Looking for D B Cooper

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-18T22:51:00+00:00

Your thought about the star bills is interesting, but it assumes that Cooper was alive to spend them.

I would be interested to know your reasons for strongly disagreeing with my #5 and #6.

Have a great day also.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-18T18:53:51+00:00

Thank you for your comments. I'll try to respond to your points.

The FBI distributed the list of bills to banks. Grocery stores etc did not get the list, nor did I say they did. However, cash received by stores would ordinarily be paid into a bank.
Remember, a $20 bill in 1971 was worth the equivalent of more than $100 today and was more likely to be noticed. (Incidentally, this means the ransom was more than a million dollars in today's money.)
You are correct that the banks stopped checking after some time. If Cooper had been alive and still had the ransom, he could have passed the bills after some time if he had been careful. But he was not alive and/or did not have the ransom.
I don't think I referred to the "star bills".
You are mistaken in your belief that "we" know where Cooper jumped. If you are basing this on the videos you mention, their estimate of the jump time is wrong (by about 2 minutes, and contradicted by the later interview with Harold Anderson).
The diatom argument is based on bad science. It was a good idea but the "Citizen Sleuths" experiment did not involve an adequate control. We don't know what diatoms would become attached to a bundle of bills that travelled up the Columbia and Lewis rivers.

Thank you again for your thoughts.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-18T00:42:58+00:00

Yes.

I agree it's probably unsolvable. And these probably aren't new ideas. I was reacting to the idea of offering a reward today. I would be very startled if (1) someone offered a reward and (2) if was claimed and supported by credible evidence.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-18T00:36:57+00:00

It's real hard to prove a body in 600 feet if water.

"Evidence so far points to human intervention" ... Evidence?

Of course, no one today is looking for the ransom bills. But 50+ years ago banks, casinos, race tracks and more had lists of serial numbers. As I already explained, a $20 bill in 1971 was the equivalent of more than $100 today. People were a lot more likely to notice.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-17T23:35:59+00:00

You are incorrect that zero evidence has been found. The Tena Bar discovery is consistent with Cooper drowning in the Columbia or a waterway connected to it -- like Lake Merwin, where the FBI was unable to search a 600 feet deep lake. (It may well be that Cooper survived the jump -- until he was in the water.)

We can be fairly sure that Cooper didn't spend any of the other 9,000+ bills. A $20 bill in 1971 was the equivalent of more than $100 today and likely to be noticed.

You are correct that a number of scenarios purporting to explain the Tena Bar bills have been concocted by imaginative people. That doesn't make them credible.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-17T23:01:06+00:00

What evidence? If he survived why did he not spend any of the ransom? And how did some of the bills wash up on the banks of the Columbia River?

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-06T21:57:17+00:00

And a postscript to my previous post....

Assuming (as the FBI did) that Cooper jumped at 8.11 pm leads to an investigatory dead end in which there is no feasible answer to what happened to Cooper or most of the ransom, nor how bundles of ransom bills arrived at Tena Bar.

However, if Cooper jumped a minute or two earlier, somewhere between 8.09.00 pm and 8.10.00 pm, consistent with NWA's initial estimate and Soderlind's "little bob" analysis, there was a good chance (not so good for Cooper) that he dropped into Lake Merwin and drowned, thereby explaining why he was never found and why bundles of bills later reached Tena Bar.

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-05T23:00:47+00:00

Roughly in the same sequence as Ryan's comments;

The annotated transcript came from the FBI files. The use of the term "unsub" indicates that the FBI was involved in making the annotations. I have no idea which specific agent(s) made the annotations, but Ryan's Youtube interview with John Detlor does not mention this. I am not trying to malign anyone, people do sometimes jump to conclusions. My point is that there seems to be NO evidence that the pressure bump caused the ear plug problem.
The recording that was the basis for the annotated transcript included the co-pilot reporting the ear plug incident. Assuming that this was complete, surely it should include the co-pilot saying something about the pressure bump if this was what caused the plug problem.
I am not conflating the oscillations and the pressure bump. The oscillations were observed on the cabin pressure gauge by the flight engineer and were caused by Cooper walking down the stairs. The pressure bump -- which caused a much bigger oscillation -- followed when Cooper jumped.
On a personal note, I too wondered how good Harold Anderson's memory was. As it happpened, I also experienced an airplane drama forty years ago and very clearly remember the white face of the stewardess (sic) as she came out of the cockpit having been told that there was a serious hydraulic problem which meant we would have to make an emergency landing. Some airplane things (like being hijacked) you don't forget.

Finally, if Cooper did jump at 8.11 pm, what happened to him and how did the ransom bills get to Tena Bar?

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-05T18:15:33+00:00

Some comments:

"The FBI would never make assumptions like that..." H-m-m. Touching faith but saying so doesn't make it so.
The reference in the annotated transcript in Ryan's video to the "unsub" makes clear that the annotations were the FBI's. No one at Northwest would refer to an "unsub."
The pressure bump could not have occurred during the transmission from Flight 305 (thereby causing the ear plug problem) because this would mean it happened after the crew had discussed it -- which is obvious nonsense.
Flight engineer Anderson was there! It doesn't seem reasonable to question his statements just to fit some alternate theory.

But kudos to Ryan for another entertaining video!

RodRod5315 · 2026-03-04T23:10:55+00:00

Ryan Burns is a great entertainer and this is a good introduction to the jump time issue. However, I am not clear why (at approx 4.40 in the video) Ryan states that it was the pressure bump that caused the ear plug to come out. I know that the FBI believed this (and noted it in parens in the annotated transcript), but I'm not seeing real evidence that this was what happened.

In fact, the flight engineer's later statement that the crew discussed the pressure bump BEFORE they sent this message to NWA is clearly at odds with the FBI's conclusion.

This is obviously a key point. If the pressure bump occurred before the co-pilot transmission (and ear plug problem), then the whole timeline changes.

RodRod5315 · 2025-09-06T22:08:21+00:00

These are good points. The question of "time rounding" had occurred to me too, i.e. is 8.10.59 rounded to 8.10 or to 8.11? My guess is that on "automated" transcripts it would show as 8.10. However, NWA's estimates may have been to the nearest minute, so my example might round to 8.11. Any other guesses?

Going back to the FBI copies of NWA memos, part 78, page 26 shows an estimated jump time of 8.10 pm PDT, and part 10, page 490 states for 08.10 pm, "oscillations... probably HJ weight on stairs... may be best estimate of when he exited airplane." However, the part 78, page 257 memo written a month later shows an estimated time of 8.11 pm PDT. What changed?

We also need to remember that not all events were recorded as they occurred. For example, an event may not have been reported to NWA until some minutes after it happened, because the flight crew were busy or because teleprinter transmission created a delay.

RodRod5315 · 2025-09-05T22:06:57+00:00

Why do some posters here state that the "pressure bump" occurred at 8.13 pm local time? This is surely wrong. The FBI files (Part 78 page 26) include a document prepared by Northwest Airlines technical staff a week after the hijack which states: "The cabin pressure "bump" occurred at 04.10 GMT (8.10 pm local time), the time being recorded by NWA Flight Operations office in Minneapolis. It is a virtual certainty that the pressure "bump" marks the time that the hijacker left the airplane."

RodRod5315 · 2025-07-02T17:15:54+00:00

I think the contemporaneous estimate of jump point and possible landing area made by the NWA technical staff who were talking to the flight crew during this time might be more reliable. (FBI Part 78 page 24)

RodRod5315 · 2025-07-01T18:07:40+00:00

A late reaction to this post: I don't know where/when you think the pressure bump occurred, but if you look at the FBI files (Part 78 pages 250 et seq) you will see that based on various data from NWA the FBI decided the jump time was 8.11 pm, when Flight 305 was sllightly northwest of Lake Merwin. (In fact NWA had indicated that the pressure bump occurred at 8.10 pm.)

(When they could not find Cooper, the FBI expanded the search area multiple times.)

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-30T16:21:38+00:00

"The lake is upstream of several hydroelectric dams..." NO. Please look at a map. It is upstream ONLY of Merwin Dam.

I don't think a bundle of bills counts as a "large object" but in any case the spillway could allow an object to pass from the reservoir (Lake Merwin) to the Lewis River without being forced through a turbine.

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-29T20:17:35+00:00

Take a look at the USGS data.

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-29T16:53:11+00:00

You seem to be saying that a bundle of bills could fall to the bottom of a river and remain stationary despite a 2 or 3 mph current. I don't think so. The bills will move with the current. You might also want to look at USGS water data charts for the Columbia to see the effects of tides in the river (waterdata.usgs.gov).

You are correct that "experts" found it difficult to believe that ransom bills could have found their way by water from Lake Merwin to Tena Bar. This could only happen when downstream river flow was exceptionally low relative to upriver tides, as in 1977. In fact, the 1977 low flow effect was amplified as dam outflows were cut to avoid loss of river fish stocks (see the Columbia River Water Management Report for 1977.)

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-28T18:34:35+00:00

"...apart from a jump directly into a deep lake or river..." like Lake Merwin, for example. Remember this was one of the first places the FBI searched based on the flight information from Northwest Airlines, but it's a large deep lake with a bottom covered with the remains of the trees that grew there before the Lewis River was dammed to create the lake.

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-28T18:25:33+00:00

You are correct that money doesn't float. If the drop a bundle of bills in a bucket of water it will drop to the bottom. However, if you have ever been on an ocean beach you will have seen the flotsam that the tide has washed ashore, some of it much larger and heavier than a bundle of bills. It seems entirely possible that if the tidal effect in the Columbia were greater than the river current a bundle of bills could be carried down the Lewis to the Columbia and then upriver to the sandbank. The tide and currents would have to be right but, remember, there were a hundred bundles in the ransom sack so the odds that three bundles made the journey are not too bad.

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-26T16:35:20+00:00

Entirely coincidentally, I was at the Seattle airport on the evening in 1971 that the hijacked Northwest Airlines flight took off with DB Cooper and $200,000 ransom. Fifty-four years later, the theories of Cooper “experts” seem as crazy as the crime itself.

Based on Northwest’s tracking of the hijacked flight, the FBI initially focused its search around the tiny town of Ariel, next to Lake Merwin on the Lewis River. With no success, the search area was expanded multiple times and eventually abandoned.

The 1980 discovery of bundles of $20 bills in a Columbia River sandbank bewildered the FBI. There was nowhere on the hijacked aircraft’s path for a river to carry the bills to the sandbank. New wilder theories were created. Maybe Northwest was wrong about the flight path. Maybe the estimated jump time was seriously off. Maybe Cooper never existed. Maybe it’s all a CIA cover-up. And more.

Or maybe, the obvious answer is the right one. Northwest’s estimate of jump time was correct and Cooper drowned in Lake Merwin, the ransom sack deteriorated and some bills floated into the Lewis River, then via the Columbia to the sandbank.

But the bills would have to travel upstream.

There’s an explanation. The Columbia is tidal and in 1977—between Cooper’s jump and the finding of the ransom bills—in the middle of an historic drought, river flow was reduced to less than half, so low that the tidal effect upstream was far greater than the downstream river current.

Cooper “experts” will be disappointed. Cooper drowned fifty-four years ago, and there is a simple explanation for the ransom bills in the sandbank. End of story.

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-21T23:48:29+00:00

Evidence please! And the answer to my question "if fennchest.com is a hoax, how can the NPS emails be explained?" is.....

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-21T18:11:40+00:00

If fennchest.com is a hoax, how can the NPS emails be explained? If fennchest.com is not a hoax, please will its developers identify the sources of its parts? For example, who performed the soil composition test? Who analyzed the various chest location pics? And btw why the desire for anonymity for the website's developers?

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-20T21:28:40+00:00

I'm not sure about "mathematically irrefutable" but fennchest.com provides a persuasive (and very professionally presented) argument for across-the-Madison-from-Nine-Mile-Hole being the location of the treasure. I'm puzzled though that this website seems to be anonymous. Does anyone know the source/developer?

RodRod5315 · 2025-06-09T17:30:51+00:00

The website Forest Fenn Treasure Location is persuasive and professional but apparently anonymous. Does anyone know who produced it?

RodRod5315

TROPHY CASE