Friday, November 27, 2015

Has the mystery of DB Cooper, hijacker who vanished parachuting from plane, been solved?

Has the mystery of DB Cooper, hijacker who vanished parachuting from plane, been solved?

I'm not convinced. It's a very flimsy case that connects Richard Lepsy to the notorious skyjacker.

The connection with Lynn Cooper, established in 2011, seems stronger, although that investigation ran into a blind alley.

Interesting trivia that I learned from reading up on this just now:
  • Of the $200,000 demanded by Cooper, the only portion ever recovered was the group of three rotting bundles found by the little boy in 1980. Not a single bill was ever placed into circulation, indicating that Cooper probably did not survive his jump from the 727.

  • There was never a "DB" Cooper. The skyjacker purchased his ticket as "Dan" Cooper. How did the mix-up occur? Wikipedia spins the tale:
    "Local police and FBI agents immediately began questioning possible suspects. One of the first was an Oregon man with a minor police record named D. B. Cooper, contacted by Portland police on the off-chance that the hijacker had used his real name, or the same alias in a previous crime. His involvement was quickly ruled out; but an inexperienced wire service reporter (Clyde Jabin of UPI by most accounts, Joe Frazier of AP by others), rushing to meet an imminent deadline, confused the eliminated suspect's name with the pseudonym used by the hijacker. The mistake was picked up and repeated by numerous other media sources, and the moniker "D. B. Cooper" became lodged in the public's collective memory."
    It was a misnomer that proved useful to the FBI, since they knew any "tips" leading to "DB" Cooper were coming from the usual media-inspired cranks, while tips leading to "Dan" Cooper might be genuine.

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