More on D.B. Cooper
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper has posted transcripts of conversations between pilots on the plane Cooper hijacked.
Check them out here: blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/library/dbcooper_transcripts.pdf
Update on hunt for D.B. Cooper
The Associated Press is reporting on a possible break in the case. Investigators are trying to determine if a parachute discovered by some children was used by the infamous skyjacker. See below:
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By GENE JOHNSON
SEATTLE (AP) — Hoping to solve at least part of a 36-year-old mystery, the FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found in southwest Washington to determine if it belonged to famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper.
Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute’s fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said Tuesday. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute’s ropes with scissors.
The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips on the unsolved highjacking — and they urged their dad to call the agency.
“When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us,” Carr said. “This is exactly what we were hoping for.”
In November 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, claiming he had a bomb.
When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. On the flight to Mexico City, he apparently took the cash and parachuted from the plane’s back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.
Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found. The parachute was discovered about 160 miles south of Seattle, near the border.
Carr spoke with the children’s father, whom he declined to identify, early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as Cooper’s.
And when Carr overlaid the family’s address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper’s most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains.
Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other remains from the parachute, but the children weren’t home, and the father wasn’t sure exactly where they found it.
There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether it’s the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy, Carr said. He’s hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it’s the right kind before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.
“We’ve got to be pretty darn sure we’re not wasting time and money here,” he said.
If it is Cooper’s parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.
In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper’s money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there’s no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.
“If this is D.B. Cooper’s parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means,” Carr said. “That whole theory is out the window.”
Oklahoma novelist’s debut involves a cold case
This week, Avon Harper Collins released the first of three books by Oklahoma novelist Jordan Dane. “No One Heard Her Scream” is available in stores.
Dane, a friend of Cold Case OKC, based her debut novel in part on real-life crimes, including at least one unsolved case.
“The Natalee Holloway investigation in Aruba shaped the story,” Dane wrote in a Q&A on her Web site, www.jordandane.com. ”I watched the drama played out in the media and witnessed the parents’ pain through this ongoing nightmare. I had also visited Aruba during the 1980s and knew something of the layout and terrain. And in my book research, I found many Internet sites that theorize a human trafficking angle to this very compelling case. Human trafficking and the trauma of such an ordeal became a facet to the plot.”
The novel centers on San Antonio police Detective Becca Montgomery, who is torn between two cases. Barred from investigating her sister’s abduction from a field trip, she distracts herself by working on another case: human remains in the walls of a burned theater.
“There is a cold case of skeletal remains in a wall,” Dane wrote in an e-mail to Cold Case OKC, “and there’s forensics about all of that part in the plot. … Quite a bit actually, including how they solve the case in the end. Cold cases are hard to solve with evidence, so it comes down to a tricky interrogation.”
Publisher’s Weekly praised the book as “a dynamite debut” and said: “Dane’s smooth style, believable characters and intense pacing will remind readers of Lisa Jackson, Lisa Gardner and Tami Hoag. While Dane’s debut is being marketed as romantic suspense, it crosses over into plain thriller country: the tight plotting and the male characters are exceptional, bad guys and good.”
For more information, visit Dane’s Web site.
‘Perfect storm’ of miscues
Special Judge Dawson R. Engle said “a perfect storm” of delays allowed his mother’s killers to escape Oklahoma City in 1986.
On April 23 of that year, Kathy Sue Engle, 41, was abducted in her own car from Shepherd Mall. (See www.coldcaseokc.com for full details.) Witnesses saw the abduction take place.
“My understanding from police is that they (witnesses) debated and waited before calling police,” Dawson Engle said.
When they did call in, a jurisdictional mess occurred, he said.
The Engles’ home had a physical address in Oklahoma City but a Yukon mailing address and phone number. Dawson Engle and his sister attended Mustang schools.
“Apparently at the time, standard procedure was for OCPD to treat that (kidnappings) like a domestic and go to the home address,” Dawson Engle said. “But it was a Yukon address. So OCPD called Yukon police and told them that they had a report of a kidnapping. … But Yukon police said, ‘No, that’s an Oklahoma City address.’ So nothing happened.”
By the time it all got sorted out, precious hours had elapsed. Officers didn’t show up at the Engle house until about 10:45 p.m. — almost three hours after the abduction.
The kidnappers escaped. Kathy Engle didn’t. Her body was found a week later in a Sayre oil field.
*****UPDATE******
Inspector Kyle Eastridge says police did arrive at the Engle home well before 10:45 p.m. There was no answer at the door initially, apparently because Dawson A. Engle, the victim’s husband, was fast asleep and didn’t hear them.
More on mystery feet
The Associated Press offers some more information on those mystery feet washing up in Canada. See below:
By DAN BURRITT, Associated Press Writer
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) – Three times in less than a year, three right feet inside running shoes have been found near separate islands in the Strait of Georgia.Police don’t know if there are any links between them. Speculation in the region is rife, including that the feet were from slaying victims or they were the remains from drownings. Police haven’t reached any conclusions.
“It is very unusual,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Annie Linteau said Tuesday.
Linteau said two of the feet were size 12, but the size of the third was not released.
The first right foot was found by beachcombers on Jedidiah Island in August.
A few days later, a foot was found inside a man’s Reebok sneaker on Gabriola Island. The third was found on the east side of Valdez Island on Feb 8. Only the shoe type for the second foot was announced.
“We’re looking into all our missing person files,” Linteau said. “We’re certainly inviting anyone who may have information about these right feet to give us a call.”
She said the coroner’s office was doing DNA testing. British Columbia’s corner’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a former professor of oceanography at the University of Washington who studies floating objects, said the feet could have drifted as far as 1,000 miles.
He speculated the feet floated away in the buoyant shoes after breaking from decomposing bodies, possibly of people who drowned in boating accidents. Other said they could be from four men whose bodies weren’t recovered after their small plane crashed in the area about a year ago.
Ebbesmeyer said it might not be a coincidence the feet were found in the same general area.
“Left foot wear and right foot wear often tend to wash up at different times at different places because they float differently,” he said. “There are beaches that collect mostly rights and other beaches that collect mostly lefts. The winds of the currents sort out left and right foot wear.”
Sheila Malcolmson, a Gabriola Island government official, said the feet are the talk of the islands.
“We are all getting e-mails and messages from friends far away, saying, ‘What’s going on up there?”‘ Malcolmson said. “We’re all walking around carefully.”
Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
