Seattle – Amateur scientists chosen by the Seattle FBI to search for clues in the mystery of the skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper may have found new evidence.
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KING-TV reports a team has been analyzing particles taken from a clip-on tie left by Cooper after he hijacked a passenger jet in 1971 and then vanished out the back wearing a parachute and pack with $200,000.
An electron microscope located over 100,000 particles including Cerium, Strontium Sulfide and pure titanium. Lead researcher Tom Kaye says the elements could have been found in the manufacturing of Boeing’s high-tech Super Sonic Transport plane.
Kaye wonders if Cooper could have been a Boeing employee or a contractor who wore a tie to work and said the public’s help is needed to discern whether that’s possible.
The FBI closed the case last year.
On Nov. 24, 1971, the night before Thanksgiving, a man described as being in his mid-40s with dark sunglasses and an olive complexion boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He bought his $20 ticket under the name “Dan Cooper,” but an early wire-service report misidentified him as “D.B. Cooper,” and the name stuck.
Sitting in the rear of the plane, he handed a note to a flight attendant after takeoff. “Miss, I have a bomb and would like you to sit by me,” it said.
He opened his briefcase, displaying a couple of red cylinders, wires and a battery, and demanded $200,000 in cash plus four parachutes. His demands were granted at Sea-Tac, where he released the 36 passengers and two of the flight attendants. The plane took off again at his direction, heading slowly to Reno, Nevada, at the low height of 10,000 feet. Somewhere, apparently over southwestern Washington, Cooper lowered the aircraft’s rear stairs and jumped.
He was never found, but a boy digging on a Columbia River beach in 1980 discovered three bundles of weathered $20 bills — nearly $6,000 in all. It was Cooper’s cash, according to the serial numbers.
Over the years, the FBI and amateur sleuths have examined innumerable theories about Cooper’s identity and fate, from accounts of unexplained wealth to purported discoveries of his parachute to potential matches of the agency’s composite sketch of the suspect.
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Information from: KING-TV, http://www.king5.com/