Robert H. Edwards

An excellent, scientific, and thorough recounting of "D. B. Cooper" and the highjacking of Flight 305. In detailed but interesting chapters, with color maps, tables, and photographs, Edwards recounts the highjacking and picks it apart section by section. His conclusions are (spoiler alert), roughly, that (a) Cooper may have worked or known about Boeing or Air America tests of parachuting from the rear stairs of 727s; (b) the flight probably stayed in the Victor 23 corridor; (c) Cooper probably did not jump at the 8:11 pm pressure "bump" that most researchers and the FBI believe; (d) Cooper jumped out a bit later, over or past Portland, Oregon, which means he may have fallen in the Willamette River or the Columbia River near Portland; thus (e) the money could have ended up floating to Tena Bar for whatever reason (more easily explainable than the FBI landing site). That is it's well-argued and reasoned case in a nutshell. Edwards eschews the task of picking a suspect, or even asking whether Cooper survived the jump. Only in an afterword does he bring up a possible suspect, a loadmaster in the Army and engineer later, who was not pursued by the FBI. But he doesn't name him and leaves more work to be done. This is the book on the skyjacking I have been hoping for: scientific, explanatory, and not full of zany crackpottery.… (mais)