Big ups to all my peeps in lockdown and University of Florida Gators RULE!!!!!
Mills
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h73kW1SKrMtRmHhB_8hgOjjm9gPwD8VKRG000
D.B. Cooper's Parachute Possibly Found
By GENE JOHNSON - 5 hours ago
SEATTLE (AP) -- The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found
buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it
might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency
said Tuesday.
Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's
fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had
been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far
as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors.
The children had seen recent media coverage of the case -- the FBI
launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to
solve the 36-year-old mystery -- and they urged their dad to call the
agency.
"When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is
going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we
were hoping for."
A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper -- later mistakenly but
enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper -- hijacked a Northwest Orient
flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he
had a bomb.
When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he
released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown
to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs
somewhere near the Oregon border.
Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain
was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found.
Carr spoke with the children's father, whom he declined to identify,
early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as
Cooper's.
And when Carr overlaid the family's address onto a map investigators
made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another
encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper's most probable landing
zone, between Green and Bald mountains.
Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for
about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other
remains from the parachute, but the children weren't home, and the
father wasn't sure exactly where they found it.
There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether
it's the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy,
Carr said. He's hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the
parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it's the right kind
before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the
agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.
"We've got to be pretty darn sure we're not wasting time and money
here," he said.
If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery -- where he
apparently landed -- but it will raise another, Carr said.
In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag
on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed
it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River.
But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there,
there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.
"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived
at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole
theory is out the window."