Bust? Already!

Has the "most promising" D.B. Cooper suspect turned out to be a dud?

Early today, the reports out of Seattle was that a guitar strap the FBI wanted to use to identify finger prints on a deceased Cooper suspect yielded no suitable finger print samples to analyze. Now the Bureau has to go back to the dead suspect's family to search for more prints, forensic evidence that would have the potential to likely yield only more in-conclusions.

And there are more problems with the suspect the Bureau has deemed credible. Today, the Times report's that the lead to the suspect came from a retired law enforcement officer who has come forward, claiming he knew somebody who knew the suspect.

This narrative is a fairly common one in Cooperland, and what tends to make them so unreliable is that the premise of the lead itself is based on second-hand sourcing. It almost sounds like a bar tale. I know a guy who knew a guy who died ten years ago….

Credible? Possibly, but a dime a dozen in the Cooper case.

Even if the Bureau were able to get a perfect print together for the Bureau lab to test, it is unlikely they have a good print of Cooper's to test against. When agents dusted the plane for prints, they found many prints. Too many! Especially in the in-flight magazine resting in the seat pocket in row 18, where Cooper hijacked the plane from. These prints themselves are partial ones, and thus inconclusive for now.

 

The best evidence to test in the case, the eight Raleigh filter tipped cigarette butts, have gone missing. During the three years I reported on the case, I learned that agents were not able to locate where the cigarette butts were and thus impossible to determine a get a genetic code for the hijacker.

 

At least for now, Cooper, once again, seems to have gotten away.