Not so fast
Just hold on now.
Today, there's a news break out of the Pacific Northwest about a "new suspect" in the legendary D.B. Cooper case. On the surface it sounds promising. Through the sleuthing efforts of The Telegraph's Alex Hannaford, we've learned the FBI has sent evidence to the lab in Quantico for fingerprinting and DNA testing. The lead on the suspect is a good one, the Bureau says, because the tip itself came from law enforcement, and not from the thousands of suspicious citizens over the years like you and me.
Here are the problems. First, the evidence the FBI uncovered on the plane, from my sources at least, has proven inconclusive for conclusive testing. During the three years that I reported on the Cooper case and was given exclusive access to FBI files to write SKYJACK: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, which comes out next month, I learned through then case agent Larry Carr that the fingerprints uncovered on the plane that night were virtually useless. There were so many prints for agents to dust on the plane it was impossible to tell which were the hijackers and which were passengers.
Furthermore, the most crucial physical evidence in the case itself—8 Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts—had gone missing. Carr didn't know where they were, and suspected they might have been tossed because DNA evidence had yet to come in vogue.
So, is the news here really the FBI finally found the missing cigarette butts to test against their new "most promising" suspect? Or will the Bureau's lab agents in Quantico come up with the same results that Carr did, namely that the physical evidence in the case is good but not good enough to make a declarative forensic conclusion on the identity of the hijacker?
The Bureau itself might be onto something promising indeed, but with so many promising leads that have come in on the case, what's looked good before has often come up short. In recent years, the last discovery to make international news and stir up a frenzy was the discovery of a white parachute in Amboy in southwest Washington, near where Cooper is believed to have landed. News of the discovery got out, a media whirlwind followed, and the parachute itself turned out to be the wrong one.
The question within this recent reveal is not whether the Bureau has a new suspect—thousands of names have come in before for testing, and names from law enforcement sources too. The real question is the condition of the physical evidence. From an investigative perspective, the cold case has not been a priority for agents to probe. So, given the let's-see-what-happens-posture, have they somehow managed to relocate evidence that has better forensic integrity than what Carr found over the past three years? Or, more likely, is this "most promising" suspect another shot in the dark?
