olemisscub

I spent some time recently and retraced your steps and found the guy in the yearbook. Those ears wouldn’t have escaped notice by the Stews if he had been on 305, haha :-)

Yeah that's why I went looking. Had only ever seen that one and it isn't very good. Makes sense now why she said this in a 302, ha

Well look what I found today! An actual photo of Alyce Gorley Hancock. Funny that we've been misspelling her name this whole time. Perhaps she went by Alice at the time or maybe that was just newspaper folks reporting it that way, but the FBI recorded it that way as well. Nevertheless, she goes by Alyce to this day.

Well see it for yourself. It's Michael Douglas in Falling Down. lol. Could nobody be bothered to look up from their newspapers during Hahneman's hijacking? Holy hell what a terrible sketch.

Yessir, it's pushing it, but we've been looking at suspects of a certain age for too long. We're forgetting that the first impression we have of Cooper that was given in real time while the dude himself was still sitting just 75 feet away was "in his 50's". Also, we're not giving Bill Mitchell enough credit here. A 20 year old isn't a 14 year old. You're an adult at 20. When I was a sophomore in college I wouldn't have called a man in his early 40's an "old guy". There are men in their 50's, even late 50's who are in dang good shape. I'm not ruling them out if there is evidence that has led me to them.

Works even better. My suspect was 24 when it came out. Thats right, my Cooper was old. :-)

Fair enough. Gregory would be your main witness in your Hahneman argument, right? He's the one who sent these to the FBI, I believe.

Flyjack, have you seen this 302 where this Cooper witness says Hahneman in no way resembles Cooper? Do you know which witness this would be?

According to Find A Grave, there are less than 500 Dan or Daniel Cooper's listed on there if you do a search for graves of people born before 1950. That's not scientific but I don't think Dan Cooper is as popular a name as people might think it is. I'm a former prosecutor and current defense attorney. Most aliases are either extremely generic "John Smith" types or they are fictional characters like "Walter White" or "Michael Scott". Media was extremely scarce during the depression. Someone who possessed this magazine would have read and re-read it countless times. Also, if you were to read the novella the author uses the name "Dan Cooper" as a gimmick. The entire story it's "Dan Cooper" punched the guy in the face or "Dan Cooper" laughed a sigh of relief. I think it's far more likely that if the name "Dan Cooper" WERE an alias based on a fictional character (and not based on an old friend or something) that it would be based on this character from the era of Cooper's childhood as opposed to some Belgian graphic novel that would have come out while he was an adult. It'd be like if you were to use an alias based on your favorite movie as a kid or something. People retain pop culture information far easier as children than they do as adults before life catches up to them. I don't think it matters that it isn't about skydiving. We know Cooper was knowledgeable about aviation. This was an aviation magazine. I think it's a bit interesting perhaps that the page right before the novella begins has this harrowing parachute rescue. Osmosis perhaps?

This Dan Cooper character was a one-off.

Coincidence or not, it's infinitely more likely to be the inspiration for our middle aged man's alias than a Belgian graphic novel, that's for sure.

Just another day in the Vortex. Who needs a Belgian graphic novel when you've got an AMERICAN 1937 pulp novella hero pilot named Dan Cooper? Found this last night. Thank you, thank you.

Where does this come from exactly? I can't find it any of the 302's that have been released so far. Thanks!

Hey guys, what are some cons on Ted Braden? Seems like if you had to invent someone who checks all the boxes it would be him: - Skydiving expert with almost 1,000 jumps under his belt - Fearless and described as having a death wish - 44 years old, not very large, swarthy, from the Midwest - Had a criminal mind and the ingenuity to come up with the concept in the first place - Angry about being underpaid while in the military and about the CIA blacklisting him from being an overseas mercenary - Almost certainly jumped from 727’s in Vietnam while serving in the SOG’s - Intensely calm under pressure - smoker and drinker Would the only major con be that he wasn’t familiar (that we know of) with the area into which he jumped? Although would that really be an enormous detriment to a guy who had jumped into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam? I’d think jumping into a pine forest would be less complicated than a triple canopy jungle. You guys are the experts, is there a major con that I’m missing on Braden? He makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than just about every other “known” suspect. Someone talk me out of this.