SEATTLE — You know the stories exploring whether D.B. Cooper was a Boeing employee?
Never mind. Time for a new speculation.
Now the attention of the “Citizen Sleuths” on whose research all those viral headlines were premised are pointing at another Pacific Northwest company as D.B.’s possible employer:
Tektronix, out of Beaverton, Ore. Not quite the name recognition as Boeing, but it’s well-known in the electronics industry.
The Boeing connection is still there, said Tom Kaye, of Sierra Vista, Ariz., who identifies himself as the principal investigator of CitizenSleuths.com.
It’s just that now the group believes the titanium particles found on D.B.’s tie came from Tektronix, which may have been doing contract work for Boeing back in the 1960s through 1971 (when the project was canceled) on the supersonic transport jet, better known as the SST.
The group was given access to the tie by the FBI and used an electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy for its work.
Kaye now believes that D.B. “was an engineer or manager type who was going back and forth between Boeing and Tektronix.”
Boeing understandably said that “we have no comment on these reports.” It’s trying to sell jets, not be associated with D.B. speculation.
As for Tektronix, it was founded in 1946 and holds 697 patents.
It makes oscilloscopes and optical modulation analyzers.
Last week, Amy Higgins, spokeswoman for the company, said it didn’t have employment documentation in its database that would go back some five decades.
So it really couldn’t add much, she said. She also said if Tektronix had been doing work on the SST, it was likely “a confidential relationship.”
It’s been 45 years since “Dan Cooper” hijacked that Northwest Orient Airlines jet, and somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nev., parachuted out with $200,000 in $20 bills.
His legend is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to stories we can’t help but read.
There was the woman who had undergone transgender surgery and claimed to have been D.B. as a way to get back at the industry that kept her from becoming a pilot.
There was the Minnesota man who believed his late brother was D.B. when the family discovered unaccounted-for money in the brother’s bank accounts.
And there are more potential D.B.s who have made the news but then not been linked to the case by the FBI.
The agency suspended active investigation in July.
It’s that black clip-on J.C. Penney tie found on the seat cushion 18E, the same seat assigned to Cooper, that has been at the heart of these latest speculations.
D.B. had that now-retro look down pat. It was the look you often would see with the engineers and management at Boeing.
