A LAWSUIT filed by an independent investigator demanding the FBI turn over a key piece of evidence in the infamous DB Cooper case has been dismissed by a judge, The U.S. Sun can reveal.
Citizen sleuth Eric Ulis filed a suit against the Bureau in March to gain access to a clip-on necktie left behind by DB Cooper when he parachuted out of Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971.
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Cooper hijacked the flight shortly after it took off from Portland, telling a flight attendant he had a bomb in his briefcase and needed $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes to spare the lives of the 36 passengers onboard.
When the flight landed in Seattle, Cooper ordered the pilot to refuel and take off in the direction of New Mexico.
Somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper lowered a staircase at the rear of the Boeing 727 and parachuted out into the night sky with the ransom tied to his waist.
He was never seen again.
Cooper vanished with all his belongings, except for a JCPenney clip-on tie that was left behind on his seat.
Ulis had been hoping to conduct independent forensic analysis on the tie, believing the FBI may have overlooked a key feature of the accessory that might still hold vital DNA evidence.
That feature is a small clasp built into the knot of the tie that spins and enables the wearer to adjust the knot to their desired size.
If Cooper ever adjusted the tie, Ulis believes the hijacker’s DNA will still be preserved in the spindle.
Ulis recently discovered the clasp after analyzing US Patent and Trademark documents for the tie.
He told The U.S. Sun that he asked two former FBI investigators who worked the Cooper case if they were aware of the spindle apparatus at the time, to which they responded they were not.
However, on Monday, Ulis’ quest to finally unmask Cooper received a considerable knock after a judge granted the government’s motion to dismiss his case.
In the ruling, US District Judge Jia M. Cobb wrote: “Regardless of the intrigue and mystery that shrouds the case of D.B. Cooper, [the Freedom of Information Act] only compels production on ‘records,’ not tangible objects. At the very least, not this tangible object.”
The judge pointed to various case laws, including a similar suit filed in 1971 to gain access to several items related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“A necktie – even a necktie that might contain DNA of a prominent figure like D.B. Cooper – struggles to find a place within the common understanding of ‘record’ is incapable of replication or copying and this is not ‘reproducible,’ and is seminal if not identical in kind to the physical items that court have already rejected as beyond the scope of FOIA.
“Indeed, if the shirt and coat worn by President John F. Kennedy during his assassination do not qualify, then certainly the necktie of rogue hijacker D.B. Cooper warrants the same treatment.”
In her ruling, the judge conceded the DC Circuit has yet to specifically determine what is and isn’t considered record.
“For this case, however, it suffices to say that to call a clip-on necktie an ‘agency record’ is not reasonable,” added the judge.
Ulis voiced disappointment about the judge’s decision in a statement issued to The U.S. Sun but vowed to appeal the dismissal.
“The judge’s ruling hinges upon her strict interpretation of whether the ‘agency record’ is ‘reproducible,'” said Ulis.
“I continue to believe that the agency record embedded upon the tie spindle is, in fact, reproducible just as the data coded onto a DVD or cassette tape is also reproducible.
“It is for this reason that I plan to appeal the judge’s decision.”
A MISSED CLUE?
In an interview last month to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of Cooper’s unsolved skyjacking, Ulis detailed his discovery of the tie spindle and the secrets he believes it may still hold.
He tracked down an almost identical replica of the JCPenney tie, from what he believes to be the same production year as Cooper’s: 1964.
Delving through US Patent and Trademark documents for the tie, Ulis said he made an interesting discovery.
“It’s got this sort of metal apparatus built into the tie knot and I discovered something in the patent […] there’s this little spindle you can twist and it would actually open up and expand the knot, or you could twist it [the other way] and close it back to tighten it,” explained Ulis.
“So depending on the person who’s wearing the tie, they can either have the knot be more prominent or less prominent, and I didn’t even realize that, even though I had the tie.
“I then tried opening mine, it was a little tight, but sure enough it eventually opened up.
“And, moreover, as I looked at the FBI pictures of the tie, every image I’ve ever seen showed the spindle in the closed position.
“That got me thinking, if it had ever been opened, at some point, DB Cooper would’ve touched the shaft part of the spindle, transferred DNA to it, and then closed it back up.
“That means DNA could still be encased in there, protected from contamination.”
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Ulis consulted with a DNA specialist who told him DNA could absolutely be preserved in the spindle all these years on.
After Monday’s ruling, a long road lays ahead in Ulis’ battle against the Bureau.
However, he said the prospect of this small discovery finally solving the DB Cooper mystery feels very probable if indeed Cooper’s DNA is found on the clasp.
“This possesses the ability to solve the case once and for all, if DB Cooper’s DNA is on there,” he said.
“And indeed, I think it’s yet another example of the FBI not being as thorough as they should’ve been because apparently nobody was aware that spindle could open up.
“And DB Cooper’s DNA may well have been underneath their noses this entire time, all they had to do was twist this little device.”
SECRETS OF THE TIE
Cooper’s tie has at least twice before been tested for DNA.
A profile was recovered from the tie but it wasn’t believed to belong to the hijacker.
After forensically analyzing the tie in 2011, FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt told ABC News: “It’s possible that the DNA sample taken off the tie was not from the hijacker. There are questions about the tie. It may have been borrowed or purchased used. The DNA may be from someone else.
“The tie had two small DNA samples, and one large sample lifted off in 2000-2001. It’s difficult to draw firm conclusions from these samples.”
Other evidence yielded from the tie led Ulis to a new potential suspect last year.
His newest suspect is a man named Vince Petersen, a former engineer at a titanium plant in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, that served as a Boeing subcontractor.
Petersen, who died in 2002, would’ve been 52 at the time of the skyjacking.
Ulis first identified Petersen as a potential suspect in late 2022 after analyzing a spreadsheet of microscopic evidence garnered from Cooper’s tie.
Several particles identified on the tie were determined to be consistent with specialty metals from the aerospace sector, including titanium, high-grade stainless steel, aluminum, and some rare elements, Ulis said.
He painstakingly went through a spreadsheet of more than 100,000 particles yielded from the tie in search of anything that seemed out of the ordinary.
Ulis explained: “My thought was that perhaps I could find something tantamount to commercial DNA, that I could find something that pointed to a specific company, something rare or a unique particle, just as DNA points to a specific individual.
“And indeed, I find three particles of a very rare alloy of titanium and antimony that have a very specific balance, a very specific blend.
“Why that’s important is because I paired that alloy up with a United States patent that was granted to a Boeing subcontractor based in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, which is no longer around.
“But I think that the science clearly suggests that DB Cooper came from this subcontractor, and that has enabled me to do a follow-up investigation and interviews and that type of thing to ultimately zero in on one particular person of interest who’s no longer alive that perhaps was DB Cooper.”
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Ulis believes Cooper’s tie was manufactured sometime around Christmas 1964.
He believes Petersen would’ve been in exactly the right place to acquire those particles on the tie.
He also believes Peterson shares a strong likeness to eyewitness descriptions of Cooper.
“This is what I’ll say about Vince Petersen: let me suppose it appears DB Cooper came from that titanium research lab, and the lab actually only had eight engineers working there, so a very small universe of men,” he said.
“The former supervisor, who was actually Vince Petersen’s supervisor, was still alive – at least as of last year – and I spoke with him on multiple occasions.
“And there’s a few reasons why the titanium research lab appears to be where DB Cooper worked.”
During his conversation with the lab supervisor, Ulis said he began describing Cooper’s physical attributes, telling him he was looking for a man between the ages of 45-50, clean-cut, conservative, with a high forehead and roughly 6-foot-1.
The supervisor apparently responded immediately: “That sounds like Vince Petersen.”
“So, I started looking into Vince Petersen from there,” continued Ulis. “Vince Petersen would’ve been 52 at the time of the skyjacking, around the right age, and his height makes him an anomaly for the time – that’s pretty tall for a guy born around 1920.
“I also asked the supervisor about traveling to Seattle. He confirmed he would travel to Seattle, as well as to visit other contractors like Lockheed or General Dynamics, and there was one other person that he traveled with on these trips occasionally – and that was Vince Petersen.
“So now, we can place Vince Petersen in Seattle, at Boeing, with the supervisor during the 1960s, possibly into the ’70s. But the ’60s is most important because that’s when the 727 that Cooper hijacked was being developed.
“It obviously doesn’t prove that Vince Petersen was DB Cooper, but it’s certainly intriguing as far as everything else goes, as we know he had access to the titanium and antimony particles that were found on Cooper’s tie.”
Another trace of evidence on the tie that Ulis found intriguing was a trace of a commercial kind of salt.
According to Ulis’ research, Vince Petersen studied extensively and even wrote an academic paper on the effects of salt on titanium.
He took his findings to Petersen’s son, who is now in his 60s, but he apparently didn’t believe his father was DB Cooper.
“And that’s fair enough,” said Ulis. “But it’s an intriguing thing all the way round. Vince Petersen was kind of an odd duck. I’ve talked with his former neighbor and been to the home he used to own, and I plan to conduct a search of that home in the near future.
“I hesitate to put a percentage of the likelihood of Vince Petersen being Cooper, but I will say he’s a compelling person of interest.
“And, hopefully, through a combination of efforts, I can either ascertain 100% that he wasn’t DB Cooper, or I can ascertain 100% that he was DB Cooper.
“Because at the end of the day, it really is a binary choice; It’s either zero percent or 100. It’s not 98 or anything in between.”
STRANGER THAN FICTION
For the last 15 years, Ulis has been screening potential suspects, reexamining the evidence, conducting his own searches in the Washington wilderness, and has even founded CooperCon, an annual exhibition for fellow DB enthusiasts.
He has set himself the task of cracking the Cooper code once and for all by 2030.
What’s so compelling about the story 52 years on is the fact it was real, Ulis said, and not some myth or scene from an action movie, though it reads like one.
“We’re not talking Bigfoot, we’re not talking the Loch Ness Monster; this is a real event and this really happened,” he said.
“And also you have this James Bond-esque element to it all: the guy with the black suit, sunglasses, the bourbon and 7UP, smoking his cigarettes. The way the guy presented himself is also very alluring.
“And the early ’70s was a fairly tumultuous time in US history, so I think the whole anti-hero thing resonated with a lot of people and has had an effect on how people view him still today.”
Ulis said he often fantasizes about the moment he finally unmasks Cooper.
When that breakthrough comes, he says he’ll enjoy a nice scotch and cigar at his desk, lean back in his chair, and smile as he says to himself: “We got him.”
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