But as the 49th anniversary of this record skydive looms, my memories of Wolfgang Gossett still resonate with obvious clues. Our mission is to provide clients with everything needed to be successful online. Close. When is this book coming out? Portland police mistakenly came up with the initials “D.B.” during their investigation, and the name stuck. And your justification for letting a criminal off the hook is “meanwhile american leaders are enslaving and stealing from us all via terrorism”. Gossett’s personal history was eye-popping and could be ripped from the pages of a spy novel. But those details, and others, will have to simmer until the publication of his book. It was buried, and by all accounts the rubber band wouldn’t last a year in the open environment, so it’d have to have been buried within a year of the jump. He even told the pilot exactly how to fly it, before the jump (they did due to potential hostage situation). Cooper hijacking to a necktie that he left behind on the plane in 1971, the FBI said Monday. Cooper 40 years later as I was working late at my newspaper office in Depoe Bay when the push-button phone rang. Simple – he needed to ensure that if he accidentally lost hold of the bag with the cash, or had to let it go, he’d be able to swim back across and at least recover enough cash to get home. He said he was D.B. Marla Cooper said that her two uncles wanted to return to search for the cash, but her father refused. I might mention Carrie, this man did NO harm to anyone…just saying! The DNA may be from someone else," Gutt said. Just another fantastic Beasley yarn, you say? It is believed that the hijacker lost much of the cash as he came crashing down, and some of the hijacking money was recovered in 1980 when it washed ashore on the banks of the Columbia River. Cooper suspect [LAT] Geoffrey Gray’s SKYJACK:The Hunt for D.B. However, the results of … As for dying during the jump I don’t buy it. If he landed in forest at night, he’d risk breaking legs, or perhaps even stuck in a tree, so surely he’d have to have had a known area to land…which isn’t possible jumping from above the clouds! Dozens of other people who knew Gossett including family members and ex-wives, people with whom he served in the military, co-workers in the court system and law enforcement officials who knew him as a private investigator, cooperated and in many cases revealed their belief that Gossett carried an ominous secret that had something to do with the D.B. Cooper’s DNA was successfully from the tie. Without that, the legend of D.B.Cooper may remain a unsolved mystery. Duane Weber. I never heard from Galen Cook again. He was D.B. They look nothing alike IMO. report. He was not Robin Hood… He was a criminal who was assisted by those who knew. Family members have helped the police solve thousands of important crimes such as the Unabomber case, so Cook took the tip seriously and began a six-month investigation that brought him on at least four occasions to Depoe Bay where he interviewed people who knew “Wolf” Gossett intimately. He called himself “Dan Cooper,” but … Galen Cook said that Gossett chose the date for the heist because he had a week off from his Army duties. © 2020 Lincoln City Homepage. Ah, mystery solved! "They left to supposedly go turkey hunting, and Thanksgiving morning I was waiting for them to return.". There are questions about the tie.It may have been borrowed, or purchased used. I am super interested! Cooper took off the tie he was wearing and left it on the airplane he jumped out of. As I recall, ‘Wolf’ did some paralegal work for the Siletz Tribe. Log in or sign up to leave a comment Log In Sign Up. As part of his process of discovery, Bradley contacted Curtis Eng at the Seattle FBI, who inquired about DNA samples. Cooper suspects and their families. “My research indicates that the reason he avoided detection on the night of the jump and the following days was because searchers were looking in the wrong state,” Cook said. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? Cooper,” Cook said. Cooper became the stuff of folk songs, books and movies. Aug. 9, 2011 -- Perhaps the last, best forensic evidence in the case of infamous hijacker D.B. Does New Photo Implicate D.B. Even if there was a stray person outside, there is no way they’d care about him as they are trying to get indoors to avoid the rain. Fact. But it also says the new evidence still doesn't rule out that Lynn Doyle Cooper is D.B. P.S. best. The sketch features a thin now and pointed chin, whereas the photo shows a wide nose and a rounded chin. DNA doesn’t link new D.B. Cooper, the famous air pirate who skyjacked a Northwest Orient Boeing 727 from Seattle to Portland on the night of Nov. 24, 1971, and parachuted into … 17. Doug – the Attorney did not plant the money – Cooper/Gossett planted it there to throw the FBI off his trail – Within a year another guy hijacked a 727 and bailed out – and he survived – but he as not very smart and kept the money with him that’s why he was caught. These tests have been used to eliminate suspects such as Duane Weber and LD Cooper, who were also profiled in The Mystery of D.B. Not an opinion.”. One is a retired Salt Lake City judge who was Gossett’s boss and close friend when he worked in the Salt Lake City public defender’s office. Ron, You win the asinine comment of the week. Carrie… being the classic merican.. self made power to judge and assume..meanwhile american leaders are enslaving and stealing from us all via terrorism.. get a clue! I told him to keep his mouth shut and don’t do anything stupid, and not to bring it up again.”. No way he would jump over water, it was all calculated. He was a marine *at the time* (not even retired). The newspaper stories had disappeared like D.B. do i think he could be DB Cooper – oh yes – he had the skills and the balls to do it. World needs more like him! In addition, they believe he had to be a fan of the 1960s French comic book character Dan Cooper -- the character used to create the famous hijacking alias D.B. He often dropped hints about the skyjacking that some people took as merely a fascination for the topic. Galen Cook’s research, documented by official records, revealed that he was born William Pratt Gossett in San Diego in 1930, the son of a Navy commander later stationed at Pearl Harbor. Marla Cooper is now convinced there was not a car accident, but that her uncle was injured crashing to earth in a parachute. Cooper. FBI Agent Gutt said the investigation would continue, and would focus on the attempt to find a fingerprint of the late L.D. A worse wrong (happening in your mind, anyway) makes other wrongs ok? Galen Cook has tied-up many of the loose threads of the case, such as the mystery over some of the ransom money that was discovered on a Columbia River bar in 1980. Walking is no problem for marines. He has worked for numerous newspapers throughout his many years in the news business, including his own, the Depoe Bay Beacon. He also knows how D.B. Personally, I can’t see how he could have survived the jump, it was cold and stormy, and surely he can’t have had any real idea where he was jumping because, according to reports, he jumped ABOVE cloud cover. This was considered a small loss, and an example of exactly how a marine would think. Cooper. Cooper case ??? Good point. hide. Rick Beasley, Homepage columnist, has. “A lot of credible people in his past told me that Gossett could have been D.B. Cooper As Hijacker? “It’s an incredible story,” he asserted. On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, … His niece, Marla Cooper, told ABC News that she believed her uncle was the man who had hijacked a Northwest Orient jet flying to Seattle. But the cold case got warm again earlier this year when it was reignited by Marla Cooper. I followed the breathless newspaper stories from Ft. Benning, Georgia, where we all agreed in the grungy Ranger Bar under a white-linen officers club it had to be an Army paratrooper that pulled off the outrageous stunt. Duane based on that. We do not have DB Cooper’s DNA. The crime remains the onl… Somewhere over … Maybe I missed them because of the second martini, or maybe I knew it all the time: D.B. This is even more damning than a DNA hair sample they only think might be his. He had the training, the motive and the opportunity, and the more I got into this case, the more he started to become the most viable suspect ever. Nope. What the FBI really needs to make the case, Gutt said, is a fingerprint from L.D. was wearing a white T-shirt, and he was bloody and bruised and a mess, and I was horrified. “Personally, I can’t see how he could have survived the jump”. I considered Gossett, a fellow veteran, a rare find among drinking buddies and wrote his obituary on the day he died, Sept. 1, 2003. Cooper didn’t really call himself that. “In 1977 he walked into my office and closed the door and said he thought he might be in some trouble, that he was involved in a hijacking in Portland and Seattle a few years ago and that he might have left prints behind. The guy died parachuting. Interesting account, and I hope I get to read the book. However, FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt said, "That doesn't suggest that the current lead is a dead end.". Galen Cook, who I’d never heard of, called me out of the blue and revealed why he was convinced that the late Depoe Bay mystery man, Wolfgang Gossett, was the infamous skyjacker D.B. Among the people he spoke with were Depoe Bay resident C.J. DNA from the cig butts would have only come from Cooper except the one Tina smoked. She provided the FBI with information about her uncle, whom the family called "L.D.," and a guitar strap that may have carried his DNA. Winter, Gossett’s caretaker in the last years of his life, a Newport attorney, Jim Bjornsen, who claimed to have known Gossett’s dark secret and, of course, me. Remember sketches of the suspect are never close to what the person actually looks like. Cooper was a timber faller, or lumberjack for part of his young life, and lived in Sisters, Ore. Cooper came home claiming to have been in a car accident. Was the DNA from Wolfgang Gossett obtained? So, if you are going to mount an argument about your suspect being DB Cooper or not, based on some dna evaluation, you had better be prepared to submit data like this, because anything else will be empty propaganda! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Send us an email so we can correct it for you! 12. In 1946 at age 16, Gossett joined the Army Air Force, then switched branches in 1954 to become a U.S. Marine. DNA collected from a tie Mr Cooper was wearing on the plane has been tested, but no match was found. And yes he was a friend – however he never told me he was DB Cooper. Yes he was a criminal but in life he made amends spiritually, had many friends, and oddly worked with folks in law enforcement. "My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous. Finally, in 1994, Gossett moved to Newport where he worked for the late attorney Dan Poling. The trail seemed to go cold at every turn until a break in the case in late 2007, thanks to the national radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, the popular late-night program for 2.5 million insomniacs. This case is the only case that the FBI has discontinued, I’m sure the feds would have loved to have announced that they had “solved” the case. How do you brag that “He was my friend..a good old boy!” You should say “I aided and abetted a thief and that makes me ?”. Not according to Galen Cook, a Spokane, Wash. lawyer who is the nation’s leading authority on D.B. Aug. 9, 2011 -- Perhaps the last, best forensic evidence in the case of infamous hijacker D.B. Had a Friend that worked the Case. There was all this third-person narrative, but he never told the people closest to him, ‘I did the job.’”. After 10 years in the Corps, he transferred to the U.S. Army, serving one tour in Korea and two tours in Vietnam, where he earned a Purple Heart for wounds and several awards for valor. He extorted $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,260,000 in 2019) and parachuted to an uncertain fate. The bandana contained hair strands that could have provided conclusive DNA proof that Gossett was the hijacker. Good article, with just 4 tiny issues; the eyebrows, the ears, the nose and the mouth. We do not have DB Cooper’s DNA. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, but they’re back in the news. Cooper selected the one parachute among the three brought to the aircraft that actually worked. Cooper is a perfect fit for the profile of the hijacker developed by the FBI years ago. I began to cry. A single donor known to be Cooper. He would have known roughly whereabout the plane was, because he lived in the area, and pre-calculated the route based on time. When asked if this "no match" finding damaged Marla Cooper's credibility, Gutt replied it did not. If you were Chinese, you’d probably justify an assassin because, after all, the Chinese government disappears people quite regularly, so who are we to judge? "My uncle L.D. Rick Beasley is a far better man than most! "We are working with surviving family members to try to identify objects he may have handled," Gutt said. He was in exceptionally good physical condition, and used to walking/running long distances throughout his career, and life (as mentioned in the article). Cooper was a friend of mine. DNA from the tie has many donors (14?) Galen Cook has been on the trail of D.B. Cooper, known for the hijacking of a flight bound for Seattle from Portland, Ore., is thought to have leaped from the plane with $200,000 in cash. If it was obtained and matched Cooper’s DNA then we would know that Gossett and Cooper were the same person. He knew where the rest of the money was but also knew he could not spend marked money. Cooper to match to the fingerprints the hijacker left on the plane. He died in the fall. Gossett also worked for the public defender’s office in Salt Lake City, where he was well-known and respected by police and court officials including the police chief of Ogden, Utah, who said Gossett “could eat bullets and call it a meal.”.