olemisscub

Somewhere I read or heard that he was given 5 reserve chutes. Clearly my nomenclature on chutes isn’t what it needs to be, however, I do remember him stating that his chute hit him in the face when he opened it.

No he wasn’t. His harness didn’t even have D-Rings.

This is most of everything that actually has the serial numbers. It's all from Nov and Dec 71 mostly. There are plenty of parachute 302's elsewhere but it's almost always Cossey verifying whether a chute was Cooper's or not, and the veracity of his statements in those are quite sketchy. I wouldn't deem them reliable. This is a grouping of 302's that I would consider to be the most reliable statements. Parachute-302s.pdf

Hahahaha that’s hysterical

Devil's advocate here: He only inferred that because Cooper wasn't jibber-jabbering with the other passengers. He may have internally been very concerned. It's just like how people might say that Cooper wasn't nervous during the hijacking. What that actually means is that he wasn't outwardly nervous. He was a human being...of course he was nervous. He just did a remarkable job of hiding it.

Where does this come from?

and was only wearing a reserve when he jumped, which knocked him silly when it opened. His hijacking is certainly the most comical. He lands hard on his butt, lays next to a tree and sleeps for 8 hours, then wakes up and is given a ride to the local town by the literal Sheriff of that county, then stays in the same hotel with FBI agents who are hunting him. Completely bonkers. Couple all of that with the drunk who rammed his original 727 upon takeoff.

Hahneman jacked a plane in Pennsylvania and ended up jumping in Honduras. Fly and I will probably always disagree on this, and that’s OK. I feel like he jumped out where he jumped on purpose because that’s close to where his original transportation was (presumably).

That’s always been my take. He was just trying to say something comforting. I often think we read into these lines too much. It’s like the grudge line. It’s quite possible that “no Miss, I don’t have a grudge against your airline, I just have a grudge” was a cooler sounding and better alternative than “no Miss, I don’t have a grudge against your airline, I’m just a dirty thief.”

Goes without saying that the deathbed confession was made up by Jo and never happened?

Yep, both of her interviews are combined into one file on there.

I've recreated all of the witness and crew testimonies in their unredacted format and put them all in one place. Many of the copies floating around the net look terrible and have gross watermarks, etc. norjak.org/testimony

Anyone know what Jo's original last name was?

When we were at Himmy's grandson's house we pulled out like a dozen letters that Jo had written to Himmy. Some weren't even opened. Since we knew Jo was full of shit and our time was limited, we just set them aside. I do wish I had glanced through them though.

This is Jo's comment from 2008 about this incident. My guess is that Jo had this letter in her possession and gave it to the film crew to use. I'd say the odds are north of 90% that she wrote this letter herself. Although why would she do that? Surely if she submitted this phony letter to the FBI they could just go cross check it with whomever this clerk's name was that is listed on the letter. So maybe it's genuine.

"wanted me to make as positive an ID as I could with the gentleman I had checked in the previous night" Certainly seems like this event happened the evening of the 24th. I think Cooper would be a little busy at that time. I guess it's possible since this was written years later the person is confusing some events and their timeline is messed up. I suppose it would make sense for the FBI to canvas local hotels. However, they'd presumably be asking about people who checked in on the night of the 23rd.

My software indicates that she used the name "Collins" at some point during Duane's life.

He didn’t invent that since Tina appears to have corroborated it. However, he definitely didn’t talk to Alice Hancock while she was living in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Alice has been living in Texas since the late 70’s. Makes me think that entire conversation was made up.

Tina says this in the HBO documentary. I've been a proponent of the bomb being real for some time now. I think that he would have only used it if he got cornered. Bomb serves two purposes if you set it off: it kills you but it also likely makes your remains unidentifiable. If he was killed in a shootout or something and they couldn't figure out who he was, you can bet for damn sure they'd have thrown his dead face into the papers asking "do you recognize this man?". So blowing yourself up eliminates yourself but also eliminates you being ID'd if you were peraps worried about bringing embarrassment and shame onto your family. While at CooperCon, I showed Kaye the statement that Tina made from the cockpit describing the bomb. He had never seen it before. One of the guys at the table had a brother who worked in Hollywood as a pyrotechnics guy and he called him to figure out how many amps (or maybe volts) it would take to set off a blasting cap for dynamite. Whatever that battery was (Tom knew what it was from Tina's description) certainly had enough juice to pop a blasting cap. So there's nothing to rule it out being real.

Most likely somewhere north of Vancouver and south of Woodland. Why does precise location matter toward solving the case? You think he left a business card on the ground or dropped his wallet in the brush? I don’t get why it matters anymore. Any evidence is long gone.

Honestly why do we give a shit where he jumped at this point?

“”(Referring to the bump or the report of the bump) "They had not yet reached Portland proper but were definitely in the suburbs or immediate vicinity thereof" (First Officer, 1971.) To me, this sounds like they have crossed the Columbia River.“”” Portland proper is literally across the river so how could they have not been in Portland proper once “they have crossed the Columbia River”? I think it’s clear that they were referring to the suburbs north of the Columbia. “Immediate vicinity thereof” sounds to me like they were closing in on the northern suburbs like Battle Ground.

Good stuff. Never seen that.