Anyone see a similarity between the objects in these two photos? Why is it when you look at photos of old decayed buried money on the internet (of which there are hundreds), you almost never see bills that have the shapes these bills do ?
BTW, the speed of Columbia water as it goes by Tina Bar is approx 2ft per second.*
*hydrologist, James Bradley USGS
Georger,
Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Apologies for the long delay – been a long couple of weeks here. Hospitals, funerals and such.
I understand your theory – that the money’s edges were rounded off by river action similar to pebbles in a stream. I still remember Ms. Krugler teaching us about geology and the different types of rock, and what happens when they erode, especially in a riverbed. That lesson is where I first learned that everything is temporary, even mountains. Big lesson. Similarly, I remember learning about the solar system, where a massive core was orbited by smaller satellites, so when I learned shortly after that electrons orbited more massive nuclei, I got super-excited thinking that there might be solar systems in every atom that made us up. Whaddya want, I was in elementary school.
Your observation is a good one. The cash is rounded, no doubt about it. My question is whether it is rounded two-dimensionally or three-dimensionally. Take a look at this set of images:
This comes from a scientific experiment to observe the rounding action of a river on rock. They started out with a three-dimensional rectangle, similar in shape to a brick of cash. Over time, the corners rounded down. So the figure to the right does appear similar to the Ingram money in a strictly two-dimensional way. When you look close, you can see that the original top surface is still there, closest to the viewer, albeit shrunken.
Here’s another graphic from the same study:
From that top edge, the matter slopes downward toward the sides, truly rounding it. If you could slice the rock into $20 bills, with Jackson’s face looking at us, you would find that the top bill would be the smallest and roundest in shape, while the bottom bill would be the largest and most rectangular.
Here’s a side view, using a different geometric shape:
Notice that the bottom edge has stayed flat. This means that a bundle of bills that was rounded by river action and was missing all of its printed corners could not have been lying on any of the edges, otherwise we would have one side of the bills intact. None are there. For this theory to hold, the Ingram bills would have to have settled and rested on their “front” or “back” billfaces. And if that was the case, we would see the top bills missing significantly more material than the bottom bills. The FBI would easily have been able to figure out, much like a Fisher Price ring-stacking toy, which bills went where in the stack when the Ingrams found it. They did not.
Additional caveats to the river-rounding theory:
- Tom Kaye’s observation about the cash fanning out in water
- The stacking of the bills in the sand having been askew (contested by some)
- The protective bag theory. For this rounding action to work, the money has to be exposed to a water flow. This means it’s not in a bag. If it’s in the bag, and the bag kept the cash together upon relocation by dredge, then the dredge did not relocate the shards all over the beach. It’s one or the other.
- The rubber bands were not removed by this erosion, nor by a dredge that supposedly shredded much of the cash.
For these reasons, I believe that the cash arrived in its present condition by a process that selected the edges of the billfaces for removal, and the only method that has been able to satisfy me so far is human. A human would bury money/evidence, a human would stack the packets neatly, a human would have a reason to cut these bills two-dimensionally, a group of humans would trample shards all through the sand, a human would have the means to transport the money way out of the drop zone, a human would demand the ransom in the first place.
I hope that you don’t take any offense to my opposition to your thoughts on the money, and I welcome any and all counterpoints as part of seeking the truth.
Brian
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