Geoffrey Gray's Blog, page 5

Cooper News: Next Symposium in…Tacoma!

Cooper Sleuths:

Very excited to report that plans have been made for the next D.B. Cooper Symposium, and the official date for our next national gathering will be November 30, 2013, and the location will be the Washington State Historical Museum in Tacoma, Washington.

What’s noteworthy here is the folks in Tacoma at the Washington Museum have been planning an entire exhibit on the Cooper skyjacking and case, so it’s natural fit to have the Symposium there.

A word on the exhibit: it should be something. The curators at the Museum are going all out for the show, and have even imported parts of a 727 plane to display. Check out the forklift in action in this photo.

The bad news of course is that the next Symposium is going to happen next year, which would be a bummer if there were no Cooper anniversary events planned. But there are plenty.

In Portland, Doug Kenck-Crispin, the ribald historian you all no doubt will remember for his Cooper raps and hilarious presentation, is hosting a pre-anniversary D.B. Cooper movie night on Saturday, November 17th, at The Hollywood Theater in Portland. The film: The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, starring Robert Duvall and Trent Williams. Crispin will place the film in its proper historic context, and also on hand will be Marla Cooper, to discuss her uncle-suspect Lynn Doyle Cooper, who the FBI is still apparently trying to connect to the hijacking via fingerprint samples and forensic evidence.

The tireless Kenck-Crispin is also sponsoring a D.B. Cooper bus tour that leaves from Portland and will trek down into the southern part of the state to celebrate the annual Cooper Days party in Ariel. Get on that bus before seats fill up, and find more at orhistory.com

More Cooper news from me soon and (almost) happy Cooper anniversary.

D.B. Cooper: the Soundtrack?

Think for a second. If a book about D.B. Cooper came with a soundtrack, what songs would on it? Well, here are the songs and here is the list.

Paperback Pub Day: Today!

So, today is the day. Paperback copies of SKYJACK: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper should be on sale in bookstores this morning. Look for them on the front tables. Thanks again to everyone for their support this year, where SKYJACK made it to the Times best-seller list and more.

Your Poetry=Free Book

Even days after the daring hijacking by parachute, songwriters and wordsmiths were penning odes and ballads and lyrics to D.B. Cooper. You could write one too.

In honor of next week’s paperback release, I want to give away a few hardback books, the big heavy ones, shipping included. I have a secret stash. I want you to have one.

Here’s how to get one. Write a poem. Cooper related. Could be haiku. Could be ryhming verse. Could be short or long. Could be a video of you singing our own lyrics and strumming your guitar. Send it my way [dbcoopersjump at gmail] with mailing address. That’s it. I’ll send you a book.

There’s a rich history of Cooper related poetry, as evidenced by the popular and impressive submissions for last year’s Symposium. You can find them in the archives. Happy wordsmithing.

Paella and Paperbacks: Release Date September 4th.

Dear Cooper sleuths:

What a year it’s been. New suspects. New leads. A poetry contest. We had our first ever Symposium, a national collaboration of retired law enforcement, private eyes, amateur sleuths, paleontologists, parachutists, survival experts, aeronautical engineers and a hundred and fifty or so more, either giving presentations or listening to information about the case.

And now a paperback release.

Like hardback books, paperback books are good to have around. They aren’t as helpful to prop up computer screens or level out wobbly tables. But they are cheaper to buy. You can also stuff them into pockets, bags and things. You can take them with you on trips. You can give them away and trade them for books of your friends.

The actual on-sale date, I’ve been told, is September 4th, the Tuesday after Labor Day. To celebrate the paperback release, I have a few plans in the works, so stay tuned for more to come.

I’m in Spain now, writing from a town of many white walls, the most fragrant jasmine plants I’ve ever walked under, and the home to 376 people who have been partying non-stop for the last two days because it is their town feria or fair. Today’s attraction was a town-wide paella cook out and feast with paella pans the size of the small cars. On the calendar tonight: “mobile disco,” which I think means an entire discotheque on wheels.

Starts at 1:00 am. Will confirm (or deny) that hunch later on.

Hope you all are having an amazing summer and your Cooper hunting has been fruitful.

Hasta luego,

-Geoff

The Great Levity in it All

In Cooperland, there are many devout sleuths. On the hunt for new clues and suspects these gumshoes have lightened the burden of solving this great unsolved mystery with levity, self-styled panache and great humor.

Bruce Smith is one of those gumshoes. Last night, this intrepid reporter from the Mountain News in Washington State sent around an e-mail informing of a new discovery he made.

"I was soon to learn that my heart had experienced a 95% blockage in the rear circumflex coronary artery," he writes in this must-read account.

Good lord. Good news: he's recovering and on the mend. Get better Bruce, we need you out there looking for Danny Boy.

The Matchbook Mystery

The clues to solving the most difficult crimes are often buried within the most minute shreds of evidence. A strand of hair found on the crime scene. A faint trace of DNA. Or, say, a matchbook that is blue in color and emblazoned with the words "Skychef" written on it.

One detail that surfaced in the FBI's case files on Mr. D.B. Cooper (ocassionally referred to as 'Danny Boy' among the hardest of core followers) is this issue of the blue Skychef matchbook.

During her debriefing with FBI agents, Northwest stewardess Tina Mucklow noted that she had helped Cooper light some of the eight Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts with his own matches, which she plucked from his matchbook.

The color of the book was blue, she told FBI agents.

And the name on it?

"Skychef," she said.

Some devout sleuths have dug up some pearls on the matchbook—including some Skychef matchbooks themselves. Skychef, it shows, was a restaurant in airports. (See last post.)

Now comes conformation that the Skychef restaurant was actually located in the Portland Airport, and there in the fall of 1971. Conformation comes in the form of this gem of a newspaper clip [click "READ THE FILES" below], unearthed by a Cooper sleuth calling himself Smokin99. (Thanks again, Smokin99.)

The ad clearly shows that Skychef was not only open for business during the week of the hijacking but soliciting customers. ("Golden Fried Chicken…gravy…for $3.95." Mmmm.)

What's telling about this darling of a clue though is the restaurant's hours of operation. Skychef clearly states that dinner is served "from 5:00 pm" and on Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. Now, we know Danny Boy got on the plane before 3:00 pm, and on November 24th, 1971, a Wednesday, presumably when the Skychef restaurant was not open.

Or at least not open for dinner.

Huh. So, was Skychef at Portland International open for other meals in November, 1971? Or did Danny Boy get his matchbooks from another location? Or on another day?

Cooper sleuths?

D.B. Cooper Evidence Found!

Well, kind of. An intrepid Cooper hunter named Todd Paoletti has been able to track down a few of the original "Skychef" matchbook covers that the hijacker reportedly used to light his eight Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts. Definitely a striking artifact, and I've yet to see one. (Forgive me if others have already come up with them.)

Anyway, look inside. One detail Paoletti discovered is that the matchbooks contain a list of Skychef airport restaurants— presumably the hijacker could have picked up the matchbook there before the hijacking.But where?

Note: there is no listing for a Skychef restaurant in Portland, Oregon, where the hijacker boarded Flight 305. So, did he actually arrive to Portland International from another airport, as some have suspected?



Also note: Denver, Colorado. Seasoned Cooper sleuths will remember that Cooper suspect Richard McCoy made a stopover in Denver, Colorado, before he executed his copy cat hijacking over hometown Provo, Utah, in the spring of 1972.

So what does the matchbook all mean? Too early to tell. It's unclear when the matchbook was printed. A similar Skychef matchbook that Paoletti found was dated from '49, which could mean that there very well could have been a Skychef restaurant in PDX by '71. Any matchbook experts out there? Or anyone know the layout of PDX in 1971 and remember seeing a Skychef in the terminal? (Oh, and if you're wondering why there is Cooper-looking tie-clasp on the matchbook cover, Paoletti is hawking them on Ebay.)

Case Closed? Not so fast.

The headlines are already coming in.

"DB Cooper case to close for good?"

"D.B. Cooper case 'solved.'"

"FBI closing case on Cooper…."

So, is any of it true?

After forty years of hunting for the mysterious hijacker…after spending millions to deploy sheriffs, deputies, cops, troopers, agents, and spy planes…after chasing down leads on over 1,000 suspects and persons of interest…is the mystery finally all over?

Absolutely not.

Today, there's been a handful of stories reporting the following: after meeting with the FBI in Seattle last week, Marla Wynn Cooper claims current Cooper case agent Curtis Eng is so convinced her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper is the hijacker he is planning to close the Cooper case for good, regardless of what additional forensics might show.

The fact that Eng is so optimistic about Lynn Doyle Cooper as a suspect is an interesting development in the case, to say the least. However, it is unlikely the Cooper case will be closed, given what we know.

From sources inside the Bureau's field office in Seattle, I'm told that even if Eng was so sure Lynn Doyle Cooper was the hijacker he doesn't have the authority to close the case. With an open indictment, the case must get referred to FBI brass in Washington and then on to prosecutors at the Department of Justice.

Furthermore, considering the stakes in the Cooper matter, it is unlikely the feds will close such a legendary case based on circumstantial evidence. Or Marla Cooper's memories. Or even an identification from, say, a member of the flight crew. The hijacking was forty years ago; eyewitnesses might not apply here.

But hey. If there's a consistent narrative to the Cooper saga, it's that the tale only seems to get wackier with age.

In a way, all the evidence Eng may need to indict Lynn Doyle Cooper (who passed away several years ago) is enough to show probable cause. The burden of proof here, as we've seen in so many cases, can be pretty light.

Because all the top suspects in the case are dead, the Bureau needs to go further than probable cause to finger a suspect. For forty years, Cooper sleuths have quested for a definitive answer in this mystery. Who was Cooper?

The way to find out—and a way nobody will quibble with—is forensic or DNA evidence. And the place to look for it is with the items found on the plane that could yield good DNA samples, namely the eight Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts, evidence that seems to have gone missing from the FBI's possession. Saliva embedded in the cotton fibers of the cigarette filters might allow Bureau scientists to ascertain a complete genetic code of the hijacker.

In the Cooper case, agents come and go, and with them their suspicions and claims. What's missing all these years is good forensic evidence to test. We need to find those cigarette butts—for Marla Cooper sake, and the rest of us.

Symposium Recap

Well, Symposium day has come and gone. For those who didn't make it, a basic recap: from most accounts, there were roughly 200 hundred of us there throughout the day, giving and listening to presentations, first hand accounts, speculations and some spectacular poems from an eclectic bunch.

One lucky paleontologist won a parachute canopy. One lucky parachutist won a very old (and quite precious) twenty dollar bill.

It was a Cooperathalon: We soldiered for nearly nine straight hours, and could have gone longer.

We learned several things. The most newsworthy, perhaps: the FBI appears to be taking Marla Cooper's lead about her Uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper very seriously. So seriously that according to Marla, the feds went to the great length of re-interviewing original crew members on the flight and showed them photos of her uncle.

One, Marla said, was Tina Mucklow, the stewardess who became Cooper's liaison on the hijacked flight and who later became a nun.

An FBI spokesperson could not confirm or deny that agents are re-interviewing the flight crew, citing "a pending investigation" and the Bureau's policy of declining to comment on ongoing probes.

If true though, it might be the first time the feds have interviewed members of the flight crew in roughly ten years, when Jo Weber first went public with her belief that ex-husband Duane was the hijacker.

Nothing conclusive, but if the feds are knocking on Tina's door after all these years it's a significant development here in Cooperland.

Back to the Symposium. The emergence of some new leads, the benefit of accounts from folks who showed up and had a part in the case, all lead many of us to the conclusion we should all come back next year and keep the Symposium going.

As part of an inaugural tradition, I passed the first clip-on tie to Doug Kenck-Crispin, a local historian, who proved his bonafides as a true Cooper aficionado by sleeping in his car outside the Ariel Tavern after the party there as a means to simulate what Cooper might have gone through—and woken up to—if he survived the jump and spent the night in the woods.

Now that there's a year to go, my thoughts: it wouldn't be such a bad idea if any computer literate sleuths out there could come up with a kind of community-sleuthing website, so we could put all our detective work under the same roof, so to speak. Ideas?