Poll

How did the money arrive on Tena Bar

River Flooding
1 (5%)
Floated to it's resting spot via Columbia river
2 (10%)
Planted
6 (30%)
Dredge
11 (55%)
tossed in the river in a paper bag
0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 17

Voting closed: August 16, 2016, 09:05:28 AM

Author Topic: Tena Bar Money Find  (Read 1178414 times)

georger

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3585 on: October 28, 2017, 12:24:56 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Carr stated no tapes were ever given to them?

The FBI would have had no in-house way of reading or doing anything with the tapes - they would have had to give them back to the military or a civilian contractor to do anything with .. or the FAA ! I wouldnt be surprised if thats still the case today.
 

MeyerLouie

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3586 on: October 28, 2017, 03:13:11 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login


I have taken a couple of trips up the Washougal River and Little Washougal River drainage.  My very first impression was "no way."  The River was so slow moving -- getting a 20-pound bag of money to float down the Washougal undetected would be a stretch, unless it was high water runoff and fast flowing around the time of the jump.  The Washougal was much like a creek in many, many places -- the water was shallow and slow-moving.  I'm not expecting big runoff in November/December, it would more likely be in the Spring, where mountain ice packs are melting and the river runoff would be much greater.  Sorry Jerry Thomas, I am not a fan of the Washougal River theory.

MeyerLouie

Isnt it too violent when it does flood?

It's hard to tell which came first the Washougal theory or the claim they were east of V23. I will look for docs that will answer that question. In 1980 the money find joined the two forever...

I did some digging around about the Washougal River.  I saw a video of the Washougal River on 12/7/2015, the river was high, nearly flooding, it almost came up to the Washougal River Bridge.  Also, a local reported that the Washougal River can get high and wild if there's been lots of rain. 

The Columbia River flooded in 1996, crested at 27.2 feet, 11 feet above flood level.  There was the Christmas Day flood, 12/25/1964 where the Columbia River crested at 27.7 feet.  The all time high for the Columbia River was 6/13/1948 where the River crested at 31 feet.  And there was the Great Flood of 1894, where downtown Vancouver was flooded.  The Columbia River flooded in 1970, 1972, and 1974, with high crests on 1/24/70, 6/12/72, and 6/22/1974.  No flooding of the Columbia River was reported around November/December of 1971

With or without actual Columbia River flooding, the Washougal could have still raged if there was unusual heavy rainfall on or a little after 11/24/1971.  If the river was raging, then it would be possible for a 20-pound bag to float a long ways downstream, maybe even to the Columbia River.  But if we can pinpoint actual rainfall data and Washougal River water levels on or a little after 11/24/71 to be normal or minimal -- nothing out of the ordinary -- then the Washougal River theory might be a little harder to explain.  As I stated earlier, I observed the Washougal River running pretty slow and shallow in several places.  IMO, under these kinds of normal runoff conditions, I don't think it would be possible for a 20-pound bag of money to float undetected for very long, or even float at all,  since there are so many shallow, creek-like, slow-moving places along the river.

Finding rainfall amounts and Washougal River levels in late November 1971 would be helpful.  Anybody have that data handy by any chance?  I know Georger and R99 and several others have looked at National Weather Service data.  Washougal River crest levels in November 1971 should be available somewhere....

Meyer

I have no Washougal data per se, however, the suggestion that 305 'might have' been east off V23 leaving Cooper to bail in the western slope of the Washougal basin, was made clear back in 1972; according to FBI docs I have. When the TBar money was discovered in 1980 people went back and re-examined that theory.

The hydrologist  BRADLEY identified the Washougal as the only likely feeder source within the previously described drop zone that would be capable of moving a package about L6x16x4 inches to the Columbia River. He said a logical time for that to happen would have been during the December 2, 1977 Washougal flood, when parts of the river were approximately ten feet to twelve over the normal winter flood stage.

Bradley's figures agree with Columbia water level data for that date (below) which places the Columbia water level at over 16 feet which is very high at Tina Bar. These rains and flooding ended a long historic drought that had plagued the area in 1977. Whatever process brings the Cooper money to Tina Bar it must also cover the money from sight with silt, because nobody noticed any money on Tina Bar until Feb of 1980 (with fisherman using the bar constantly during that two year period).

If the money arrived approx Dec 1977, that leaves two years for further changes in the morphology at Tina Bar to happen creating the sand bar found during the excavation in 1980. Can that happen?   

There are many problems with the Washougal theory. It's hard to imagine single bundles of bills being transported all the way from the Washougal to Tina Bar - the whole bag of money is a more likely scenario. But no evidence of a money bag was found on Tina Bar. Fragments at three feet deep some distance from the Ingram bundles must also be accounted for. Money must arrive and immediately be covered so it is not seen by the large number of people using the sand bar. No distinctive geological sediments from the Washougal were found in the lab examinations of the Ingram bills. The Lab basically said 'if you rely on sediments between the bills the only contact the bills have had is with Columbia river water. The Lab report is very specific in that statement. In addition, Flight 305 must be near the Washougal basin for the Washougal theory to work, at all.     And the list goes on . . .   

Okay, good information, Georger.  My main concern is how the money bag was not detected in the Washougal River, if it indeed got there from 305 on 11/24/71.  As stated earlier, the River runs slow and shallow in several places.  A bag of money would be easily seen.  If the money bag ended up in the Washougal, from 305, and if the runoff was not significant the day and several days after 11/24/1971, then why didn't anyone see the money bag?  Why didn't Jerry Thomas find it, for that matter?  What happened between November of 1971 to the flood event you described in December of 1977?  I'm telling you, we can debunk the Washougal Theory here and now if we can show the weather conditions on and after 11/24/1971 were fairly normal -- i.e., no significant rainfall and no flooding or rapid runoff due to heavy rain.  I don't know -- although I was in the Columbia River Gorge that night, and there was a wind and rain storm there the likes of which I have never seen before or since.  We need some data on rainfall amount and at what level the Washougal River crested on and several days after 11/24/71.  I would like to have that data.  Any ideas who I might talk to?  R99, any ideas?

Again, I can see no way a 20-lb money bag floating down the Washougal River, under normal weather conditions -- normal amount of rainfall and river runoff -- would go unseen for any extended period of time.  It would stand out like a sore thumb, and there most likely would have been enough traffic on the Washougal River highway for someone to notice such an object fairly quickly.  I drove that highway a couple of times, watching the River the whole way.  Something out of the ordinary, I would have easily seen.

I have to respect Jerry Thomas' work, he looked for years in the Washougal and found nothing.  Jerry's thoroughness, good work ethic, and superior skills in the elements are top of the line, and if he didn't find anything, that tells me it's most likely not there.

It amazes me how much confusion there is with the flight path -- did 305 go eastward or westward coming into Vancouver?  I've heard compelling arguments both ways.  And that's just the flight path....

Meyer

Ah, but you forget Part XVII subpart VCXYUIYT-3B in that theory!

That subpart reads:  bag of money must be in some smaller 'tributary of the Washougal', not in the Washougal itself,  and within 10ft of that smaller tributary. Because that is what Bradley stipulates (the fine print). And, said tributary-obscurus, must be 'where nobody goes'! Inaccessible. That's why nobody noticed. A place full of rattlesnakes, wild boars, charging moose, angry Amazons with knives, with a little lethal nuclear radiation thrown in for good measure.

And lastly, the whole theory does not go active until the "day-of transport on the day of the highest level of the flood", which has the whole basin flooded '10ft out of its banks'. Which banks uncertain.

In other words the money bag sits idle until the worst day of the flood in some back-water tributary, then it is washed away unnoticed into the Washougal itself where it then arrives at the Columbia also unnoticed .... just like JT's 100 ping pong balls all of which showed up at Tina Bar!

And, the money itself never picks up any sediments of the Washougal geological region, which forensics could notice because of course the money is neatly protected inside its container at all times. That explains why the Lab only found Columbia sediments on and in between the bills, after the container rotted apart in the Columbia exposing its contents to God and Jerry's pin-pong balls. No funny stuff please!

Got it?  ;)   

Very interesting stuff....
 

FLYJACK

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3587 on: December 14, 2017, 01:48:44 PM »
Interesting flyover video of high water around TBAR in 2017... it really puts the entire area in play including Lake Vancouver.

 

Offline Bruce A. Smith

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4365
  • Thanked: 465 times
    • The Mountain News
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3588 on: December 14, 2017, 02:35:58 PM »
Yikes. There is water EVERYWHERE.
 

Offline 377

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1596
  • Thanked: 442 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3589 on: December 14, 2017, 02:58:57 PM »
 "just like JT's 100 ping pong balls all of which showed up at Tina Bar!"

What is the real story about that experiment JT performed. Where released, where found? I remember being skeptical.

Anyone in touch w Jerry? He used to be a regular now we never hear from him. I really enjoyed my time with him at the symposium.

377
 

georger

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3590 on: December 14, 2017, 03:45:24 PM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
"just like JT's 100 ping pong balls all of which showed up at Tina Bar!"

What is the real story about that experiment JT performed. Where released, where found? I remember being skeptical.

Anyone in touch w Jerry? He used to be a regular now we never hear from him. I really enjoyed my time with him at the symposium.

377

The story was a lie. The motive disruption-jealousy meant to humiliate and discredit the science team.

JT felt that he should be the go-to guy and science team, in any Cooper investigation.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2017, 12:10:26 PM by georger »
 

MeyerLouie

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3591 on: December 16, 2017, 04:35:31 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Interesting flyover video of high water around TBAR in 2017... it really puts the entire area in play including Lake Vancouver.




Yeah, I saw it.  Meyer
 

Offline Unsurelock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Thanked: 53 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3592 on: January 05, 2018, 09:45:18 PM »
Howdy, Cooper Folk.

I've recently published an article in the current issue of P.I. Magazine (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login ) detailing a theory I've been developing regarding the Tena Bar money.  It's an alternate burial hypothesis to the "plant theory," that suggests the bill bundles were discarded, not planted, and that Cooper survived his jump. It provides an elusive motive for burying these formerly negotiable stacks of currency, a reason for the shards winding up where they did, additional felony charges to tack on, a possible way of tracking Cooper after the jump, even now, and a government agency who may already - unwittingly - have the evidence needed to find and convict him, if he's still alive. 

I'll eventually post the details if someone else doesn't first, but for now I don't want to undermine the magazine's efforts. I usually wait for a movie to come out on Netflix, so I'd be okay waiting. But if you're the impatient type, I think they charge $7.95 for a single issue in both .pdf and print format.

Cheers
 
The following users thanked this post: dice

georger

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3593 on: January 05, 2018, 11:40:02 PM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Howdy, Cooper Folk.

I've recently published an article in the current issue of P.I. Magazine (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login ) detailing a theory I've been developing regarding the Tena Bar money.  It's an alternate burial hypothesis to the "plant theory," that suggests the bill bundles were discarded, not planted, and that Cooper survived his jump. It provides an elusive motive for burying these formerly negotiable stacks of currency, a reason for the shards winding up where they did, additional felony charges to tack on, a possible way of tracking Cooper after the jump, even now, and a government agency who may already - unwittingly - have the evidence needed to find and convict him, if he's still alive. 

I'll eventually post the details if someone else doesn't first, but for now I don't want to undermine the magazine's efforts. I usually wait for a movie to come out on Netflix, so I'd be okay waiting. But if you're the impatient type, I think they charge $7.95 for a single issue in both .pdf and print format.

Cheers

pse post a url here when available to the public - free. 

Are solicitations for money allowed on this forum?
« Last Edit: January 05, 2018, 11:56:06 PM by georger »
 

Offline Unsurelock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Thanked: 53 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3594 on: January 06, 2018, 12:15:58 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Are solicitations for money allowed on this forum?

I don't earn commission.
 

Offline dice

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 268
  • Thanked: 40 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3595 on: January 06, 2018, 07:14:44 PM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Howdy, Cooper Folk.

I've recently published an article in the current issue of P.I. Magazine (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login ) detailing a theory I've been developing regarding the Tena Bar money.  It's an alternate burial hypothesis to the "plant theory," that suggests the bill bundles were discarded, not planted, and that Cooper survived his jump. It provides an elusive motive for burying these formerly negotiable stacks of currency, a reason for the shards winding up where they did, additional felony charges to tack on, a possible way of tracking Cooper after the jump, even now, and a government agency who may already - unwittingly - have the evidence needed to find and convict him, if he's still alive. 

I'll eventually post the details if someone else doesn't first, but for now I don't want to undermine the magazine's efforts. I usually wait for a movie to come out on Netflix, so I'd be okay waiting. But if you're the impatient type, I think they charge $7.95 for a single issue in both .pdf and print format.

Cheers

Good stuff, unsurelock
Purdue 38  Iowa 36
 
The following users thanked this post: Unsurelock

Offline Unsurelock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Thanked: 53 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3596 on: January 06, 2018, 10:13:55 PM »
As it turns out, I retain the copyrights to the original story as submitted. Here you go. (And Dice, I'll buy you lunch if you just spent 8 bucks to read this.)


The FBI May Never Find D.B. Cooper, but the Secret Service Might
by Brian Rafferty

   For thirty-eight years, the Bureau has been stumped. How did $5,800 of skyjacker D.B. Cooper’s ransom money arrive at a little beach on the Columbia River, and what weathered it down into weird little ovals? It wouldn’t be so important a question if this wasn’t the only physical evidence found of the only skyjacker in history who has never been caught or identified. And while the FBI publicly called it quits on the case last year, private citizens and online sleuthing communities are just getting warmed up.

   Virtually every lead in the case for decades has been generated by the public, and while many of them are less than credible, some of them have been taken seriously by law enforcement. One such lead came from the DropZone website, where it was suggested in 2008 that “Dan Cooper,” the name the hijacker actually gave at the airline check-in counter, was an alias inspired by a Belgian Comic Book character. Like the skyjacker, the fictional “Dan Cooper” parachuted to safety after high-altitude ordeals. After that lead, the FBI reportedly switched its focus to finding a suspect who may have spent time in French-speaking countries.

   While the suspect profile is key, the money really is the bottom line. Tying somebody to it is just about the only chance of getting a conviction, if the hijacker is even still alive 46 years later, as he is assumed by many to have died in the jump. With only partial finger prints and inconclusive DNA profiles, the found ransom money is the linchpin of the investigation. But after four decades of fruitless scrutiny, what details did we all miss about this money?

   It was discovered on a beach known as Tena Bar, where in 1980 a boy and his daddy cleared a spot for a campfire and unearthed “three little driftwoods,” to use the words of the father, Dwayne Ingram. It took a moment to realize that this driftwood was actually bundled money with the edges seemingly rotted off all the way around. Decomposition had apparently robbed the bills of everything but the serial numbers and the center portraits of Andrew Jackson.

   After scouring the beach for more cash, the Ingram family called the FBI, who brought in shovel teams and a tractor to look for more evidence. No body, bomb, bills or parachute were located. All they found were little fragments of money strewn about, which today can be found in two tiny boxes in the FBI vault, averaging about a millimeter in diameter each. In total, those fragments appear to make up less than a single bill’s worth of material.

   The bulk of the cash was reduced to small, oval-shaped bundles, oddly symmetrical, and stacked in the sand. What caused the bills to drop so much weight has never been contended, as the FBI made it clear from the get-go that “The money was badly decomposed.” This is viewed as gospel, as wherever you look, online or in books about the case, that word appears repeatedly: decomposed. Along with degraded and deteriorated, it makes up the Holy Trinity of adjectives used to describe Cooper’s found bills.

   The online sleuths agree, and have plenty more to say about the money. Two-hundred and fifty pages of material have been written and reposted solely about the money at the DB Cooper Forum, a website dedicated to the case, and all of it is virtually unanimous. Everyone believes the money got there naturally. Nobody seems to think the money could have been buried by hand. Excerpted here are individual opinions from a recent exchange on the Forum:

-   â€śI don't think anyone has, or even can, provide a meaningful reason for deliberately burying the money at Tina Bar.”
-   â€śA plant (burial) doesn't make any sense.
-   â€śOnce I saw the TV news show with the shards I (reluctantly) kissed the T bar money plant theory goodbye.”
-   â€śYes, the KATU video sure does send the plant theory Bye-bye.”
-    “Plant: there is NO evidence of a plant - none, zip, nada!”

Notice another word that is used over and over again: Plant.

   The “plant theory,” as it has come to be known, postulates that Cooper survived his 1971 skydive from a commercial airliner and later returned to bury some of the loot. Why? To confuse investigators, and possibly even fake his own death. It is the only theory offered to explain a deliberate burial, and is wholly inadequate, like everything in the case. Even with the bills appearing to have been “trimmed” in the opinion of geologist Phil Scoles, who is involved in an independent investigation, burying the money hasn’t made any sense to most people so far.

   But looking at the money from another perspective brings up another possibility entirely, one that could bring another government agency into the investigation: the U.S. Secret Service. After all, they’re the agency that deals with counterfeiting. Just have a look at what can be done with the edges of a Federal Reserve Note, like the ones missing from the Cooper cash:




   If the above photo looks funny, it’s because George Washington is not on the Ten dollar bill. This image is of what the U.S. Secret Service of yesteryear referred to as a “raised note,” the arch-nemesis of the distracted 20th-century cashier. Much more prevalent a century ago, this type of altered bill has had the value inflated by applying the edges of a bigger bill to the body of a smaller bill. Look close and you'll see the natural semi-circle made by trimming the Ten. 

   While the FBI and the online sleuths have focused on the bundled money that was found, a focus on the missing edges gives an alternate reason for burying the money. Rather than trimming off the edges, Cooper may have trimmed out the serial numbers that could identify the money. Then it wouldn’t be a “plant,” but a simple disposal, much like an unwanted apple core, with Tena Bar being the dumping ground.



Photo Used by Permission of CitizenSleuths.com

   As in the previous photo of the fake Ten, notice the shape this recovered ransom bill has: semi-circles on the sides. The corners with the number 20 are all gone, and so are the identifying words, “TWENTY DOLLARS” that should be on the bottom. What is here is the serial number, which authorities had recorded, a fact that Cooper may have suspected early on.  Within 36 hours of the hijacking, newspapers had published that the FBI would not confirm whether the bills were “marked” or not. So the cash may have become too hot for him to spend as-is.

   When an old-timer made a “poor man’s counterfeit” like the phony Ten in our example, he took $21 in the form of two Tens and a Single, and altered each of them a little bit. He’d trim the left edge off of one Ten and the right edge off of the other. Then he’d paste them onto the single and spend all three bills, making $30 out of the original $21. It’s not very profitable. Even using Twenties, you’d still need to invest $41 to make a fake Twenty and possibly go to federal prison.

   However, it is an entirely different story if you’re already trying to escape federal charges and you’re loaded with cash that will lead the FBI right to you. On Thanksgiving of ’71, the whole world was looking for a skyjacker carrying specific serial numbers, not a small-time flimflammer trying to pass off a doctored single. The edges of those bills would have made ideal $20 disguises for a steady stream of George Washington Singles given to Cooper as change as he made his way out of the search area.

   A far more common method of making an “eleven dollar bill” as they were also called, was to just remove the corners and cover the “1” with a “10,” but a “20” worked just as well. Interestingly, according to the Sleuths at the DB Cooper Forum, no corner of a Twenty has ever surfaced in evidence or in any photo of the evidence pertaining to this case. The edges are gone entirely.

   If D.B. Cooper was the Master Criminal that Walter Cronkite reported him to be, it might not take him long to realize that he had the raw materials at his fingertips to make the highest quality “Raised Note” Twenties possible, redeeming the ransom for up to 95% of its worth after an investment in Singles and glue.

   What you see in the photos above is possible evidence of a salvage operation, with the cornerless Twenties being like stripped chassis in a junkyard. If so, then the reason why nobody ever found Cooper's money in circulation because they couldn’t tell which bills were his without their serial numbers.

   The question of how many Cooper bills may have been passed would not even be a question for the FBI, but for the Secret Service.

   If this theory holds, it may have been overlooked by the FBI for multiple reasons. In addition to not being their area of expertise, the practice of raising notes peaked between the 1880’s and 1920’s, with the last mentions of it in newspaper archives having been over a decade ago. Additionally, it could impact the case by helping eliminate suspects, such as Barb “Bobby” Dayton, who claimed to have stashed the loot in a cistern and found it deteriorated some time later.

   One current suspect, Robert Rackstraw, is being fingered for the skyjacking by another independent investigator that claims Rackstraw purposefully dumped the money elsewhere to fake his own death. This story relies on the money staying whole and being transported by a flood, before deteriorating over time as per the conventional view of the money’s physical state. If the bills were cut to make phony Twenties, it could eliminate this theory, if not Rackstraw altogether.

   The most exciting aspect of this new angle is that theoretically, if Cooper did pass any of these notes, he may have gotten arrested for it, only not as a skyjacker. If so, the government could have a new set of fresh leads to investigate, and not just from arrest records, but potential physical evidence. While the Secret Service reportedly destroys the counterfeits it confiscates, they are also known to keep a few as samples. If this includes raised notes, then this means there is a feint heartbeat of a chance that the government already possesses the edges of Cooper’s Twenties and doesn’t even know it.

   Interesting as it sounds, the Raised Note theory is not without a hurdle, in the form of those “shards” of money the FBI found in 1980. A debris field was described of tiny pieces of twenty dollar bills all through the sand where the bundles were discovered. How they arrived there has also been a big mystery, as some of the fragments were reportedly found up to three feet beneath the surface of the sand, leading some to theorize that they had floated to shore over time and become buried gradually.

   However, according to an on-location news broadcast in 1980, “most of the pieces of money they found…up near the surface,” despite the FBI having dug much deeper. Since the Ingram family had previously been digging on the beach while trying to separate the brittle bills themselves, the fragments may very well have been spread like cookie crumbs after its discovery. The FBI team may then have inadvertently caused a small number of shards to sink to a depth of three feet while digging. In short, the money fragments found may simply have been the result of an innocently contaminated crime scene.

   Was this little sand bar the location where Cooper, cold and on the run after his jump, clumsily hacked apart his cash with the pocket knife he carried? If so, he treated the serial numbers much like a homing device, or a dye pack in a bank robbery. He got rid of them.

   Some of the more scientific minds involved in the case have contributed research that supports the Raised Note theory. In addition to Scoles, another group of researchers brought into the case by the FBI a decade ago made a different discovery on the Cooper bills. The group, nicknamed the Citizen Sleuths, experimented with new dollar bills soaked in river water and buried in sand, both taken from the shoreline near Tena Bar. The test bills contained a form of algae. The ransom notes had none. This suggests they likely did not get to the beach by way of the river.

   What does this all mean? That unless a second master criminal, knowledgeable in a counterfeiting technique nearly extinct by 1971, happened upon Cooper's frozen corpse that winter, it is increasingly likely that he survived the jump. He may have left a trail that we can track even now. And he may have lived long enough to laugh at quite a few hair-brained theories about his money, just like this one.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 10:31:13 PM by Unsurelock »
 

Offline Lynn

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 322
  • Thanked: 70 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3597 on: January 07, 2018, 03:24:55 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
As it turns out, I retain the copyrights to the original story as submitted. Here you go. (And Dice, I'll buy you lunch if you just spent 8 bucks to read this.)


The FBI May Never Find D.B. Cooper, but the Secret Service Might
by Brian Rafferty

   For thirty-eight years, the Bureau has been stumped. How did $5,800 of skyjacker D.B. Cooper’s ransom money arrive at a little beach on the Columbia River, and what weathered it down into weird little ovals? It wouldn’t be so important a question if this wasn’t the only physical evidence found of the only skyjacker in history who has never been caught or identified. And while the FBI publicly called it quits on the case last year, private citizens and online sleuthing communities are just getting warmed up.

   Virtually every lead in the case for decades has been generated by the public, and while many of them are less than credible, some of them have been taken seriously by law enforcement. One such lead came from the DropZone website, where it was suggested in 2008 that “Dan Cooper,” the name the hijacker actually gave at the airline check-in counter, was an alias inspired by a Belgian Comic Book character. Like the skyjacker, the fictional “Dan Cooper” parachuted to safety after high-altitude ordeals. After that lead, the FBI reportedly switched its focus to finding a suspect who may have spent time in French-speaking countries.

   While the suspect profile is key, the money really is the bottom line. Tying somebody to it is just about the only chance of getting a conviction, if the hijacker is even still alive 46 years later, as he is assumed by many to have died in the jump. With only partial finger prints and inconclusive DNA profiles, the found ransom money is the linchpin of the investigation. But after four decades of fruitless scrutiny, what details did we all miss about this money?

   It was discovered on a beach known as Tena Bar, where in 1980 a boy and his daddy cleared a spot for a campfire and unearthed “three little driftwoods,” to use the words of the father, Dwayne Ingram. It took a moment to realize that this driftwood was actually bundled money with the edges seemingly rotted off all the way around. Decomposition had apparently robbed the bills of everything but the serial numbers and the center portraits of Andrew Jackson.

   After scouring the beach for more cash, the Ingram family called the FBI, who brought in shovel teams and a tractor to look for more evidence. No body, bomb, bills or parachute were located. All they found were little fragments of money strewn about, which today can be found in two tiny boxes in the FBI vault, averaging about a millimeter in diameter each. In total, those fragments appear to make up less than a single bill’s worth of material.

   The bulk of the cash was reduced to small, oval-shaped bundles, oddly symmetrical, and stacked in the sand. What caused the bills to drop so much weight has never been contended, as the FBI made it clear from the get-go that “The money was badly decomposed.” This is viewed as gospel, as wherever you look, online or in books about the case, that word appears repeatedly: decomposed. Along with degraded and deteriorated, it makes up the Holy Trinity of adjectives used to describe Cooper’s found bills.

   The online sleuths agree, and have plenty more to say about the money. Two-hundred and fifty pages of material have been written and reposted solely about the money at the DB Cooper Forum, a website dedicated to the case, and all of it is virtually unanimous. Everyone believes the money got there naturally. Nobody seems to think the money could have been buried by hand. Excerpted here are individual opinions from a recent exchange on the Forum:

-   â€śI don't think anyone has, or even can, provide a meaningful reason for deliberately burying the money at Tina Bar.”
-   â€śA plant (burial) doesn't make any sense.
-   â€śOnce I saw the TV news show with the shards I (reluctantly) kissed the T bar money plant theory goodbye.”
-   â€śYes, the KATU video sure does send the plant theory Bye-bye.”
-    “Plant: there is NO evidence of a plant - none, zip, nada!”

Notice another word that is used over and over again: Plant.

   The “plant theory,” as it has come to be known, postulates that Cooper survived his 1971 skydive from a commercial airliner and later returned to bury some of the loot. Why? To confuse investigators, and possibly even fake his own death. It is the only theory offered to explain a deliberate burial, and is wholly inadequate, like everything in the case. Even with the bills appearing to have been “trimmed” in the opinion of geologist Phil Scoles, who is involved in an independent investigation, burying the money hasn’t made any sense to most people so far.

   But looking at the money from another perspective brings up another possibility entirely, one that could bring another government agency into the investigation: the U.S. Secret Service. After all, they’re the agency that deals with counterfeiting. Just have a look at what can be done with the edges of a Federal Reserve Note, like the ones missing from the Cooper cash:




   If the above photo looks funny, it’s because George Washington is not on the Ten dollar bill. This image is of what the U.S. Secret Service of yesteryear referred to as a “raised note,” the arch-nemesis of the distracted 20th-century cashier. Much more prevalent a century ago, this type of altered bill has had the value inflated by applying the edges of a bigger bill to the body of a smaller bill. Look close and you'll see the natural semi-circle made by trimming the Ten. 

   While the FBI and the online sleuths have focused on the bundled money that was found, a focus on the missing edges gives an alternate reason for burying the money. Rather than trimming off the edges, Cooper may have trimmed out the serial numbers that could identify the money. Then it wouldn’t be a “plant,” but a simple disposal, much like an unwanted apple core, with Tena Bar being the dumping ground.



Photo Used by Permission of CitizenSleuths.com

   As in the previous photo of the fake Ten, notice the shape this recovered ransom bill has: semi-circles on the sides. The corners with the number 20 are all gone, and so are the identifying words, “TWENTY DOLLARS” that should be on the bottom. What is here is the serial number, which authorities had recorded, a fact that Cooper may have suspected early on.  Within 36 hours of the hijacking, newspapers had published that the FBI would not confirm whether the bills were “marked” or not. So the cash may have become too hot for him to spend as-is.

   When an old-timer made a “poor man’s counterfeit” like the phony Ten in our example, he took $21 in the form of two Tens and a Single, and altered each of them a little bit. He’d trim the left edge off of one Ten and the right edge off of the other. Then he’d paste them onto the single and spend all three bills, making $30 out of the original $21. It’s not very profitable. Even using Twenties, you’d still need to invest $41 to make a fake Twenty and possibly go to federal prison.

   However, it is an entirely different story if you’re already trying to escape federal charges and you’re loaded with cash that will lead the FBI right to you. On Thanksgiving of ’71, the whole world was looking for a skyjacker carrying specific serial numbers, not a small-time flimflammer trying to pass off a doctored single. The edges of those bills would have made ideal $20 disguises for a steady stream of George Washington Singles given to Cooper as change as he made his way out of the search area.

   A far more common method of making an “eleven dollar bill” as they were also called, was to just remove the corners and cover the “1” with a “10,” but a “20” worked just as well. Interestingly, according to the Sleuths at the DB Cooper Forum, no corner of a Twenty has ever surfaced in evidence or in any photo of the evidence pertaining to this case. The edges are gone entirely.

   If D.B. Cooper was the Master Criminal that Walter Cronkite reported him to be, it might not take him long to realize that he had the raw materials at his fingertips to make the highest quality “Raised Note” Twenties possible, redeeming the ransom for up to 95% of its worth after an investment in Singles and glue.

   What you see in the photos above is possible evidence of a salvage operation, with the cornerless Twenties being like stripped chassis in a junkyard. If so, then the reason why nobody ever found Cooper's money in circulation because they couldn’t tell which bills were his without their serial numbers.

   The question of how many Cooper bills may have been passed would not even be a question for the FBI, but for the Secret Service.

   If this theory holds, it may have been overlooked by the FBI for multiple reasons. In addition to not being their area of expertise, the practice of raising notes peaked between the 1880’s and 1920’s, with the last mentions of it in newspaper archives having been over a decade ago. Additionally, it could impact the case by helping eliminate suspects, such as Barb “Bobby” Dayton, who claimed to have stashed the loot in a cistern and found it deteriorated some time later.

   One current suspect, Robert Rackstraw, is being fingered for the skyjacking by another independent investigator that claims Rackstraw purposefully dumped the money elsewhere to fake his own death. This story relies on the money staying whole and being transported by a flood, before deteriorating over time as per the conventional view of the money’s physical state. If the bills were cut to make phony Twenties, it could eliminate this theory, if not Rackstraw altogether.

   The most exciting aspect of this new angle is that theoretically, if Cooper did pass any of these notes, he may have gotten arrested for it, only not as a skyjacker. If so, the government could have a new set of fresh leads to investigate, and not just from arrest records, but potential physical evidence. While the Secret Service reportedly destroys the counterfeits it confiscates, they are also known to keep a few as samples. If this includes raised notes, then this means there is a feint heartbeat of a chance that the government already possesses the edges of Cooper’s Twenties and doesn’t even know it.

   Interesting as it sounds, the Raised Note theory is not without a hurdle, in the form of those “shards” of money the FBI found in 1980. A debris field was described of tiny pieces of twenty dollar bills all through the sand where the bundles were discovered. How they arrived there has also been a big mystery, as some of the fragments were reportedly found up to three feet beneath the surface of the sand, leading some to theorize that they had floated to shore over time and become buried gradually.

   However, according to an on-location news broadcast in 1980, “most of the pieces of money they found…up near the surface,” despite the FBI having dug much deeper. Since the Ingram family had previously been digging on the beach while trying to separate the brittle bills themselves, the fragments may very well have been spread like cookie crumbs after its discovery. The FBI team may then have inadvertently caused a small number of shards to sink to a depth of three feet while digging. In short, the money fragments found may simply have been the result of an innocently contaminated crime scene.

   Was this little sand bar the location where Cooper, cold and on the run after his jump, clumsily hacked apart his cash with the pocket knife he carried? If so, he treated the serial numbers much like a homing device, or a dye pack in a bank robbery. He got rid of them.

   Some of the more scientific minds involved in the case have contributed research that supports the Raised Note theory. In addition to Scoles, another group of researchers brought into the case by the FBI a decade ago made a different discovery on the Cooper bills. The group, nicknamed the Citizen Sleuths, experimented with new dollar bills soaked in river water and buried in sand, both taken from the shoreline near Tena Bar. The test bills contained a form of algae. The ransom notes had none. This suggests they likely did not get to the beach by way of the river.

   What does this all mean? That unless a second master criminal, knowledgeable in a counterfeiting technique nearly extinct by 1971, happened upon Cooper's frozen corpse that winter, it is increasingly likely that he survived the jump. He may have left a trail that we can track even now. And he may have lived long enough to laugh at quite a few hair-brained theories about his money, just like this one.
This is a really interesting theory; it does account for the odd way the money had deteriorated and in a very logical way, based on the existence of that counterfeiting technique.

The parts of it that concern me are:
- The rain continued into the 25th of November, according to what I'm finding on the Weather Underground re precipitation for that date in the Portland area; someone may be able to provide more specific weather details for that date narrowed to the Tena Bar area? If it was continuously raining and DBC was dripping wet, it would have been very difficult to pull off a cut and paste job on the beach, not that that would be easy in good weather.
- DBC probably wouldn't have needed the ransom money to get out of the region once back in civilization; we know he had a $20 to pay for his own ticket, so it's likely he had other money on him, at least enough to get out of Dodge.

Still, that doesn't discount the possibility of "raising". It could just as easily be that DBC discarded some of the mutilated money later to make the FBI think he was dead. (I don't know why Colbert thinks that being the case would make Rackstraw a more likely suspect than anyone else, though. I don't believe for an instant Rackstraw did it, but that's a matter for a different thread.)

LOVE this out of the box thinking. My only thought on the bills themselves is that they were probably in the same spot for quite a while before Ingram found them, because otherwise the rubber bands that splintered apart instantly would likely have done so at some point while the bills were moving under whatever forces, natural or otherwise. (I believe it was georger who was talking about that aspect of the bills' condition - the crystallization phase.) But 9 years is a long time. If the plant theory is correct, he could have planted them any time in there.
 

georger

  • Guest
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3598 on: January 07, 2018, 04:48:15 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
As it turns out, I retain the copyrights to the original story as submitted. Here you go. (And Dice, I'll buy you lunch if you just spent 8 bucks to read this.)


The FBI May Never Find D.B. Cooper, but the Secret Service Might
by Brian Rafferty

   about his money, just like this one.

trimmed for bulk.

Cook's investigation into the money has been aided by Phil Scoles of Terra Science Inc. and a Lecturer at Wetland Training Institute and Portland ... You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Scoles says the bills were trimmed which means the bills found were part of a counterfeiting operation? Natural decomposition is a phony lie!

Now we know who Galen's Cook's 'sci team leader is'. Phil Scoles of Terra Science Inc. and a Lecturer at Wetland Training Institute and Portland ...

Unsurelock is presenting for Galen Cook who cannot post here.

Does Phil Scoles have an electron microscope? How could Tom Kaye and the Sci Team and the FBI Lab and Georger have missed this! Does Galen Cook have an electron microscope and analyzed Cooper bills for the FBI also? Did DB Cooper have an electron microscope and analyzed Cooper bills for the FBI also?
« Last Edit: January 07, 2018, 05:13:12 AM by georger »
 

Offline Unsurelock

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 351
  • Thanked: 53 times
Re: Tina Bar Money Find
« Reply #3599 on: January 07, 2018, 09:09:13 AM »
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
As it turns out, I retain the copyrights to the original story as submitted. Here you go. (And Dice, I'll buy you lunch if you just spent 8 bucks to read this.)


The FBI May Never Find D.B. Cooper, but the Secret Service Might
by Brian Rafferty

   about his money, just like this one.

trimmed for bulk.

Cook's investigation into the money has been aided by Phil Scoles of Terra Science Inc. and a Lecturer at Wetland Training Institute and Portland ... You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Scoles says the bills were trimmed which means the bills found were part of a counterfeiting operation? Natural decomposition is a phony lie!

Now we know who Galen's Cook's 'sci team leader is'. Phil Scoles of Terra Science Inc. and a Lecturer at Wetland Training Institute and Portland ...

Unsurelock is presenting for Galen Cook who cannot post here.

Does Phil Scoles have an electron microscope? How could Tom Kaye and the Sci Team and the FBI Lab and Georger have missed this! Does Galen Cook have an electron microscope and analyzed Cooper bills for the FBI also? Did DB Cooper have an electron microscope and analyzed Cooper bills for the FBI also?

Actually, Georger, I don't know Phil Scoles or Galen Cook. Phil would not even discuss the case with me when I contacted him, though he was nice and polite about it. I saw him on a Travel Channel show - I can send you the clip off of my DVR if you like. And while I agree that the bills look trimmed, I disagree with both Scoles' observation that the bills look like someone poked them with an ice pick, as well as Cook's conclusion later in the segment that they were planted.

I am not contesting that the bills had natural decay on them. They were out in nature for a long time. I have no reason to believe Kaye is wrong in his observations & conclusions. I think he & the others at CS are exactly right. They write, "Experimental burial of bundled dollar bills in sand for 33 months showed almost no decomposition." Since based on the rubber bands the money was probably under the sand for 99 months (11/71-02/80), we could expect to see (roughly) 3X the decomposition, unless some catalyst sped up the process. At that rate, we would still not see this level of extremely even and neat rot. Look at this photo:



You've undoubtedly seen this a thousand times, but look how even the bills are all the way around.

(I also don't know Geoffrey Gray, since you thought that aloud here on this Forum before, but he, too, was polite when I contacted him while shopping this story. Seemed like a nice guy.)
« Last Edit: January 07, 2018, 10:19:04 AM by Unsurelock »