Fish True Crime Blog: True Crime-Looking Back at the D.B. Cooper Story and New Developments

It's another True Crime post and we've got more info on the D.B. Cooper parachute and a possible identification!

Plus, those fine boys who taunted the San Francisco tiger? Well here's an update and why are we not surprised?

A Brazilian serial killer you'll not believe and the Yeager girl got to see her father before she went unconscious. More on that story.

Finally, man arrested for, we're not making this up, sex with a picnic table.

Quote of the Day

Fine Boys Who Taunted Tiger Now Suing

Stories on the San Francisco killing and mauling by Tatiana the tiger, were covered on this Blog HERE ,HERE ,HERE, ,HERE ,HERE AND HERE.

It’s not so much that the fine Dhaliwal brothers are suing the city of San Francisco for their wounds caused by Tatiana the tiger, a big cat that somehow escaped its inadequate enclosure to kill their friend Carlos Sousa and injuring both Paul and Kulbir Dhaliwal before police finally shot and killed the tiger.

An argument can be made that the wall meant to contain the tiger wasn’t as tall as industry standards require and no matter what those fine boys, whose parents must be so proud of them, were doing before the tiger escaped the moat, the tiger should have been contained.

Let’s not forget here that the attorney we all admire so much for his courtroom skills, the fine Mark Geragos, the fellow who got Michael Jackson off for child molestation, is representing these fine boys. No wait! Geragos didn’t get Jackson off, in fact, Geragos didn’t even come to court the day of the Jackson verdict…such a fine, fine attorney to the stars.

In the link below we learn that all of these fine folk, the best that humanity has to offer, are suing the city of San Francisco, not only for injuries they received by an animal the city failed to properly contain, but also for defamation of character!

From the Mercury News.com:

The bizarre aftermath of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack took another strange twist this week. Two San Jose brothers injured in the attack filed a negligence and defamation claim against the city and zoo, and hours later, one of the brothers was in trouble with the law.

Paul Dhaliwal, 19, was arrested on suspicion of trying to swipe a pair of Nintendo Wii video game controllers from a Target store in San Leandro.

Now in order to have one’s character defamed one has to have, gulp, CHARACTER!

These Dhaliwal boys, at least as they admitted to their dead pal’s father the day of the tiger attack, had been drinking and smoking marijuana this past Christmas day when they decided to visit the zoo. They also engaged in mischief that likely resulted in angering the tiger by standing on top of the fence and waving and in general taunting the tiger.

Now smoking dope, drinking, visiting the zoo, indeed even waving and teasing a tiger in a pit aren’t necessarily against the law, especially in California where anything goes.

And goodness knows what the truth is but it has been reported that footprints were found inside of the fenced enclosure above the pit where the tiger was pacing in anger at her tormentors. By the boys’ own admission and in a police affidavit of the incident, that bit about the dope, beer and taunting was noted and someone had to tell the police this.

The allegations by the fine Geragos, who evidently doesn’t know when to stop when he’s ahead, are that the public relations firm hired by the zoo made untrue charges against those fine boys and ruined their pristine and pure reputations that makes the angels smile.

It’s entirely possibly the zoo threw out some facts that cast aspersions on these fine boys but first, if a footprint was found in the area around the pit than a footprint was found. Any conclusion made that the footprint was left by one of these fine boys was up to whoever heard this factoid. It’s not like the zoo said, for example, Paul Dhaliwal’s footprint was found inside that fenced enclosure.

Beyond that, let’s talk about these fine boys and the character they don’t want sullied.

According to the link provided at the Mercury news above, Paul Dhaliwal was recently arrested for trying to steal Nintendo parts just recently. The fine Paul Dhaliwal also has another arrest on his pristine record for battery against a police officer.

And both of these fine boys, in a shocker, still face TWO misdemeanor accounts for, gasp, public drunkenness and resisting arrest, as hard as that might be to believe.

These boys are 19 and 23 years old and already they’ve got quite a record, fine, fine boys.

Couldn’t Geragos have just file a suit against the zoo for failing to control its damn tiger, something the zoo should have done no mind what foolishness these fine boys were engaged in that day? To sue for defamation with the history these boys have is to spit in our collective faces and demonstrate a greed I doubt any jury, even a California jury, will reward.
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Doe Network Helps Name the Dead

I chanced across this story and found it intriguing and thought perhaps other True Crime buffs might be interested. Indeed, the Internet makes such a network possible and here’s a tribute to those living souls who spend their spare time giving the lonely dead a name and a proper remembrance.

From WRAL.com:

At 37, Matthews is a sensitive soul who has always felt an affinity for the dead, perhaps because two of his siblings died just after birth. Matthews still chokes up when he visits the graves of Gregory Kenneth and Sue Ann. But at least he knows where they are buried.

When the body of a dead person is found, first thing would be, of course, to identify that body. Something that does not always happen. I’ve read plenty of stories of children’s bones found in a forest or in a basement being renovated. Adult bodies are too found with no one around to claim them and all are often buried with no name or identity.

Enter the Doe Network, a group of folks across the fruited plains who spend their spare time seeking to identify and give the dead a name, a proper burial with a name on the headstone, and a memory.
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3rd Graders Plot to “Hurt” Their Teacher

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the third grade. My granddaughter is four years old and she’s waaaaay closer to third grade than me. But I’m just not believing that up to NINE third graders were discovered plotting and scheming to “hurt” their teacher.

And yet, it’s true.

From Yahoo.com:

WAYCROSS, Ga. - A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.

Since this happened in Georgia and since that state’s laws prohibits charging a child under 13 with a crime, every one of these children, whose parents must be so proud of them, has not been charged with any crime at all.

According to the link above, the word “kill” was never mentioned. But this was no idle children’s fantasy, folks. These kids actually brought such items as steak knives, duct tape, and a heavy paperweight to school! Further, these kids sat and divvied up the various jobs such as covering the windows and all other deed required to “hurt” their teacher, who they were angry at for a scolding of a student a day prior.

All of these fine children, with obviously such bright futures ahead of them, have been suspended but they are innocents, ladies and gems, innocents who can’t be charged with any crime at all.
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Sure He’s a Serial Killer. But He’s Also a Minor!

Speaking of youngsters, here we have a 16 year old who confessed to killing twelve people!

Because he’s a minor, Brazilian law does not allow release of his identity. I must suppose it’s okay to know the names of his victims dead at the hand of this fine adolescent whose parents must be so proud of him.

From CNN.com:

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- A 16-year-old boy has admitted to the murders of 12 people in southern Brazil, according to a police investigator who described a chillingly calm confession.

This Brazilian 16-year-old says he killed 12 people in three months, police say.

The teenager, whose identity was not revealed because he is a minor, allegedly told police he killed his victims over the past three months in a fit or rage or out of revenge, and police inspector Enizaldo Jose Plentz said Friday he believes the boy killed some of his victims for enjoyment.

If this fine young man managed to kill twelve people in his short life span of 16 years, I’d softly suggest he must have started while he was very young.

Like maybe the third grade, just throwing it out there?
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Let Me Be the First to Start the D.B. Cooper FBI Conspiracy

So last week I get all excited, not that I have a life or anything, to hear that a parachute had been found in a farm field in Amboy, Washington. First thing I ask right here for yon two or three readers who read this Blog every day, just what the hell is a parachute, a DEPLOYED parachute evidently, doing buried in a field in Washington state?

Notice of the parachute had been broadcasted widely and its discovery was featured on many of the news cable networks, some devoting entire shows to the story of D.B. Cooper. So if some hapless parachuter had deployed that parachute over some desolate field in Washington state, something skydivers do all the time, jump from airplanes into large copses of trees and lonely farm fields, then why didn’t this sky diver come forward and claim the chute to be his or hers?

Or maybe the parachute belonged to some Japanese or German soldier who jumped from the plane over the populated area of Amboy, Washington to begin an attack that would stun America as it stood helpless in not protecting its remote forests and farm fields in Washington state, a center of great human activity at any rate?

D.B. Cooper, in a synopsis, was a clever fellow who hijacked an airplane and through a series of twists and odd maneuvers, managed to get delivery of $200,000 in twenty dollar bills and four parachutes to the hijacked plane. He released all the passengers and Cooper and the crew then took off to eventually end up over Washington state, where Cooper jumped out of the plane with the money.

No one’s heard of D.B. Cooper since.

Back in the early 80’s, almost $5,000 of those twenty dollar bills were found by a kid playing on a beach. Remember please that Cooper got $200,000 so that five thousand was just a small bit of the money given to Cooper. The FBI had delivered unmarked bills as required but they did note the serial numbers of the bills delivered to Cooper. Which is how those bills found on the beach were identified as part of Cooper’s ransom.

Below, God Bless America, I found an original story on the D.B. Cooper story written when it happened.

From Star Tribune.com:

A Northwest Airlines stewardess said Friday she first thought a note handed her by a hijacker on a flight Wednesday between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., was “a pass” or an attempt to “hustle” her.

Stewardess Florence Schaffner, 23, who said she regularly encounters amorous passengers in her work, put the note in her purse without reading it.

So after much speculation by many over whether the parachute could have been used by D.B. Cooper, now we discover that it was not, in fact, any of the four originally delivered to Cooper.

From Yahoo.com:

SEATTLE - A tangled, torn parachute found buried last month last month is not the one used by plane hijacker D.B. Cooper when he bailed out of a plane over the Pacific Northwest, the FBI said Tuesday. Investigators reached that conclusion after speaking with parachute experts, including Earl Cossey, who packed the chutes provided to Cooper that rainy November night in 1971.

Something about the parachutes delivered to Cooper were nylon and this parachute was silk. Or maybe visa-versa.

D.B. Cooper has been one of True Crime’s “heroes” since 1971. First, his crime was rather benign in that he didn’t harm a soul on that airplane and, in fact, risked his own life to escape rather than harm the crew who flew him over Washington state that rainy and foggy night.

Second, the guy only wanted a couple of hundred grand for God’s sake. While that was way more money back in the early seventies than it is today, it’s more like an amount someone would demand if they somehow thought it owed to them although I’ll admit this is my speculation.

Third, D.B. Cooper is believed to have been a former military guy of some sort in that investigators speculate the modus operandi of the crime, what with involving jettisoning one’s self from an airplane, would likely only have been chosen by someone familiar with such things, such as a military paratrooper.

Fourth, the man, his parachute or the money, has never been found. Sure a few dollar were found but what happened to the rest of the money? With the discovery of this parachute it was speculated that Cooper planted the money to be found at a later date in order to confuse investigators.

Finally…it’s been known for a long time exactly where Cooper likely landed the night of his intriguing jump. They’ve now found a parachute, they’ve already found the money…where the hell are Cooper’s bones if he died?

So I now declare myself the FIRST person to assert that the FBI is hiding the fact that this parachute does really belong to D.B. Cooper and for whatever reason, perhaps to discourage future thefts of this nature, the FBI is lying to us.

Heh.

It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Sort of.
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The Toilet Lady…One More Time

This past Tuesday I posted an update to the story of the mentally weird woman who’d sat on a toilet for two years until her skin actually grew around the toilet’s seat. This story was the subject of much speculation and in this Blog post I reported that the fine man who failed to notify authorities of his girlfriend’s plight had been charged with exposing himself to a neighbor.

I had a picture of where this toilet story happened and failed to upload it when I posted that update on the story and the pic is too important to not post. Below, the home of the fine man, who got charged with the crime of failing to seek help of a mentally deficient person. The same fine man who right after his girlfriend finally got the help she needed exposed himself to a teenaged neighbor.

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Man Taped Having Sex With a Picnic Table

An update on the story linked below states that charges against this fine fellow were dropped but he isn’t yet in the clear.

From WTOL.com:

BELLEVUE -- Police say a man in Bellevue was caught on tape having sex with a picnic table.

Bellevue Police Captain Matt Johnson says Art Price, Jr., 40, was seen on four occasions between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and noon having sex with his picnic table. What makes this a felony, Johnson says, is that it took place in close proximity to a school, which made it likely that children could have seen Price.

So my husband, True Crime expert extraordinaire, asks what the hell’s wrong with having sex with a picnic table?

“It’s not like it’s a living being,” is how he couched his query. Yes I’ve been watching how he acts around our own picnic tables but so far they are just friends.

Indeed we’ve had stories on this Blog about perverts having sex with Rottweilers and dead people but this is the first time we’ve had a story of a pervert in love with his picnic table.

The bigger problem, as yon reader can plainly see, is couldn’t this fellow and his picnic table have gotten a room for God’s sake?

And the fact that this picnic table was in plain view from a nearby school makes me wonder if, in fact, it wasn’t the possibility of being seen by the children that was more the aphrodisiac than the picnic table.

Like they say folks, you can’t make this shit up.
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