Tag Archives: Forensic

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/

THE TERRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT ADOLF HITLER’S REMAINS

The name “Adolf Hitler” is synonymous with evil. Pure evil. Hitler, or the Fuhrer as he self-titled, ruled Germany as chancellor and dictator from the rise of Nazism in 1933 until his death by suicide in 1945. During that time, millions of civilians and soldiers died and the Motherland was destroyed — a truly atrocious era in human history. Horrific as that time was, today there’s a terrible possibility a new monster could arise from Adolf Hitler’s remains.

From the moment Adolf Hitler expired, rumors circulated about what really happened to the Fuhrer’s body. Many witnesses were at Hitler’s death scene. Most saw his deceased form, and some admitted to help dispose of Hitler’s earthly evidence. Despite sworn statements and hard medical facts, few details were released to the Allies and the western world. That was because Russians did the investigation. Red Army Intelligence officers processed forensics that included autopsying and conclusively identifying Hitler’s cadaver.

Because of a lack of released information, speculation of Hitler’s survival soon started. Concocted conspiracy theories began, and there were sightings of the Fuhrer reported on every continent including a secret submarine base near Antarctica. Nazi hunters followed clues across Europe, in Asia, Africa, America and deep into Argentina. None paid off because the truth was the Russians had Hitler all along.

The truth is also that Hitler’s corpse made a remarkable journey from one hiding spot to another. He was buried and dug-up at least five times over a twenty-five year period. Today, tangible parts of Adolf Hitler still exist, and that leads to a modern biological possibility the Fuhrer could live again. Here’s the terrible truth about Adolf Hitler’s remains.

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Adolf Hitler entered the world in 1889. His birthplace was near Linz which was then part of the Austrian-Hungarian alliance. Hitler moved to Germany in 1913 and worked as an aspiring architect but amounted to no more than a starving artist.

He served in the German Army during World War 1 and rose to a corporal rank. He was injured while running messages and spent most of the First World War on the sidelines. Following Germany’s surrender, Hitler immersed in trade union politics with the German Workers Party and soon got himself in trouble.

Hitler was jailed as a political prisoner after he led a failed coup. His lock-up during 1923 and 1924 gave him time to write Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which was his manifesto outlining his plan to gain dictatorial power in Germany and expand Aryan racial interests. Hitler also met Rudolf Hess who had significant influence in solidifying anti-Jewish hatred in Hitler’s psyche.

By the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler attained sufficient control through the National Socialist Party which were the Nazis. Hitler surrounded himself with particularly nasty men and used brute force to gain and maintain authority. Some were ideological psychopaths such as Heinrich Himmler. Others, like Herman Goering, were crass opportunists.

Hitler managed to establish massive support from the German population which included the Caucasians and excluded other races and cultures, especially the Jews. He formed plans to expand Germany’s empire and gain space for the blond-haired, blue-eyed pure Aryans. But, his 1939 action of annexing Poland started the Second World War and began his undoing.

One of Hitler’s massive mistakes was declaring war on Russia. From a historical point, there was no need to do this for Hitler to execute his manifesto. It seems Hitler went slowly mad and his delusions caused him to fatally overextend his armed forces’ capacity and the world turned on him through an unlikely Russian and western alliance.

By April of 1945, the war was nearly over and Hitler denied it. He was probably insane by this time which is backed-up by accounts of his inner circle who stayed with Hitler in his Berlin bunker until the Russians arrived. There were reports of Hitler collapsing in tearful rages and hysterically ordering non-existent army units into combat action.

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, in the Fuhrer bunker. After a minor champagne celebration and dictating his last will and testament, Hitler and Braun retired to their chambers and committed joint suicide. Exactly how they did it and what became of their bodies turned into a world-class mystery. Some describe it as a parlor game full of crazy conspiracies.

The best evidence of what really happened to Hitler and Braun comes from two sources. One is eyewitnesses who were in the bunker at the time. The other is scientific material carefully collected by the Russian government. The first information pool has the usual witness fallibilities. The second source has credibility issues due to Russian misinformation, concealment, and cover-ups.

There is absolutely no doubt Adolf Hitler died on April 30, 1945. That is uncontested by any credible opinion. Most accounts have Hitler using the “pistol and poison” method where he ingested prussic acid, or hydrogen cyanide, while putting a handgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. All accounts indicate Evan Braun was not shot. Rather, she also took a cyanide dose.

Hitler clearly expressed his wish to have their bodies cremated. He’d learned of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s public execution where Mussolini’s body was hung by the feet and mutilated by the crowd. Adolf Hitler did not want that happening to him. He specifically instructed his staff to take his body out of the bunker and set in on fire in the garden.

This act is well recorded and supported by now-released evidence. Hitler’s aides poured some sort of petroleum fuel over the Fuhrer and Eva Braun. However, they were unable to create sufficient heat to consume the corpses and the cadavers were only charred.

There were several attempts to increase the inferno, but time ran out. The Russians were on their doorstep and lobbing artillery rounds into the garden and at the bunker. Aides hastily dug a shell crater into a shallow grave and covered up Hitler and Braun’s burnt bodies.

The bunker occupants surrendered and quickly disclosed where Hitler and Braun lay buried. Russian medical experts arrived on May 4, 1945, and exhumed the grave. They took both bodies to a facility at Buch in Berlin and stored them above ground. Two Russian pathologists performed autopsies on May 10, and their report was publicly released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 2000.

Hitler and Braun were superficially scorched to the point of visual non-recognition. However, they were skeletally intact which included their organs being suitable for dissection. Braun showed no bullet wound but did exhibit post-mortem shrapnel damage. One pathologist noted this probably happened as an artillery round exploded while she was on fire. Glass shards and cyanide traces were in her mouth, and they listed Eva Braun’s cause of death as suicide by poison.

Adolf Hitler showed no conclusive sign of disease or any sudden medical event. As rumors always said, Hitler only had one testicle. His brain was biologically unremarkable, but it was traversed by a bullet passage. The pathologists could not identify an entrance wound and theorized it was probably through the mouth. There was also no notable exit wound or bullet slug itself. The report says Hitler’s upper cranial bone was missing, and they assumed it was blown off by the gunshot force.

The pathologists conclusively found glass shards and cyanide traces in the Fuhrer’s mouth. They listed his cause of death as a combination of cyanide poisoning and a gunshot wound to the head. Something else they discovered in Hitler’s mouth was crucial to identifying his body. That was Adolf Hitler’s unmistakable dentition.

Hitler’s teeth were in terrible condition. His upper and lower mandibles were a mess of bridges and crowns with a sprinkling of natural enamel that enclosed tooth pulp. His gums were inflamed, and he had several extraction gaps that weren’t replaced. It was an odontologist’s dream when it came to making a postmortem identification.

The Russian pathology team located Hitler’s dentist and assistant who were thoroughly familiar with every part of the Fuhrer’s mouth. They viewed the dental work from the cadaver and produced Hitler’s complete records. They established there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever these dental works belong to the now-deceased Adolf Hitler.

Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator, wasn’t so sure. Stalin was paranoid that his nemesis Hitler would come to haunt him by people believing Hitler was alive and hidden or having his body become a future Nazi shrine. Stalin stalled and ordered Hitler’s body temporarily buried with the dental work brought to Moscow for his inspection.

It’s not clear from historical records where Hitler’s body was temporarily interred. It seems he was stored in the Russian-occupied sector of Berlin. Once Stalin was satisfied Hitler was dead, and the dental work was conclusive identification, he began a misinformation campaign to deny this. Stalin’s motives for fooling the west have gone to the grave with him, but Stalin wasn’t finished with Hitler’s body.

On June 3, 1945, Stalin ordered Hitler’s remains exhumed from temporary storage and moved to a highly-secret and secluded spot. This was in the Brandenburg forest area southwest of Berlin. Hitler, and presumably Braun as well, were buried in wooden caskets which were more like shipping crates. They lay undisturbed for several months until Stalin had a change of plans.

For whatever reason, Stalin ordered Hitler dug-up again. On February 21, 1946, Stalin directed that Hitler be put under the ground at a parade square inside a Russian-held military base at Magdeburg, Germany. This spot was southwest of Brandenburg, but in a high-traffic area instead of a remote forest.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Russia carried on as the Soviet Union and entered the cold war. By 1970, Russia began turning occupied territory over to the East German government which was communist friendly. That included the Magdeburg base going back into German hands.

Yuri Andropov, who went on to be the Soviet Union leader, was the KGB head in the early 70s. Andropov knew Hitler’s body was under the Magdeburg parade square, and the last thing he wanted was a future German regime breathing life into Hitler’s memory by turning that site into a Neo-Nazi Mecca. Andropov had Hitler exhumed again and finally dealt with.

In the middle of the night on April 3-4, 1970, a secret shovel squad extracted what was left of Adolf Hitler’s bones and burned them. There are conflicting stories about what happened. Andropov is on public record stating the ashes were scattered in the nearby Elbe River. Work-party members state the bones were so dry that they vanished in smoke. And a few reports hint that Adolf Hitler was dumped into the city sewer system.

What finally took place with Hitler’s cadaver may never be known. However, there’s one thing for certain. Adolf Hitler’s teeth remain locked in a Kremlin vault. They’re resting there today.

What’s also certain is Hitler’s natural teeth contain his DNA. Those molecules stay preserved in the pulp. Hitler’s biological profile is encased within the enamel practically forever, and DNA can be cloned. Cloning Adolf Hitler was the plot in the 1978 blockbuster The Boys From Brazil. Back then, it was science fiction. Today, technology of DNA extraction and cloning zygote embryos into a surrogate mother is not sci-fi. It’s very, very, very real.

All it would take is some evil crackpot doctor like Joseph Mengele to steal Hitler’s tooth, saw it open, and start cloning away. That’s the terrible truth about Adolf Hitler’s remains.

BRINGING LIFE TO THE DEAD WITH CGI TECHNOLOGY

Once upon a time, when a person died… they stayed dead. Sure, they were remembered through paintings, etchings, busts and even death masks, but their long-gone images remained distorted likenesses of how they truly appeared in life. That’s no longer the case, as modern Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has the uncanny ability to eerily bring the dead back to life.

Images created with CGI technology are so good that it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s real and what’s invented inside a computer. Today, computer generated images are commonplace. You see them everywhere around you. From blockbuster movies like Toy Story and Iron Man to still-framed Amazon ads that capture your buying attention, you’re constantly bombarded with CGI impressions.

But, all CGI technological projects aren’t aimed at entertaining you or exploiting your bank account. The forensic world slowly endorsed computer generated imagery since its inception. CGI technology was a perfect fit for reconstructing faces on skulls found with decomposed human remains.

Once forensic anthropologists teamed with computer scientists specializing in CGI technology, the field expanded. It wasn’t long before specialized companies like Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University developed cutting-edge techniques to move beyond realistically recreating facial recognition from bare bones to analyzing historical works depicting famous people.

Recently, the team at Face Lab released stunningly-real images of Cleopatra, King Tut, Nefertiti, Shakespeare, Bach, George Washington, Mary Queen of Scots, Saint Nicholas and many other high-profile historical people. Yes, even the real Santa Claus has been brought back to life with CGI technology. Here’s a look at how Face Lab does it and some samples of their deadly depictions.

Technology Behind Computer Generated Imagery

You’d think computer generated imaging is a recent forensic and technological breakthrough. Not so. CGI first hit the public domain via the movie business with Westworld in 1973, Star Wars in 1977, Jurassic Park in 1993 and then in 1995 when Toy Story made Woody and Buzz come alive. Now, two decades into the 21st century, it’s fair to say that virtually every TV and big screen production uses CGI for special effects. Forensic science took awhile to adopt the digital techniques.

Albrecht Durer

Would it surprise you to know the basic principle behind computer generated imagery showed up in the 16th century? It’s called ray tracing. A brilliant German painter/printer by the name of Albrecht Durer discovered an artistic technique of following light rays from the human eye back to the object rather than the normal method of human perception where the eye captures a light ray blast. Durer didn’t have a computer, but his revolutionary technique was so successful that it influenced Renaissance Masters like da Vinci and Raphael.

In computer graphic terms, ray tracing is a rendering technique for generating images by tracking a light ray’s path from the viewer’s vantage point back through a pixel and onto a virtual object. The CGI designer works with shape, color, texture and light levels on the object to give it life-like realism once the image is transferred back to the eye. In a sense, it’s fooling the brain to see non-real objects as real.

This sounds simple, but it’s incredibly complicated. Ray tracing to build computer generated images is also exhaustively time-consuming. Images built through ray tracing also require mathematical expertise in using trigonometry to build algorithms that account for light ray effects. Computers are the key to managing huge information packages and pull the entire CGI process together.

Ray tracing produces believably-good images, but it comes with a cost. A skilled CGI technologist can spend a full day developing one frame of a movie. That transpires to thousands of person-hours building one movie scene which has to pay back through box-office sales.

Gamers can’t afford the time and money spent on developing picture-perfect imagery that movie-goers demand. Because video games are more real-time experiences, the gamer technologists use a CGI technique called rasterization. It works on manipulating light through tiny polygons rather than pixels and produces “raster” images. The results aren’t as real, but it’s hundreds of times faster and far cheaper than ray tracing.

Face Lab and Their Fantastic Faces of Forgotten Folk

Face Lab is an interdisciplinary research group attached to the Institute of Art and Technology at Liverpool John Moores University. It’s headed by Professor Caroline Wilkinson who is a world-renown leader in craniofacial analysis, facial depiction and forensic art. With her group at Face Lab, Prof. Wilkinson specializes in facial reconstruction through computer generated imagery as well as building portraitures of population demographics.

Besides contributing to forensic facial identification cases with law enforcement agencies like Scotland Yard, Interpol, the FBI and the RCMP, Face Lab finds time to have a little fun. They work with world-class museums to reconstruct realistic portraits from exhibit material. Using actual skulls of historical figures as well as authentic images, the Face Lab team applies highly-technical processes like 3D scanning, modeling and animating to known likenesses.

Recently, Face Lab took on a side project where they brought long-dead celebrities back to life with CGI technology. Their convincing result lets you look guys like Julius Caesar and Nero in the face. Here’s a peek at some fantastic faces of forgotten folk.

King Tutankhamun is the world’s most famous mummy. When his Egyptian tomb was opened in 1922, King Tut had been sealed away for over 3,200 years and the vault contained 5,000 dazzling artifacts. Some, like Tut’s gold funeral mask, are considered among the world’s most valuable antiquities.

King Tut was an unusual Pharaoh. He ascended the throne in 1342 BC as an 11-year-old boy. Tut died in 1324 BC from suspicious circumstances which some scholars believe involved foul play. Whatever the death mechanism was, Tut was never well. All depictions of him show Tut seated including his hunting and archery activities.

Recreating Tutankhamun was a classic case for Face Lab. They had his intact skull with preserved flesh to work with. The CGI technologists used 3D scans to build a life-like image and they used historical data from tomb paintings to get details like his skin and eye color bang-on.

Nefertiti was Tutankhamun’s stepmother. She was Queen to Pharaoh Akhenaten and lived between 1370 and 1330 BC. This royal pair was ahead of their time in religious views where they recognized monotheism or worshiping only one god.

Historians differ their view on whether Nefertiti carried on in power after Akhenaten’s death and before Tutankhamun took over. They also debate whether Nefertiti’s remains have been conclusively found. Some feel she’s still out there, and others attribute a mummy called “The Younger Lady” as being the long-dead queen.

What all agree on is that a bust of Nefertiti is authentic. It’s a limestone/stucco artwork found in 1912 and depicts a beautiful woman that matches other known images of her. From the bust and related works, a marvelous CGI portrait of a life-like Nefertiti emerged.

Cleopatra is perhaps the most famous woman in ancient history. That’s because of the mystique of her sexual power and masterful manipulation of men. It’s also because Cleopatra VII Philopator of the Ptolemy dynasty was beautifully portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her acting career.

Cleopatra was the last ruler of Egypt’s Ptolemaic Kingdom. She lived between 69 and 30 BC and took the royal throne at the age of 18. Cleopatra was love-linked to Mark Antony and Julius Caesar although her relationships may have been more political than romantic.

There’s no doubt Cleopatra was a bright and shrewd lady. She spoke numerous languages and her survival strategy was one of keeping friends close with enemies even closer. Forces caught up with Cleopatra, and she was rumored to have committed suicide by taking poison. It’s popularly believed she was intentionally bitten by an asp.

Julius Caesar, by anyone’s standards, was a powerhouse in the old world. He was a Roman general/dictator responsible for the empire’s expansion ranging from England to Egypt. Julius Caesar lived from 100 to 44 BC and made major changes to Roman societal structure which didn’t sit well with some senior senators.

Many military historians consider Julius Caesar to be one of the world’s great strategists and tacticians. His military and political philosophy is entrenched as “Caesarism” and still used as a study model on how to, and how not to, over-extend. One of Caesar’s conquests was Cleopatra and their union produced a son.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar’s relationship ended when he brought another woman to their Egyptian party. Caesar returned to Rome where he was assassinated by a conspiracy between rivals, one of which was Brutus (“et tu, Brute”). Today’s CGI techs were fortunate to have a host of Julius Caesar likenesses to work from.

Saint Anthony of Padua might not be a household name to some. To others, he’s known as the patron saint of lost things. Anthony was a Portuguese Catholic priest famous for wise preaching and teaching during his short lifespan that spanned 1195 to 1231 AD.

Saint Anthony was a masterful orator with an uncanny ability to heal the sick. He was intricately familiar with scriptures and explained bible quotations so the commoner could understand. Anthony’s frugal living and simplistic style related to people from peasants to the Pope.

Some strange things happened when Saint Anthony died. Legend has it that all the children cried as all the bells suddenly rang. The mystery goes deeper when his remains were exhumed 30 years after death. He’d turned into dust except for his tongue. Today, Saint Anthony’s preserved tongue is on public display in a Padua basilica.

Maximilien Robespierre was a prominent force in the French Revolution of 1789. He was a lawyer and political activist with an outspoken voice for commoners. His criticism of church and state led to profound violence and the French monarchy overthrow.

Although Robespierre was effective, he wasn’t a nice guy. His taste for power went beyond the public good, and he turned into a typical tyrant. Robespierre is now best known for his role in the “Reign of Terror” that took place between 1790 and 1794.

Maximilien Robespierre sent thousands of people to the guillotine. His turn came on July 28, 1794, when the tide turned and resistance fighters seized Robespierre, tortured him and cut off his head with the same system he used on so many. Today, Robespierre’s head is digitally reproduced through CGI technology.

Mary, Queen of Scots, was the ruling monarch of Scotland from 1542 to 1567. She was six days old when her father, King James V, suddenly died and she acceded to the throne. Mary ruled by title rather than in person for her formative years and grew up in France where she married Francis, the Dauphin of France.

Mary returned to Scotland in 1561after her husband’s death and married her half-cousin to which they had a son. Mary was never accepted by Scotland’s real rulers, the regents, and she was imprisoned in 1567. She was forced to abdicate and her son, James VI took over the title as King.

History generally views Mary, Queen of Scots as a decent woman who didn’t stand a chance of exercising power. In 1587, she was convicted of a trumped-up plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary was beheaded for the “crime” and now is convincingly recreated in a 21st-Century image.

William Shakespeare may be the greatest writer the English language has ever known. The “Bard” invented or contrived over 1,700 unique words, phrases, cliques and sayings. Some are simple and familiar nouns like critic, bandit and lonely. Some are creative verbs like elbow, dwindle and swagger.

From Shakespeare’s birth in 1564 to his death in 1616, he produced 39 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems and uncountable verses. He’s the mind behind Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. And Shakespeare wrote Othello, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Truly, William Shakespeare was a timeless talent.

However, some scholars doubt that Shakespeare produced all his attributed material. They also question what he really looked like as few Bard images exist. An engraving by Martin Droeshout is considered the most accurate Shakespeare portrait and it’s this piece that supports Face Lab’s CGI rendition.

Nero was the last Roman Emperor of the Judio-Claudian dynasty. He lived from 37 to 68 AD and died by suicide at the age of 31. Nero was a “Momma’s Boy” for his early years of rein, but turn-coated and had her murdered.

Tales of Emperor Nero’s instability abound. He seized Christians as slaves and had them burned more for cruel personal pleasure than serving public justice. Stories of Nero’s extravagance and tyranny finally caught up with the disturbed leader. The Romans revolted and rallied for Nero’s death.

During the Great Fire of Rome, Nero went to a rooftop and sang rather than pitching in with putting it out. Probably no one was more despised by nobles and commoners than Nero who took his own life. He left behind excellent sculptures and engravings that preserved his unquestionable likeness for eternity.

Meritamen means “beloved of the god Amun” in ancient Egyptian. She was the biological daughter and then wife of Ramesses the Great who ruled as Pharaoh from 1277 to 1213 BC. Meritamen was highly-influential in Ramesses II’s court, and many different depictions describe her appearance.

Egyptologists have identified Meritamen’s tomb and sarcophagus with inscriptions worshiping her. She’s also portrayed on numerous statues and drawn in detail on papyrus tributes. However, the only physical evidence of Meritamen is her skull and the remainder of her mummy is missing.

There is enough of Meritamen’s cranium and mandible to tell she had a sweet tooth. Her teeth showed advanced decay for her age. There was also enough information on  Meritamen from her skull, statues and drawings to generate a computer image of what was once apparently-attractive woman with exotically-braided hair.

King Henry IV was a nice guy as far as medieval kings go. Known as “Good King Henry” and “Henry the Great”, he reined England from 1399 to 1413 AD. Henry was 19 when he took over from his grandfather, King Edward III, after having his cousin King Richard II deposed.

Not everyone liked Henry, though. Cousin Richard came back to bite him through successive assassination attempts. History records 12 attempts to dethrone King Henry IV. After Richard died of starvation in jail, rebellions against Henry increased to the point where he fled to France.

Henry IV died under somewhat suspicious circumstances after clandestinely returning to England in 1413. He was well embalmed and was in good shape when exhumed in 1832 to verify his identity. Today, King Henry IV’s image is brought to life through computer generation.

Nicholas Copernicus was way ahead of his time in scientific disciplines. He lived from 1473 until 1543 during a time when most scholars thought the world was flat. Copernicus proved them wrong, but he didn’t have an easy go of it.

Nicholas Copernicus was a true Renaissance man who thought outside the box. In fact, Copernicus thought out the universe and first described the true nature of our sun-centered solar system. Today, we know Copernican Heliocentricism as a universal model from which our current understanding of the cosmos rests on.

Sadly, Copernicus and the Catholic Church didn’t see eye-to-eye. The papal institute made him renounce his blasphemous betrayal, and he publicly went along with it to save his skin. Nicholas Copernicus is now a role model of brilliance, but no one ever complimented his looks.

Johan Sebastian Bach was a German musical composer living between 1685 and 1750 AD. He’s best known for instrumental masterpieces like the Art of Fugue and vocal perfections such as the St. Matthew Passion. The 19th-century Bach Revival period recognizes the greatest western musical canon ever to live.

Bach was a child prodigy. He was born into a musical family and, by 11-years-old, Bach arranged Latin organ compositions for the church that set musical standards of today. He’s considered the epitome of mastering counterpoint and harmonic organization as well as larger vocal works like four-part chorales.

Johan Sebastian Bach died from eye surgery complications when he was 65. He was buried into obscurity but accidentally rediscovered during a church renovation. Bach’s skull, along with an authentic bust, gave the Face Lab crew strong support for generating his image in their computer.

George Washington was the first American president and a founding father of the United States. Washington lived between 1732 and 1799 during the time of colonial revolt and the Revolutionary War. He served as a general of the continental army and a patriot leader.

Following U.S. independence from the British crown, George Washington turned from military life and took up politics. He helped in drafting the constitution and implementing a strong government with fiscal responsibility set as a high priority. Legislators today could take lessons from George Washington.

George Washington is one of America’s most recognized faces. He’s on money, hung up in schools and used as a marketing symbol for integrity and independence. Here, Washington is recreated through computer generated imagery with details so clear that you can see the whites of his eyes and his five o’clock shadow.

The Lady of Cao might not be as famous as George Washington, but she’s definitely fascinating. This lady was once a Peruvian aristocrat. Now, she’s a perfectly preserved mummy with a brilliant new image thanks to computer generation.

Archaeologists unearthed the Lady of Cao in 2005 when they excavated ruins in Peru’s El Brujo region. She’s estimated to have died around 400 to 450 AD and was buried with artifacts suggesting she came from the upper class. She was also interred with a lower-class woman who researchers suggest may be a human slave sacrifice to help her in the afterlife.

The Lady of Cao was so well-intact that there’s little left for guesswork. Her physical appearance was recreated by the Face Lab team with help from computerized tomography (CT) scans. The Lady’s image is that of a remarkable woman adorned in a regal headdress who was probably in her twenties when she passed.

Saint Nicholas of Myra was a Christian bishop from the Greek maritime city in Asia Minor. His lifespan stretched from 270 to 342 AD during which time he was known for generousness, especially towards children. He’s also renowned for miracles which explains his other title as “Nicholas the Wonderworker”.

Besides being the patron saint for sailors and merchants, Saint Nicholas is also the prime patron of children. Nicholas is attributed to his legendary habit of leaving secret gifts for kids which led to the modern-day “Sinterklass” practice.

Saint Nicholas has been called by different names at different times. He evolved into Saint Nick and then Santa Claus. We best know the jolly old elf’s description from the western world’s Coca Cola commercial. Professor Wilkinson and her Face Lab people took a different view of the fat old man in the red suit, and they brought life to the dead by computer generating this image from an ancient fresco of the child-loving man called Saint Nicholas.

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