Hi, I'm newly registered here but have been lurking for a number of years now. Just going to add my 2 cents.
I've read through all three of these Cooper threads over the past three or four years and they truly are fascinating. However, I think that although Myers and Dvorak did some
excellent work, Teddy Mayfield wasn't the right man. I suspect he probably appreciated the attention he was getting, and where's the harm in a used-up old con pretending to be a folklore hero? However, when things got 'serious' he appeared to deny it outright, and began lying. I can absolutely understand why certain people were - and perhaps still are - convinced that Mayfield is Cooper, but I personally am doubtful of this. I have no idea if the FBI have a copy of Mayfield's prints, but if they do and they have been able to rule him out based on that evidence (or lack of) then that may be why they've remained quiet about him for all these years. Given that the Cooper hijacking is still an open case, that may explain why the FBI are reluctant to publicly rule out certain suspects.
My own theory is that Cooper was
probably either Canadian or at least familiar with and living in Canada at that time. The
CitizenSleuths website gives - in my opinion - a fairly plausible synopsis of events, and the fact that the hijacker originally requested to fly to Mexico City automatically casts doubt over Mayfield, whose primary alibi was that he claimed to have phoned the FBI (from his home) within two hours of the hijacking. Had the hijacker's original request been met, what would Mayfield's alibi - if he had been the hijacker - then have been? Just some food for thought, although I have other reasons for discounting Mayfield.
As tempting as it is to muse over the various primary suspects ala Mayfield, Weber, Christiansen, Gossett, et al, I honestly do not believe any of them were the hijacker, and - as I mentioned above with Mayfield - I suspect the FBI have also come to this conclusion, or we're likely to have heard something by now.
Boring though it is, I do not think the hijacker has so far been identified at all, and I am not absolutely convinced he ever will be. I certainly hope I am wrong on that count, though. In cases such as this, my initial thought is always 'if there's no body, they probably survived' and given that neither a body nor parachute nor the bulk of the money has ever been found - and statistically, it's pretty likely that over a period of 45 years that at least one of these would have been - I am inclined to believe the hijacker survived, and probably fled north to Canada.
Assuming you believe the letters sent to the various local newspapers are genuine, then that confirms the hijacker survived and therefore that no body will ever be found. However, it is of course possible they were forgeries sent by an interested third party.
Finally, given that so many well-known suspects have been accused of almost certainly being the hijacker due to X, Y and Z factors, and that their families, friends and followers are utterly convinced of this, we're clearly in a situation where - to some extent - people actually
want 'their man' to have been the hijacker, either openly or at least subconsciously. Given that clearly only one of these suspects can have been the hijacker, and I honestly believe that none of them were, then we have to accept that - short of a matching print, which would likely be the smoking gun in this case - the other evidence is just so vague and circumstantial that almost anyone within a certain set of criteria (general physical likeness, a degree of skydiving experience,
possibly ex-military,
possibly a chain-smoker,
possibly a drinker) can be put forward as a suspect - and the more unusual their personality the better.
Another thing that worries me about the Cooper hijacking is the obsession with trying to accurately match photos of suspects with the various sketches of the hijacker. Let's be absolutely clear: these sketches are a
vague composite likeness of the hijacker based on multiple eyewitness accounts, they are not photographs or otherwise exact images. Indeed, one of the sketches was made some 17 years after the hijacking, or so I've read. So, given that we can be fairly certain that the hijacker did not look
exactly like any of these sketches (and that's not to say they didn't bear a resemblance, which they presumably will have) and that various passengers and flight staff described the hijacker slightly differently and with varying degrees of consistency - which is perfectly understandable given that different people saw him from different angles, for different lengths of time, people's memories work differently and that some witnesses will have been more scared or under pressure than others - then we have to conclude that it is
extremely unlikely that any photo of the suspect will look exactly like any of the sketches. This is a point I don't recall being raised, and one which seems obvious to me; I mean, the idea that (in an example I've seen posted above) the hijacker's ears would look exactly like the ears on one of the sketches... to me, that's just reaching, surely?
In a crime such as this, given all the various factors in play and just how long ago it was, I simply do not find it credible that it will ever be solved by visual identification. The hijacker was just too generic-looking to be caught out by this fact alone, and that he was described as having no discernable accent and may even have been wearing makeup (something I've read a lot of, particularly with regards to Mayfield) only lessens the utility of the sketches. I mean, let's be honest, if the FBI were going by visual likeness alone then Bing Crosby's final years would have been very, very different.
I'm not sure if this has ever been done (probably) but I do think an interesting experiment would be to ask a friend to introduce you to a friend of theirs whom you - and several of your other friends - have never met, and then describe him or her to a sketch artist several hours later, having made no notes of this person's appearance. The sketch artist then produces a composite sketch - or even multiple individual sketches - of that person, based on your collective descriptions of him or her, and the sketches can then be compared to a photograph of that person taken at the time you met them.
I can promise you that none of the sketches will look 'virtually identical' (a common phrase we hear in this case) to the friend you all met for the first time and had been asked to describe. It is
very difficult to describe someone physically - even with any physical flaws or features you have remembered - to such an extent that it will resemble them absolutely when compared to photographic evidence. And of course, one of the problems with the hijacker is that there is very little to distinguish him physically, and particularly details that we're expected someone who'd never met him to have remembered hours, days or weeks after the fact. I daren't imagine how many 'mystery solved' letters and e-mails the FBI must have had since 1972; a photograph of a fairly generic-looking dark-haired man in a suit who smoked, drank, had parachuted a few times and demonstrated 'odd behaviour' from time to time.
'Oh my god, it's uncle Lynn! He was a smart guy, he could have done it, and he even used his real surname...' No.
We're talking hundreds of thousands of people, potentially. It's not surprising that I once read a rumour that Don Draper from
Man Men would perhaps become 'D.B. Cooper' in that show's finale, as it would have been a good indicator of just how any pissed off middle-aged, middle management kind of guy could have been tempted to try a hijacking like this one. If you're in a certain state of mind - depressed being an obvious one, as it tends to somewhat dull the senses and detach a degree of responsibility - then I can see it happening. Someone with a vendetta against the airline specifically or corporate culture in general? Possibly. Someone who did it simply because they wanted to see if it could be done? More likely, IMO.
Ah well. Just my thoughts.
