 Hi, it's Darren. I need to take just a quick moment to let you know I need to leave town for a family emergency and will likely not be able to post new episodes for the next week or two. But I will post archive episodes, so you'll continue to get daily content – hopefully you either will not have heard the episodes before or you won't mind hearing them again. I'll be back with new episodes as soon as possible. I might be on Facebook and Twitter during this time, depending on what happens, so you can follow me there if you'd like. Just look for Weird Darkness at both. Thanks to all of you for being loyal, weirdo listeners. You mean the world to me. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Nine-year-old Minnie Lee Langley was outside with her mother on New Year's Day, 1923, when she saw them coming. A mob of white men marching to her hometown of Rosewood, a daughter of the Jim Crow South where violence against black people was part of everyday life. Minnie knew that all those white men together meant terrible trouble. We was out there in the front yard and them crackers were just coming down the railroad, just as far as you can see some of them, she recalled, in a radio documentary in the 1990s. Just as far as you could look, you could see them in those big white hats and on horseback. Even by the standards of the 1920s south, the chain of events that followed was unfathomable. Over the course of a week, Minnie Lee's small town would be wiped off the map with the families who lived there so terrified to speak of what happened that the town was almost wiped from history as well. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. For nine years, a family in South Wales experiences activity that defies rational explanation. Amidst the tree-lined streets of Alpine, New Jersey, stands an ominous tower with a haunting reputation. On November 24, 1971, one of the most famous disappearances in the annals of American crime took place in thin air. But first, a white mob wiped this all-black Florida town off the map. 60 years later, their story was finally told. The tragic story of how racism destroyed Rosewood, Florida. We begin with that story. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Rosewood was a relatively well-off, nearly all-black town a few miles from Florida's Gulf Coast, with an African Methodist Episcopal Church, a Masonic lodge that doubled as a schoolhouse, and two general stores. Most of the people who lived there were domestics for white families in nearby Sumner, or worked in the town's sawmill. The white mob had been summoned after the screams of Sumner resident Franny Taylor brought neighbors running to her door on the morning of January 1st. Taylor had been beaten, her face visibly bruised, and she claimed her attacker was black. Eyewitness accounts from her domestic workers told a different story. They said she was struck during an argument with the white lover she was seeing while her husband was at work. Nevertheless, the group of whites numbering in the hundreds, according to white witness and Sumner resident Edith Foster, were deputized by the county sheriff. They'd followed a bloodhound's nose two miles to Rosewood and Minnie Lee's family's front yard, where they grabbed Aaron Carrier, Minnie's uncle, and started looking for a rope to tie him up. Mama just went to crying and all that saying, don't kill him because he don't know nothing about this, Langley recalled. The sheriff intervened and took Carrier to a nearby jail for his own safety. It was the only time that white authorities would help black residents of Rosewood. A few hours later, the mob dropped the pretense of lawfulness and grabbed Rosewood resident Sam Carter, who was African American. They accused him of knowing and hiding Taylor's assailant, strung him up in a tree, and tortured him before murdering him, taking body parts as souvenirs. The next target was another of Minnie Lee's uncles, Sylvester Carrier, who gathered the extended family at the home he shared with his mother, Sarah Carrier. Sylvester's house was two stories tall with glass windows. He stocked up on ammunition, hid his nieces and nephews in the upstairs bedroom, and took up watch. He considered himself the protector of the family which he had a right to, recalled white Sumner resident Ernest Parham, who was 17 at the time of the massacre. On January 4th, the mob returned and surrounded Sylvester's house. From upstairs, Minnie Lee heard the mob calling her great aunt, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, come on out here now. Sarah refused to leave. Minnie Lee crept downstairs looking for comfort from a grown-up. Sylvester grabbed her just before a member of the mob kicked down the front door and sheltered her behind the firewood bin as he took aim and shot the intruder, then fired at the man who rushed in behind him. A firefight followed, but afraid to approach the house and running short on ammunition, the mob disbanded. Thirteen of the women and children left the home and ran for the swampy woods. Three days and three nights we stay out there in the woods in that cold Minnie Lee recalled, we didn't have no clothes. The bodies of Sylvester and Sarah were found the next day, January 5th, when the mob returned to torch their house and the town church. They burned the home of Lexi Gordon, who couldn't run because she was sick with typhoid. When she dragged herself out of the fire in her backyard, she was shot and killed. Then the mob came across James Carrier, Minnie Lee's grandfather, and made him dig his own grave before they shot him. By January 7th, eight people, six black and two white, had been confirmed dead. By the time the destruction ended, the town had been all but raised. Some white people refused to simply stand by and watch. John Wright, who owned the general store, was one of the few whites who still lived in Rosewood in 1923. He did what he could to save his black neighbors by sheltering women and children in his home and searching for the survivors crouched in the woods. The owner of the sawmill in Sumner sheltered his Rosewood workers until the rampage ended, instructed his white employees not to participate in the mob and sent guards to protect Sumner's black residents. Wright is credited with arranging for a train to stop in Rosewood at 4 a.m. on January 6th and guiding women and children on board. They took refuge in Gainesville, Jacksonville and other nearby towns and eventually reunited with the men in their families, sometimes after months-long searches. Few others helped, despite national publicity about what was at the time called the Rosewood riots. Those who failed to act included the governor of Florida. In fact, he offered to help the county sheriff who declined assistance. Reassured that the matter had been well handled, the governor headed out for a lazy round of golf. Rosewood, meanwhile, was left in ruins and today it is all but impossible to tell that it was once a town. It took 60 years for the refugees to return to Rosewood. Their visit was initiated by a Florida journalist, Gary Moore, who had stumbled on the story of the massacre. His 1983 article in the St. Petersburg Times drew national attention. 60 minutes followed up with the story that same year and reunited Minnie Lee by then a frail woman in her 70s with a few fellow survivors on the site of the former town. Standing in a field of tall grasses, broken up only by the occasional tree and the remains of fences, Minnie Lee seemed overwhelmed. Yet she kept telling her story. In 1994, she testified before the Florida legislature, lending her support to a bill that noted the state's failure to protect Rosewood residents and requested compensation for the survivors. The bill passed. Minnie Lee, who had spent her life making brooms in a factory and retired without a pension, was awarded $150,000. She died a year later at the age of 82. As well as a fascination with the people and creators that make the paranormal community what it is. Exploring all 40 subjects, from phantoms to UFOs and every cryptid creature in between, their global team collects stories, conducts interviews and reports on cutting edge paranormal projects. They also consider contributions from outside writers, researchers and artists. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine to learn more or subscribe to Paranormality magazine. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine. And you can get 10% off your subscription if you use the promo code Weird. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. My family and I lived at a large property called Gladstone Villa. From 1969 to 1978, we experienced activity that simply defied a rational explanation, such as lights going off and on. We witnessed electrical cables being pulled, and my grandmother, Bill, claimed to have had a glass bottle thrown towards him as he entered the main bedroom, missing him by inches. I didn't personally see this myself, but I still recall the time he came from there with the broken bottle in his hands, and he told us what happened. There was the occasional sighting, but this was very rare indeed, so rare that in all the nine years I was there, I never once saw it, but I did hear it many times in the bedroom. It's still worth mentioning that my mother, Caroline, saw it on at least two occasions. There were also regular footsteps heard in the main bedroom every evening. Sometimes during the day, when we'd all be downstairs watching TV, one of us would turn the volume down to hear it more clearly, and my grandfather, Bill, would point to the ceiling and say, he's by here, and he's by there now, trying to make out where the footsteps were coming from exactly. There were five members of the family that were living in Gladstone Villa. My maternal grandfather, William Higgs, known as Bill to family and friends, a retired minor who worked at the local colliery. He was a short, bald man who liked nothing more than to listen to his country and western LPs, Johnny Cash and Glenn Campbell and so on. He also liked westerns on TV that starred John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. My maternal grandmother was Rita Higgs. She was a short woman who was a housewife. She was completely T-Total, but she did like an occasional smoke. She also liked collecting garden gnomes and liked watching soap operas on TV. My mother, Caroline Dexter, met my father at the local bakehouse in Baldwin Street. She was dayshift regularly, and my father worked the night shift. He would stay behind to make her a cup of tea and have a chat. They dated for three years before they got married on Monday, the 1st of April 1968. The Beatles were number one with Lady Madonna, very apt. They did not get a place of their own, but they decided to live with my grandparents at Gladstone Villa, which was in Cardiff Road. I was born on the 24th of August 1969, when everyone was listening to the latest number one in the charts, Onkytog Woman by Rolling Stones. It was soon after that my mother said that strange things started to happen. I was just a baby when she said it all started off rather quietly, like small tapping here and there but nothing too noticeable, but in time the activity gradually increased. One time my mother said the family heard a noise, a noise like someone jumping down from the attic and onto the landing. Naturally thinking that someone was trying to break in, they went to see what was going on. When they got there, they found nobody there, but the hatch to the attic was open. Whatever it was eventually occupied itself in the main bedroom, which incidentally was my grandparents' room. It soon made its presence felt by walking around the bedroom and the sounds of dragging could be heard. One day, my mother went upstairs to that bedroom to get my father up for work so he could get ready for his night shift. When she got there, she was confronted by the site of the ironing board placed on my father's torso as he slept. When he awoke he was astonished to find the situation he was in. He suspected my grandfather Bill was playing pranks but in time he knew my grandfather was not responsible for it and he told his work friends what was going on there and it got around town that Gladstone Villa was haunted. My parents separated in 1972 and my father left Gladstone Villa, but it wasn't because of what was going on at Gladstone Villa, it was just a breakdown of the marriage. They finally divorced on the 25th of April, 1975. The British band The Bay City Rollers were number one on the charts with Bye Bye Bay. Again, very apt. It would have been amusing but for the fact of what was going on there. I was barely two years old so I have no memory of my father living at Gladstone Villa, but he would come to see me every Saturday to take me to see my paternal grandparents and to the local cinema, great times even though the paranormal activity still continued. As I got older, I too witnessed the activity for myself. I actually saw the poltergeist activity for myself. I saw the electrical cables being pulled by unseen forces. I saw the lights going off and on and when my grandfather Bill would play records on Sunday as the family did dinner, it would turn the music off. It took exception to the British band Slade and any religious TV shows my grandmother Rita would watch. The local police were also involved. I remember them popping their heads into the attic, hesitating and not going in but they suggested it was my father playing a prank on the family. The family friend, Mrs. Ivy France, she was more of a friend to my grandmother Rita. She was very skeptical when my grandmother told her that Gladstone Villa was haunted. I could still remember Ivy going into the main bedroom, looking around and saying it was vibration from the traffic outside causing it, but she was soon to change her mind when she experienced it for herself. It was then she suggested the local press and a medium. The medium was John Matthews and when he came to Gladstone Villa, he started by asking the family questions. He then began by challenging the spirit to perform by knocking on the ceiling and sure enough it responded by knocking back at him. At some point John went into a trance to try and make contact with it but he failed to get a name. He later confirmed the obvious that there was indeed a presence there and it was an earthbound spirit and that it had unfinished business. A priest by the name of Graham Jones was called to Gladstone Villa. He blessed the property and after a few prayers he duly left and it was quiet for a few short months after that. No incidents but he did return with a vengeance. This time it decided to show itself. One evening my grandfather Bill, my mother Caroline and I were watching television. My grandmother Rita was reading a book when all of a sudden my mother just so happened to look to her left and she saw the full solid figure of a monk standing by the doorway. We did not see this as we were otherwise occupied but she later described it in detail as a monk in typical brown habit complete with hood over the head so she didn't see the face. It sounded very much like a 16th century Benedictine monk. Fred Davies was a friend of my grandfather Bill. They worked together at the local colliery and he would visit most evenings. Fred was a slim man who would wear a flat cap and glasses and smoked homemade cigarettes that hung from his lips when he spoke. He'd sit in his favorite chair by the open fire and talk to the family and watch TV with us. One day Fred was with us in his usual place by the open fire. I was quietly playing with my toys by the sideboard. It was quiet when all of a sudden there was one very loud bang. It was so loud that Fred ducked his head and I ran to my mother for comfort. When it was quiet we all went upstairs. My grandfather Bill would always be first and I would be last. When we got to that bedroom we found nothing that could account for the noise. Fred later told us that he ducked his head as he thought it was going to come through the ceiling. Fred told us of another experience he had at Gladstone Villa. My grandfather Bill liked to look out the landing window that overlooked Cardiff Road and into Bargode Town Center. This time Fred joined him. He said he felt something brush past him. When he looked there was nothing there. The most frightening experience I had was when I was alone in that particular bedroom. I made sure the light was on. It was very quiet. I was lying on the bed facing the window that overlooked Cardiff Road when I suddenly felt something heavy pounce on the bottom of the bed. I heard the bedsprings go just once and I felt the bed bounce. I didn't look straight away but when I did there was nothing there. I went downstairs to tell my mother and we all went back up. We saw distinctive paw marks on the bed like that of an animal. I later found out that my grandfather Bill had a black Labrador dog called Tuvi who died before I was born. My grandfather Bill and my mother Caroline claimed to have heard a baby crying there but as I didn't hear that at the time I took very little notice of what they said. The activity got so bad that my mother, grandmother and I slept downstairs with the lights on. It was only my grandfather Bill who was supposedly brave enough to sleep up there. It was then that he himself had yet another experience there. He told us that he was lying on the bed when all of a sudden he couldn't move. He couldn't even shout out to us to help him. This very well could have been sleep paralysis but he said he heard something in the room with him. My grandmother Rita had her own experiences. One day she went upstairs into that room to get my grandfather up when she saw the boiler door open wide by itself. She didn't stay there to see what it was but she rushed out of the room. Another occasion she said she had the sensation of something pulling from under her foot like she had stepped on his gown. We had the ghost for so long that my grandmother Rita gave it a pet name. She called him Jami and my grandfather Bill would shout out that name to provoke a reaction but nothing would happen. Ivy Francis' son Charles got to hear about what was going on at Gladstone Villa and he came along with some friends and with my family's permission they went into the bedroom. It frightened one of his friends and to this day one of his friends still says it was a spooky place. My mother Caroline had an operation and she ended up on crutches to support herself. The local nurse would tend to her foot. My mother sat on the chair when the nurse came this day and the nurse knelt down to tend to her and she told my mother not to hold her. My mother looked at my grandmother Rita in amazement and she was not holding the nurse at all. My mother made her own conclusions that it was Jami the ghost that was holding her so as not for the nurse to hurt her. The only time I heard the ghost being vocal was the time we were all in the room. One of us wanted to use the bathroom and we couldn't get in there. My grandfather Bill said he's behind there. I heard quite distinctively the sound of Gregorian chant and that was it. Nothing more. We left in the summer of 1978 when two local businessmen bought the property and Gladstone Villa was eventually converted into a small hotel and its name changed to Reds Park Hotel. On the night before we moved there was one final incident we experienced as if it knew we were going and that was its way of saying goodbye. My mother, grandmother and I got ready to go to sleep. The light was still on and then we heard the doorknob turning as if someone was trying to get in. At first I naturally suspected my grandfather Bill as he was the only one who slept upstairs in that room and we thought it may have been him playing a prank. I called out to him but there was no answer, no laugh that would give him away. We then heard our belongings that were packed in the hallway being thrown around. The next day we asked my grandfather Bill if it was him playing a joke on us. He insisted it was not and to this very day I still believe him. I had my 40th birthday at Reds Park Hotel in August 2009 for old time's sake and it was the female staff that told me about the ghost and I told them about what happened to me there 30 years before. The staff told me of their own personal experiences, lights going off and on, the odd sighting in room 5, a bride in white was seen, again as with the claims of the baby crying that made no sense to me at the time. I did a thorough research of the property and the Cardiff Road area and I found out some very interesting things indeed. I found out from Bargoid Library and local newspaper archives that Gladstone Villa dates back to 1900 and it was named after the former British Prime Minister William Gladstone. I discovered the previous people that lived there, the Kimmiet family in 1924, the new married couple Michael and Evelyn Kimmiet and a son named Elvin Kimmiet. He died at the property just four months old according to the archives of Cardiff newspaper The Western Mail of that year. This explained the baby my mother and grandfather heard in the bedroom. Mrs. Evelyn Kimmiet died in 1970 soon after I was born, maybe this is why the activity all started. I also found out that there was a monastery in Baldwin Street where my parents met and worked and there is a property directly opposite the former Gladstone Villa property in Cardiff Road dating back to the 16th century. It is now a public house called the Rafa Club. A priest's body is said to be there but it is sealed up, which explains the monk my mother saw. What I have said here is true. I wouldn't share this if I couldn't possibly back this up and I've used real names as I have nothing to hide and all I have said can be verified by the family of those people I mentioned. Sadly, some of the people I have mentioned are no longer with us. I challenge any hardened skeptic and firm non-believer and I could assure them that they will indeed most certainly question their belief system. Of this I have no doubt at all whatsoever. In fact, I am 100% positive. You may google this property, it is still there on Cardiff Road, Bargo and Wales, UK, very near Kirefully and Cardiff. This place needs to be thoroughly investigated and it is well worth documenting. I am quite serious about this and very sincere. There are very few among those with a love for the supernatural who don't also have a passion for Edgar Allan Poe. Poe wasn't simply a melancholy author who wrote about premature burials, sinister black hats and talking ravens. He was much more. If you've ever read a modern mystery or horror novel, you can thank Poe. Poe invented the modern mystery story, mostly invented science fiction and was the first writer to take the horror stories of the Gothic era and set them in modern times, starting a trend that continues today. With a lifelong interest in Poe, Troy Taylor decided to take his own look at the mysterious and macabre writer, his tragic life, unexplained death and lingering hauntings. He invites listeners along to delve into the strange and bizarre world of Edgar Allan Poe, from his early life to his tragic marriage, his insane grief, his dramatically failed career, his links to an unsolved murder and the mystery of what happened to the writer in the five days before his unexplained death. Even more than a century and a half later, no one knows what happened to Poe before he was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland or what killed him. Why did he disappear and then show up in an incoherent state wearing another man's clothes? Where did he go when he vanished and who was the mysterious Reynolds that Poe whispered about in his dying breath? And perhaps strangest of all, does he haunt the mysterious graveyard where his body is buried? Nevermore, the haunted life and mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe, written by Troy Taylor, narrated by Darren Marlar. Find a link to the book on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com Alpine, New Jersey, a borough of Bergen County is just a 15-mile drive away from Manhattan. A rather upper-crust place to live, Forbes ranked Alpine as one of America's most expensive zip codes in 2012 and it's maintained that prestige ever since. As nice as it is, history will prove that even the most pleasant bustling sought after town is not without its share of dark mystery and folklore and Alpine has several shares of it. Amidst the treeline streets, gorgeous houses and beautiful parks of Alpine stands an ominous looking tower called the Devil's Tower. Built in 1910 by a millionaire sugar importer named Manuel Rionda, the tower has taken on a reputation for being both cursed and haunted, a terrifying combo. But how did an otherwise striking piece of architecture acquire such a sinister reputation? There are many different theories. It's widely thought that Manuel built the 100-foot stone tower at the end of a scenic pathway lined by cedar trees as a gift for his wife Harriet, so she would have a nice place to break away from the troubles of the day and look out to the sweeping view. When Harriet died in 1922, stories began circulating that Harriet actually jumped to her death from the highest point of the tower after looking out and catching her husband cheating on her with another woman. This story went from mouth to ear so many times in the town of Alpine that it became known as truth, which is so often the case with legends such as this. Since Harriet's death, people have reported being pushed by unseen forces in the tower, seeing apparitions in the form of black clouds that appear and then vanish in a blink, and even smelling Harriet's perfume. After hearing one too many reports of things of this nature, Manuel locked the tower and filled in the tunnel that ran from its entrance to the house. At this point, the tower gained its newly official name of the Devil's Tower, which has stuck to this day. If you ask a local, they'll tell you that it's known around those parts that if you drive or walk backwards around the tower a number of times, Harriet will appear to you. On November 24, 1971, one of the most famous disappearances in the annals of American crime took place in thin air between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, when a man, since identified only as D.B. Cooper, parachuted to an unknown fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and an ongoing FBI investigation, Cooper has never been found or even identified. The case remains the only unsolved air piracy in American aviation history. Hundreds of leads have been pursued over the years, but no real evidence about Cooper's whereabouts or identity have ever surfaced. In addition, the bulk of the ransom money that he received has never been found. Its whereabouts, like the true identity of D.B. Cooper, remains unknown. The skyjacking began mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971, at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon. A man carrying a black out-of-shay case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He identified himself as Dan Cooper and purchased a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a 30-minute trip to Seattle, Washington. Cooper boarded the aircraft and took a seat. He then lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda. On board, eyewitnesses recalled a man in his mid-40s between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall. He wore a black, lightweight raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white-colored shirt, a black necktie, and a mother-of-pearl tie pin. Flight 305, approximately one-third full, took off on schedule at 2.50 pm local time. Cooper passed a note to Florence Schaffner. The flight attendant situated nearest to him in a jump seat attached to the aft stair door. Schaffner, assuming the note contained a lonely businessman's phone number, dropped it unopened into her purse. Cooper leaned toward her and whispered very politely, Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb. She looked at the note, printed in near all capital letters. It noted again that Cooper had a bomb and asked her to sit next to him. She asked to see the bomb. Cooper cracked open his briefcase long enough for her to glimpse eight red cylinders attached to wires coated with red insulation and a large cylindrical battery. After closing the briefcase, he dictated his demands $200,000 in negotiable American currency, four parachutes, two primary and two reserve, and a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft upon arrival. Schaffner gave Cooper's instructions to the cockpit. When she returned, he was wearing dark sunglasses. Flight 305's pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle Tacoma Airport Air Traffic Control, which informed local and federal authorities. The 36 other passengers were informed that their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a minor mechanical difficulty. Northwest Orient's president, Donald Nairup, authorized payment of the ransom and ordered all employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker. The aircraft circled Puget Sound for approximately two hours to allow Seattle police and the FBI time to collect Cooper's parachutes and ransom money. Schaffner recalled that Cooper appeared to be familiar with the local terrain. At one point, he remarked, looks like Tacoma down there, as the aircraft flew above it. He also mentioned correctly that McCord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Seattle to Tacoma Airport. Schaffner described him as calm, polite and well-spoken, not at all consistent with the stereotypes, enraged hardened criminals or take me to Cuba political dissidents popularly associated with air piracy at the time. Tina Muklow, another flight attendant, agreed. He wasn't nervous, she told investigators later. He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time. He ordered a second bourbon in water, paid his drink tab, and insisted Schaffner keep the change and offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle. He was the most polite criminal since John Dillinger. FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle area banks, 10,000 unmarked $20 bills, many with serial numbers beginning with the letter L, indicating issuance by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, most carrying a series 1969-C designation, and made a microfilm photograph of each of them. Cooper rejected the military issue parachutes initially offered by authorities, demanding instead civilian parachutes with manually operated ribcords. Seattle police obtained them from a local skydiving school. At 5.24 p.m. Cooper was informed that his demands had been met, and at 5.39 p.m. the aircraft landed at Seattle Tacoma Airport. Cooper instructed Scott to taxi the jet to an isolated, brightly lit section of the tarmac and extinguish lights in the cabin to deter police snipers. Northwest Orients Seattle Operations Manager Al Lee approached the aircraft in street clothes to avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake his airline uniform for that of a police officer and delivered the cash-filled knapsack and parachutes via the aft stairs. Once the delivery was completed, Cooper permitted all passengers, Schaffner and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane. While the plane was being refueled, Cooper made plans with the cockpit crew about his escape. They would fly towards Mexico City at minimum airspeed with the landing gear down and at a low altitude so that the cabin remained unpressurized. The aircraft's range was limited so they would have to take on more fuel before Mexico. Cooper and the crew decided that Reno, Nevada would be the perfect spot. At approximately 7.40 p.m., the plane took off again with only Cooper, pilot Scott, flight attendant Muklow, co-pilot Raneczak and flight engineer H.E. Anderson on board. After takeoff, Cooper told Muklow to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed. As she complied, Muklow observed Cooper tying something around his waist. At approximately 8 p.m., a warning light flashed in the cockpit, indicating that the aft air-stairs apparatus had been activated. The crew's offer of assistance via the aircraft's intercom system was curtly refused. The crew soon noticed a subjective change of air pressure, indicating that the aft door was open. At approximately 8.13 p.m., the aircraft's tail section sustained a sudden upward movement, significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight. At approximately 10.15 p.m., Scott and Raneczak landed the plane with the aft air-stairs still deployed at Reno Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies and Reno police surrounded the jet as it had not yet been determined with certainty that Cooper was no longer aboard, but an armed search quickly confirmed that he was gone. Somewhere in flight, Cooper had vanished into history. Aboard the airliner, FBI agents recovered 66 unidentified latent faker prints, Cooper's black clip on tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip and two of the four parachutes. Witnesses were interviewed, composite drawings were made and investigators began questioning possible suspects. One of the first was an Oregon man with a minor police record named D.B. Cooper, contacted by Portland police on the aft chance that the hijacker had used his real name or the same alias in a previous crime. His involvement was quickly ruled out, but an inexperienced wire service reporter, Cly Javen of UPI by most accounts rushing to meet an imminent deadline, confused the eliminated suspect's name with the pseudonym used by the hijacker. The mistake was picked up and repeated by numerous other media sources, and the moniker D.B. Cooper became lodged in the public's memory. A precise search area where Cooper jumped from the plane was difficult, even impossible to determine. When he jumped from the plane, the aircraft was flying through a heavy rainstorm over the Lewis River in southwestern Washington. The best guess put investigators on the southernmost outreach of Mount St. Helen's, a few miles southeast of aerial Washington, near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed by a dam on the Lewis River. Search efforts focused on Clark and Kelletts counties, encompassing the terrain immediately south and north, respectively, of the Lewis River in southwest Washington. FBI agents and sheriff's deputies from those counties searched large areas of the mountainous wilderness on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door questioning and searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. No trace of Cooper, nor any of the equipment presumed to have left the aircraft with him, was found. Later, this area would be called into question, and numerous others were later suggested. In the end, no one really knew where to look. In late 1971, the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers to financial institutions, casinos, racetracks, and other businesses routinely conducting significant cash transactions and to law enforcement agencies around the world. Northwest Orient offered a reward of 15 percent of the recovered money to a maximum of $25,000. In early 1972, U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public. A number of other rewards were offered by newspapers and remained in effect until Thanksgiving 1974, and while there were several near matches, no genuine bills were found. In 1976, discussion arose over impending expiration of the statute of limitations on the hijacking. Most published legal analysis agreed that it would make little difference, as interpretation of the statute varies considerably from case-to-case and court-to-court, and a prosecutor could argue that Cooper had forfeited immunity on any of several valid technical grounds. The question was rendered moot in November when a Portland grand jury returned an indictment against John Doe, a.k.a. Dan Cooper, for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act. In effect, the indictment formally initiated prosecution of the hijacker that can be continued should he be apprehended at any time in the future. In February 1980, an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram vacationing with his family on the Columbia River about nine miles downstream from Vancouver, Washington and 20 miles southwest of Ariel uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, significantly disintegrated but still bundled in rubber bands as he raked the Sandy River Bank to build a campfire. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom, two packets of 100 bills each, and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper. The discovery launched multiple new rounds of conjecture, and ultimately raised many more questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were founded on the assumption that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries, which confirmed the idea that, despite many theories, no one still had any idea where Cooper landed. Multiple alternative theories were advanced. Some surmised that the money had been found at a distant location by someone, or possibly even a wild animal, carried to the River Bank and reburied there. There was also the possibility that the money had been found on the River Bank earlier, perhaps before the dredging, and buried in a superficial sand layer at a later time. The sheriff of Cowlitz County proposed that Cooper accidentally dropped a few of the bundles on the air stairs, which then blew off the aircraft after he jumped and fell into the Columbia River. One local newspaper editor opined that Cooper, knowing he could never spend the money, dumped it in the river or buried it there, and possibly elsewhere himself. No hypothesis offered to date satisfactorily explains all of the existing evidence. The means by which the money arrived on the River Bank remains unknown. The D.B. Cooper case has never been forgotten, and technically is still being worked on by the FBI. Over the years, the FBI has periodically made public some of its working hypothesis and tentative conclusions about the case, drawn from witness testimony and the scarce physical evidence. The official physical description remains unchanged and is considered reliable. Agents believe that Cooper was familiar with the Seattle area and may have been an Air Force veteran, based on testimony that he recognized the city of Tacoma from the air as the jet circled Puget Sound, and an accurate comment to Mucklow that McCord Air Force Base was approximately 20 minutes driving time from the Seattle to Tacoma airport, a detail most civilians would not know or comment upon. His financial situation was very likely desperate. Extortionists and other criminals who steal large amounts of money nearly always do so, according to experts, because they need it urgently, otherwise the crime is not worth the considerable risk. A minority opinion is that Cooper was a thrill seeker who made the jump just to prove it could be done. Agents theorize that he took his alias from a popular Belgian comic book series of the 1970s, featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot who took part in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. Because the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English nor imported to the U.S., they speculate that he may have encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe. The FBI task force believes that Cooper was a careful and shrewd planner. He asked for four parachutes to encourage the assumption that he might compel one or more hostages to jump with him, thus ensuring he would not be deliberately supplied with sabotaged equipment. The amount and form of the ransom appeared also to have been carefully calculated in advance. 50 or $100 bills would have drawn attention and been too difficult to pass, and a larger quantity of $20 bills would have been too heavy and bulky for the jump. Cooper was apparently quite familiar with the 727-100 aircraft. It was the ideal choice at the time, not only for its aft air stairs but also the high afterward placement of all three engines, allowing a reasonably safe jump without risk of immediate incineration by jet exhaust. In addition, Cooper knew that the aft air stairs could be lowered during flight, a fact never disclosed to civilian flight crews since there was no situation on a passenger flight that would make it necessary, and that its operation, by a single switch in the rear of the cabin, could not be overwritten from the cockpit. He may even have known, particularly if he served in Vietnam or had friends who did, that the Central Intelligence Agency had been using 727s to drop agents and supplies behind enemy lines in Vietnam. The Bureau feels strongly that he lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience, and has argued that from the beginning that Cooper did not survive his jump. Even if he did land safely, agents contend, survival in the mountainous terrain would have been all but impossible without an accomplice at a predetermined landing point, which would have required a precisely timed jump, necessitating, in turn, cooperation from the flight crew. There is no evidence that Cooper had any such help from the crew, nor any clear idea where he was when he jumped into the overcast darkness. Who was Dan Cooper? No one knows. Since 1971, the FBI has processed over a thousand serious suspects, along with assorted publicity seekers and deathbed confessors, most of whom have been definitely ruled out. To this day, no serious contenders for the identity of D.B. Cooper have ever surfaced, and it is unlikely that he and the rest of the ransom money will ever be found. But like September 11, 2001, the D.B. Cooper skyjacking changed air travel forever. It marked the beginning of the end of unfettered and unexpected airline travel. Despite the initiation of the Federal Sky Martial Program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972, 19 of them for the specific purpose of extorting money. Most of the rest were attempts to reach Cuba. In 15 of the extortion cases, the hijackers also demanded parachutes. In early 1973, the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple lawsuits charging that such searches violated Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, federal courts ruled that they were acceptable when applied universally and when limited to searches for weapons and explosives. Our bags have been searched ever since, and the Cooper skyjacking remained in the back of many mines until much more tragic events in 2001 changed things once again. WeirdDarkness.com You can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Ghost of Gladstone Villa was written by Andrew Dexter. Whitewashing of a Black Florida town is by Heather Gilligan. The History of Devil's Tower was written by Kelly McClure. And The Disappearance of D.B. Cooper was written by Troy Taylor. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 19 verse 15, laziness brings on deep sleep and the shiftless man goes hungry. And a final thought from Henry Ward Beecher. The little troubles and worries of life might be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping stones to a nobler character and to heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Have you ever noticed that in just about every post-apocalyptic TV show or movie, the electrical grid is gone, no power at all, anywhere, no places to plug in a radio to get news. And you can forget about charging your mobile devices or relaxing in an air-conditioned house or apartment. We rely on electrical power. Did you know that the power grid we are currently surviving off of was designed in the 1800s? It's so fragile that in 2003 a tree branch hit a power line in Ohio and it shut down 21 power plants and close to 100 people died because of it. And it's not just natural disasters. In January, a power station in North Carolina was damaged by gunfire, marking the third time it happened. 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