Part 52, page 91

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

airports in a hundred other metropolitan areas. But [REDACTED] was very enthusiastic about showing it to her. This, like his reaction to the movie, was so peculiar that she remembered it well, even years later. But at the time she made no connection between this and the movie or the Cooper case. It was only in 1997, when it occurred to her that he might have committed the Cooper skyjacking, that these two memories came together.

As odd as these occasions were, though, she did not put much weight on them. More striking was an event that occurred on November 24, 1999. She and [REDACTED] had flown into Atlanta and rented a car to drive to North Carolina, for a Thanksgiving [REDACTED] They had a long way to drive, but trying to get out of Atlanta proved to be a nightmare. The holiday traffic in a city like Atlanta would have been difficult at best, but it turned out that there had been a serious truck accident along their route, and traffic ground to a halt. For a long time, they could only inch along. As a result, X came to be in a really foul mood, one that threatened to spoil the whole weekend, especially as they had not been looking forward to the weekend anyway. (As [REDACTED] But then something happened. The car radio was on, and without warning the news announcer suddenly said, "Do you know what tonight is? Tonight is the twenty-eighth anniversary of D. B. Cooper." He explained briefly who Cooper was and told a weak joke in tribute to him, and then went on to the day's news. Immediately X's mood changed, and changed totally, though the traffic remained horrible for some time. X immediately became very cheerful and upbeat, and he remained "up," i.e., not just in a better mood but noticeably happier than normal, not only for the rest of the drive but for the entire weekend. Though he never mentioned what had been said on the radio, it was obvious that it had triggered a radical change of mood. It also seemed that this was not the reaction of a mere "fan."

At this time [REDACTED] began to read about the case. Everything she read, from Cooper's behavior to the phrases and expressions he had used, reminded her forcefully of [REDACTED] She also realized that he had all the skills needed to carry out the skyjacking, that he had had a motive to do so, and that he could have had the opportunity. It was only because of this -- and not because of the odd behavior of [REDACTED] mentioned above -- that we made an effort to locate [REDACTED] the stewardess who had had so much contact with Cooper during the commission of the crime. However, when we were unable to locate her, we felt our chances of getting anywhere with the case were remote, and we turned our attention back to our original concerns. Nevertheless, we remained convinced that there was a possibility that X was guilty of the skyjacking.

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DB Cooper-21704