By Tim Binnall
A recent search for famed skyjacker D.B. Cooper's parachute yielded a rather intriguing discovery in the form of a white sheet that may have played a role in the caper. The potential clue to the decades-old cold case was found last Thursday by researcher Eric Ulis as he and his team were scouring a spot located near where a boy had stumbled upon some of the money from the legendary crime back in 1980. Detailing the discovery in a press release, he explained that the group had only searched fifteen percent of the three-quarter-mile-long trench, where they believe the parachute might be located, when they found "a tattered white flat sheet" amidst "dense blackberry bushes."
Amazingly, the bedding had a Kmart tag on it which allowed Ulis to determine that it had been purchased from the store "between 1964 and 1967," which is around seven to four years before the skyjacking. He went on to note that flight attendant Tina Mucklow told the FBI that Cooper had tried to wrap the ill-gotten cash in some kind of "white material" prior to jumping from the plane and vanishing into the annals of true crime history and mystery. Ulis also pointed out that other witnesses from the caper recalled seeing the skyjacker carrying around a sizeable paper bag that could have contained the white sheet.
"Given the flight attendant account of seeing Cooper use a white material to wrap the $200,000 ransom, the mystery of the paper bag, the age of the white flat sheet, and the location of its discovery, the possibilities cannot be ignored," Ulis concluded. He went on to muse that "this item is at least 56-years old and was transported to the difficult-to-reach spot, within a half mile of the 1980 money find, somehow, for some reason, by someone." The researcher now plans on having the sheet tested to see if it contains the same distinct fibers that were found on the necktie that Cooper left behind in the plane.