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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Olemisscub on November 23, 2025, 04:14:05 PM »* Is there any way to establish the authenticity of these recordings?
I selected the clip from 11m19s to 12m05s (46s), which is the longest clip attributed to the First Officer; and a clip of comparable length (3m48s to 4m55s) from the First Officer's presentation to the Northwest Airlines History Center on September 8, 2012 (recognizing that this was 41 years after the events); and uploaded both to an online voice similarity checker. The similarity score was 0.6152, which the application interpreted as "different people".
Would you recommend another sample from the First Officer's voice?
0.61 may actually be a high score of similarity. The same person's voice separated by 41 years difference in voice anatomy and other factors. Context of samples is crucial.
Yes, context is very important. The hijacking audio is a high stress context and the sound quality itself is absolutely terrible and it’s through a radio. The press conference is very clean audio and he is speaking very slow slowly and measured. And the other audio is four decades later.
But again, I find this exercise to be rather unnecessary. His voice is extremely unique in its tone and cadence. I’m surprised that anyone could listen to it who has heard Rat’s voice before and not realize that it’s absolutely him. Scott also has a very identifiable Dakota accent.
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by georger on November 23, 2025, 04:03:10 PM »* Is there any way to establish the authenticity of these recordings?
I selected the clip from 11m19s to 12m05s (46s), which is the longest clip attributed to the First Officer; and a clip of comparable length (3m48s to 4m55s) from the First Officer's presentation to the Northwest Airlines History Center on September 8, 2012 (recognizing that this was 41 years after the events); and uploaded both to an online voice similarity checker. The similarity score was 0.6152, which the application interpreted as "different people".
Would you recommend another sample from the First Officer's voice?
0.61 may actually be a high score of similarity. The same person's voice separated by 41 years difference in voice anatomy and other factors. Context of samples is crucial.
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Olemisscub on November 23, 2025, 05:34:49 AM »* How would the crew be able to talk to Soderlind in real time, when the crew were at Sea-Tac and Soderlind was in Minneapolis (far out of radio range), and there were no cell-phones?
To clarify my question: prior to take-off at 7:36 pm PST, how would the crew talk in real time to Soderlind, when the phone patch would not be in place until 8:18 pm at the earliest?
There were multiple phone patches. The first was on the company frequency out of Sea-Tac on 121.7
The 8:18 phone patch was because they were no longer in range of their Seattle NWA Company frequency. NWA knew they would eventually lose their Seattle frequency, so they went and set up an ARINC phone patch on frequency 138.1. They would lose that frequency at 20:45 and had to switch to a new phone patch frequency of 129.13. At 22:30 around Red Bluff they again have to switch to a new ARINC phone patch frequency, this time of 130.6.
I hope that clarifies things.
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Olemisscub on November 23, 2025, 05:15:08 AM »* Is there any way to establish the authenticity of these recordings?
I selected the clip from 11m19s to 12m05s (46s), which is the longest clip attributed to the First Officer; and a clip of comparable length (3m48s to 4m55s) from the First Officer's presentation to the Northwest Airlines History Center on September 8, 2012 (recognizing that this was 41 years after the events); and uploaded both to an online voice similarity checker. The similarity score was 0.6152, which the application interpreted as "different people". Would you recommend another sample from the First Officer's voice?
Doc, really? You uploaded clips to a voice similarity checker? Holy smokes. This is Bill Rataczak’s voice. You wrote a book on this case, do you really need to run the audio through software to know that’s Bill Rataczak’s voice? His tone and cadence is entirely unique.
Forgive me, but your skepticism is baffling. Perhaps you don’t have a good ear for American accents and voices? That is clearly Bill Rataczak’s voice. Who else’s voice could that be? Or are you suggesting that this is some sort of AI deep fake? I assure you, Doc, I didn’t spend about 30 hours of my time going second by second restoring audio of a hoax tape. The audio comes from a video a woman took on her phone of an old cassette player. One can see the cassette in the videos she sent.
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Dfs346 on November 23, 2025, 03:22:20 AM »* How would the crew be able to talk to Soderlind in real time, when the crew were at Sea-Tac and Soderlind was in Minneapolis (far out of radio range), and there were no cell-phones?
To clarify my question: prior to take-off at 7:36 pm PST, how would the crew talk in real time to Soderlind, when the phone patch would not be in place until 8:18 pm at the earliest?
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Dfs346 on November 23, 2025, 03:19:01 AM »* Is there any way to establish the authenticity of these recordings?
I selected the clip from 11m19s to 12m05s (46s), which is the longest clip attributed to the First Officer; and a clip of comparable length (3m48s to 4m55s) from the First Officer's presentation to the Northwest Airlines History Center on September 8, 2012 (recognizing that this was 41 years after the events); and uploaded both to an online voice similarity checker. The similarity score was 0.6152, which the application interpreted as "different people".
I further compared the clip from 11m19s to 12m05s with the First Officer's comments at a press conference in (I think) 1971, published at , clip from 00m36s to 01m18s. The similarity score was 0.5783, which the application interpreted as "different people".
Would you recommend another sample from the First Officer's voice?
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DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Olemisscub on November 22, 2025, 09:38:00 PM »9
DB Cooper / Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Last post by Shutter on November 22, 2025, 08:47:53 PM »Excellent work on the audio..top notch...
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