Speaker 1: And I just turned around and I call ass out
of there.
Speaker 2: I was done.
Speaker 3: I wasn't deal with them. The hypocrisy of the cult
is one of the things that turned me.
Speaker 1: Away the quickest.
Speaker 3: When I turned my head lights on, it turned and
looked at us. And one of the things I remember
the most where the eyes were going red. I see
an orb of light. It is just circling these steps
like it is waiting for me.
Speaker 4: And he begins to tell them that he saw UFO.
They're basically like, what are you talking about. That's seven
foot up on a tree, peeking around it, and that's
where I saw the top of the muzzle, noose and
the eyes. As soon as I made eye contact with
this thing, it don't like death.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Tenfoil Tells. I'm your host, Brandon Wright.
Tonight we're going to be joined by my guest, Darren.
Darren is the host of The Cooper Vortex, a podcast
that he does that dives into all of the information
about dB Cooper, or the lack thereof for information and
everything that happened with the incident back in nineteen seventy one.
You're not familiar with the dB Cooper story, then we
will definitely be diving into that here, but before we
bring Darren on, If you've ever had an experience and
you would like to be on an episode of Tenfoil Tells,
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But I think now we're going to go ahead and
bring Darren on and dive on into this dB Cooper investigation.
It's been fifty three years, still no real leads, no
conclusive evidence, So I'm definitely looking forward to talking with him.
He's done a lot of research into this and I
hope you guys enjoy the conversation. So seit back, relax
and enjoy the show. Like think this time to welcome
my guest night Darren. Thanks for coming on here and
talking with me.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Would you like to let the audience know a little
bit about yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my name is Darren Schaffer. I'm the host of
the Cooper Vortex podcast. I grew up in Woodland, Washington,
which would have been the closest city to where dB
Cooper's proposed drop zone was. It sort of was first
exposed to that story watching Unsolved Mysteries as a child
and just being excited that here's this local story and
I know all the all the cities involved that they
listed off. It was exciting and I was just sort
of I thought dB Cooper was a cool thing. It
was a very local story, not much interest in it.
And then a bunch of different things in my life
happened all at the same time that it sent me
into the coup vortex, as they call it. And my
wife bought me this book, Skyjack by Jeffrey Gray, and
it sort of just sat on my bookshelf for a while,
and I was traveling and brought it with me and
I started to read this book, and I was like, man,
I thought I knew about the DV. Cooper story, but
there's just so much more to this that I don't know.
And I got through that book and I just I
was baffled by all the things that I didn't know
in the case, and I was just amazed that we
don't know who he is. And that book alluded to
another book, Into the Blast by Robert Blevins, and Skyjack
was a few years old when I picked it up,
so I was like, well, that book has got to
be out now, So I picked up Into The Blast
by Robert Blevins, and after I read those two books,
I was really confident that DV. Cooper was Kenny Christensen.
And then I unfortunately decided to go onto this website
that they were referencing in these books, the drop Zone,
And once I got on there, I started reading and
I was like, Wow, dB Cooper is not Kenny Christiansen,
and there's so much more to this. And they were
talking about this other book, D B. Cooper and the
FBI by Bruce Smith, So I ordered that book and
read that one, and I realized how much more there
was to this. Even still, there was so much more
to learn and so much farther to go into this.
And now I'm at this point where I thought I
thought it was the one guy who I was introduced to,
Kenny Christiansen, And now I don't think Kenny Christiansen is
dB Cooper. So where do I go from here? I'm
totally obsessed with the case. At this point, I had
just started this job where I work completely alone, so
I listened to forty to sixty hours a week of
talk radio and podcasts, and I'm hungry for G. B.
Cooper content. So I punch into Apple podcasts. This is
like twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen. I punched dB Cooper
into Apple podcasts, and there was fifteen or twenty shows
that had done one episode on dB Cooper. And I
was like, hell, yeah, I'm gonna burn through all these
I'm gonna listen to all This is gonna be fun.
And I quickly discovered they were all exactly the same.
It was two or three hosts. They basically read the
Wikipedia page for the dB Cooper case. They would list
a handful of suspects, give a very brief overview on them,
and then at the end they would decide which suspect
they liked the most, and the case was solved. But
I was so deep into this the dB Cooper case
by then that I was just so unsatisfied with that
it got to the point where to burn through all
those podcasts. I just started fast forwarding over their description
of the hijacking because I felt like I knew it
so much better than they did that I didn't care
what they said about the hijacking. I would just tune
in for their thoughts and theories on suspects and maybe
who they thought it was. And so I was like,
I need I want to hear long form interviews with
the authors of these books. I want to know why
they think it's the suspect and how they got to
that conclusion and why they're even involved in the dB
Cooper case at all. And so I just decided, all right,
I'm going to create the show that I want to
listen to. And so I reached out to a bunch
of people like, hey, will you be on my show
that doesn't exist yet, and all of them said, yes, absolutely,
I would love to be involved in that project. So
I called up my friend Russell Colbert and we started
this podcast, The Cooper Vortex. Originally the plan was to
do about twenty episodes, maybe do it for six months
to a year as just kind of a fun side project,
and that I'd be done because how much dB Cooper
talk is there even?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 4: And they called the Vortex because once you get sucked in,
you can't escape, And that's absolutely true because six years later,
I'm still doing the exact same show.
Speaker 3: Do you still have a co host with you?
Speaker 4: Russell is actually not my co host. He edits and
produces the show. Okay, I'm hoping to one day get
him on. He says, once I hit one hundred episodes,
he'll do it. So I'm trying to meet that goal.
But I guess but before before we get into anything else,
I should probably start with who dbe?
Speaker 3: Cooper was, Yeah, for anyone that's not familiar, that'd probably
be the best way to go about it.
Speaker 4: So November twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one, a man in
a dark brown business suit in a black overcoat or
trench coat walks into the Portland International Airport. He purchases
a one way ticket to Seattle. The cost of that
ticket with tax is twenty dollars. He pays in cash.
The only identification you needed in nineteen seventy one to
board a plane. The gate agent asked him his name.
He gave his name as Cooper, Dan Cooper, and then
the gate agent writes Dan Cooper on his ticket, that's
the only identification you needed to board a plane in
nineteen seventy one. He's wanted the last to board the plane.
He boards via the aft stairs of the seven twenty seven.
He sits in the back of the plane shortly before
or I'm sorry. Shortly after takeoff. At two point fifty
he hands a stewardess a note. She u, this is
one of my favorite parts. She automatically assumes it just
a creepy businessman trying to hit on her, so she
puts the note in her purse without looking at it.
Cooper notices this and gets her attention again and says,
excuse me, miss, you might want to have a look
at that note. I have a bomb. She sits next
to him cracks open his briefcase. Inside his briefcase are
nine red sticks, some wires, and a large lantern style battery.
Your stereotypical briefcase bomb. He's now hijacking the plane. He
wants two hundred thousand dollars and two sets of parachutes,
two manes and two reserves, or two backs and two
fronts to be ready by the time they land in Seattle.
Once his demands are met, he will let the passengers
off the plane. The airline agrees to his demands. The
pilots inform the passengers that there is some mechanical issue
on the aircraft and the flight is going to circle
the airport and settle burn some fuel. None of the
packengers aboard the plane knew the plane was being hijacked.
Until they got off the plane in Seattle. The plane
lands in Seattle, Cooper's parachutes and money are brought on board.
He releases the passengers, and now he's got some new plans.
He wants to be flown to Mexico City. But more
important than where to fly, he instructs the pilots how
to fly the plane. He wants the plane to fly
no higher than ten thousand feet. He wants the plane
to fly no faster than two hundred miles an hour.
He wants the landing gear to remain deployed, the cabin
to remain unpressurized. He wants the flaps set at fifteen degrees,
and most importantly, he wants the plane to take off
with the aft stairs. And if you aren't familiar what
aft stairs are, early in commercial aviation, you had a
handful of planes with an aft staircase, meaning a staircase
that would come off the ass end of the plane,
so that if that smaller airport didn't have a ramp
truck or didn't have a gate, that the plane could
pull right up to the passengers could board and exit
the aircraft via those aft stairs. So, with those demands,
the pilots are not even sure that the aircraft can
fly with the aft stairs down nevertheless take off. So
they call into air traffic Control and ask air Traffic
Control they're probably flipping through manuals in different schematics of
this aircraft and they have no idea. So they reach
out to Boeing and call Boeing, Hey, can a seven
twenty seven fly with the aft stairs down? And Boeing says, yes,
We've tested that that plane can fly with the aft
stairs down. Now, the pilots still disagree with the idea
of taking off with the stairs down. They told Cooper
was unsafe to do that with a plane full of fuel. Interestingly,
Cooper disagrees with their assessment, but says, you know what,
forget it will take off with the stairs up. I'll
lower the stairs in the air the plane takes or
before the plane takes off, the pilot's like, well, in
this configuration you've asked for, we don't have enough fuel
to make it to Mexico City. So they discuss a
couple of refueling stops. They agree on a refueling stop
in Reno, Nevada. The plane takes off from Seattle around
seven forty five pm for Reno, Nevada. Cooper asks for
one stewardess to remain on board to be a go
between between him and the flight crew and the cockpit.
And the last thing, Tina Mucklow, the lone stewardess aboard
the aircraft, saw it was dB Cooper putting on his parachute,
and he asked her to go into the cockpit. She
was also scared of like being sucked out of the
plane when the aft stairs were deployed, so he instructs
her to go to the cockpit. The last thing she sees,
like I said, is him putting his parachute on, and
she commented it had looked like he had done that
many times before. The plane lands in Reno, the aft
stairs are down and Cooper is not on board. He
took his briefcase bomb with him. He asked for his
notes back, and the only thing he left on the
plane was a black clip on tie. He has not
been seen or heard from since now.
Speaker 3: Back then, how much was two hundred, he says, two
hundred thousand, and he was asking.
Speaker 4: For He asked for and got two hundred thousand dollars,
which would be about one point three million dollars today.
Another interesting thing about that money is Sea First Bank
in Seattle had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars stashed
away for just such an emergency, whether it be a
ransom or a hostage situation, or even if that bank
was robbed. They had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
set aside where they knew and had recorded all of
those serial numbers. So the bills he got were not marked.
They weren't bad in any way. It was legal tender
us currency, but they knew the serial numbers of all
of those bills.
Speaker 3: He had to have known a bit about flying, too,
just because of the demands he had for the altitude,
than the winning the stairs, basically hanging out and everything else.
To me, it seems like for just some random person,
he has a lot of information about how to go
about things that the average person shouldn't know.
Speaker 4: Forget about the average person, Brandon, he knew more about
that plane than the pilots did. He knew that that
plane had capabilities that the pilots didn't know that plane
could do. And it's an interesting set of knowledge because
he actually had to have that. Stewart is Tina Mucklow
show him how to lower those aft stairs. So why
is it that you have a guy who seemingly knew
the exact flight configuration for the plane to be jumped
from that it could be jumped, but he didn't know
himself how to lower that aft staircase.
Speaker 3: Mm hm. The other thing I was thinking if he
was most people don't ever. I don't know how they
do it back then, but like jumping out of an
airplane with parachutes and everything else, like you would have
to have some sort of experience. I would think, like
if he's just risking it all on his first try,
Like I don't know if I could get up there
and just jump out of an airplane. So he's either
had some sort of experience with that or he just
didn't care.
Speaker 4: I totally agree with you. I've brought this up before.
I'll give a wild example, like, you know, how much
experience do you have driving F one cars? I assume
it's none. No, So would you brandon plan a crime
where your only escape is in an F one car? No,
you wouldn't because you don't even know how to drive that.
So would you plan a crime where your only escape
is a nighttime parachute jump into unknown terrain if you've never.
Speaker 3: Parachuted, especially never parachuting or even really knowing where you're.
Speaker 4: At exactly, and who does that? Who would be willing
to do a night jump into unknown terrain?
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, the whole the whole thing I've always
thought was very strange. That's why I wanted to talk
with you because even as a kid, I was fascinated
by it because I remember, I think probably the same
Unsolved Mysteries episodes or whatever. I remember like they were
always who is dB Cooper? And I've watched shows that
they tried to figure out who dB Cooper is, and
there is a lot of weird theories that are tossed
around there and everything else. And for me, it's like,
I don't know if it'll ever be one hundred percent,
like unless someone come out and could prove that they
were dB Cooper. But at this point I don't see
that happening. But it's like one of those mysteries and
I don't want to say it's like one of the
greatest crime mysteries or whatever, but it kind of is
in the sense that like no one knows what happened
to the guy who he is, what it was about
like the whole thing to me just is almost like
the perfect crime. It's weird as that sounds.
Speaker 4: Well, it definitely seems that way. We're going on fifty
three years will be uh a Cooper con This year
will be the fifty three year anniversary of this happening,
So it pretty much seems like he got away with
it at this point in time, and even a satisfactory
could this case be solved. One of the one of
the things about this case that's so wild is we
have a confession. We have a deathbed confession. And not
only do we have one deathbed confession, we have thirty
six of them, and we have hundreds more other confessions.
So if you would compared this to like the Zodiac
or something unsolved like that, this is a weird one
in that we do have so many very serious confessions.
Duyne Weber made a deathbed confession to his wife. Kenny
Christiansen made sort of a half confession to his brother
Walter RecA Is. You can listen to his taped confession
to his friend Carl Lauren that he didn't want released
until after he died. Wolfgang Gossip confessed to both of
his sons on their eighteenth birthday, and two different lawyers
in two different states. I spoke to one of the
lead agents on the case in the two thousands, Larry Carr.
He was on My show, and one of the things
I thought was so wild about talking to him was
he told me when he was a lead case agent,
this is thirty five years after the skyjacking. During his tenure,
a handful of people went into FBI offices to confess
to this crime. Now, dB Cooper didn't hurt anyone. Physically
threatening people with the bomb is not a really nice
thing to do, but no one was physically harmed. And
you have him in the back of the plane in sunglasses,
drinking the bourbon and soda, with a hot young stewardess
sliding the cigarettes. It's a very James Bond thing. And
confessing to this is cool. If me and you were
at a bar Brandon and I was like, hey, man,
you know that dB Cooper thing that happened a few
years ago, that was me. Man, I'm so cool. Can
you believe it? I get that confession one thousand percent.
I don't understand you going into an FBI office to
confess to a crime. You know you did not commit
that part. I don't get even the deathbed confessions. I
struggle to understand it. I mean, maybe you lived this
life where you didn't think you had a great story,
or you weren't successful, or you didn't accomplish what you
wanted to get done, so you want your name to
be attached with something cool. I guess I don't know,
but I've talked to many, many people whose father or
grandfather or uncle confess to this crime or husband, and
those people spend the rest of their lives trying to
prove the confession of their loved one. Which is why
one hundred percent I'm going to tell my kids some
real wild shit on my deathbed, just so I know
what they're going to be up to the rest of
their life.
Speaker 3: That's a that's an idea for me to pull off. Now,
if someone were to confess and it's been so long ago,
can they still be charged for it as it passed
the I forget what the term is, but I thought
there were so many years before they could actually charge
someone for the crime. If it's already been so many
years past.
Speaker 4: Great question. So there's a couple different charges involved. You have,
you know, pretty much like extortion and kidnapping and a
bunch of different charges. They ended up charging John Doe
with air piracy in lieu of a name, so to
sort of get around the statute of limitations, which we
could argue on whether or not there would be a
statute of limitations on this. But about seven years after
the hijacking, the FBI charged John Doe with air piracy
of flight three h five, so that if they ever
did figure it out, he's already been charged. Which I've
tried to look that up and see how common that is,
and it's a pretty rare thing to do, and so
you have that. But I've also had a couple of
different lawyers on the show, and dB Cooper smoked seven
cigarettes on that plane. I said the only thing he
left behind was a black clip on tie, but that
was a lie. It was two things, a black clip
on tie and seven cigarette butts. And so the FBI
collected those seven cigarette butts out of the ash tray
and then they sent them into the forensic lab. And
the FBI files on the Cooper case are out now
and you can read them. There's like hundreds of thousands
of files. So if you really want to read them.
They're all there for you. But lucky for me, I
know a bunch of people who are sifting through them,
and you can read the FBI file on the cigarette butts.
They sent them into a lab and the messages, hey,
these are dB Cooper's cigarette butts. Examine them and see
if you can get any fingerprints on them, and if
you can't, then just throw them away. So those cigarette butts,
which we could potentially pull DNA from today, were destroyed.
They also found a hair on the seat that he
was sitting in that they believe could be from him. Now,
it is an airplane and a bunch of people went
through there, so you can't be one hundred percent, but
they thought it could be dB Cooper's hair. So they
had this hair on a slide. And so you would think,
now I can look back at the FBI files and
see how they handled this, And you would think that, Hey,
I'm calling into the Seattle Field Office and I'm like, hey,
I'm investigating this dB Cooper suspect, and I know you
have a slide of hair. I got some hair off
my suspect. Do you want to compare it? You would
think the Seattle Field Office would say, okay, mail me
your hair, but that's not how they did it. The
Seattle office mailed the slide out to other places for
them to compare it, and at some point that hair
slide got lost. Also looking into that, because we could
identify them with DNA through that hair, but unfortunately the
glue that they used to affix the hair to the
slide in nineteen seventy one more than likely at this
point in time that glue has degraded any chance of
us getting DNA. Even if we found the slide.
Speaker 3: I think, doesn't DNA for so many years, like it
starts to deteriorate anyways, after so many years, I believe so. Yeah,
I was thinking that tune you're talking about the cigarette buds, like, man,
if they had those, they could pull DNA. But I
was like, I don't know how long the DNA is
viable for after so many years. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think that they could get real, real close, even
after fifty years. But the problem, especially with the hair
slide that may or may not exist anymore, is looking
into it, and then the glue that they used to
affix those slides back then over time would degrade the
DNA much faster than time itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back then they weren't going to uh be able
to do DNA that that was just nothing they've ever
done before. So I understand it wasn't even an idea. Yeah,
so I understand why that wasn't like one of the
precautions or whatever. But to me, it's looking back at
it now, they're like, man, we had evidence that we
could have used, but back then it was no fingerprints,
no point keeping it. It is weird though they kind
of destroyed that they didn't try and keep them. But
I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I've thought about that too, and I
guess my logic behind it is, if I'm running an
evidence locker, do I want cigarette butts sitting around? Probably not,
because even I mean, even if you put cigarette butts
in a plastic bag, it's gonna stink.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one thing that I'm I'm not a smoker,
but I do notice it a lot. I think it's
because I'm not one, so I do notice that smell.
So it's the one thing that I would agree with
that if you kept it and there, you'd smell it.
For some reason, my nose is very sensitive to cigarette smoke.
It's kind of strange book.
Speaker 4: But also in nineteen seventy one, there's a good chance
the guy running the evidence locker was smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 3: True. Back in those days, I felt like everyone could
smoke everywhere. It didn't matter what you did, and everyone
was walking around into restaurants, buildings. That was all un place.
Speaker 4: Imagine being in a plane with eighty five people and
seventy of them are smoking.
Speaker 3: I remember watching movies where people were smoking on airplanes.
They like smoking. It's still strange. They again different times,
but just from where I'm at today, Like, there's certain
places you can't go into, like my state, anything that
you have smoking in you have to be at least
twenty one to get in. There is considered a bar.
You can't smoke anywhere unless it's outside. But I actually
think they made this Aside bars, everything else is smoke free.
I don't know how it is in other states, but
I just know here in Indiana that's how it is.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there's a handful of bars in some states
that still out smoking, but I mean most of the states,
especially west of the Mississippi, you can't even smoke in
a bar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird, but Again, for me, I grew up
in this area where we didn't have it, so to me,
it's not any different. But I do remember as a
kid people were smoking and burgering that they're little smoking sections.
But bar is the where the case goes and everything.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of weird stuff that happened, and we
talked to little bit about how there was beliefs that
the CIA may have been involved in some other things.
If you want to talk about a little bit about
some of that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just you know Cooper, he only exists for
about five hours. He boards the plane at two point
fifty and then his proposed jump time is just a
little bit after eight. And there is no story before that,
and there is no story after that. So in this case,
when you are able to find a suspect, you're sort
of filling in all these details. But if you want
a good CIA connection and suspect, I get into some
pretty deep conspiracy theory stuff here. So there's a gentleman
named Najeeb Hallibe, and off the top of my head,
I'm gonna mess up his uh, his positions, but he
was like head of the FAA and president of United Airlines,
and a very very big d in commercial aviation. November
twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one, the day of the hijacking,
he's meeting with Richard Nixon to discuss airline safety. Now,
that is an incredible coincidence if I've ever heard one.
And then to tie in Nixon again, E Howard Hunt,
who is one of Nixon's plumbers who you may remember
from the Watergate trials. He's sitting there with sunglasses on. Now,
Cooper famously don sunglasses during his hijacking, and E Howard
Hunt always sort of imagined himself this James Bond character.
He wrote spy novels. You know, he got real close
to being a James Bond type character as one of
Nixon's plumbers. And so he's a guy that would have
had the ability to plan something like this and more
than likely would have had the ability to execute something
like this. Now, does he do this with approval from
Nixon's CIA, some sort of a shady government thing, or
does he do it? Does he go rogue and do
it himself, knowing that if he got caught, he could
say he was doing it for the benefit of airline security,
which I don't know how true, either one of those are,
but he's the right age. He sort of fits the
physical description. I really really love that we have an
example of him wearing sunglasses and doors, which Cooper did
to hide his identity. If you want another crazy CIA
tied suspect, one of the better suspects in this case
is a gentleman by the name of Ted Braiden. And
Ted Braden, at like six teen years old, uses like
a fake ID so he can sign up for the
military and go serve in World War two. Continues his
military career as just like this crazy do all badass.
He's in Vietnam on this team called macv SAG, which
is just like this secret special ops badass force. And
while on that, he goes a wall and is discovered
working as a mercenary in the Congo and he's arrested
and sent back to Fort Dix where he's going to
stand trial for a wall and desertion and it's not
going to be awesome. And now I spoke to one
of the guards at Fort Dix that observed Ted Braden
there and he said the first time he walked by
Ted Braiden sell Ted Braden was in full uniform with
a belt buckle and poulish shoes. He was smoking a
wood tipped cigar and watching a television and he told me, Darren,
none of those things I just mentioned were allowed at all.
So I knew right away whatever is going on with
the guy in the cell, it's well above my pay grade.
And when the day came for Braiden to stand trial,
instead of standing trial, he was released from the prison
with a note that said there wasn't enough staff to
do the trial that day, which is it doesn't make
any sense and obviously it's a lie. Ted Braden had
a very close friend named Jack Synglob who worked for
the CIA, who could have been looking out for him. Also,
Ted Braiden would would have done some things for the
government that potentially they didn't want those to get out.
But even arguing against that, if they already have him
in custody, what's the risk of that getting out. Wouldn't
it just be easier for him to be locked in
a military prison for the rest of his life or
they could just kill him, So why does he get out? Also,
I have a couple of friends in the Stebe Cooper
community that have let's just say more access to background
checks than the average person. And if you look up
Ted Braiden, there's no information. And I'm not talking about
like there isn't much, there's nothing when there should be
all of these records that every human being in the
United States has. And again I'm not talking about that
you could just google someone and pull up records. These
are systems that you pay for that have limited access
where you can get records for things, and there's nothing
on Ted Braiden. Drew Beeson good friend of mine. He
wrote this great book on Ted Braden, the Paratrooper of Fortune.
In talking to family and friends and just poring over
this guy Ted Braiden's life, he found this great story
where Ted Braiden gets arrested for duy in his seventies
and he had no license, played on the car, no registration,
no insurance, no license, no identification, and refused to identify
himself to the police officer. That's pretty weird for a
guy in his seventies who already has a storied, shady past.
Speaker 3: I was gonna ask after the whole incident, did they
change anything far as like requirements for airlines, like for
people to get on there for passengers.
Speaker 4: Well, there was a huge debate. Like I said to
Jeeb Halliby was meeting with Nixon about airport security day
of the hijacking. This wasn't the first airline hijacking by
any means. There was a lot going on at that time,
but none of those hijackings were people jumping out of
the airplane. They were almost all of them politically motivated,
take me to Cuba, that kind of a thing. And
so this was a novel crime. The one thing that
we can completely attribute as a security change by dB
Cooper was I'm not sure if it was Boeing, but
one of the airplane manufacturers develop what they nicknamed the
Cooper vane. And what that would do is when the
plane was flying, there would be enough wind against this
little flap or a wind vane, and it would push
that to the side and lock that aft staircase, so
then the staircase could not be lowered or even lifted
up when the plane was in motion. But security was
already a big deal at the time. The problem was
everyone knew we needed airport security, but no one wanted
to be the one to do it. The airport was
saying that the government should be responsible for the security
at airports. The government was saying that the airlines should
be responsible for their own security, and the airlines were
saying the airport should be in charge of security. So
they all knew that it needed to be done, but
they were all waiting for someone else to do it.
I wish I could tell you that Cooper was the
one that changed all that, but it was a slow
process over years before we had metal detectors and drug
dogs and airports and training on visual screenings and who
to look out for, and then we didn't see the
security we deal with today until after nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I know nine to eleven changed a lot
of things, but I wasn't sure how it used to
be before that. I've never been on a plane up
until the early two thousands, so I wasn't exactly sure
what kind of protocols came into place after the whole
dB Cooper thing. If the CIA is involved and is
politically agendaed or something like that, I could see them
doing something to cause the effect of what they're wanting,
like pushing that narrative.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, it wasn't even until years after
GB Cooper where you had the bare minimum of metal
detectors and somebody needs to see your identification.
Speaker 3: Which is strange in today's concepts to think about that.
You could just ord an airplane and they didn't have
to have any sort of information about you.
Speaker 4: There's a really good book about the airline industry and
sort of this skyjacking craze of the late sixties early
seventies called The Skies Belong to Us by Brendan Kerner,
And one of my favorite parts about that book is
he talks about how easy it was to get on
a plane. Back then. There were planes where you could
go to the airport, walk to the plane, board the
plane with no ticket, and then the stewardess would walk
down the aisle in the air to check your ticket,
and if you didn't have a ticket, she would say,
all right, Brandon, you're flying to Cleveland today. That'll be
forty seven dollars and you paid in the air.
Speaker 3: Weird times, wild times. Yeah, I could see we're back
in those days. If people did commit like some kind
of a crime, it'd be easy to get away, you
would think, just because they could go and just tell
us someone that they're whoever they want to be, and
then they just they're off and they're gone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're trying to hunt this guy down. We have
no photos of him, we have no videos of him.
We don't have an audio recording of him. We we
don't have his real name.
Speaker 3: They don't even know exactly where he jumped from, do they.
They didn't have any like, did anyone actually see him
leave the plane and to kind of get an idea
of what parts that he actually jumped from.
Speaker 4: No one saw him leave the plane. They had too
I'm gonna call him F one oh six is that's
probably wildly wrong. But they had these two planes I
believe that were from the Air National Guard that followed
that that seven twenty seven, to see if they could
see Cooper jump from the plane or maybe even worst
case scenario, if Cooper was going to blow that bomb,
maybe maybe they would do something else. But because it
was night and because Cooper got them to fly that
plane at about two hundred miles an hour, two hundred
miles an hour was just below the stall speed of
those chase planes, so they were speeding up and slowing
down and making turns to just kind of stay behind
the plane. So they never even really had a chance
to see a body drop out the ass end of
that plane at night from a distance, and Tina Mucklow,
he had her go up into the cab or into
the cockpit. I'm sorry, but the idea of where Cooper landed,
we don't get that until thirty six hours after he
jumps from the plane. So during that flight to Reno,
the cockpit is in constant communication with air traffic control,
and sitting beside air traffic control are the police and
the FBI. They're also tracking this plane with what's called
the Sage radar system, which was brand new at the time,
and we had installed or the Air Force had installed
that as this fancy radar system, so they could see
if there were any Russians coming to get us. So
they used that to track this plane as well. And
so in between eight eleven and eight fourteen, depending on
if you think it's the oscillations or the pressure bump,
which that goes real deep, but the pilots basically experienced
the aircraft moving a little bit enough that required correction
in their controls, and they also experienced what they described
as a pressure bump, like they felt the pressure increase
in the cabin for a second. And so They theorized
that that was from when dB Cooper was standing on
those backstairs and jumps, and then after he jumps, the
end pushes that back staircase up. It sort of bounces
back into place and causes that pressure bump. Now, to
test that theory, they took the exact same aircraft, not
the same make and model, the exact one that dB
Cooper hijacked, and they flew it out over the Pacific
Ocean and pushed a two hundred pounds sled off to
the aft stairs to see if it would recreate the
pressure bump that the pilots felt, and they believed that
it did, so then they use that as a marker
to win Cooper jumps. Now, the plane is traveling at
two hundred miles an hour and you have some eastbound
wind at the time. You also have to think when
Cooper jumped, does he open his shoot right away or
did he free fall for a little bit, Because if
he opens his shoot right away, then he's going to
drift much farther east. If he free falls for a bit,
it's going to shorten that drift considerably. So they basically
made this map of this is where Cooper's proposed drop
zone might be. They did a real brief search of
that area at that time, and in that area it's
probably just starting to snow. You'll probably get sustained snow
on the ground for a little while. There's parts of
that that are some seriously thick brush, So with snow,
it's not really something you're going to be able to
march through the woods with. So there were a couple
of quick searches, but there wasn't a real big ground
search of his proposed drop zone until four or five
months later, I want to say it was March or April.
By the time they had they had like three hundred
people stomped through the brush to see if they could
find anything. It was National Guard, County sheriffs, volunteers, there
were boy scouts that were part of that group. The
next day after the skyjacking, they flew the It wasn't
the next day, but real close. So the next morning
they had small aircraft and other chase planes fly that
route from Seattle to Reno to see if we could
find you a parachute stuck in a tree or obviously
this is where he landed, see if you could see anything.
And they also had the SR seventy one blackbird fly
that flight path and use its fancy camera to document
that whole thing. It's the Pacific Northwest. So the first
time they do that, there was too much cloud cover
and it made it basically useless. So they had to
do it a second time, which neither one of those
produced any results.
Speaker 3: What was the weather like the night that he'd jump.
Was it clear or is the cloud ear?
Speaker 4: It was cloudy, typical Pacific north weather, Pacific Northwest weather.
It would have been overcast with a light rain about
forty five degrees on the ground.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm thinking like it'd be weird in the sense
of everyone's talking about it for so long, But what
if you didn't survive the jump, but you still They
never found the body. They never found a shoe. But like,
if a guy jumps from a plane at dark, it's cloudy,
it's a little windy, could be drizzling. What if something
goes wrong the shoot doesn't he gets stuck in tree.
There's so many things that could have went wrong in
the whole situation, and he may have died on before
he ever made it to the ground. So it's it's
one of those things. Is like it's it's still I've
questioned it too. I was like, how did the guy
survive at all? Especially like, even if you land there
in the middle of nowhere, you have to track out
of there in order to get to where you're going,
like you still have to go through wilderness.
Speaker 4: I will say there is no evidence that he survived
the jump. Also, there is no evidence that he died
in the jump, And people say a lack of evidence
is not evidence of something else. In this case, I'm
kind of leaning that other way. I think the lack
of evidence that he died in the jump is sort
of evidence that he survived. So you have a couple
things to consider about this. There's this great book by
Martin Androde Finding dB Cooper, Chasing the Last Lead, and
a lot of that book is about the survivability of
that jump. Is it doable, what are the odds? How
can it be done? The parachute that he used, And
one of my favorite parts about that is he compares
World War II ejections over Europe and their survivability. So
you're talking about planes with mechanical failure maybe, but most
likely planes that have been shot and are damaged to
beyond the point of saving it, and now the crew
or the pilot or whoever we got a bail, and
he found something like a ninety seven percent survival rate
for those men, and the vast majority of them would
have had one practice jump or only classroom training on
how to use a parachute, and they're jumping out in
the worst conditions. Cooper's conditions are not awesome, but the
planes not spiraling out of control to the ground. He
also found that if you dig in those numbers a
little deeper, it could be as much as two percent
were dead before they hit the ground anyway, so the
parachute helping them survive doesn't matter at all, or if
they were a no pull. So parachutes work, they work,
they will get you to the ground safely. So if
Cooper doesn't survive his jump, there are two ways this happens.
One is he pulls his ripcord, the parachute deploys or
half deploys. Maybe some failure he ends up in a
tree or a super hard impact on the ground, breaks
his legs, or even dies on impact. If he pulled
that ripcord and it deployed at all, he has found
as soon as the sun comes up there's no doubt
about that. That did not happen. The other way Cooper
dies in the jump from my point of view, is
a no pull where he just doesn't pull the ripcord.
And Cooper's jump is not ideal, but it's not it's
not bad enough where he wouldn't have pulled the ripcord.
And back to my point earlier about you driving F
one cars, Are you gonna plan this when you don't
even know how to pull a ripcord? No, So, at
the very least, I think he has some jump experience,
which would mean he pulls the ripcord. There is People
like to talk about him landing in water. What I
would have to say to that is, what are the
odds he lands in water. Let's draw a line from
Seattle to Reno. How much water is in between Seattle
and Reno, and then let's compare that to how much
land is in between Seattle and Reno, And those are
the odds that he lands in water. Now, if he
pulls his ripcord and the parachute deploys and he lands
in water again, he's found really quickly. You can look
at a handful of other parachute landing scenarios. There is
a scenario where maybe he gets tangled up in the
chute and the whole thing goes down, But even in
that scenario, he's sort of gonna emerge towards the top
of the water again, in that tangled bundle of human
and parachute would be found, which it has not been
so myself and I would say ninety nine percent of
the other people that have spent hundreds of hours researching
this case and thinking about it would be on the
side that he survived the jump. To defend my point
of him surviving the jump, Cooper spawned a handful of copycats.
Cooper's copycats ranged in parachuting ability, from green berets who
parachuted for the military and then were recreational skydivers to
a gentleman that didn't know how to use a parachute
and asked for instructions. All of those people were successfully
able to use their parachute and get to the ground,
even Mart McNally. That's an interesting one because the pilots
were like this guy, he's a fool. He doesn't know
the difference between two hundred miles an hour and four
h miles an hour. From the sky, let's kill him
with speed. So the pilots pushed the plane up to
well over three hundred miles an hour and McNally jumps
and is knocked unconscious by the wind, regains consciousness in
the air, pulls the rip cord, and gets to the ground.
He loses the money and is arrested shortly after that,
but he still gets to the ground.
Speaker 3: My thing with all of that, the speed and everything, like,
even at two hundred miles an hour, to me, seems
ridiculously fast. Obviously in an airplane, it's not as fast
as you would think, but at two hundred miles an
hour and you jumped from the plane, I feel like
he had to have some sort of experience. Like you said,
you don't just do that just to do it. You
have to have some sort of familiarity with it. So
it kind of makes me think maybe he'd have some
sort of training, so he could have been military. What
did the other passengers say, Did anyone else like give
a description of him, of like age, wives, of where
he could how old he could have possibly have been,
other than just like the stewardess.
Speaker 4: There is one passenger that takes a good look at
him and it's for a hilarious reason. So, like I
mentioned the stewardess that sat next to him, Tina Mucklow,
she was a beautiful young woman. She's twenty two years
old and just a total smoke show. And so, like
I mentioned earlier, Cooper's one of the last to board
via the aft staircase and sits in the back. So
if I told you I sat in the back of
the plane, you're picturing me walking past every row of
people to sit in the back. In this plane, they
boarded from the back, so he didn't walk past anyone,
He just sat right down in the back row. Across
the aisle from him was a college student heading home
for Thanksgiving named Bill Mitchell. And Bill Mitchell saw this
smoke show stewardess and his thought was, why is that
is a quote from him, I've spoken to him. Why
is that geeky old guy getting all the attention from her?
Why not me? Like, why isn't she talking to me?
And I just I love that line of thinking because
I could picture myself as a twenty two year old
or a twenty year old guy like thinking the exact
same thing. Why is she talking to that geeky old guy,
and he's really the only guy that got a good
look Tina Mucklow. She sits next to him for about
three hours. She lit his cigarettes for him, they had
some conversation. Not a lot of people got a good look.
But the age that Cooper's penda is mid to late forties.
The descriptions from a couple other passengers, which I'm not
even super confident in. It's one of those things where
you know, let's say you and I are at the
bar having a drink, and then the police run in
and arrest this guy and run out, and then they
ask us to give a description of that guy. We
didn't pay attention to him, we weren't looking at him.
But now because they're interested, now both of us have
something to say. Oh like, oh yeah, I remember he
was wearing this jean jacket, blah blah blah. And some
of those details might not even be accurate, but you
and I both want to say something to the police,
and I think there's a little bit of that going on.
But he's the youngest description of him I want to
say is like thirty five, and the oldest is fifty five.
But it's generally believed mid to late forties. And that's
something that I think about a lot. In this case,
if I just told you, hey, you won't believe this. Brandon.
There was this hijacking that happened yesterday and he ended
up jumping out of the plane and it was wild.
Guess how old this guy was. You'd probably say twenty three,
twenty four. You wouldn't say forty seven, because by the
time you're forty seven, your life's kind of already in place,
and more than likely you can't afford to go to jail.
You don't want to go to jail. You're not committing
these types of crazy crimes. And also, you know, like
I mentioned, the passengers didn't know the plane was being hijacked.
Cooper was in complete control of the situation and he
was calm, cool, and collected the entire time. Tina mucklow
is in a press conference immediately after the hijacking and
reno and comments that he was polite, he was never unkind.
He got annoyed at one point when refueling the plane
took too long, but he was never cruel or unfriendly
to me. Those are her exaus act words. So, who
would be this guy that has this crazy knowledge about
the aircraft. Who's older, who couldn't control this situation like this,
someone who could plan and execute this, Like I mentioned,
one of the copycats was a Green Beret. That's a
guy who has been involved in the planning and execution
of quite a few operations. And his hijacking is very
well planned. I think he even made some improvements on Cooper's,
but his execution is very poor. He drew attention to
himself right away. He made goofy mistakes. People noticed that
he was wearing makeup, People noticed that he was wearing
a wig, people noticed that he was acting funny. Tina
Mucklow sits next to Cooper for three hours and says
he wasn't wearing any makeup or any sort of disguise.
He puts sunglasses on, and when people try to tell me, oh,
my suspect he had he put huddy behind his ears
to hold him back, or he was wearing makeup, or
he put Hoddy on his chin to remove his dimpled chin. Bullshit,
absolute bullshit. A twenty two year old woman has worn makeup?
How many times by this point in her life? Hundreds
of times? How many times have I worn makeup? I
don't know twenty and nineteen of those were Halloween. I
don't know anything about makeup, But would a twenty two
year old woman who is wearing makeup and puts makeup
on and buys makeup, would she notice that the guy
sitting directly next to her has makeup on? Absolutely and
she says no makeup.
Speaker 3: Seems strange to me. That and just in general, like
the copycat thing, I don't understand why people would. I
guess because he got away, they all think they could
do that. But again, it goes back to what I
said earlier, like it's almost like the perfect crime because
there's nothing. He didn't exist and he's never existed since
he was only would you what do you say? It
was five hours?
Speaker 4: Only existed for five hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy to me because again, two hundred thousand
dollars today it's it's good money, but it's not the
same equivalent of what it was back then. But even
a million dollars today, if I heard someone did all
this for a million dollars, it does almost doesn't seem
worth it, you know what I mean, Like in today's standards,
like a million dollars, Yeah, it's a million dollars but
like going through the trouble of hijacking a plane, which
today is almost impossible to kind of do, especially the
way he did it, but the risk and everything else
for such a minimal amount of game, having to survive
the jump, having to somehow make it out of the wilderness,
and to get back to civilization and be undetective for
the rest of your life. Like the whole thing to
me is like I said, it is always fascinating to
me in the sense of it's just strange of how
there's no trace of this guy ever and then never
again exactly.
Speaker 4: It's what's so baffling about this. I've used this analogy before,
but the dB Cooper case is like the most interesting
and exciting book I've ever read. But somebody ripped out
the first four chapters and the last five chapters, and
now I'm just desperately searching for those beginning an end
to this story.
Speaker 3: I've read some stuff and I don't know. I go
down rabbit holes. I read the dB Cooper didn't even exist.
The whole thing was like made up, which I don't
see all these people being involved in I'm making up story,
but that we are ten Foil tells here, so we
got to cover the out there theories.
Speaker 4: But Brandon, are you trying to piss me off?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: But okay, I have to address this. There are two
theories that if you're new to the case, you will
have one of these two theories come to your mind.
I'm not exactly sure why that is, but it is
always the case. Those two theories are dB Cooper never
existed and the flight crew was either in on it
or completely cooked him up. The other theory is that
dB Cooper never jumped from the plane. He hit on
the plane, and then magically, when the all the law
enforcement walked away turned their back, he casually walks off
the plane. I'll address that first one first. So the
idea that Cooper doesn't exist is just not true. He
was seen by the gate agent, he was seen by
the passenger Bill Mitchell. I'm excluding the flight crew that
saw him. He was seen by a couple of other
passengers on that plane. He was seen by people in
the airport. They observed him standing looking out the window.
Now at an airport, that's not unusual. Lots of people
stand by the window and look at planes, look at
the weather. But I mean, obviously he's sort of doing
that so that nobody gets a good look at his face.
If this is well planned, as I think it is,
so Cooper existed. Now it's a possibility. I guess that
Cooper is a friend of one of the flight crew,
or he's in on it with the flight crew. I
have spoken to many, many people that worked for the
airlines in the sixties and seventies, stewardesses, highlots, baggage handlers, everyone,
and especially the pilots and stewardess's the flight crew. That
was a very glamorous job. That was a desirable job.
It was a job that paid well, It was a
job that had prestige. It was a job where you
could be a twenty two year old woman and travel
the world in a glamorous way. And everyone I've talked
to that worked for the airlines in the sixties and
seventies says the same thing. They loved their job and
it was fun and it was glamorous. So now we're
going to take depending on how many people in the
flight crew could be involved anywhere between let's say, at
a minimum four at most seven are going to be
involved in this. Now, if you know anything about flight crews,
there's a good possibility that that crew didn't know they
were working together until that morning or maybe even earlier
that week. And then even then, crews change a little bit.
So the idea that you're going to plan this with
a flight crew that may or may not be working
together doesn't work. And now you're going to whack up
two hundred thousand dollars five ways, seven ways, and not
only risk your career but your liberty to do this.
It doesn't make any sense. And also, there is zero
evidence that I've seen, and I've I'm deep in this
to support the idea that any of the flight crew
was in on this at all. Doesn't make sense. There's
no evidence for it, and logically doesn't make sense. The
second theory that people come to that he didn't jump.
If you've ever been on an airplane, you know they're
using every inch of that aircraft. If there was an
extra space that they could fit a body in, they
would put a seat there and charge you for it.
There is no secret cabinet that a man can fit inside. Also,
when the plane lands at Reno, the FBI did not
believe that Cooper was going to jump from that plane,
so they were ready on the ground in Reno. One
of the flight crew opens that back door and hollers
out if Cooper's there, doesn't receive an answer, walks to
the back, sees that Cooper's not there, walks out the
aft stairs, and then immediately the plane is boarded by
law enforcement and the plane is searched with dogs. One
of the other hilarious things about this skyjacking is that
back to Cooper being polite when he was on the
ground in Seattle. Somehow, I'm not sure how he knew
that that was going to be the last stop for
that flight crew. I want to say they went from
like Missoula to Spokane to Portland to Seattle was their
shift that day. Don't quote me on that exactly, but
I am positive of the last two steps. And so
when they land in Seattle, Cooper asks, as part of
his demands for meals for the flight crew to be
brought on board, so he cared enough about them that
he didn't want them to be hungry even but when
the plane is searched with dogs, the flight crew did
not eat those meals. The dogs did.
Speaker 3: I don't know where, Like I said, the whole aspect
of saying he didn't exist, like where they're saying they
were involved in it or anything like that. It was
more or less just saying that they didn't believe that DV.
Cooper was a real person.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And I'm just I'm giving you a little
bit of shift for it, But it is, it is
very popular. I've heard that hundreds of times, and I
think it truly is like you watch one thing on
Cooper and you're like, well, okay, they didn't figure it out,
but what if it's this? And I understand thinking that
because I've been in this so long where I'm like, well,
what if it's this, or what if it's this? But
then you realize, like that ground has been treadover dozens
hundred thousands of times. It's really tough in this now
to come up with new and novel ideas because we
have so little to go on that we've been floating
crazy ideas now for fifty three years.
Speaker 3: It kind of goes back into even what I do
here when I talk to people that have even we'll
just throw it into the completely off topic. But like
people have been debating the Patterson Gimlin Bigfoot film, which
I'm sure you probably are familiar with it because everyone knows,
like the story of Bigfoot, like the guys were out
filming in the nineteen sixties and that's the infamous Bigfoot footage.
Everyone today still debates if that was a man in
a suit or if it was real, when.
Speaker 4: Even the name of the footage suggests it wasn't.
Speaker 3: And to me, it's like, you're never going to know
because the guy died and people come out and claim
they've made a suit, and everyone that's made the suit
claims they're in that suit. The suit looks nothing like
the video they've had. People from Hollywood suit makers claim
that that was not a possibility to make a suit
like that back in the nineteen sixties, but it sure
as hell looks like a man in a suit. So
it's like back in those days the technology they had,
like these people were going out to find said thing
and they found said thing. To me, it sounds very fishy,
like two cowboys went out there and found a mysterious
monkey man. Okay, But at the same time, it's like,
but dB Cooper, this guy doesn't have any record of
him anything, shows up on a plane five hours later,
he's gone, never no trace of him again. And now
the people are saying, well, he didn't exist. It was
all a big fake thing. And it all goes back
to the same type of the mindset of because people
don't have evidence to prove it one way or the other,
then they have to start making things up.
Speaker 4: Would you like me to connect Bigfoot to dB Cooper
for you?
Speaker 3: If you can, I would love to hear it.
Speaker 4: Well, they're both Pacific Northwest, they're both in the right area.
The area dB Cooper jumps from is an absolutely an
area you could see Bigfoot. I believe there is a
Bigfoot museum in that drop zone. But there is a
I'm not even sure what genre movie. There's a movie
called Bigfoot Versus dB Cooper, and it is very light
on Bigfoot content, and it is very light on dB Cooper,
but it is full of homo erotic shots of shirtless
guys working out. If you've never seen it, I would
highly recommend it. But it doesn't make a lot of sense.
It's mostly just shirtless guys working out. It's apparently this
one director makes these movies where the storyline of the
movie has nothing to do with what the movie actually is.
So it's like Bigfoot Versus dB Cooper and the next
one could be Space Reptiles Invade Earth, but neither one
is about what the title is. It's just shots of hot, young,
shirtless guys.
Speaker 3: That's a very weird marketing ploy, but I guess if
it works. Now, I bring up the big Foot thing
because you mentioned it too. It's literally that happened in
the same somewhat region, like it's not exactly the same spot,
but it all happened up in that region of north
like the North Pacific, and the timeframe is fairly close.
I believe the one was nineteen sixty seven, sixty eight
sixty nine, somewhere around there in Dbrisa is seventy one.
Speaker 4: I think Patterson Gimlin's Northern California.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was Northern California. And I've been on the
fence with that one since i've been a child, Like
I always I wanted to believe. But everyone's like, oh,
it's just a man in a suit. Today's technology. They've
enhanced it and they claim, oh, you can see muscles moving.
They've got four K resolution on Oh, it has breast,
so it's actually a female. This is what I found strange.
Back in the nineteen sixties, if two cowboys are going
to make up some story about filming something, the fact
that they made it female is a very clever thing.
Like I don't know if a lot of people ever
think about in that aspect, but like when you see
suits made, you don't really ever think of them as
being male or female. But they had enough gumption, I
guess to make it a female that way. In the
next fifty something years, when technology can enhance the video
that you can actually see that it had boobs, it's
now there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe they knew there was going to be a
really really desperate pornographic market for that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure they're actually sadly probably is.
Speaker 4: There's I know, there's a series of like bigfoot erotica
books for women.
Speaker 3: That would explain the recent trend of people like women
and bears in the woods. Don't I don't don't. I
don't fully understand that either. I just keep saying a
lot of people, a lot of women, saying they'd rather
be out in the worlds with the bear than a man.
It was like, okay, well whatever, I don't I don't
quite understand it myself, but hey teach their own. But
now far as getting back with dB Cooper and everything.
Try and wrap this one up. If you had to
pinpoint one direction, one person, whatever, Who do you honestly
think about all the suspects that you've looked into, who
do you think the one that would be the most logical.
Speaker 4: Most logical. There's probably three suspects. We talked about Ted
Braden m H. I think it's a fantastic suspect. There's
a numerous suspect with a JFK assassination connection. It's not
even a connection if you're deep in JFK. I'm sure
you've heard the name Lauren Hall or Skip Hall directly
involved and was part of those public hearings, or may
not have even been one of the people to pull
a trigger in the JFK assassination. But man, is he
a good dB Cooper suspect as well? The other one
I really like. I go back and forth on this
a little bit, but Wolfgang Gossip, who he confessed to
both of his sons on their eighteenth birthday and confessed
to two different lawyers in two different states. And I
interviewed one of his sons, Greg and I sought Greg out.
Greg didn't come to me, and when I reached out
to him. He was like, yeah, I think I'd be
willing to do that, but I don't know you. So
I would like to have dinner first, because I drove
out to where he was to do that episode, and
I really don't like doing that because on my show,
I want us to talk like for the first time,
and so I'm honestly surprised by your answer, and I
want to know this. I want to know that. I
don't want to do that thing where I ask you
the question and I already know the answer. I really
don't enjoy that that much. But because I was desperate
to talk to this guy Greg, I was like, yeah,
we can go to dinner first, that's no problem. And
so we go to dinner. And what I got from
that was he just wanted to know that I wasn't
going to manipulate his answers. He wanted to know from
me that I didn't have like this agenda that I
was trying to put him in this place so he
could participate in my solve of the case or anything.
I really just wanted to know what he had to say.
And we became real friendly, real quick, and hung out
and had a good time and then we actually went
to his house, I did that interview, and I just
found him so believable because he also he's not going
around pitching this story. He has his own life, he
has his own income. He's not like looking to get
rich off dB Cooper. He's his own man. And he
was very quick to point out to me that his
father was not a good father, not great at all.
He told me some really just some sad stuff. Not
not really really terrible as far as like what bad
dads can do, but just like he wasn't a good father.
And so to have this guy who's not even is
a big fan of his own father. And he told
me he's not even sure himself if he believes that
his dad was Dbe Cooper, but he likes it when
guys like me look into it because he would like
to see it solved. He's not going to be the
one to do it, but he wants to know if
his dad was or wasn't Dbi Cooper. And he told me,
if I found out tomorrow one hundred percent that my
dad was Dbie Cooper, I would be like, Okay, at
least he was telling the truth about that, and then
he would move on with his life or the other
way around. He finds out one hundred percent your dad
was not Dbie Cooper, and he'd be like, Okay, well
that was just another thing he lied about, and he
would move on with his life. If you look up
Wolfgang Gossip, there's a really interesting video you can pull
up on YouTube right now if you just type in
Wolfgang Gossip for he's on the news in Seattle and
not Seattle, I believe it's salt Lake. I'm sorry. He's
on the local news in Salt Lake for performing an exorcism.
He also became like a paranormal radio talk show host.
Have you ever heard of Clyde Lewis.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have so.
Speaker 4: Clyde Lewis views Wolfgang Gossip as a mentor.
Speaker 5: HM.
Speaker 4: So next time you talk to Clyde Lewis, ask him
about Wolfgang Gossip.
Speaker 3: I have not spoken to Clyde, and he is actually
someone that I've contemplated on reaching out to, but I
know he's got so much going on. I'm not at
his level, so I don't thank you to reach back
out to me.
Speaker 4: You know, I hung out with Clyde Lewis at Cooper
Kahn in I think it was twenty nineteen, could have
been twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen. A cool guy, an
interesting guy. He's very intense. He sort of looks you
in the eyes, has opens his eyes real wide, and
has a big, prominent voice, and you've heard his voice
on the radio. A cool, fun guy. I've tried to
get him on my show. I've tried to get on
his show in person. He's always like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
let's do it, and then I just never get a
follow up or anything. Obviously, he's a busy guy. He's
a popular guy.
Speaker 3: But that is how fight.
Speaker 4: If you're listening, hit me up.
Speaker 3: That is how a lot of the big I don't
want to say big time, but like the larger fan
based things are, the people that are in charge of
those typically are too busy to come on smaller activities,
which I get it. I'm busy a lot on my
own stuff, and I'm nowhere near as big as any
of those people. But you mentioned Cooper Fest. Would you
like to let the audience know when that is coming up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, November fifteenth or the seventeenth at the Seattle Museum
of Flight, which is probably one of the best aviation
museums in the United States, if not the best thanks
to its proximity to Boeing. Dbcooper Events dot Com. If
you are familiar with the dB Cooper case at all,
there's going to be a bunch of names you're familiar
with authors. I'll be MC that event. Come see us,
Come check it out. Dbcooper Events dot Com. Also, if
you enjoy listening to podcasts, check my podcast out, The
Cooper Vortex. Anywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: I'll make sure to include that in the show notes
for anyone listening. So just go in there and you
need to click on and I'll take you right to it.
I think we can wrap this one up. I just
want to say thank you to Darren. Appreciate you coming
on here and talk with me tonight. This has always
been something that I found interesting to you as a kid.
Like we probably saw the same Unsolved Mysteries episode that
got me interested in it.
Speaker 4: Oh a million percent was Unsolved Mysteries, and then Leonard
Nimoy did that in Search of m HM that featured
dB Cooper as well, and that was basically the only
dB Cooper content maybe until the two thousands. Whenever, when
without a Paddle came out.
Speaker 3: I remember that movie. Actually I have that movie. It's
been so long since I've watched I actually saw something
posted online about it that it's been twenty it's been
out for twenty years now. I think that's alright, and
I get like registered in my memories. I was like,
I have that movie, like I got it when it
came out. It was like down on my basement with
all the other DVDs because anymore, like everyone got DVDs
and now we got Blu rays, so we don't watch DVDs.
But I kind of forgot that that had something to
do with dB Cooper.
Speaker 4: The whole adventure is them going to find him.
Speaker 3: They want to find the dB Cooper and they Yeah,
like I said, I haven't watched that movie years now,
i'mn'a have to go watch it. But anyways, again, thanks
to Darren. Make sure to check out the Cooper Vortex,
and thanks for listening. But we will find you on
the next one. So good night.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: Yep, not a problem, and that's the show everyone. I
really hope you guys enjoyed the conversations. If you would
like to be a guest on tenfoil Tels. Remember to
send an email to Tenfoil Tales Podcast at gmail dot
com or go to the contact section of tenfoiltal dot com.
Just get your message to me. We'll get some schedule
for a future episode. And just remember the truth lies,
and the stories we share, the connections we make. Stay
curiously open minded. Thank you all for joining us on
this journey, and until next time, keep questioning, keep seeking,
and keep exploring the unknown. Good night everyone seen on.
Speaker 2: Sounds in the headphones. Yeah, it's turn to rock. Got
a story about a crypty creature. Let's take a walk,
thigs Foot tug Man. They're out there in the talk,
but the truth is out.
Speaker 5: There likeingly as fuck.
Speaker 2: Us.
Speaker 5: Both signings got the whole.
Speaker 2: Worldsome conspiracies fons, like a story in the book.
Speaker 5: Control trying to keep us fine. We're all gonna use
the whole mind in history.
Speaker 2: They don't want us to know the secrets they hide
since they want show so they don't society.
Speaker 1: They keep us in chase, but in Talma's time to
break the reins.
Speaker 5: Control trying to keep us fine. But I'm before gonna
use a mind in history. They don't want us to
know the secrets they hide since they will.
Speaker 1: Show THEMDAL Society, thank us and Chase.
Speaker 5: The sand in talkic sound to break the reins
Speaker 4: H