Tag Archives: DNA

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.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PERSONAL DNA TESTING

Personal DNA testing is a huge business. Genetic profiling on an individual or home-based level is a multi-million dollar industry that’s tripling each year. As the biological identification process becomes faster, easier and cheaper, more and more people are submitting their spit. What they’re finding can be fascinating—or terrifying—which makes some folks reluctant to try. But, if you’re curious about checking out your molecular makeup, here’s what you need to know about personal DNA testing.

DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. It’s the basic building block of organic life—the blueprint prescribing every bit of non-local as well as tangible information required to make a bee a bee, a bird a bird, and a beluga a beluga. DNA is also what makes you… you.

About 99 percent of your DNA is universal to the living world. You share most of the same biological codes with other carbon-based life forms. As you move closer to your mammalian cousins like the apes or the now-extinct Neanderthals, that 1 percent of your human coding narrows. By the time you reach your individual family level, DNA gets very unique.

Your personal DNA profile is as individual to you as your fingerprints. That’s unless you have an identical or monozygotic twin, in which case you’d have the same genetic blueprint. Or, you might be an exceptionally rare occurrence known as a chimera. In that event, you’d have two different DNA profiles within your cells.

How DNA Operates in Human Cells

Cells allow you to be a living human. Every part of you, from your blood to your bones to your brain, is made of individual cells. There’s no way to count the number of cells in your body as they’re constantly changing. You have more cells as you grow from a toddler to a teen and less cell material when you succeed on your diet.

It’s estimated the human body, like yours, completely recreates itself every month or so. New cells replace your old cells and life goes on until you die. Then your cells stop reproducing, and you begin decomposing which is an entire science of its own.

The amazing thing about your cell regeneration is that, for the most part, they perfectly reproduce. That’s thanks to the specific information encoded in your DNA. Without DNA direction, you’d be like trying to repeatedly rebuild the space station without the plans.

What makes you unique as a human being, rather than an ape, is your chromosomes. These are particular chapters in your DNA playbook and appear as lengths of information in your genome sequence. As humans, we have 22 pairs of chromosomes that direct everything from skin color to disease resistance. It’s problems with information breakdown in chromosomes that are leading causes of birth defects and inherited disorders.

There’s a distinct difference in boys and girls and women and men. That’s because of the 23rd pair of chromosomes that complete our human makeup. All females have two X-chromosomes in their last pair while males have one X chromosome complimented with a single Y-chromosome. Genetically, female chromosome equations get expressed as 22+XX while males are 22+XY.

The numbers associated with the human genome project, and where DNA fits in, are truly staggering. It’s a wonder we function at all. There are four biological building blocks in your DNA which are nucleotide chemical bases—adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). You have approximately 3.2 billion pairs of A, T, C and G in your cellular makeup. That’s a total of 6.4 billion letters describing your DNA genome code which contains 6,500 segments known as centimorgans (cM). Multiply this by the trillions of cells in your body…

You actually have two DNA types active in your cells. One is “regular” deoxyribonucleic acid that supplies codes for building physical cell structure. The other is mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA). The mitochondrion is a human cell component that creates energy. Each cell contains 16,569 base pairs of mtDNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is Maternal

You get mitochondrial DNA from your mother who got your genetic recipe from your grandmother. It’s a unique biological occurrence that happens on your maternal side and geneticists believe it’s because the pre-fertilized egg that you started from needed an energy source and coding to initially program it. From the point of conception, when your father’s sperm joined your mother’s egg and created you as a zygote before you were an embryo (Google it – zygote is a freshly fertilized egg), your cell nucleus information remained maternally bound.

Mitochondrial DNA has nothing to do with determining chromosomes and whether you turned out male or female. Having two XXs or a Y and an X was a biological crapshoot. It’s a flip of the coin, according to theory, and it’s amazing that after the billions and billions of babies born, they average about 51 percent female and 49 percent male. Go figure who figured the odds.

But your chromosomes, directed by your regular DNA and powered by your mtDNA have everything to do with how you turned out. Some speculate DNA contributes to how you act and feel, as well. Although there’s no scientific proof of DNA contributing to emotions, let alone consciousness, it’s because of DNA that we’re alive and curious. One of the biggest curiosities today is what our DNA profile tells us about who we are and where we came from. Perhaps it’s that knowledge that helps us understand where we’re going.

How Personal DNA Testing Happens

An internet search finds over twenty outlets offering personal DNA profiling services. Some are credible. Some are not. It’s caveat emptor in the profiling business and we’ll cover that in a bit. First, let’s look at how a typical DNA profile happens. It goes like this:

Research the Service and Provider Best Suited to Your Goal

That might be tracing your ancestry, determining parentage, finding relatives, planning a family, identifying genetic risk through inherited deficiencies, determining pharmacological compatibility, developing a lifestyle or any one of a number of motives for why you’d want to see your profile. Be cautious, though, of relying on dubious predictions on optimal diets and such. Experts warn that using DNA tests to extrapolate this type of information is probably pseudoscience.

Order Your Collection Kit Online

Most companies now use sterile swabs for collecting saliva. Good old spit is by far the best-suited substance for DNA typing. Sure, the forensic scientists can isolate DNA from blood, bone marrow, hair follicles, semen samples, vaginal fluid and mucus. But, for obvious reasons, these aren’t best managed for a personal collection.

Collect Your Saliva Sample

Your mouth is full of genetic material. By far the best area of your mouth to swab is your inner cheek or under your tongue where you store the largest amount of buccal swabs. Some companies supply tubes to simply spit into, but the most efficient and accurate collection method is swabbing. At any rate, you can’t go wrong by following the manufacturer’s instructions.

Package Your Sample

Your kit provider will include a vial to seal your swab and prevent contamination. Cross-contamination can ruin a personal DNA test, so make sure you have limited handling and that you keep others some distance from your swabbing. The return envelope or container should be pre-addressed and suitable for regular mail. You might have to buck-up for postage, depending on who’s doing your test.

Register Your Sample

This is extremely important. All DNA testing companies require online registering before they receive your swab. Otherwise, they can’t process it. Again, follow the directions and select your options. Some testing agencies require completed questionnaires. If you have privacy concerns, it’s best to read the fine print or call their customer service line.

Wait for Your Results

You’ll have to wait anywhere from four to eight weeks to receive your DNA profiling results. This depends on the particular company, their backlog and how detailed an analysis you requested. You’ll be digitally notified, likely by email, or you may have to log on to your private portal.

Decipher Your Personal DNA Test

This might be the most difficult part of your whole DNA profile procedure. If you’re simply looking for ancestry information, it might be straightforward. But, if you’ve ordered an in-depth search into your maternal or paternal lineage, there’ll be more to it. That’s certainly so if you’ve requested genetic information pertaining to your health.

Available DNA Testing Services for Individuals

There are three main DNA testing services available for personal profiling. Keep in mind that you’re dealing with a civilian process that’s an interesting information exercise rather than a forensic examination bound by the rules of evidence. Civilian genetic testing agencies will offer one or all of these services:

Autosomal Testing — This is the most basic and popular means of genetic testing. It’s commonly called the family finder. The autosomal method looks at your 22 standard chromosome pairs, not including the ones that determine your sex. The first 22 chromosome pairs are called autosomes. Through autosomal typing, the service aligns you with other profiles already stored in their database and matches you with similar people. As regular DNA changes with generations, autosomal testing only goes back 5-8 generations, unlike the other two services that can profile you between 20 and 100 generations.

mtDNA Testing — Mitochondrial services focus on the X chromosome in your DNA profile. Every human has an X chromosome signature regardless if they’re female or male. mtDNA profiling is precise and this is where geneticists zero-in on abnormalities in your traits and indicate issues that you’d otherwise have no idea about.

Y-DNA Testing — This one’s for boys only. As women don’t have a Y chromosome, they can’t play this game. Y-DNA testing follows the paternal line that’s passed from fathers to sons. However, don’t write-off the girls too quick. They have a way around determining their paternal line. If you’re female, you can simply ask your biological brother for a Y-DNA test and you’ll find all about your dad’s side of the family.

How the Science of Personal DNA Testing Works

There’s nothing simple about DNA testing science. This is a highly-trained, exacting discipline done in expensive laboratory environments. As with other science arenas, DNA testing methods have rapidly improved with technology. Today, scientists can extract the smallest DNA fragment and multiply it as many times as necessary to develop an accurate profile. It’s like cloning.

Once your saliva sample hits the lab, technicians extract your DNA content from the liquid through a centrifuge and plating procedure. What they’re looking for is an area of your genome sequence that displays certain variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs). Within the identified VNTR points are smaller sections called short tandem repeats (STRs) which are microsatellites that really tell the story of who you are, who made you and where you came from.

You’ll find a lot of DNA lingo if you surf the net. Some terms are PCR, RFLP and ALFP but the only notable acronym that applies to personal testing is STR. From STR information, technicians apply a quantitative analysis that provides a statistical interpretation of approximately 20 “loci” core markers. This is as technical as you need to get in order to understand what’s happening with your spit at the shop.

It’s the power of statistical discrimination that’s amazing in STR DNA analysis. You’ll hear DNA technicians speak of statistical probabilities when quantifying the reliability and accuracy of your DNA test. It’s common to hear results like 99.999 percent or one-in-a-billion. No matter how they present your results, you still have to do some interpretation.

Commercial Services for Personal DNA Testing

No doubt you were waiting for this part. Now that you have some idea of what personal DNA testing entails and are taking the plunge into the biological soup-pot that supports you, the question is what services are suitable for you. In other words, what’s the best bang for your biological buck?

Well, this website isn’t associated with commercial DNA testing and receives no referral fee, so there’s every reason to be independently objective. There are plenty of providers and gobs of internet information available, so you’ll have to do a bit of homework. To help you speed the process, here are the highest rated commercial services for personal DNA testing:

Cellular Research Institute (CRI) — This seems to be the Cadillac of DNA testing services, according to Genetics Digest. It also seems to be the only one employing a world-renown, Harvard-educated genetic scientist who trained under Dr. Watson (who is one of the co-discoverers of the DNA double-helix molecule). CRI has an amazing depth of analysis and a widely expanding database. They’re not expensive, though, considering what you get. You can pay $99 for a quick ancestry test and $199 for a basic ancestry & heath profile. The price quickly rises for specialized work.

AncestryDNA — These DNA testers are probably the best known providers. That’s because they’ve been around the longest after starting Ancestry.com. Originally, Ancestry was an online family tree service. They got into the DNA business as a value-added service and are highly reputable. Ancestry is also relatively affordable. Prices start at $129 and go to $299, depending on what service you want.

23and Me — If you’re looking for thorough ancestor reports and some decent health observations, 23andMe is a good choice. They’re fairly new and their marketing really appeals to millennials. So does their price point. 23andMe has an a la carte menu starting at $99.

tellmeGen — If you’re a hypochondriac, you’ll want to pick up a tellmeGen personal DNA testing kit. They do basic autosomal tests, but really shine when drilling down into what’s behind your health concerns (real and imaginary). You’ll pay for it, though, as their entry level test is $169 and it climbs from there.

MyHeritage — For basic, bottom-line DNA testing on a budget watch, get yourself a kit from MyHeritage. You’ll shell out $109 and they’ll be back to you in 3-4 weeks with a really cool pie-chart of what’s going on in your body.

Remember Caveat Emptor

In personal DNA testing—like most things in life—you get what you pay for. Good services cost money and, if you want credible results, you’ll have to buck-up. That’s not to say that many other commercial DNA services aren’t honorable, credible and valuable. A quick internet scan finds agencies like LivingDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, AfricanAncestry and even National Geographic Geno 2.0. They’re probably fine, too.

But you will find some scammers. One online investigator submitted saliva from his golden retriever, Bailey. He got back a computer generated profile that missed Bailey’s species but got her hair color right. The report also profiled Bailey as not suitable for contact sports and suggested she take up golf.