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On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.

Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?

It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.

Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely. And we have reignited the case—thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing.

You can help. We’re providing here, for the first time, a series of pictures and information on the case. Please look it all over carefully to see if it triggers a memory or if you can provide any useful information.

Check out the photos and the rest of the evidence at the FBI Press Room

For my money this is one of the best stories in the history of crime. Period. The story still resonates with me as strong as it did when I was a kid and saw the story covered on “In Search Of…”

via NPR

[3-29-2008: update!]

Cooper’s parachute found?

Chute Find Rekindles D.B. Cooper Legend

AMBOY, Wash. (AP) — A tattered, half-buried parachute unearthed by kids had D.B. Cooper country chattering Wednesday over the fate of the skyjacker, who leapt from a plane 36 years ago and into the lore of the Pacific Northwest.

While the FBI investigates whether the fabric came from the world’s only unsolved skyjacking, the discovery re-energized a legend in the southwestern Washington woods where Cooper may have landed, and where time has helped turn him into a folk hero.

I spent some time yesterday catching up on this story. This is a little easier to link to than the forum posts I had to read yesterday to get the scoop on this fascinating story.

(link via Schneier on Security)

A few weeks back I blogged about allegations of cheating at an online poker site called Absolute Poker. While things looked awfully suspicious, there wasn’t quite a smoking gun, and it was unclear exactly how the cheater might have cheated.

A combination of some incredible detective work by some poker players and an accidental (?) data leak by Absolute Poker have blown the scandal wide open.

You can read the first-hand account in the following thread at 2 2 Poker Forum, but here’s the short version:

The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open

Handsome painting:

Whenever paintings like this are recovered it gives me hope that the missing Gardner masterpieces will be returned one of these days.

A police raid in Glasgow has recovered a £30m Leonardo da Vinci painting stolen more than four years ago.

Arrests after da Vinci work found

Da Vinci officers never lost hope

Just in time for my trip

“Fugitive gangster James “Whitey” Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, may have been spotted in Sicily in April by a vacationing federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who shot a brief video of the couple before they slipped away, according to law enforcement officials.”

You know, even with the conservative look, he still looks like he’s ready to stick a gun in somebody’s mouth. The video (which should really be on Youtube- seriously I’d post that here in a hot second,) makes me wonder how well concealed the guy/gal doing to taping was since both of them look apparently right into the camera. I’m not sure how a DEA agent would handle it, but if I were filming Whitey and looked right into the camera I’d probably just start running. Sure he’s like 95 years old, but he’s still a freakin’ on-the-run murderer.

FBI posts pictures of possible Whitey Bulger sighting in Italy

Nice is nice. Oh snap! I didn’t just make that joke, did I? Someone shoot me. I’m at my wit’s end over here.

Five armed, masked thieves sprinted into an art museum on the French Riviera during opening hours Sunday afternoon and snatched a Monet and three other masterpieces off the walls in the latest brazen heist of high-profile art from the rich collections of Europe.

Wearing jumpsuits, the robbers ordered guards to lie on the floor at gunpoint as accomplices fanned through the galleries of Nice’s Museum of Fine Arts. One thief grabbed French Impressionist Claude Monet’s “Cliffs Near Dieppe” while others snagged the bucolic “Lane of Poplars at Moret” by another Impressionist, Alfred Sisley, and two evocative oil paintings by Flemish artist Jan Bruegel the Elder, according to Interpol, the international police agency.

In case you were wondering, this is the Sisley:

And this is the Monet:

4 masterpieces stolen from museum in Nice - The Boston Globe

It’s bad enough that there are kids out there taking Jackass to heart. But when they end up hurting people other than themselves it actually makes me angry. I mean if some kid wants to light himself on fire or jump off of a roof because he thinks it’s cool then who am I to complain? Anyone that stupid needs to learn an object lesson every once in a while. But in this case? The idiot’s friend was asleep and unwittingly gets drawn into the Realm of the Brain-dead? That’s foul. Police: Boy burns sleeping friend with hot water in stunt mimicking ‘Jackass’ movie

Genovese boss Gigante ends insanity ruse, pleads guilty to obstruction of justice

Man convicted in officer’s drunken driving death gets 26-33 years

Small consolation of course, but seeing this piece of shit get such a lengthy sentence is nice.

“BOSTON (AP) A man convicted of killing an off-duty Boston police officer in a drunken driving accident was sentenced Tuesday to 26 to 33 years in prison.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted William Powers last week of manslaughter, felony motor vehicle homicide and two counts of causing an accident resulting in serious bodily injury while operating under the influence.

The August 2001 collision in South Boston killed Officer Sean Waters and severely injured two of his friends. ”

Kidnapped teen back with family. Personally, I’m floored that she’s still alive. Stunned. After nine months or whatever it’s been? I just assumed she was dead. She’s not. That’s amazingly excellently excellent. I can’t even craft a positive enough phrase.

Diamond theft haul worth $100m.

Let me write that out for you: $100,000,000. That’s a big number.

A wicked big number.

I want to see the TV movie.