Information and Articles on America's Only Unsolved Skyjacking
Recently, I was asked by the film producers I am working with in Los Angeles to create an outline (limited to two pages for print in 8.5×11) laying out the case against Kenny Christiansen and Bernie Geestman.
Well, boiling down a nine-year investigation where you interviewed dozens of people and took page after page of notes isn’t an easy thing. However, this was the result, shown below:
Continue reading “On Request – The Two Page Outline on Christiansen and Geestman in the D.B. Cooper Case”
Depending on your attitude or opinion on whether Ken Christiansen and Bernie Geestman were the actual perps in the D.B. Cooper hijacking, you might be ecstatic and wish us well…or hope I accidentally fall off a cliff on one of those camping trips to the Olympic Mountains I do occasionally. (We have our detractors, as well as our supporters.)
Yes, it’s true that a Los Angeles-based film production company has picked up the option for our book, Into The Blast – The True Story of D.B. Cooper. It’s the story of Kenny Christiansen, a former US Army paratrooper and an employee of the airline that was hijacked by Cooper. This doesn’t mean they will actually bring the book to market in a picture, of course. That remains to be seen. However, here’s how it all came about and where it’s going now –
About two weeks ago, I received an email from three people at the same time. They wanted to make sure any reply I made went to all of them. They told me they had been following me (and the investigation into KC) for quite a while and wondered whether the film rights to the book were still available. I said yes, but I also warned them that I wasn’t interested in doing a comedy on the Cooper story, or Kenny’s life, and that I had rejected a previous offer over that same point. (The inquiry by CBS Films, via their rep at Paradigm in New York City.)
The three men were execs from the LA film company, and came back with a message right away.
No, they said. They were not looking to do a comedy, but the first serious feature film on the DB Cooper case. And they wanted to name Kenny Christiansen as the hijacker, and present it not as a theory, but as historical fact. This surprised me, because I have stated many times for the record that I can’t be 100% sure Kenny and Bernie were the perps. Yes, I believe they are guilty as sin. Could I prove it today beyond a reasonable doubt? Maybe…if I had Bernie Geestman and a few other folks on a witness stand somewhere. Maybe.
Continue reading “D.B. Cooper: Book on Christiansen Optioned for Feature Film”
While Flight 305 was on the ground at SeaTac Airport, hijacker ‘D.B. Cooper’ requested that the airstairs be left DOWN on takeoff. This was refused on the grounds of safety. The stairs would drag on the tarmac and possibly cause the jet to crash before it could even leave the ground. Here at Adventure Books of Seattle, we’ve always wondered WHY the hijacker wanted them left down. Seemed a bit premature, since he told everyone he wanted to go to Mexico, and there was going to be a refueling stop in Reno, NV along the way. The only good answers we could think of were that the hijacker didn’t plan to stay aboard the aircraft very long, and had no intention of trying for Mexico. And that he had a plan involving someone on the ground a little closer to home. The idea that he would try jumping from a jet at night without a ride home seems unlikely, unless he was planning to just stick his thumb out while packing a bank bag full of cash.
And…if Cooper had help somewhere on the ground…that both men would know where that help was waiting. And that this help would probably come via a payphone, which were virtually everywhere back in 1971.
Now we do know a couple of facts regarding Bernie Geestman from our investigation, the man we allege was Kenny Christiansen’s guy on the ground. For example, we know Geestman bought an Airstream trailer approximately six weeks prior to the hijacking, and instead of bringing it home to Bonney Lake, he parked it down at his shop property in Oakville, WA. We also know he took the station wagon he used to haul the trailer back to Bonney Lake. (And that his wife Margie did serious bitching about him leaving the trailer in Oakville unattended. He told her ‘Don’t worry about it’.) We also know Mr. Geestman left Bonney Lake in the station wagon a day or two PRIOR to the hijacking. And since he told his wife he was going camping in his Airstream (over the Thanksgiving holiday no less) that he ended up at Oakville, at least initially. She did some serious bitching about that, too…reminding him that they were supposed to attend Thanksgiving dinner at Helen Jones’ place down in Sumner, WA that year. As they had the previous year, and DID do the year AFTER the hijacking. Coincidentally, so did Kenny Christiansen, although the year of the hijacking, he told several people he was planning to take a free NWA flight back to Minnesota to do the family thing for Thanksgiving.
(His family said he never did.)
Witness Helen Jones stated that Kenny Christiansen told her a few weeks after the hijacking that the reason he hadn’t attended Thanksgiving dinner at her house, as he usually did, was because he was with Geestman. (He didn’t give details, of course.) She ran into him at the Sumner Laundromat, she said in her interview. Jones also noted how angry Mrs. Geestman was when SHE turned up at Jones’ place for Thanksgiving and had to tell Jones that her husband skipped the dinner to go camping over the holiday week.
So…we can place these men together in Oakville before the hijacking.
We HAVE done this.
Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument these guys pulled it off. We don’t know for sure, we will just theorize here. We think they stayed at the trailer in Oakville overnight, made last-minute plans (probably over a bourbon and a road map of Washington State) and Kenny told Geestman where he would try to jump. And that spot was probably NOT down by Ariel, Amboy, or Woodland, but further north. Maybe within the area shown by the circle on the map below. That area, especially back in 1971, was not heavily populated. A lot of empty space, lightly -traveled country roads, and the landing zones mostly not too dangerous. The next morning, Geestman drops Kenny Christiansen off at the Portland Airport and returns to the shop property in Oakville, which may even have had a phone installed.
But not everything went according to plan. For example, when the ground folk at SeaTac said ‘No way’ to leaving the airstairs down. Now, the door has to be opened in flight, and that took a bit of time with the jet cruising along at three miles a minute. And the hijacker had to take time to secure the money bag and put on the parachute. By the time Cooper was ready to jump, the jet was far south (we think) of the jumpzone he had originally planned, and that’s why he ended up down there.
It’s just a theory, but IF Christiansen was really Cooper, and Geestman his buddy on the ground, we think the map shown below is a good rendition of what really happened that night. And then a long walk out of the woods to a payphone.
Geestman on the telephone with Kenny a day or two later:
“You’re WHERE?”
Kenny tells him where he is.
“Oh, crap. How the hell did you end up clear down there? Okay. I’ll be there in about 90 minutes. You’ll have to tell me what happened…”
In late March of 2008, a story broke in the press that some kids from the small town of Amboy, WA had discovered a partially buried parachute. The parachute was found along the same line as the alleged dropzone for Cooper. As a spokesperson for the Seattle FBI said initially to the press:
“It’s the right kind, the right color, and found in the right area…”
Earl Cossey, the man who packed the parachutes for Cooper, but did not actually OWN or DELIVER them to SeaTac Airport (as he claimed in the media for years) said this:
“It was my parachute,” said Earl Cossey of Woodinville, Wash. “So, yes, I’d be able to identify it to this day.”
It is possible he could ID the chute, but the FBI’s own records tell a slightly different story than the one Cossey told the media for years. (Cossey only packed the parachutes, and this was done some time prior to the hijacking.) The proof is in an official FBI document publicly available on their dot gov website. It was written shortly after the hijacking by Special Agent John S. Detlor. It tells how the chutes were actually obtained for DB Cooper on November 24, 1971, and how they were delivered. And Cossey was neither their owner, nor did he deliver them to SeaTac as he claimed for years:
‘SE 164- 81
JSD:klb
Parachutes
Mr. George Harrison, Northwest Airlines (NWA), Flight Operations, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, (SeaTac) advised that he talked with Mr. Barry Halstead of Pacific Aviation at Boeing Field, Seattle, in order to secure parachutes to furnish to the hijacker in this matter. He stated that two parachutes were obtained through Halstead, these two parachutes being back pack parachutes. He stated that two chest pack parachutes which were also furnished to the hijacker were obtained from Mr. Linn Emerick of Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, Washington. He stated that these two chest pack parachutes were transported to Sea-Tac by the Washington State Patrol.
Mr. Barry Halstead, Pacific Aviation, Boeing Field, Seattle, advised that the two back pack parachutes which were furnished to Northwest Airlines were obtained from a Mr. Norman Hayden of Hayden Manufacturing Company at Renton, WA.
Mr. Norman Hayden, Hayden Manufacturing Company, Renton, advised that two back pack parachutes which were his property, were furnished to Northwest Airlines. He stated that he called a taxicab in Kent, Washington, and had the taxi cab deliver the parachutes to Boeing Flight Service, Seattle. He described the two back pack parachutes as follows:
What do we have here so far? What does it all mean? Well, that is the Big Question, isn’t it?
The best road to the answer is to examine how the Seattle FBI handled all of this.
Continue reading “D.B. Cooper – The Parachute Found in Amboy, WA – and Why The FBI’s Explanation Makes No Sense”
January 11, 2011: America was introduced to a new suspect in the unsolved DB Cooper case, Kenny Christiansen.
Christiansen, an unhappy employee of Northwest Airlines at the time of the hijacking, and a former WW2 paratrooper, was a reletive newcomer to the suspect list. He first came to light in October 2007 as the subject of an article in New York Magazine by best-selling author (Skyjack) Geoff Gray.
Christiansen soon turned out to be one of the most viable suspects in the case, despite detractors. After the book Into The Blast emerged detailing the initial evidence, History Channel produced and aired an episode on Christiansen for their show Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. Not only was a hiding spot discovered in his attic by former prosecutor and now-judge Scott Rolle, but alleged accomplice Bernard Wayne Geestman of Port Angeles, WA was later found to be lying to the cast of the show on key points. Geestman pointed to Christiansen as the hijacker, but witnesses verified he was WITH Christiansen for the entire week the hijacking occurred. Geestman also claimed to be at Ken Christiansen’s deathbed in 1994, when in reality he merely called on the phone. Since he hadn’t contacted Christiansen in many years, the most likely scenario is that he wanted to see if Christiansen planned on a last-minute confession. His ex-wife Margie pointed to him as an accomplice in a half-dozen or more interviews, and admitted in her final interview that it was Christiansen who was with her husband the week of the crime. After all of this emerged, she sold her ranch in Twisp, WA for a half-million bucks to Washington Fish and Game and told her lawyer and bank officer to not reveal where she was headed next.
Shortly after Bernie Geestman’s phone call to him, Christiansen told his brothers Lyle and Oliver while he lay dying:
“There is something you should know, but I cannot tell you…”
SCREENSHOT BELOW: (Link to actual article here)> An article at Newsvine.com about Bernie Geestman’s possible involvement in the hijacking:
Four and a half years after the Decoded episode aired, a 74-page illustrated report file containing names, witness testimony, pictures, and key documents was submitted to the Seattle F.B.I. by the staff of Adventure Books of Seattle. It was the end result of an investigation that took years and included multiple interviews in the Northwest USA.
The public version of those files can be seen HERE.
Link to the Decoded episode on Christiansen:
http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-decoded/videos/brad-meltzers-decoded-db-cooper#
In the picture below, Christiansen is shown walking into his apartment in Sumner, WA between the Thanksgiving and Christmas of the hijacking. The picture is dated by the developer, as pictures were back then, and was found after Kenny died. He lived alone at the Rainier View Apartments, number J-3, which still exists today. Picture shows him having less hair than the hijacker, but witnesses who knew him for years testified he owned a toupee and sometimes wore it socially, although not on the job. One of the passengers who had seen Cooper extensively during the flight told the Washington State History Museum recently in an interview that he thought the hijacker may have been wearing a toupee. Christiansen is also carrying a paper bag and a briefcase, the same type of items carried on board the hijacked aircraft by Cooper.
On a Saturday afternoon recently, I did an extensive interview with Chuck and John, the hosts of the podcast Mysterious Topics. The subject of the interview was the DB Cooper case and Kenny Christiansen. There is a video version coming to YouTube soon, but until then here is the MP-3:
There is ONE inaccuracy in my interview. It was when I said that some others famous for engaging in personal attacks on others in their Cooper case discussions had been ‘cut’ from any media production (if any) that is upcoming on Cooper. I found out later that only SOME folks had been cut, while other people will still participate. After I thought about it for a while, I decided this was the best course. Everyone’s voice in the case, mine, yours, whatever…should be included. Any questions directed to me regarding any such production will be deflected, since I am not allowed to speak about it, or to even acknowledge its existence.
“Should you or any of your IM Force be caught or captured…the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions…”
Marla Cooper first came to the attention of Cooperland in the fall of 2010, and her allegations caused a media stir. Over the space of about three months, she appeared on national television, attended the first symposium held on the Cooper case in Portland, Oregon, and submitted some physical evidence in the case to the F.B.I. An F.B.I. spokesperson once named her as a ‘viable witness’ in the case to public media. She was interviewed on morning talk shows and her beautiful figure and striking blonde hair certainly turned heads.
Some armchair investigators of the Cooper case even voiced different fantasies about Marla, concentrating a bit more on her derriere, rather than the evidence she presented. On her Facebook page, Marla famously announced she ‘was ready to create a media frenzy,’ while at the same time apologizing to author Geoff Gray when his Cooper book fell off the NYT bestseller list as soon as she went public. She talked about her own upcoming book, and made hints that a publisher was interested.
A few weeks later, it all ended and she was largely forgotten except by fans of the case. But during the time she was enjoying the media frenzy, (and perhaps the fantasies of male Cooper investigators) I decided to put her claims under the microscope. At the end of that, my only question was how the F.B.I. even considered her story legitimate in the first place.
The Short Version of Marla’s Story: During an interview with ABC news, Marla claimed that her uncles (now deceased), Lynn Doyle Cooper, and his brother Dewey, were the real perpetrators behind the famous D.B. Cooper skyjacking. She said that Lynn Doyle Cooper was the actual hijacker, and that his brother Dewey was the accomplice on the ground. This occurred, she says, while several of her family members had gathered for Thanksgiving at Marla’s grandmother’s house in Sisters, Oregon. She was eight years old at the time.
According to her account, the two men were seen testing expensive walkie-talkies shortly before the hijacking, and then announced they were going turkey hunting. On early Thanksgiving morning, she says, the two men returned and Lynn Cooper had to be helped from the car to the house. He was injured, she said, wearing a bloody T-shirt, and incoherent. She said her other uncle, Dewey, told her that it was due to a traffic accident. Marla says she knows now that this was not true, and that her ‘Uncle L.D’. was actually hurt in the landing after parachuting from the hijacked Boeing 727. To support this, she says that the alleged accomplice, Dewey Cooper, told her father later:
“We did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked a plane…’
Marla used a go-between person to approach the F.B.I. and they listened to her story. She must have been convincing, because at first they took her seriously. A short time later they dismissed her claims and never commented publicly on those claims again. Talk of a possible book vanished, except for perhaps a self-published book, which never materialized. She no longer comments on any of the blogs or websites dedicated to the Cooper case.
As Steve McQueen said at the end of the film, The Sand Pebbles:
“What the hell happened?”
Nobody knows if the FBI ever checked out Marla Cooper’s Facebook page just prior to her going public, but they SHOULD have. If they had, it is unlikely they would have taken her seriously at all. Her postings there on the very week she went public contain references to ‘starting my own media frenzy,’ saying that the case agent for Cooper told her privately that he thought her story was legitimate even if the evidence showed otherwise, and that one of the stewardesses had ID’d pictures of Uncle Lynn Doyle as Cooper. None of those things, except the media frenzy part, were true. Or if they were, the FBI never said they were. They simply dismissed Lynn Doyle Cooper as the hijacker and left it at that. Marla also claimed that the Seattle case agent currently assigned to Cooper, Special Agent Thomas Eng, told her the FBI would be closing the case soon anyway. This never happened and the case remains open.
This author did an interview with her some years ago in a Ten Questions format. In other words, I submitted her ten questions and I posted the answers in an article for Newsvine.com. That interview is here.
I once said her story had more holes than a five-pound block of Swiss cheese. There are three basic problems with it. First, that this happened over Thanksgiving with her brother, mother, father, sister, and grandmother in attendance…and that none of them saw a thing. Her own brother posted to Marla’s Facebook page: “I’m not going near this one…” when she started posting the details. Her sister was silent on the whole thing. Her mother was only slightly more supportive, telling the media she ‘suspected’ L.D. could be the hijacker, but offering no testimony on what went on that particular Thanksgiving. In other words, none of Marla’s family members who were there for the family gathering would back her story. Her famous Facebook postings about taking AAD meds, going for a media frenzy, saying the FBI was closing the case, and teasing author Geoff Gray about his drop in book sales are legend. They have been posted publicly at Dropzone.com under the History and Trivia, DB Cooper thread.
Second, that Marla’s claim that she saw copies of the famous ‘Dan Cooper’ comic on Uncle L.D.’s bedroom wall at the time of the crime has problems. She said L.D. had been staying at her grandmother’s house in Sisters for a while, but that he departed the Saturday after the hijacking. This claim was discounted by a lot of people because L.D. died in 1999 and the idea that the REAL Cooper got his name from the French comic book wasn’t even discussed until years later. The comics were printed in French and available only in Belgium, France, and parts of eastern Canada. When asked how her uncle could have obtained the comics, she said maybe he drove his car (a Triumph MG) to Canada to purchase them.
Third, she changed her story…a LOT. One factor Marla failed to consider was the ransom money found at Tina Bar on the Columbia River in 1980. Her initial version of the story says her uncle landed outside Sisters, Oregon and that both uncles later went back to pick up the money where L.D. had dropped it on the way down. When confronted about the bills found 150 miles farther north along the Columbia, she changed her story. She said L.D. landed up there instead, and he lost the money on the way down. But she ran into ANOTHER problem when it was pointed out to her that the flight path was miles east of the found money. And that the condition of the money did not show it had been exposed to the elements for almost nine years.
In the end, the F.B.I. wrote her off as a credible witness. However, there was some fallout as a result of the Marla Fable. Post-Marla, the F.B.I. became a lot more closed-mouthed about public inquiries into the Cooper case. They stopped giving detailed answers to questions, and instead relied almost exclusively on the statement, “We can’t discuss it. It’s an ongoing case.” Before Marla they were a lot more open.
You really can’t blame them. In this writer’s opinion, the F.B.I. got burned and decided to be a lot more careful with witnesses and inquiries regarding the Cooper case. Some time later, I created a series of cartoons that depict my thoughts on Marla. They are meant to tease her a bit, to satirize her claims somewhat. Reports I received say she has seen them.
