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WHO WAS THE REAL SKYJACKER D. B. COOPER?

On November 24, 1971, a mysterious man using the alias D.B. (Dan) Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Once airborne, he produced what appeared to be a bomb in a briefcase and demanded $200,000 in ransom along with four parachutes. Once his threat was met, he donned a chute and bailed out in the dark, damp and cold. Nearly fifty years later, the infamous D. B. Cooper has never been found or conclusively identified.

Who skyjacker D. B. Cooper really was is one of the world’s great unsolved crimes.  The FBI put countless hours into following thousands of leads. By July 2016, they ran out of steam and officially closed the case. That’s not without some interesting suspects surfacing which can’t quite be ruled out. However, with advanced forensic techniques, there is still the strong possibility of solving the case—even if the real D.B. Cooper is no longer alive.

This bizarre story began on a Wednesday afternoon in Portland, Oregon. A nondescript man dressed in business attire arrived at the Northwest Orient wicket and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle. He registered as Dan Cooper and boarded Flight 305 which departed at 2:50 pm for the 30-minute hop north to Seattle. On the flight were 37 passengers, including Cooper, and 4 flight staff.

From witness accounts, there was nothing unusual or nervous about Dan Cooper. He ordered a bourbon and soda while taxing out and lit up a smoke. Once in the sky, Cooper called a flight attendant and passed her a hand-printed note. Cooper said, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

Cooper’s note was specific. It read that he wanted $200,000 in “negotiable American currency” along with four parachutes—two main packs and two reserve units. He then demanded the flight land at Seattle, pick up the money, refuel and fly him on to Mexico City.

Cooper then cracked open his briefcase. The attendant saw red cylinders that looked like dynamite along with a maze of wires and switches. Cooper closed his case and directed her to alert the cabin crew. The pilot and co-pilot transmitted this information to the Seattle tower who immediately involved the police and the FBI.

Flight 305 went into a holding pattern outside Seattle while Northwest Orient management approved paying the ransom. In less than two hours, they sourced 10,000 20-dollar bills and delivered the money to the Sea-Tac airport. The authorities also obtained parachutes from a skydiving club and grouped them with the ransom cash.

Once Cooper was assured his demands were being met, he instructed the airplane to land and allowed the passengers to disembark. Cooper stipulated that the pilots and one attendant stay onboard. The plane refueled and departed at 7:40 pm with a destination of Mexico City by way of another refueling stop at Reno, Nevada.

Cooper stayed in the passenger compartment with the attendant. He gave further instructions to the flight crew that they were to level out at 10,000 feet, keep the landing gear down, lower the flaps to 15 degrees and slow the aircraft to near stall speed at 120 miles per hour. Then, Cooper had the attendant go into the cockpit cabin and close the door.

At 8:13 pm, the fuselage lost pressure. Then, there was a sudden shake in the tail section as if a weight was discharged. The crew called Cooper on the intercom, but he didn’t respond. The Boeing 727 landed in Reno at 10:15 pm and the crew found D.B. Cooper and his money to be long gone.

The police and FBI in Portland, Seattle and Reno acted fast. Their priority was to identify Cooper and try to locate him. This was the days before intense video surveillance so all the authorities had was interviewing witnesses who had contact with the man known as D.B. Cooper.

Artist drawings taken at different locations were remarkably similar. The image was a white male in his forties with brown eyes and short, receding hair. His build was between 5’10 and 6 feet with weight estimation at 170-180 lbs. Cooper’s dress was a dark suit jacket and matching slacks, with a white shirt and a black clip-on tie. He wore an overcoat and had only loafers on his feet.

The news of this brazen and bizarre event brought masses of information pouring in. By daylight, air and ground searches pounded the area where they thought Cooper jumped. Agents tracked down suspects and verified alibis. They also processed physical evidence left on the plane.

The investigation was exhaustive. But it wasn’t unproductive. Although D.B. Cooper was never found or identified—officially—there is existing evidence that could solve the case. It might be a matter of time before a break comes and the D.B. Cooper case is cracked through modern forensic technology. Here’s what’s known about the elusive Dan Cooper.

The Physical Evidence

The FBI, along with local police, treated the Boeing 727 like the crime scene it was. They isolated the area Cooper sat at and recovered some items. Of prime importance were 8 Raleigh King-Sized filter-tipped cigarette butts. These were verified by the flight attendant who observed Cooper smoking them.

Forensic examiners lifted fingerprints from the bourbon glass Cooper drank from. They also lifted prints from surrounding surfaces including an in-flight magazine that the attendant saw Cooper flip through. The prints have never been identified even through modern computerized assessments.

D. B. Cooper left his clip-on tie on the seat. It was sourced as being sold by J. C. Penney and contained a pearl tie clip. From the clip’s position, it appeared to have been placed by a left-handed person. This is consistent with witness descriptions of how Cooper was holding objects and conducting his actions. With forensic advancements, Cooper’s tie would later tell a whole lot more.

The Parachute Evidence

There were two thought schools in the early Cooper investigation stages. One was that he was an experienced parachutist with possible military training. The other was that Cooper was a rank amateur. Experienced parachutists mostly agreed that it was foolhardy—if not suicidal—to jump from a jetliner in those conditions.

When Cooper left the aircraft, it was pitch black, rainy and cold. The air temperature at 10,000 feet was well below zero, and Cooper was wearing nothing but a suit and slip-on shoes. When he demanded the specific parachutes, he made no request for warmer clothes, better boots, a helmet or any gloves.

However, D. B. Cooper was exact about the parachute types. He demanded four packs. Two were main chutes that were back mounted. The other two were reserve or backup packs designed to be harnessed on the chest. Two of the parachutes went out the door with D. B. Cooper, and two stayed behind on the plane.

These parachutes were unique and Cooper knew it. One main, or back-mounted, unit was a civilian sport-diving parachute that was steerable. The other was a military emergency parachute suitable for pilot and aircrew ejection. The civilian parachute had a long and slow opening rate while the military one deployed immediately and would work for low altitude operation.

One reserve parachute complemented the civilian model. The other was termed a “dummy” chute and was more suitable for last-resort operation. Cooper left the civilian-type main and reserve parachutes on the plane. He jumped with the low-altitude escape model on his back and modified the dummy pack to hold his money.

The Bail-Out or Jump Location

Flight records and crew input estimated D. B. Cooper’s exit-from-the aircraft time at 8:13 pm. This is when they felt the fuselage pressure drop and the shake when presumably his body weight relief changed the flight characteristics and the plane required re-trimming. Given the flight path, speed and distance, the original investigators placed the jump site as being in the Ariel district of southwest Washington near Lake Merwin on the Lewis River drainage.

Searchers extensively covered the Ariel region. They used fixed-wing airplanes, helicopters and submersibles. Hundreds of military staff, police officers and local volunteers scoured the ground on foot, horseback and all-terrain vehicles. They found nothing.

In the spring of 1972, investigators and flight experts reevaluated their location estimate. They realized there was a flight path mistake as the pilots were on manual flight control, not autopilot. With a westerly wind influence, the experts revised their suspicion to believe that Cooper jumped further east over the Washougal River region.

Search efforts focused to the south-south-east of Mount St. Helens. Again, they found no trace of D. B. Cooper or his effects. The man and the money had simply vanished. The big question on everyone’s mind was whether he was alive or dead.

The Boeing 727 Aircraft

It’s obvious that D. B. Cooper, whoever he was, knew more than his parachutes. He also knew his airplanes. Cooper knew the Boeing 727-100 model was ideally suited for a jetliner jump.

The 727 had a very interesting design compared to other popular jets of the era like the 707, 737 and 747. It was tri-engined with all three powerplants mounted high on the rear and not forward on the wings. The 707 also had a unique entry and exit door in the tail.

The rear-entry/exit stairway, combined with the elevated rear engines, made the Boeing 727 about the only commercial passenger jet that a jumper could safely and practically exit. With the rear staircase lowered, it allowed the parachutist to enter the outside and be partially protected from the wind stream. The jumper would also be below the heat and thrust of the engine exhaust. (Click on GIF Image for Animated Bail Out)

D. B. Cooper also knew things about the staircase operation. He was able to open it while in flight which is not what system was designed to do. The flight attendant who stayed on the Seattle to Reno leg also stated that Cooper asked her a question about the staircase operation that indicated he had technical knowledge of it.

The Portland-to-Seattle Flight Choice

Without question, D.B. Cooper intentionally chose the Northwest Orient Airlines 727 flight from Portland to Seattle. Besides the 727 being the perfect plane to serve Portland, the company’s home base was in Seattle. It was the headquarters city for Northwest Orient and the location where decisions could be quickly made and cash being raised fast.

$200,000 was a lot of money back in 1971. It’s the equivalent of $1.26 million today. That’s not pocket change, but Northwest was able to source that amount and deliver it to Cooper in a two-hour window. In all likelihood, Cooper knew it.

D. B. Cooper also knew the topography. In conversations with the attendant, Cooper casually mentioned a landmark in Tacoma that he could see out the window. He also stated he knew McChord Air Force Base was a 20-minute drive from there. It’s also likely Cooper would know that two F-106 fighters were scrambled from McChord and were shadowing him all the time.

Cooper also must have known intimate things about his jump zone. On one hand, it was the dead of night and in a cold climate. A random leap into unknown territory would have been extremely risky for suffering injury or experiencing hypothermia. One the other hand, if Cooper had planned his exit strategy as well as his entrance, then he probably had something prepared for the getaway.

Evidence Turns Up on the Ground

For seven years, there wasn’t hide nor hair seen of D.B. Cooper. The suspected landing regions were combed by professionals from the military and law enforcement agencies as well as folks from the general community. It wasn’t so much D. B. Cooper that the civilian sleuths were interested in. It was the cash.

Most people believed, on the balance of probabilities, that Cooper died in the fall. That meant his bag of money was out there—somewhere. It didn’t hurt the search efforts that Northwest Orient and their insurer offered a large reward for Cooper or the cash’s capture.

A bit of a break happened in 1978. An airline placard from Flight 305 was found near a logging road in southern Washington State. It was the instruction notice for how to operate the rear stairwell of a Boeing 727. This location jived with the eastern flight path that the aviation experts reassessed and placed in the Washougal River drainage.

A bigger break came in 1980. A much bigger break. A 10-year-old boy was digging along a sandbar bank on the Columbia River downstream from Vancouver, Washington which is near Portland. He found part of D. B. Cooper’s ransom money.

The young fellow spotted a weathered wad of bills. They were all U.S. twenties for a total of $5880. The serial numbers matched the ones recorded by Northwest Orient and their banker.

The bills were in pretty tough shape. They were worn in a “rounded” pattern that indicated water-sourced erosion rather than being buried or hidden in their original condition. This led investigators to consider the source.

The forensic team eliminated the Lewis River drainage because it poured into the Columbia downstream from the sandbar. The Washougal drainage, however, was upstream. Searchers went back in full force through the Washougal and its tributaries. They came away empty-handed.

The Current Forensic Evidence

Since 1971, there have been tremendous advances in forensic science. The biggest one is DNA genotyping and that’s been done in the D. B. Cooper case. The results—or lack of results—are interesting.

There were biological deposits on the J.C. Penney tie Cooper left on the plane. Two small samples and one larger sample allowed the forensic lab to build a male profile. The best guess is the bio-material was saliva.

And the best guess is that the profile is from the real D. B. Cooper. But that’s just an educated guess because this tie could have been contaminated by another male who borrowed the tie from Cooper or sold it to him. This avenue is weak, but it’s the only DNA path the forensic team has.

But what about the Raleigh King-Sized filtered tip cigarette butts? The attendant saw Cooper with these in his mouth. Surely it would be his saliva and DNA on those?

Well, no one knows what happened to Cooper’s butts. In deep-diving the Cooper case literature, it looks like the FBI lost the entire eight cigarette butts. Internally, the blame bonces between the Reno team who recovered them and the Las Vegas lab who received them. Buck-passing also goes from Vegas to Seattle but, the truth is, the cigarette butts are unaccountable and they have been gone for a long, long time.

There’s still a bit of a shining light in the D. B. Cooper forensic closet. In 2008, forensic specialists used a highly-sophisticated scanning electron microscope to look inside Cooper’s tie. What they found was telling.

D. B. Cooper’s tie was significantly contaminated at the near-molecular metal by some very rare and unusual metals. The microscope picked up traces of cerium, strontium sulfide and pure titanium as well as other tidbits of bismuth and aluminum. That meant the tie had to have been in a metal shop that manufactured high-tech materials.

The prominent place where these materials amassed was in the Boeing factory near Seattle. At the time, this combination of micro-materials was only used in making the prototype in Boeing’s supersonic transport development project. Insiders said that only managers and engineers wore ties in the work area where they’d be exposed to airborne trace metals.

The D. B. Cooper Suspect List

The FBI investigated over 1,000 suspects during their years of probing. Some leads were weak. Others were strong. And, some still haven’t been completely ruled out.

But before naming names, there’s a big curiosity many people have. That’s where did the handles D. B. Cooper and Dan Cooper come from? There seems to be some confusion.

In the official investigation, there’s no such name as D. B. Cooper. The suspect used the name Dan Cooper on the flight manifest, and that is undoubtedly an alias.

Somehow, the Portland media, in a rush for a deadline, got the name wrong and put it on the wire as D. B. Cooper. The name stuck and now holds legendary status.

There’s an interesting background to the “Dan Cooper” alias, though. In the late 1960s, a Belgium comic book publisher ran a series about a Canadian Air Force test pilot who did a lot of thrill-seeking stuff. Bailing out of airplanes with parachutes was one. The magazines were never printed in English—only French—and the hero’s name was Dan Cooper.

When the FBI closed the file they called NORJAK for Northwest Hijacking, they publicly indicated they’d done their best to eliminate all reasonable suspects. However, they left the door open to re-investigating leads should something new and good come in.

Here are the top names who the FBI looked into:

Kenneth Christianson was a U.S. Army paratrooper who joined Northwest Orient as a mechanic and then went on to be a flight attendant and purser. He served on 727s and knew them intimately. Christiansen was left-handed, smoked and liked bourbon. He died in 1994 and allegedly left a deathbed confession

Jack Coffelt was a conman and government informant. He allegedly made a jailhouse confession and was a dead-ringer in looks to the D. B. Cooper sketches. Coffelt was in Portland on November 24, 1971, and showed up a few days later with leg injuries that he said were from a skydiving accident. He died in 1975.

Lynn Doyle (LD) Cooper was a Korean War veteran. After he died in 1999, his family members came forward with their belief that “LD”, as they called him, was D. B. Cooper. The family stated he was obsessed with the Dan Cooper comics and images of LD were similar to the suspect drawings. LD Cooper lived in the Washougal River drainage and survived a questionable and unwitnessed accident at the time of the skyjacking. Familial DNA testing does not match the Cooper tie.

William Gossett died in 2003. According to the FBI’s lead NORJAK investigator at the time, “The circumstantial evidence is real strong, and I feel we got the right guy”. Gossett was an army paratrooper with extensive night and low-level jumping experience. He also was an exact physical match to the eyewitness reports of D. B. Cooper.

Richard McCoy was an experienced military parachutist. He was also caught after highjacking a 727 airplane and bailing out over Utah in 1974. McCoy’s modus operandi was an exact replica of the Cooper skyjacking. He also looked like Cooper. Whether he was a copycat or the real McCoy, we’ll never know. Richard McCoy escaped from jail and was shot to death in a gunfight with the cops.

Duane Weber could have been D. B. Cooper’s doppelganger.  Before he died in 1995, Weber confessed to his wife that he was the real D. B. Cooper. He even provided her with key-fact evidence like fingerprint placement on the aft staircase rails. The FBI tested Weber’s familial DNA and eliminated it as being the donor on the tie.

The FBI Theory on Who D. B. Cooper Really Was

Many FBI agents worked on the NORJACK file. Over the years, agent opinions have waffled back and forth on who D. B. Cooper really was and if he survived the nighttime jump in frigid conditions. The majority seem to think Cooper died in the fall.

Others are not so sure. They point to five other 727 hijackings where the perpetrator jumped in midair and lived to tell about it. Some feel it might be crazy, but it’s been tried and it worked. They say there’s every reason to believe Cooper succeeded.

FBI Agent Larry Carr was the last investigator assigned to the D. B. Cooper case. He closed the file in 2016. Here’s Agent Carr’s take on the matter:

“I think it’s highly unlikely Cooper survived the jump. But he came from somewhere and something. And that is what we wanted to know. My profile of Cooper is that he served in the Air Force and at some point was stationed in Europe. That’s where he may have become interested in the Dan Cooper comic books.

I think he worked as a cargo loader on military planes, giving him knowledge and experience in the air-drop cargo aviation industry which was still in its infancy back in 1971. Because his job would have him throwing cargo out of planes, Cooper would have worn an emergency parachute in case he fell out. Certainly, he would have been trained in parachuting and would have experienced a few actual jumps. This would have provided him with a working knowledge of parachutes, but not necessarily the functional knowledge to survive a jump under the conditions he did.

I think he arrived in Seattle after he discharged from the military and might have got a job in the Boeing factory. That’s where the metal traces in the tie likely came from. It’s possible that he lost his job during an economic downturn that happened in the aviation industry in 1970 and 1971.

If he was a loner, or with little family, no one would have missed him after he was gone.”

Did the mysterious Dan (D. B.) Cooper die in his skyjacking? Or did he live to see another day? What are your thoughts?

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Post Publication Note 07April2020: A DyingWords follower sent a link to their website that developed an interesting theory purporting the late William Smith might have been the real D. B. (Dan) Cooper. There are some remarkable similarities and it appears the FBI never investigated Smith as a suspect. The website host gave the FBI their information on Smith in 2018 along with Smith’s known fingerprints from his US Army service file. So far, there’s been no response from the FBI, presumably because the NORJACK case is a closed file. Here’s the link to the William Smith suspect website and a comparison photo of an older William Smith to the artist drawing: https://dbcooperhijack.com/

DID THREE PRISONERS REALLY SURVIVE THEIR ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ?

Over the night of June 11/12, 1962 three inmates broke out of the United States maximum-security penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They carved their way through concrete cell walls with crudely-made tools and entered a mechanical service corridor leading outside. Once over the perimeter fence, the trio fled into cold Pacific waters on a makeshift raft. The felons were never seen again. That left many to speculate whether the fugitives drowned or… if the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz.

Alcatraz Island is a forbidding place. It’s a rugged rock just inside the entrance to San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz is highly visible from the city’s shoreline and is a well-known landmark around the world. It was once also viewed as the perfect place to build a prison.

The lunar-like landmass covers 12 acres and hosts a hostile environment. Its tidal currents run fast and cold making Alcatraz a navigational challenge. An experienced yachts-person would think twice about trying to row around Alcatraz, especially in the dead of night. Even champion swimmers equipped with wetsuits struggle with the 1.5 mile trip to the shore.

The Spanish Navy first “discovered” Alcatraz and named it La Isla de los Alcacatraces which translates to “Pelican Island” after the archaic Spanish word for the bird. There doesn’t seem to be an aboriginal name for the Island because the original settlers probably found the barren place rather worthless.

The United States Army didn’t think that. They saw Alcatraz as the ideal spot for a military jail and developed it in the 1850s. Over time, Alcatraz Island served as a lockup and lighthouse. Common thinking held that no self-respecting prisoner would attempt something as crazy as a swimming escape from “The Rock”.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons felt the same way. In 1933, the Army relinquished Alcatraz to the Justice Department who needed a secure facility to house the worst of the worst offenders. Criminals like Al Capone, Machinegun Kelly, Alvin “Creepy” Karpas, and Robert Stroud (the psychotic Birdman of Alcatraz) served sentences in the “prison system’s prison”.

Alcatraz was a state-of-the-art, super-max facility for its time. There was a one-guard-to-three-inmate ratio with each felon occupying a single cell. But, despite the precautions, it was here in 1962 that three little-known, bank-robbing hoods made their famous escape from Alcatraz.

Frank Lee Morris (Inmate #AZ1441) was born in 1926 to a terribly dysfunctional family. He was orphaned at age 11 and was so incorrigible that foster homes refused to have him. By 13, Morris was already in jail for crimes ranging from armed robbery to narcotic trafficking. Prison authority tests placed Frank Morris in the top 2 percent of inmates when it came to intelligence with a 133 IQ. He was a leader, a conman, and a calculator. Morris arrived on Alcatraz in 1960 with a 10-year bank robbery sentence.

John William Anglin (Inmate #AZ1476) was an east-coast criminal. He was also a broken-home product in a family of 13 kids birthed by migrant farmworkers. John Algrin was 30 years old when he arrived on Alcatraz in the fall of 1960. His sentence was 15-20 years for a string of Alabama bank robberies committed with his younger brother Clarence.

Clarence Anglin (Inmate #AZ1485) was a year behind his brother John in age. However, he was just as bad when it came to criminal behavior. Clarence Anglin’s first conviction was for breaking into a service station when he was 14 and he continued on from there. He entered Alcatraz in January 1961 with a 20-year penalty earned after 10 years of robbing everything from banks to brothels.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers didn’t meet in Alcatraz. They went back to being co-inmates in a Florida prisoner where they made repeated escape attempts. Deemed candidates for the Alcatraz treatment, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons sequentially classified them as high-risk offenders and transferred them to The Rock one-by-one. Somehow, the three were assigned to adjacent cells.

The Morris-Anglin escape plan started in December 1961. That was six months before the breakout which gave them plenty of time to think and prepare. Their plan was elaborate, and it took a tremendous amount of coordination and cooperation with the inmate population to pull off. It seems the inevitable escape was one of the worst-kept secrets inside the criminals’ culture.

The escapees used self-made tools modified from old saw blades and kitchen utensils to chip concrete around existing ventilation ducts at floor level in their cells. Their creativity extended to using a power drill made from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor which they ran during music hour in the evening. To conceal their tunneling, they fabricated fake ventilation covers painted on cardboard.

The enlarged vent ducts gave them access to a 3-foot wide service corridor that was unpatrolled. This led to a larger area where they smuggled-in around 50 rubber raincoats donated by other inmates. The investigation later showed Morris and the Anglins built an inflatable raft and blow-up life jackets with the raincoats by vulcanizing the rubber on the facility’s steam pipes.

To inflate the raft and personal flotation devices (PFDs), they got even more ingenious. They pilfered a musical instrument called a concertina which is an accordion-like device they converted into a bellows. The trio also sourced wood scraps and screws to build paddles.

On the escape night, the three simulated themselves in bed by stuffing clothes and towels under the blankets to build body shapes. What really topped-off their attention to detail was fabricating human heads with paper mache that were authentically painted with flesh tones. They even attached human hair sourced from the Alcatraz barbershop.

Getting out of the prison facility took some doing. The fleeing felons used a ventilation shaft from the corridor to climb to the roof and then shinnied two stories down to the ground along service lines. Then, they faced inner and outer perimeter fences topped with barbed wire before making the shore.

How they hauled the raft, paddles, and some limited personal effects through this route is not clear. It took determination and considerable physical dexterity. However, the cons did it, and it worked.

The three were discovered missing during the 7 am stand-to and head-count. This set off a massive search done by the prison officials with the help of the local police and the Coast Guard. Bit-by-bit, pieces of their escape showed up.

Alcatraz Island National Park sits to the south-west of San Francisco Bay. It’s 1 ½ miles north of downtown San Francisco, about 3 ½ miles east of the Golden Gate Bridge and Horseshoe Bay in Marin County, and just over 2 miles south of Angel Island. Alcatraz is also slightly under 3 miles west of Treasure Island.

The searchers found their evidence near Angel Island. That included a broken paddle, two deflated life vests, shreds of raincoat material, and a wallet containing contact information for the Anglin relatives. Examination of one life jacket noted deep teeth marks in the inflation piece indicating that the wearer may have been struggling against air loss.

The main search lasted for two weeks. There were no signs of the Anglins or Morris, either alive or dead. Who aided the investigation was Allen West, an Alcatraz inmate who was part of the escape plot but couldn’t get through his enlarged ventilation duct in time to join the party.

West cooperated in exchange for immunity from punishment. He revealed the planning and the escapee’s intentions. According to West, the plot was to paddle the raft west from Alcatraz and land near Horseshoe Bay near the north end of Golden Gate Bridge. Here, they intended to steal clothes, a vehicle, rob some money, and then head for the Mexican border.

The investigators took West seriously. They followed every lead linking to car thefts, clothes swiping, and hold-ups. Nothing even remotely matched a modus operandi that indicated the trio had landed anywhere in the San Francisco Bay region.

Over time, many tips came in but nothing panned out. Some information was well-intended but wrong. Others were obviously pranks and hoaxes. There was one reported sighting of a man’s body floating in the Bay area that described it as wearing denim clothes consistent with prison garb. It was never found.

Another lead surfaced years later, and it came along with photographs. A long-time con-man claimed to have seen the Anglin brothers in Brazil and took their photos. By this time, the FBI had closed the case after writing off the escapees as having succumbed to hypothermia and drowned on the night of their mission. The U.S. Marshalls, however, took the photos seriously and sent investigators to Brazil. Nothing amounted to this but, today, there’s still speculation it might have been them.

So, what are the chances the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz?

The answer lies in the water. The reason authorities selected Alcatraz as a maximum-security prison site was because of how nasty the water conditions surrounding the island were. The temperature, currents, and wind conditions made this spot nearly impossible to cross without the right knowledge, timing, and equipment.

San Francisco Bay is a large water body that drains about 40 percent of California. Combining its inlets and estuaries, the bay area exceeds 1,500 square miles. That water gets flushed twice a day by ebb and flow tides that have to pass through the mile-wide Golden Gate narrows. This creates tremendous current action and some of the fastest waters on the California coast.

The logical escape plan for Morris and his Anglin accomplices would be to use the tide currents to their advantage. That would have to be when the ebb or outward action was happening, and the currrent would carry them from Alcatraz to their apparent destination near Horseshoe Bay on the Marin County shore. This would move them the fastest and minimize their paddling.

If they didn’t plan their water trip with a favorable tide, the flow tide would carry them into the bay and swirl their raft like in a toilet bowl. Surely these convicts who went to an elaborate escape effort would have considered the tide timing. That’s exactly what Allen West said they did.

Historical tide records are available online at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website. A little Googling found the tidal information for San Francisco Bay at the Alcatraz Island area for the night of Monday, June 11 and Tuesday, June 12, 1962. Here’s what was going on:

  • High tide of 5.24 feet at 7:11 pm on June 11
  • Low tide of 1.47 feet at 1:39 am on June 12
  • High tide of 3.69 feet at 7:27 am on June 12

To understand tide-talk, the figures 5.24 feet, 1.46 feet, and 3.69 feet refer to water levels above the mean or average low watermark. An important part of tidal water navigation is working with what’s called slack tide. This is the short period between ebb and flow when the current is neutral.

Low slack tide happened between Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate narrows at 1:39 am on the Tuesday morning. Before that, there was a strong ebb or outflow current moving a significant water exchange between the earlier high at 5.24 feet and the low at 1.47 feet. That meant that 3.77 feet of water depth changed from a 1,500 square mile bay area and sent it whooshing beside Alcatraz and under the bridge.

Should the escapees have missed their window of opportunity from the prison “lights-out” at 10:00 pm and the low slack time at 1:39 am, they’d have faced an incoming flow tide returning a 2.22 foot rise in water coming back into San Francisco Bay. It would’ve been a challenge to paddle a homemade raft into that force.

So, it looks like the escapees had about 3 ½ hours to crawl out of their cells, haul their gear over the fence, and catch a favorable tide to make it 3 ½  miles to freedom at Horseshoe Bay. That seems do-able… except for the wild card.

Every trained mariner respects the wind. Air movement can be good or bad depending on your vessel type and travel direction. More Google exploration found the San Francisco weather records for June 11/12, 1962. It was a cool and cloudy night with a west to southwest wind coming in off the open Pacific at a steady 10-13 mile-per-hour blow with gusts up to 21 miles-per-hour.

The escapees and their blow-up raft would have paddled into an oncoming wind which certainly would have worked against the tide power. In fact, this combination of an inflow wind hitting an outflow tide makes for choppy surface conditions, especially in shallow water. The wind and tide action also create whirlpools which seriously suck to paddle through.

San Francisco Bay is notoriously shallow as large inlets go. That’s a major reason why the U.S. Navy chose San Diego as a main port over more centrally-located San Francisco. The average depth of San Francisco Bay is 20 feet which is less than the draft on most freighter ships. The deepest part of the bay is a 300-foot underwater canyon on the north side of the Golden Gate narrows that creates significant turbulence during tide changes.

It’s an understatement to say the water surface conditions were challenging for the escapees. It seems obvious they intentionally chose that period to run as it gave them the best odds of making it. They had favorable moonlight conditions with a ¾ waxing image being blocked by high cloud. According to weather records, nautical twilight occurred at 9:42 pm on June 11 and nautical sunrise occurred at 4:37 am. Therefore, they certainly had the cover of darkness.

Weather records indicate there was no rain, there was a high barometric pressure of 102.1, and a relatively cool nighttime air temperature of 48-50 degrees Fahrenheit. With the windchill, it would feel more like the mid-40s. The water temperature was a different story. NOAA recorded the waters surrounding Alcatraz to be 47 degrees Fahrenheit on the outflow and 50 degrees Fahrenheit on the inflow. That’s due to the colder freshwater coming into San Francisco from the Sacramento River’s spring melt and the warmer Pacific saltwater returning.

There’s a picture emerging of three desperate men with little tidal water experience making an untested run for freedom using their human technology against nature’s elements. The escapees calculated their timing to use darkness and an ebb tide to carry them along, so they took their chances. What they may have failed to consider is the subterranean characteristics of the bay and air power.

Their raft was also untested. Same with their life jackets. It’s hard to say what happened once the men’s weight put pressure on the inflated raft and jacket seams. Leaks likely started early in their journey, and this would have made paddling hard. Probably, the harder they struggled, the more force they exerted on their raft and buoyancy devices which possibly failed.

If Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin ended up in the water, their life-expectancy would be limited. An average man, with a thin build like these escapes had, would go numb within a few minutes. According to charts by the U. S. Coast Guard , in water temperature between 41 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, this scenario would happen:

  • Shock  Setting — 1 to 3 minutes
  • Exhaustion Onset — 30 to 60 minutes
  • Certain Death — 1 to 3 hours

Did the escapees survive? We’ll likely never know for sure. There is no conclusive proof one way or the other. There are urban legends and family suggestions that at least the Anglin brothers made it to safety, but you have to question the source. It’s theoretically possible for three men in a rubber boat to go from their cells to shore in a 3 ½ hour period, but they’d need a dose of luck from the escape gods.

However, their bodies have never been found. Some historical unidentified remains were recently examined through DNA testing which eliminated the Anglins from being a recovered John Doe. So far, forensic investigators haven’t been able to rule out Frank Morris, as he has no known living relatives to get a DNA comparison standard from.

If the Anglins and Morris did perish in San Francisco Bay, it’s not surprising their bodies didn’t surface – especially if their life vests failed. Typically, human bodies initially sink when immersed in water. Bodies then respond to environmental conditions like temperature and salinity.

San Francisco Bay was cold in June of 1962. It also had high freshwater content due to the late-spring runoff. Bodies tend to float better in saltwater than freshwater, but they need a reasonable amount of gas to do so. With the ambient temperature being so low, it’s unlikely there’d be sufficient postmortem gas generated to cause buoyancy. If the men sank, the tidal action would have pushed them around for a while and then dropped them off in the deepness of the sea where they’d permanently decompose.

On the balance of probabilities, it’s unlikely the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz. However, there’s always a chance given the time frame they had. If they did and were still alive, they’d be old men by now. The FBI gave up the chase a long time ago, but the U. S. Marshalls still have an open file. They have a reward for you… if you can find them.

KUDOS TO WHOEVER WHACKED GANGSTER JAMES “WHITEY” BULGER

One of the world’s most infamous criminals is dead. 89-year-old James Joseph Bulger, aka Whitey—once head of the Boston Mob—was murdered inside Hazelton Federal Penitentiary in West Virginia on October 30, 2018. Authorities transferred Bulger from a Florida maximum security jail to the WV medium security facility less than 12 hours earlier. The wheelchair-bound, high-risk geriatric inmate got placed in general population. Credible prison sources say other prisoners quickly isolated and beat Bulger beyond recognition using the “lock-in-a-sock” technique, tearing his eyes from their sockets and cutting out his tongue. It was a signature end for the notorious American gangster.

Whitey Bulger was more than a larger-than-life mobster—he was a devious, double-crossing sonofabitch convicted of eleven brutally cruel murders inflicted on organized criminal associates during the 70s and 80s when South Boston’s Irish Mob ruled town. Bulger also acted as a top FBI informant and turned into a Bureau embarrassment while he continued his criminal enterprise under federal government immunity. Just before indictment on racketeering charges, Bulger’s FBI handler tipped him off. That corrupt information about pending arrest gave Bulger years on the lam before he was taken down in 2011.

My opinion is Whitey Bulger deserved what he got, and kudos to whoever whacked him. It was long overdue. Bulger should have been executed years earlier had the State of Massachusetts retained the death penalty and nabbed him. However, his murder inside the joint raises the question of what protection a high-profile and vulnerable prison inmate like Whitey Bulger is entitled to.

That Bulger died less than a day after arrival at Hazelton suggests powers within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons intentionally placed Bulger in peril. It’s likely no coincidence convicted Boston mafia hitman, Fotios “Freddy” Geas, was on the scene and in the cell when Bulger died. Currently, Freddy sits on ice. He’s in the hole pending an investigation.

Before examining who in the system is accountable for setting up an old con-man’s death, let’s look at Bulger’s past and what he did as a sociopathic killer.

James Bulger was born in 1929 at Everett in North Boston. His father was injured in an accident and unable to work, placing the family in poverty. From an early age, James Bulger bounced between relatives’ homes and whoever would put up with his delinquent behavior. Nicknamed “Whitey” for his platinum hair, Bulger preferred being called “Jimmy”. However, the name Whitey stuck and it stayed with him throughout his criminal career.

Whitey Bulger developed a nasty reputation as a cruel dude. At fourteen, he was a seasoned street fighter and enforcer for the South Boston Shamrock gang. Also at fourteen, Bulger went to jail for theft and burglary. He was placed in adult population and learned from some of the country’s most experienced cons.

Bulger was in and out of prison during the war years. He tried reforming in 1948 by joining the U. S. Air Force, but that didn’t work. Whitey Bulger was jailed in military prison for assaults and being absent without leave. To get rid of Bulger, the Air Force released him with an honorable discharge in 1952. He went back to the streets of South Boston.

Whitey Bulger graduated to extortions, drug trafficking and armed robberies. By 1956, he was incarcerated for robbery in Atlanta but was transferred to Alcatraz prison at San Francisco. Bulger was too much for Alcatraz authorities to handle so they sent him to the super-maximum pen at Leavenworth. He made parole in 1965 and never saw another day in jail for 46 years.

Back in Boston, Whitey Bulger joined the Killeen gang who were established pimps and bookies as well as experienced loan sharks and bone bashers. During a gang war between the Killeens and their rival Mullen gang, Bulger committed his first known murder by shooting an unarmed man between the eyes, then biting off the end of his nose. Things heated up for the Killeens and Bulger, so he turn-coated to the powerful South Boston mob. Bulger joined the Winter Hill gang and went about setting up the Killeens to eliminate their leaders.

Whitey Bulger rapidly rose in South Boston’s underworld. He had a peculiar modus operandi, or MO, for a con. Bulger preyed only on other criminals, not the general public. It was a pattern that worked well for Bulger, as it was high-level criminals who controlled the money, and he used the lower lying cons to rat out their bosses.

Whitey Bulger manipulated other influential people, too. He was a paid informant for the Boston Police and given leeway to operate with impunity. Bulger worked both ends against the middle. By the mid-70s, Whitey Bulger was in complete control of the South Boston mob. Secretly, he was also the FBI’s snitch.

In 1971, the FBI recruited Whitey Bulger. Or, it was more like Bulger recruited the FBI. What Whitey Bulger wanted was the FBI’s help in eliminating the Italian Mafia while leaving him alone, and it worked. Soon Mafioso members were being rounded up and jailed. Other Bulger rivals were disappearing or turning up dead. Throughout the 1980’s, Whitey Bulger ran unopposed and committed or ordered at least nineteen known murders. His body count might be higher.

There was a problem, though. That was Bulger’s FBI handler, Special Agent John Connolly who’d been giving Bulger carte blanche permission to operate freely as long as Connolly got arrests. Connolly was eventually exposed by the Bureau as a crooked cop, but not before tipping Whitey Bulger off that a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) indictment was about to fall on Bulger’s head.

With FBI Agent Connolly’s help, Whitey Bulger went into hiding. This was in 1994. For the next seventeen years, Bulger was a wanted man, and for twelve of them, Bulger was on the FBI’s most wanted list at #2—right behind Osama bin Laden. A $2 million reward was offered for Bulger’s scalp and sightings came in all over the world.

But the truth was, Whitey Bulger never left the States. He and his long-time girlfriend, Catherine Greig, holed-up in California where they rented a quiet apartment in Santa Monica. Finally, after the FBI did a media blitz with age-corrected sketches of Bulger and Greig, a neighbor recognized the pair and turned them in.

It was June 22, 2011, when the police captured Whitey Bulger. He was now 81. In Bulger’s apartment, they seized over $800,000 cash and a horde of firearms along with plenty of fake ID. Bulger and Greig were extradited back to Massachusetts where Grieg pleaded guilty to harboring a fugitive. She drew six years. Bulger went to trial.

Whitey Bulger was charged with 48 felony counts—19 of them first-degree murders. The trial lasted three months and heard from a rogue’s gallery of convicted mafia members, mobsters and hitmen. It also heard from relatives of Bulger’s victims. The jury convicted Bulger on 11 murders, and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms, plus an extra five years for good measure.

Evidence told of Bulger’s viciousness. He had many people severely tortured, especially those suspected of informing on him. Some of those maimed and then killed were women—girlfriends of Bulger’s subordinates in the gang world. Others were rival drug dealers and racketeers who posed business threats to Whitey Bulger. Further evidence showed Bulger being involved with arms trafficking to the Irish Republican Army terrorist group as well as firebombing Senator Ted Kennedy’s house.

Upon sentencing Whitey Bulger, Judge Denise Casper told him, “The scope, the callousness, the depravity of your crimes are almost unfathomable. Your crimes are more than heinous because they were all about money.” Bulger replied, “Money is the common denominator in crime. It will never stop.” Bulger also said he wanted an epitaph on his tombstone stating, “I’d rather be in Alcatraz.”

*   *   *

Whitey Bulger was also indicted for murders in Florida and Oklahoma, however, prosecutors there stayed charges due to his age and existing life sentences. Bulger first went to the Coleman II U.S. Penitentiary in Somerville, Florida where he was held in protective custody. Later, he moved to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, also in protective custody, then back to Florida. All of Bulger’s federal pen time from 2014 till 2018 was in maximum security and tight protection—never given access to the general inmate population. Even though he was old, Whitey Bulger was a marked man and a high-value target inside the system.

Then, on October 29, 2018, Bulger was suddenly transferred from protective custody in a Florida max jail to open population at a medium place in West Virginia. He arrived at 9:53 pm and by 8:20 the next morning, Whitey Bulger was whacked in his cell. Conveniently, the cameras didn’t catch the actual death sentence, and somehow Freddy Geas and friends were lying in wait. This reeks of a system-orchestrated event.

When I say kudos to whoever whacked Whitey Bulger, you might think I’m condoning planned and premeditated murder. I’m not—not for ordinary, law-abiding and peaceful citizens that is. But, I’ve got no sympathy for the devil, and I think guys like Whitey Bulger, Freddy Geas and their kind deserve what they get in the end. Career criminals are not remotely like you and me. These animals have no regard for human rights and human life. It’s the law of the jungle in their world, and it’s fitting that Whitey Bulger finally got whacked.

But, what I’m having a hard time getting my head around is how bureaucrats and employees in the correctional system stuck their necks out like this. I’ve been around the system for decades and I know most system players are government appointees and employees. They value security, promotions, pensions and non-publicity. Yet, somebody—some people—within the United States Bureau of Prisons let Whitey Bulger’s murder happen.

This case made the news. There’s a fascination with gangster and gang lifestyles in America and around the world. Whitey Bulger was a pop-figure and a cult idol. Just look at two high-profile movies like The Departed where Jack Nicholson won an Oscar portraying Bulger’s character. Then Johnny Depp hit the big screen as Bulger in Black Mass. Currently, there’s a lot on the news about Whitey Bulger.

I found an interesting interview in the Washington Post with retired Boston PD Sergeant Bill Bratton. He knew Whitey Bulger and described him as, “The consummate gangster. The consummate manipulator. He was a brutal, feared, stone-cold killer.” Another cop, not wanting to be identified, simply said, “He was a bad, bad, bad guy.”

Although it’s interesting to hear comments about Bulger’s character, I was more curious about how people in the correctional system responded. I found an answer through NBC where Rick Heldreth agreed to a statement. Heldreth is president of AFGE Local 420 Prison Workers Union representing employees at Hazelton Penitentiary in West Virginia. Here’s how Rick Heldreth explained it.

“Hazelton is known as one of the most violent penitentiaries in the country. It’s very unusual that this particular inmate (Bulger) of this notoriety would be placed in general population given the level of violence and the type of inmates housed here. This decision was made far above us. Hazelton has a reputation of con-honor and placing a massive turncoat like him (Bulger) in general population and not in protective custody made him particularly vulnerable to attack. I know how he was labeled in the system, and it’s not something that went well with our inmate population.”

Rick Heldreth offered insight about how recent federal government cutbacks affected their staffing levels. Heldreth reported that Hazelton normally holds 120 high-profile, violent inmates. It’s one of the most dangerous environments in America’s prison system. In the past three months, there were two other inmate murders, both happening immediately after admission. Heldreth said inmates always know who’s coming in. “It’s really like in the movies.”

Heldreth stated it takes 880 staff to manage 120 inmates at Hazelton. That’s a 7.3:1 ratio. “Since the Trump-era hiring freeze, we’re down about one hundred staff and can’t replace them. We have prison plumbers and teachers filling in for guards.”

In my opinion, forces within the U.S. Bureau of Prisons purposely sent Whitey Bulger to his death at Hazelton Penitentiary. Bulger was far from a model prisoner. He was a problem—a psychopath and without any form of normal conscience. Shortly before being sent to Hazelton, Bulger’s file records that he masturbated in front of a female prison worker and—at 89—threatened to kill another prison official. They had enough of him.

We’re not in a perfect world. If we were, Whitey Bulgers wouldn’t exist. But they do, and now one of them got a just reward. I say kudos to whoever whacked Whitey Bulger. He was fair game after prison authorities threw fresh meat over the fence and into the jungle. But autonomous authorities shouldn’t authorize death sentences and capital punishment really has to follow a legal and due process.