Author Topic: Suspects And Confessions  (Read 1293545 times)

Offline Bruce A. Smith

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4785 on: August 25, 2021, 03:41:12 AM »
Yup, $116 to re-fuel Flight 305. Av gas was $0.16/gal. That's what the WSHM reported.

In 1971, I remember working for two bucks an hour and thought it was a decent wage. If I remember correctly, gas for one's car was $0.19/gal. A brand-new VW bug was 2K.
 
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Offline Parrotheadvol

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4786 on: August 25, 2021, 10:16:43 AM »
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Good for the Yanks!  :bravo:   Guess it will be Cincinnati and the SOX next year at the Field of Dreams.

Add this to your collection:  fuel ticket for 305 the night of the hijacking. 3874 gal total:  $116.22 !  Can that be right?   :-\

Nope, official word came down a few days ago that it will be the Reds and Cubs. I think the Reds and White Sox makes more sense though as those were the two teams involved in the infamous black sox scandal. It's hard to look at Shoeless Joe's stats through that series and believe he had a part in throwing it. As a lifelong Reds fan (BOO Yankees!), I would love to go to this. My son is a freshman on his high school baseball team and I would love to take him to it. Unfortunately, the price and the scarcity of the tickets will make that virtually impossible. I am traveling back to Iowa next week though, and may leave a day early and catch the Reds and Cards on Monday night. It's been a couple of years since I've been to a game. And even then, I got there in the 7th inning. I was traveling back from Michigan and was determined that I was going to stop and watch baseball and enjoy a hot dog and a few beers. That's exactly what I did.

Stay safe up in Cooper / Covid country Bruce, it looks like things are getting crazy again.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2021, 10:17:55 AM by Parrotheadvol »
 

Offline Robert99

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4787 on: August 25, 2021, 01:34:00 PM »
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Covid in Cooper Country

My county, Pierce County, which includes Tacoma - but not Sea-Tac airport - is reporting the worst numbers of Covid infections this week - greater than at any time in the pandemic. 40 or so new cases per day, with 3-4 deaths per day. The Gov has issued a mask mandate for everyone to wear one indoors, regardless of vax status. Maybe 40% of the population are wearing theirs. I'm selective - I'm wearing mine in the grocery store, but not in a diner. I usually sit way off by myself when I eat out, or out on the patio. But the world seems indifferent about it all.

More troubling, the tensions between the vax and unvaxed is escalating. The anger is mounting on both sides to the point where I have become fearful of violence. Friendships and long-standing relationships are fracturing all around me.

The realization that the vaccines are not making people bullet-proof - giving them the customary 100% immunity - is also sobering, adding to the tensions.

Add it all up, and people are beginning to hunker-down voluntarily. Restaurants are again half-empty or less. I walked into a Denny's yesterday for din-din and the waitresses out-numbered the guests 4-2. I haven't talked to Eric recently, but the chances that CC21 will be held are fading. Currently, I rate it 60-40, as Covid is worse in the very rural and conservative SW Washington. Clark County is a veritable hot spot.

On the good news front, the Yankees just won their 11th straight. Go Yankees. The Mariners are playing well, too. Go figure.

Good for the Yanks!  :bravo:   Guess it will be Cincinnati and the SOX next year at the Field of Dreams.

Add this to your collection:  fuel ticket for 305 the night of the hijacking. 3874 gal total:  $116.22 !  Can that be right?   :-\

I don't believe this is for the cost of the fuel itself.  Rather, it is probably a charge for the refueling services out on a remote ramp and some distance from the usual refueling point which would be the ramp at the passenger terminal.  The cost of Jet-A fuel was probably somewhere near 20 cents per gallon in 1971.
 

Offline Bruce A. Smith

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4788 on: August 25, 2021, 04:44:06 PM »
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Good for the Yanks!  :bravo:   Guess it will be Cincinnati and the SOX next year at the Field of Dreams.

Add this to your collection:  fuel ticket for 305 the night of the hijacking. 3874 gal total:  $116.22 !  Can that be right?   :-\

Nope, official word came down a few days ago that it will be the Reds and Cubs. I think the Reds and White Sox makes more sense though as those were the two teams involved in the infamous black sox scandal. It's hard to look at Shoeless Joe's stats through that series and believe he had a part in throwing it. As a lifelong Reds fan (BOO Yankees!), I would love to go to this. My son is a freshman on his high school baseball team and I would love to take him to it. Unfortunately, the price and the scarcity of the tickets will make that virtually impossible. I am traveling back to Iowa next week though, and may leave a day early and catch the Reds and Cards on Monday night. It's been a couple of years since I've been to a game. And even then, I got there in the 7th inning. I was traveling back from Michigan and was determined that I was going to stop and watch baseball and enjoy a hot dog and a few beers. That's exactly what I did.

Stay safe up in Cooper / Covid country Bruce, it looks like things are getting crazy again.

Even if you don't see the MLB game at Dyersville, Parrot, I highly recommend a trip there at any time. The original ballfield used in the movie is still there, along with the house that Kevin Costner's character lived in. I was there in 2000-ish, and I loved it. Still have my souvenir baseball from there.
 
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Offline snowmman

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4789 on: September 08, 2021, 08:01:43 PM »
I never asked him, but it always bothered me how Sheridan managed to have a visa for the amount of time he was in Nepal

Visas has recently been relaxed for Nepal. But back in 70s it was still pretty constrained?
He wasn't working, so I would think he had a tourist visa

They were doing a bunch of stuff to encourage tourism starting in the late 60s and tourism started to increase (it was really small in the 60s)

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that url has this paragraph (the report is from 1974, so this is pre-1974 info)

In no case does the Royal Nepalese Embassy (U.S., India, or other
countries) issue more than two-week visas for entering Nepal. All extensions must be obtained after arrival. However, prior clearance from the Institute (a procedure which may soon be required) us a strong guarantee of a visa extension.



I had a very quick look at Sheridan's passport from that era, and I believe I saw just one Nepal entry and one Nepal exit stamp at the expected times.

But they were years apart if I remember right. My understanding is that back then passports got stamped on all entry/exit between countries? Not sure.


So it's odd that he never got nailed for staying past his visa. Or what he did. Maybe things were looser then.

If he was working, I could see getting some kind of work visa.
But I would think all he would have been able to get was a tourist visa? which back then would have been much shorter than the length of time he spent there.

I was musing about whether he could have had multiple passports. I think not..
Just another random confusing thing.

In his book he talks about one of his characters have $20k in saigon in savings, and using that to fund the time writing the documentary in Nepal. Maybe he showed that he had money, and they let him live there. Maybe saying he was a writer?
« Last Edit: September 08, 2021, 08:33:01 PM by snowmman »
 
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Offline Lynn

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4790 on: September 08, 2021, 08:48:33 PM »
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I never asked him, but it always bothered me how Sheridan managed to have a visa for the amount of time he was in Nepal

Visa has recently been relaxed for Nepal. But back in 70s it was still pretty constrained?
He wasn't working, so I would think he had a tourist visa

They were doing a bunch of stuff to encourage tourism starting in the late 60s and tourism started to increase (it was really small in the 60s)

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that url has this paragraph
In no case does the Royal Nepalese Embassy (U.S., India, or other
countries) issue more than two-week visas for entering Nepal. All extensions must be obtained after arrival. However, prior clearance from the Institute (a procedure which may soon be required) us a strong guarantee of a visa extension.



I had a very quick look at Sheridan's passport from that era, and I believe I saw just one Nepal entry and one Nepal exit stamp at the expected times.

But they were years apart if I remember right. My understanding is that back then passports got stamped on all entry/exit between countries? Not sure.


So it's odd that he never got nailed for staying past his visa. Or what he did. Maybe things were looser then.

If he was working, I could see getting some kind of work visa.
But I would think all he would have been able to get was a tourist visa? which back then would have been much shorter than the length of time he spent there.

I was musing about whether he could have had multiple passports. I think not..
Just another random confusing thing.

In his book he talks about one of his characters have $20k in saigon in savings, and using that to fund the time writing the documentary in Nepal. Maybe he showed that he had money, and they let him live there. Maybe saying he was a writer?
It may just have been more lax, or he may have had to pay off someone a bit of money to overlook it. I don't know much about the Nepalese economy of the time, but you could live pretty splendidly on $10 a day in Thailand in the Nineties, so I don't imagine you needed much to be considered reasonably well-off in 1971 Nepal. Passports were a lot easier to fake back then, too, and with little or no computer tracking, he could even have applied for a replacement passport for one that wasn't missing without setting off any bells going through Customs anywhere. Hard call.

If he was there the whole time legitimately, I suppose it's possible the US ambassador wanted him out of Vietnam quickly enough to be willing to arrange it. Or, as you say, he could have shown he had enough money to stay a spell without working. Or if his wife had gotten Vietnamese citizenship and was stating she was the sole wage-earner; but in some parts of Asia I visited, you couldn't really become a citizen so much as a permanent resident, in some cases even if you were born in the country but your parents weren't. Can't say re: Nepal, though.

That's part of why SP is so hard to eliminate. He was already roaming, not missing on US Thanksgiving and could easily have told his wife he was going home to see ailing family. Kids would have been too young to ever remember. Unknown source of income for several years, inexplicable visa status in Nepal thus far. Of course, there were those who thought he was in too many world hot-spots in his life, with too little known journalistic output, to explain it beyond bad luck, a thirst for action, or some kind of intelligence position. But given his later stances in life, it's also hard to imagine SP working for the CIA or other such agency.
 

Offline snowmman

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4791 on: September 08, 2021, 08:52:53 PM »
I also wondered why he left Nepal after a couple years and went back to Vietnam and went back to work.

That smells like "out of money" ...surely there could have been better places to travel if tired of Nepal.

it's unclear if he really had $20k of savings at point. He might have saved that much from his time in Vietnam.

EDIT: Sheridan most definitely did not work for the CIA.
read his book and you'll understand him more. You'll be surprised that an old man would want a book published that really made him seem like an ass. (like his perception of women).
You'll read the word "cock" more than you expect, in unpleasant ways.

I was also wondering about his Filipino wife. What she thought about living in a hut in Nepal (and having two kids there). Wondered if she pushed him to move on.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2021, 08:55:31 PM by snowmman »
 
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Offline snowmman

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4792 on: September 08, 2021, 08:57:53 PM »
I had the accidental opportunity to look at Sheridan's passports at one time.
I immediately felt like an ass, since I hadn't asked permission.

But it's one thing I wish I could have closely examined.

He had the whole stack of his passports on a table next to a desk I was working at.
I've recently mused whether it was a setup, and he might have expected me to look :)
cooper nut thinking :)
 
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Offline Lynn

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4793 on: September 08, 2021, 08:59:36 PM »
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I also wondered why he left Nepal after a couple years and went back to Vietnam and went back to work.

That smells like "out of money" ...surely there could have been better places to travel if tired of Nepal.

it's unclear if he really had $20k of savings at point. He might have saved that much from his time in Vietnam.

I was also wondering about his Filipino wife. What she thought about living in a hut in Nepal (and having two kids there). Wondered if she pushed him to move on.
It's possible he was a good saver, and/or that his wife may have wished to leave Nepal. I don't know her background. I can say, though, that I've been to the Philippines and poverty there had to be at least as bad as it was in Nepal. I saw children playing on garbage dumps, people serving tourists steak while eating only rice themselves, and overheard a rich woman who had "made it out" loudly insisting that the poor should be treated badly for their own good. Don't know her family history/financial situation (I don't even know her name) or how she herself ended up in Nepal, so it's hard to say how comfortable she was with hut life, or whether she hope her husband would bring her a more comfortable life. Would love to know more about her.
 

Offline Lynn

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4794 on: September 08, 2021, 09:00:53 PM »
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I had the accidental opportunity to look at Sheridan's passports at one time.
I immediately felt like an ass, since I hadn't asked permission.

But it's one thing I wish I could have closely examined.

He had the whole stack of his passports on a table next to a desk I was working at.
I've recently mused whether it was a setup, and he might have expected me to look :)
cooper nut thinking :)
Haha you're in good company. I'd have had a hard time not looking myself.
 

Offline snowmman

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4795 on: September 09, 2021, 02:07:36 AM »
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I also wondered why he left Nepal after a couple years and went back to Vietnam and went back to work.

That smells like "out of money" ...surely there could have been better places to travel if tired of Nepal.

it's unclear if he really had $20k of savings at point. He might have saved that much from his time in Vietnam.

I was also wondering about his Filipino wife. What she thought about living in a hut in Nepal (and having two kids there). Wondered if she pushed him to move on.
It's possible he was a good saver, and/or that his wife may have wished to leave Nepal. I don't know her background. I can say, though, that I've been to the Philippines and poverty there had to be at least as bad as it was in Nepal. I saw children playing on garbage dumps, people serving tourists steak while eating only rice themselves, and overheard a rich woman who had "made it out" loudly insisting that the poor should be treated badly for their own good. Don't know her family history/financial situation (I don't even know her name) or how she herself ended up in Nepal, so it's hard to say how comfortable she was with hut life, or whether she hope her husband would bring her a more comfortable life. Would love to know more about her.

well here's the thing. I don't mean to be rude, and I didn't realize you were a woman.
I don't know how to say it in just one or two sentences...but there was a lot of messed-up shit in Sheridan's life.
If you take his book at face value, he had a lot of messed-up attitudes. Although he was in a lot of messed-up situations,
there's no way getting around the fact that he was a bit of an ass. The issues behind the marriage to the Filipino are a little complicated.

All of that is what kind of pisses me off about Sheridan. I would have liked him to be a little better person, even if he was a cranky old man.

If you read his book and understand that Grecco and Olson are both him, you'll either be totally repulsed by Sheridan, or sympathetic to a messed-up dude. Both are valid responses.

At a certain point, his son/daughter deserve their privacy. Sheridan wrote his book, let it speak for him, not me. He thought it was important, he thought he was documenting "something". He would say it was the Vietnam war. Me, I'm not sure what he was documenting, or whether he even knew. Still, a wicked-smart dude, even at an old age. Could be razor-sharp with cutting criticism. It would have nice to know him when he was younger.

I was always cognizant that interacting with an old man could easily turn into elder abuse. Even though he as a piss-ant, he still was a real old guy with problems. The whole thing was a confusing, crazy situation. I wish he would have contacted me before he died.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2021, 02:17:58 AM by snowmman »
 
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Offline snowmman

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4796 on: September 21, 2021, 01:24:15 AM »
new suspect for you! Too bad he gets so excited about the initals DBC as being important! And spent 15 years on this!

from Q2 2021
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History Corner: The most unbelievable theory about D.B. Cooper…and he may have been a seaplane pilot.
Bill Hoover, Retired Delta Airlines Pilot (via Bruce Hinds, edited by S.H. Cooper)

Best to sit down with a nice drink while reading this. I welcome comments... 

Well, here it is. I will state my case. As I said, I started this over fifteen years ago, and while I have a nice stack of files on this case, I have not gone into them in ages. That being said, I will be telling you some things as best that I remember them without digging up the files.


I fell from a ladder while trimming a tree a few years before my official age sixty retirement from Delta. That put me out on disability with a fractured spine and spinal fusion. When my age sixty rolled around in 2002, I officially retired. In retirement, I was on a website called PCN Death Notices. This site sends out the passing of fellow Delta pilots. The site was run by a lady named, Carol Faulkner. She and her husband were living in Arizona and both were retired from Delta. I think that Carol was from Human Resources. She still runs the notification site.

Well, one day, Carol sent out a death notice of a Delta pilot, a Donald B. Carter. She said that she had little background information of his passing, and further, she said that she could find no records of a Donald B. Carter being a pilot for Delta. Records did not show up at ALPA either. I found that fascinating and could not imagine how a multibillion-dollar airline corporation could not have one of its pilots within its records. Carol did say that there was another Delta pilot, a Roy P. Sandness, who had the same birth date as this Donald B. Carter. She closed by asking if any of the pilots could supply any further information about either of these two individuals.

As I sat at my computer reading this, I noticed that Donald B. Carter had the same initials as D.B. Cooper. I was making no connection between the two people whatsoever; it was just something that came into my mind. I was trying to remember what entailed the D.B. Cooper event, and with nothing to do at that moment, I Googled D.B. Cooper hijacking and started to read.

< he goes thru Cooper evidence >

So much for the evidentiary material, let's get back to our Delta pilot.

I took the information that Carol Faulkner put out and did a search of Donald B. Carter, who did not appear on any Delta records, and this Roy P. Sandness, the guy with the same birthday. What I found was that indeed a Donald B. Carter had gone to court and affected a legal name change. Now, some people who are baptized Brunhilda or Torkel, may go to court to change a first name that they do not like, and after a divorce, an ex-wife may go back to her maiden name, but what motivates someone to go all the way from Donald B. Carter to Roy P. Sandness?

I tracked this Roy P. Sandness back to his place of death, it was either North or South Dakota, I can't remember. I read his obituary, and it said that he was being buried in Canada. I was actually able to go to the church website and see the tombstone. It reads: "Donald B. Carter/ Roy P. Sandness." They are one in the same. They are one and the same Delta pilot.


then tried to trace this Donald B. Carter. He was raised north of Winnipeg on the edge of a huge National Forest. He had no father. He had a brother: Dan Carter. This Dan Carter was a test pilot for the Canadian Air Force and died in an airplane accident. Our Donald B. Carter was also a Canadian Air Force pilot. He hunted and fished, loved the outdoors, flew as a bush pilot. He would also have been familiar with the French comic book. He also would have been familiar with parachutes. He was a loner. He never married until after he retired from Delta.

This Donald B. Carter made his way across the U.S. border and went to work flying for Northeast Airlines in Boston. I have talked to a Northeast pilot who remembered him. He also had a girlfriend in Boston. She worked for Northeast. When we tried to interview her, she said that if it had anything to do with Donald B. Carter, she would not discuss it. Can you imagine that after all these years? Donald B. Carter eventually qualified as a captain on the Boeing 727 with Northeast. He subsequently went to Delta when Delta bought Northeast.

It appears that he was based in Atlanta, but there is also some information that he was also in Miami. Remember the guy with the tan and the sunglasses? Subsequent to the hijacking, he went to court and changed his name. He then went out on medical with Delta and later retired. FAA records show that, though he had no medical after leaving Delta, he bought a seaplane. Records also indicate that he had owned a seaplane in Canada years earlier, and at the time of the hijacking.  So, why and how did he do it. Except for the one package of money that has been found at Tena's Bar on the Columbia River, none of the money has ever turned up.

The FBI had the serial numbers for each and every bill and all the banks were on alert. This was not done for the money. He was a wealthy airline pilot, no kids, no family; he did not need the money. He did this to prove to himself that it could be done. One of the loose ends in all this is the comic book illustrator in Belgium. I just wonder if Donald B. Carter was not feeding him story lines. After all, his dead brother had been a Canadian Air Force Test pilot, and the comic book character's name was used to check in for the hijacked flight. I believe that Donald B.  Carter never got over the death of his brother, and I believe he was the source of the comic book lines for the Belgian illustrator.  Regardless of how much we are at attention for our cockpit duties in flight, we all daydream somewhat.

I think that Donald B. Carter did a lot of this. I think he daydreamed of how someone could hijack a civilian airliner and jump out of it. He knew exactly how the stairs operated. He knew exactly the flap settings and speeds. He knew the route that he wanted and the jump point.  I found some relatives of Donald B. Carter/Roy P. Sandness and interviewed them over the phone. They were very cooperative. I was upfront with them and said that I was wondering if their now Roy P. Sandness could be D.B. Cooper. They said they would not doubt it. They also told me that Donald B. Carter had a cabin on a lake in Canada, just over the U.S.  border near Seattle. They said that the cabin was only accessible via seaplane. They said that nobody had been back to the cabin since Carter had died. And, there is the second loose end. A trip to that cabin may be in order. You just may find the parachute or even some money.

So, in summary, what do I think? I think that Donald B. Carter never got over the death of his brother. I think he was the source for the comic book story lines for the Belgian illustrator. I think he had spent a lot of time planning this hijacking. I think he was totally familiar with the Boeing 727. I think he probably flew from his cabin in Canada down to the Portland area and landed and tied up the airplane somewhere on the Columbia River. He then got on the hijacked flight and carried out exactly what he had imagined would be necessary to accomplish the feat. He did not do this for the money. This was something mental. He exceeded the boundary of what he had only been imagining and tried to put it into reality. He was totally comfortable in the wilderness. He was familiar with parachutes. He would have owned a black tie. He was based in Miami at the time and would have had a tan and owned sunglasses. He was a loner and nobody would have reported him missing or asked where he had been. I believe that after the jump, he made his way back to the seaplane on the Columbia River and flew back to his cabin on the Canadian lake. I believe the single pack of money found near Tena Bar years later was something that he accidentally dropped.

When he first went to Delta, the airline was not flying to Portland, so he did not have to show up in that airport where someone might recognize him. However, later on Delta did start service to Portland, and I think at this point it became a risk if he were to return to that airport and be recognized. It is at this point that he goes out on medical, changes his name, and disappears from Delta records.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2021, 01:30:33 AM by snowmman »
 
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Offline JAG

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4797 on: September 21, 2021, 09:01:23 AM »
Nice find, very cool story.  Was the name change post hijack ?  (I didn't notice any dates in the story regarding when the name was changed.)  If it was post hijack, maybe still has a little believability that if Don was Dan, he decided to go with the DBC initials since that was what the media was using.

EDIT:  Nevermind, I had the direction of the name change backwards....disregard above comment.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2021, 09:08:32 AM by JAG »
 

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4798 on: September 21, 2021, 09:57:30 AM »
Birth:14-Jan-1930
Death: 22-Mar-2006

Small write up on him in his obituary here:

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It says his favorite time of year was Autumn...hmmm... :D
 
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Offline Lynn

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Re: Suspects And Confessions
« Reply #4799 on: November 01, 2021, 04:37:24 PM »
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I also wondered why he left Nepal after a couple years and went back to Vietnam and went back to work.

That smells like "out of money" ...surely there could have been better places to travel if tired of Nepal.

it's unclear if he really had $20k of savings at point. He might have saved that much from his time in Vietnam.

I was also wondering about his Filipino wife. What she thought about living in a hut in Nepal (and having two kids there). Wondered if she pushed him to move on.
It's possible he was a good saver, and/or that his wife may have wished to leave Nepal. I don't know her background. I can say, though, that I've been to the Philippines and poverty there had to be at least as bad as it was in Nepal. I saw children playing on garbage dumps, people serving tourists steak while eating only rice themselves, and overheard a rich woman who had "made it out" loudly insisting that the poor should be treated badly for their own good. Don't know her family history/financial situation (I don't even know her name) or how she herself ended up in Nepal, so it's hard to say how comfortable she was with hut life, or whether she hope her husband would bring her a more comfortable life. Would love to know more about her.

well here's the thing. I don't mean to be rude, and I didn't realize you were a woman.
I don't know how to say it in just one or two sentences...but there was a lot of messed-up shit in Sheridan's life.
If you take his book at face value, he had a lot of messed-up attitudes. Although he was in a lot of messed-up situations,
there's no way getting around the fact that he was a bit of an ass. The issues behind the marriage to the Filipino are a little complicated.

All of that is what kind of pisses me off about Sheridan. I would have liked him to be a little better person, even if he was a cranky old man.

If you read his book and understand that Grecco and Olson are both him, you'll either be totally repulsed by Sheridan, or sympathetic to a messed-up dude. Both are valid responses.

At a certain point, his son/daughter deserve their privacy. Sheridan wrote his book, let it speak for him, not me. He thought it was important, he thought he was documenting "something". He would say it was the Vietnam war. Me, I'm not sure what he was documenting, or whether he even knew. Still, a wicked-smart dude, even at an old age. Could be razor-sharp with cutting criticism. It would have nice to know him when he was younger.

I was always cognizant that interacting with an old man could easily turn into elder abuse. Even though he as a piss-ant, he still was a real old guy with problems. The whole thing was a confusing, crazy situation. I wish he would have contacted me before he died.
I'd like to read his book all the same, though I certainly didn't know there were two characters based on him, had only heard of Grecco. Would be interested in knowing more about the messed-up shit in his life and relationships, and if he could be an ass am curious as to the specifics. I'm a woman, yes (strange I always forget Lynn is also a man's name - my first name is also androgynous - considering two people connected to the case were men with Lynn/Lin in their names - I'm not sure if there are other women on this Forum; I thought there were a couple but that may have been DZ, which I never  joined but visited and got too frustrated trying to find the nuggets of fact among the ravings of certain individuals who are not on this forum and shall remain nameless because you all know who they are/were anyway. ;)

But I've pretty much heard it all in my life when it comes to sexist stuff and do make allowances for age and attitudes of the times and indeed life experiences; there are those who come to a place of perspective on their experiences, and some who never do and hold grudges without reservation. I've met two men who told me they would never read a book written by any woman; one was much older and I took it with a grain of salt, the other was younger and in lieu of belting him I just stared at him like the idiot he was. Last I heard he was a meth-head/coke-head so I guess life or karma or whatever belted him instead; he was awful to women, but then he was awful to everyone, just in different ways.

Short of anything egregious like that, I really don't sweat it when it comes to off-colour language, old-fashioned stereotypes, yada, nor do I assume someone telling a naughty joke or using the "wrong" slang is sexist, racist, etc. Big believer in context.

I do find it a bit odd that most of the women who have occasionally commented on the case have been either into skydiving/airplanes or were relatives of suspects; I'm neither, just fell down the rabbit hole of the case. The page I'm on for the 1922 William Desmond Taylor case has about a 50/50 split, but then it's a murder mystery and I'm not sure there's a gender skew on those kind of cases; the real-life story reads like Agatha Christie, and women are huge readers of puzzle/cozy mysteries. I can't think why DBC chats are, to use a common term, often a "sausage fest" (kind of like Rush concerts ;)) but this forum was my best source of info on the case for my own book and I'm very grateful to have met the gentlemen I have here. No one has ever challenged anything I've posted in a sexist way or from a sexist viewpoint. The only difference I've found is that I totally get Tina's reservations over the years about discussing the case; a surprising approach from a stranger can be a very different experience for a woman than a man. I'd love for her to look at every suspect and go "no-yes-maybe" on each, but I also believe her life is her own, and it's unfortunate for her that DBC hijacked her privacy, not just her plane. Perhaps for a long time that's how she saw it, though I do appreciate the statements she's made recently.

FTR Sheridan is still my top suspect, but the reality is there could still be suspects who haven't even been named yet. There are a few, though, who I'm relatively certain DBC wasn't.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2021, 04:49:15 PM by Lynn »