olemisscub

I've seen Ralph say quite a bit, but freezing to death in midair and instant death under a deployed canopy were new to me...

Found two Himmelsbach doozies.... good grief that guy...

Thanks! No wonder it didn't come up...."Elisnor". Sounds like a Tolkein character.

I've seen you say this a few times now and I'm interested (not at all because of Gunther) to know where that is in the files. I've clicked through every document that pops up for "Elsinore" and I've not seen anything where Cameron changes his story or walks it back. Could you point me in the right direction?

Cooper strikes me as the type who wouldn't want to talk about it with anyone.

That's too bad. The FBI obviously would have wanted it to come out and would have used it in his trial if so. Did he even have a trial or did he just take a plea?

Flyjack, I came across this recently in an article about the Hahneman hijacking. Know anything about this? Would be interesting to know if that photo could be FOIA'd (assuming it came out correctly).

In the book it’s because Gunther wrote an article for a men’s magazine about how to abandon your family. “Cooper” read this article and it inspired him to leave his family in search of adventure, which ultimately culminated in NORJAK.

The first one was literally a template just based upon written descriptions that the sketch artist had with no input from eyewitnesses. It was a template to be used to make adjustments against once the sketch artist sat down in person with eyewitnesses (which is what Roy Rose did on Nov 27 when he met with the Stews in Minneapolis.)

Indeed. Cooper had around 30 minutes to himself in the back. Between Tacoma and Woodland on Victor-23 is a whole lot of NOTHING except heavy forest. At any point during that 30 minutes he could have chunked out his briefcase or maybe the dummy chute and it wouldn't at all be surprising that these items were never reported to be found. Even if some hiker or hunter came across it five or ten or fifteen years later there's a high likelihood that it would have just been random junk in the woods to them.

Tina is so all over the place that she even liked that first sketch thrown together just from witness statements. I always thought that 302 was about Comp A, but Comp A wasn't made until 11-27. Here we have Tina on the 25th talking about viewing a "facsimile". So she's viewing that first sketch, which was clearly just a template to work off of. Here I've got Tina saying: - 11-25-71 template sketch a "good likeness" - 11-27-71 Comp A is "almost 100% like him" (we don't have this 302 but reference is made in a 302 from August 72 that she said this on 11-27-71) - 10-2-72 Comp B "not a good similarity to Unsub" - 12-1-72 Revised Comp B "more similar to the appearance of Unsub than previous sketches" - 3-27-73 Final Comp B "bears very close resemblance..."

If you still think Reca actually worked for the CIA, then I’m not sure what to tell you. His KGB “ID” literally has “Walter Reca” as his name on it. You really think double agents or whatever he was claiming to be would use their actual name?

Personal opinion here but an actual spook would be hard to write a book on. Braden is verified to have worked with the CIA and falls off the map after 1968. Beeson had a tough time collecting enough info on him This comes from a very, very expensive background check service. Note the difference…the confirmed CIA dude vs the quadruple agent super secret international man of mystery.

It’s the ONLY book on Braden

Why would he have done that? Braden was a criminal and would have just done it himself or would have been a copycat. He committed multiple high dollar felony scams and heists throughout the 70’s with nets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I doubt Braden would have assisted anyone. He’d have just done the job himself.

Braden and it isn’t even REMOTELY close. To suggest anyone else would be intellectually dishonest. He probably wasn’t Cooper but of the named suspects, he IS the only real answer to your question. As far as being qualified to make the jump, Braden made over 900 free fall jumps with the military, was one of the test jumpers when the Army was inventing HALO jumping, and was chosen by the Army to represent them at International Skydiving competitions, many of which he won. Braden was also chosen by Project DELTA to teach South Vietnamese Special Forces how to jump into wooded and jungle terrain in 1965. Evading capture and escaping? The guy did nighttime jumps with 6 man teams (that he led) into Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and North Vietnam from early 65 until late 66. He would be evading capture and certain death/torture for weeks at a time. Braden was the first guy to ever successfully plant a wire tap in North Vietnam. Again, he likely wasn’t Cooper, but he is the answer to your question. Even if Peca was the only quadruple agent of CIA-Mi6-KGB and Mossad in all of history, Braden still has him beat at this sort of thing.

Right, so just to clarify for all time's sake: neither of these back chutes were the luxury chutes or whatever bullsh*t that Cossey was telling the Feds? Their age was different, but they were otherwise identical (except it appears Cooper's chute had a slightly smaller canopy).

I realize it's terribly far fetched. Just trying to come up with another possible solution than Cooper doing it himself. Because I have to wonder why he'd have taken the time to put the card from his chute into the unused chute. Aren't the packing cards somewhat difficult to get to? I admittedly know nothing about parachutes but I've heard they can be tricky to find or something to that effect.

Only other thing I can think of is that for whatever reason Cossey inadvertently put both packing cards in that single chute. With both packing cards having the same date on them (presumably the date on or around when he delivered these two chutes to Hayden) then maybe he just brainfarted and put them both into one chute. If they were packed at different times and the cards had different dates, then I'd say hell no to the "brainfart" theory. But since we know he did both cards at the same time, it at least raises the slight possibility that both cards were inserted together into one chute. Yes, I realize that would be strange, but that's the only alternative I can think of to what you're proposing.

Just to clarify, this is proof that Cooper did find and remove the packing card from the chute he jumped with?

Presumably it was white since I believe Hayden has said that the two chutes were identical. Could be wrong on that, but I believe that to be the case. So the whole notion of Cooper having a choice between "the luxury chute" and the military chute is bunk.

My dude, KK5-1 is a random mugshot of some long dead criminal from yesteryear, it's not a sketch. It comes from this:

This was Flo since it came from Denver. She moved to Denver in early 72 to work for Frontier. I originally thought Alice was the one who moved to Denver, but it was 100% Flo. Alice stayed in Minny throughout 72 with her husband who was an NWO employee. Tina ended up moving to Chicago in summer 73 when she married Larson.

By that same logic he sat on the right side of the plane so he could have his left hand free to do tasks while his right hand was inside the briefcase (pretending to be holding detonator wires or whatever). Lynse's "probably right" is weird. Lynse's 302 says he probably couldn't pick him out if he saw him again yet he is supposed to remember or have paid attention to what hand he paid with? The stains is interesting as well. The only time so far that appears in a 302 comes from a couple of 1988 302's. Himmy in NORJAK also mentions his fingers were stained, but doesn't specify which hand. Hopefully one day we'll get a 302 of a previously unseen testimony indicating where that derived from precisely. I think there is evidence that points toward him being a lefty and also evidence pointing toward the righty. I think if we get a 302 from closer in time to the hijacking indicating that it really was his right hand that was tobacco stained, then that should solve it. However, it's odd that a stew, presumably Tina, would even notice that his fingers were stained on his right hand since Tina also says "he had his right hand inside the briefcase at all times."

Were you trying to link to a specific batch?