Handwritten letter from a citizen to FBI Portland offering search suggestions
Title revised to match the document’s own text.
Original title: Handwritten letter from Vance, Washington citizen to FBI Portland offering ground search advice
Document date December 1971
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Id: Cooper-Part-91:440-443
Subject: Cooper Files: Cooper-Part-91:440-443 Document: Handwritten letter from a citizen to FBI Portland offering search suggestions Id: Cooper-Part-91:440-443 Page: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-91%3A440-443 What is wrong (title, date, type, which pages belong together, copies)? What does the scan show?
A person reads every report. Corrections are made by hand, to the data — titles, dates, names, which pages belong together — never to the scans, and they can take a while to appear.
FBI 164-81, Vault Part 91 pp. 440–443 (DB Cooper-40841–40844), Handwritten note, dated Dec 1971, serial PD 164-41-431 (as read from the transcript) — cooper.theunsolved.net/documents/Cooper-Part-91%3A440-443
164-41-431 SEARCHED ___ SERIALIZED ___ FILED ___ DEC [illegible] 1971 FBI — PORTLAND
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Federal Bureau Of Investigation Portland Office, [illegible]
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Dear Sir!
I would like to help you with some suggestions on how to find D.B. Cooper. You probably have thought of the same things that I'm about to mention or they may have been suggested? But if not here they are. Why not a similar drop from a 727 with conditions the same accept, leave the darkness out. Have at least ten Sky divers leave at 30 sec intervals along the suspected departure
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DB Cooper-40841 over
route. Have Air and Ground observers pick the jumpers up. This it seems to me would give you some better Idea where to start digging. If I was a critic I could start picking my Idea apart. The wind being variable and all. Plus some other things. But if it hasn't been Tried who knows? Your Ground Search was maybe Thorough but! I'd give it another Try. Its awful easy to miss something you[r] looking for some-times. Especially if it's blended in with surroundings. Of course what he
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DB Cooper-40842
may have been wearing plus the chute & all most people would think he'd be awful easy to spot. But it's not that easy) The Shadows and different colored foilage plus Sunlight which of course (SUNLIGHT) you didn't have. These things can play some awful Tricks on the Searchers eyes. Ive had people with me who couldn't see a deer 30 FT. away in the Brush. Theres an awful [guess: #] lot of places a man could disappear in the woods and almost never be found. I personally believe he's [guess: hung] up midway
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DB Cooper-40843 over
in a Tall tree with the chute [guess: strung] out in a swamp that it would be hard to see from the air or Ground. What I mean is when looking for deer you don't look for the whole deer, you look for an ear a tail a nose. How many of your searchers were looking for an elbow or a knee or a foot. Probably a majority of them were looking for old D.B. in the whole. Now the Snow presents a problem. A Spring Search is most probable. But I'd Keep up a Winter Search also. Page [guess: II] Please.
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DB Cooper-40844
Serials: PD 164-41-431
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