D.B. Cooper is Barbarosa ... Or is it Barbarosa is D.B. Cooper?

By J. Thomas Duffy

[Don Baulio has chosen the next one to go after Barbarosa]
Don Braulio Zuvalla: Eduardo. You are the one. You will go after Barbarosa. Will you know him?
Eduardo: Si, I will know him. From the songs we sing and the stories we tell, I will know him.
Don Braulio Zuvalla: Kill him; kill this Barbarosa. Bring me his cojones. Bring them to me on a stick so we can see them and honor you.

From "Barbarosa", starring Willie Nelson, Gary Busey and Gilbert Roland

Boy, don't these guys have anything better to do?

One would think that the CIA Interrogation Tapes case, which the Justice Department announced today they will investigate, will need some extra bodies.

After all, that's a crime that leads directly, and squarely, into the Oval Office.

But no.

Perhaps swayed by television shows that solve their cold cases in about 48-minutes (gotta have the commercials accounted for), the FBI has announced it is reinvestigating the 36-yea-old "D.B. Cooper" hijacking case, the nation's only unsolved hijacking.

“This case is 36 years old, it’s beyond its expiration date, but I asked for the case because I was intrigued with it,” said Larry Carr, a federal agent based in Seattle who usually investigates bank robberies, and who was 4 when the hijacking occurred. “I remember as a child reading about it and wondering what had happened. It’s surreal that after 36 years here I am, the only investigator left. I wanted to take a shot at solving it.”

Since the case was turned over to him about six months ago, Mr. Carr has come up with a new way of seeing the incident: as a bank robbery that just happened to be on an airplane. The fresh perspective led to new investigating techniques.

“The classic way we solve bank robberies is with the public,” Mr. Carr said. “Everything we know — pictures, descriptions, m.o., everything. We put it all out there.”

D.B. Cooper jumped from the back of a Boeing 727 jet airplane on the night of November 24th, 1971, somewhere between Seattle and Reno, with $200,000, in unmarked $20-bills and was never seen or heard from again.

Speculation has rested heavily that he died from the jump.

In 1980, an eight-year-old boy found $5,800 of the money, near the banks of the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, but that's all that has surfaced.

Let us hope that it doesn't take 36-years to bring the Bush Grindhouse to justice.

After all, we already have, seven-years-worth, of "pictures, descriptions, m.o., everything ..."

Bonus D.B. Cooper Links

D.B. Cooper, where are you? Saturday is 36th anniversary of hijacker's leap into legend

The D.B. Cooper Story: A Mystery

D.B. Cooper's Disappearing Act



















(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)