Prison Break考据篇
在Prison Break中，监狱里有一个很神秘的人物，就是D.B.Cooper，在监狱中的名字是Charles Westmoreland. 这老头人不错，可惜最后倒在了越狱前的最后一道关前。
实际上，历史上D. B. Cooper这个人是真实存在的，他的事迹和电视里传说的一样。1971年，有人以D. Cooper的名字劫持了一架727，他要了20万美元（这数目远小于电视里提到的数目了）的由20美元的钞票组成的现金和四个降落伞，条件满足后他命令飞行员将飞机飞往墨西哥，然后从空中跳下去了，之后就永远消失在人们的视野中。D. B. Cooper是记者报到的时候出现的typo. D. B. Cooper一案是世界上迄今唯一没有被破获的劫机案。之后的几十年里，出现了不少关于D. B. Cooper的影视和音乐作品，他甚至变成了一个大英雄。
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/cooper.htm
From the 7/24/00 issue of USN&WR
Skyjacker at large
A Florida widow thinks she has found him
BY DOUGLAS PASTERNAK
It was the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 24, 1971. As Northwest Airlines Flight 305, from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, sped along the runway preparing for takeoff, the man in Seat 18C, wearing sunglasses and a dark suit, handed a flight attendant a note. It said he had a bomb and threatened to blow up the Boeing 727 unless he received $200,000 cash and four parachutes when the plane landed. The man in Seat 18C purchased his ticket under the name "Dan Cooper."
After receiving his booty at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, the man released the 36 passengers and two members of the flight crew. He ordered the pilot and remaining crew to fly to Mexico. At 10,000 feet, with winds gusting at 80 knots and a freezing rain pounding the airplane, Dan Cooper–mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper by a reporter–walked down the rear stairs and parachuted into history.
What followed was one of the most extensive and expensive manhunts in the annals of American crime. For five months, federal, state, and local police combed dense hemlock forests north of Portland. D.B. Cooper became an American folk icon–the inspiration for books, rock songs, and even a 1981 movie. Over the past three decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has investigated more than 1,000 "serious suspects" along with assorted crackpots and deathbed confessors. Most–but not all–have been ruled out. The case was back in the news just last month when FBI agents investigated a skull discovered nearly 20 years ago along the Columbia River. It turned out to belong to a woman, possibly an American Indian. Today, the D.B. Cooper case remains the world's only unsolved skyjacking.
In March 1995, a Florida antique dealer named Duane Weber lay dying of polycystic kidney disease in a Pensacola hospital. He called his wife, Jo, to his bed and whispered: "I'm Dan Cooper." Jo, who had learned in 17 years of marriage not to pry too deeply into Duane's past, had no idea what her secretive husband meant. Frustrated, he blurted out: "Oh, let it die with me!" Duane died 11 days later. Jo sold his van two months after his death. The new owner discovered a wallet hidden in the overhead console. It contained a U.S. Navy "bad conduct discharge" in Duane's name and a Social Security card and prison-release form from the Missouri State Penitentiary, in the name of "John C. Collins." Duane had told Jo that he had served time for burglary under the name John Collins. Still, says Jo, a real-estate agent in Pace, Fla., Duane rarely spoke of his past. "His life started with me, and that was it," she says.
The FBI sketch strongly resembles a photo of Duane Weber.
In April 1996, Jo discussed Duane's criminal and military past with a friend. She also mentioned that just before he died, Duane had revealed the cause of an old knee injury. "I got it jumping out of a plane," Jo recalls him saying. "Did you ever think he might be D.B. Cooper?" the friend asked.
Handwriting match. In May 1996, Jo checked out a library book on D.B. Cooper. "I did not realize D.B. Cooper was known as Dan Cooper," Jo says. The book listed the FBI's description: mid-40s, 6 feet tall, 170 pounds, black hair, a bourbon drinker, a chain smoker. At the time of the hijacking, Duane Weber was 47, 6 feet, 1 inch tall, and weighed around 185 pounds. He had black hair, drank bourbon, and chain-smoked.
The similarities between a younger Duane and the FBI's composite drawings struck Jo. "It's about as close a match as you can get," agrees Frank Bender, a criminal forensic reconstructionist who has worked with the FBI for 20 years.
Jo never knew Duane to go to the library. Yet in pencil in the book's margins was what looked to her like Duane's handwriting. On one page he had written the name of a town in Washington where a placard from the rear stairs of Flight 305 had landed. "I knew right off the bat that handwriting was his," says Anne Faass, who worked with Duane for five years.
Jo called the FBI the night she read the D.B. Cooper book. "They just blew me off," she says. Eventually she began a dialogue with Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent in charge of the case from 1971 until his retirement in 1980. At his urging, the FBI opened a file on Duane Weber in March 1997. They interviewed Jo, as well as one of Duane's former wives and his brother. They compared his fingerprints with the 66 unaccounted-for prints on Flight 305. None matched, although the FBI has no way to know if any of the prints were Cooper's. Himmelsbach finds Jo Weber, who has agreed to take a polygraph test, to be credible. There is no reward money to motivate her. He thinks she simply wants to learn the truth about her spouse. "The facts she has really seem to fit," he says. But the FBI dropped its investigation of Weber in July 1998. More "conclusive evidence" would be needed to continue, they say.
Though the facts are few, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Retired FBI agent Himmelsbach believes the skyjacker must certainly have had a criminal record, military training, and familiarity with the Northwest. U.S. News has confirmed that Duane Weber served in the Army in the early 1940s. He also did time in at least six prisons from 1945 to 1968 for burglary and forgery. One prison was McNeil Island in Steilacoom, Wash.–20 miles from the Seattle-Tacoma airport.
The skyjacking was a desperate act by a desperate man. In 1971, Duane Weber's emotional and physical health were failing. He was on the verge of separating from his fifth wife and had been diagnosed with kidney disease; he was not expected to live past 50. Himmelsbach believes the skyjacking may have been a criminal's last hurrah and says Weber is one of the best suspects he has come across.
A skeptic at first, Jo Weber now believes her husband of 17 years was D.B. Cooper. "If he is not," she says, "he sure did send me on the wildest ride any widow has ever been on."
劫机犯逃之夭夭
一个佛罗里达的寡妇认为自己发现了他
事情发生在感恩节的前夜，1971年11月24日。一架西北航空公司的305航班在跑到上径直加速，准备从波特兰飞往西雅图。一个坐在18C位置上的戴着墨镜身穿深色西服的中年男子递给机组人员一张纸条，上面写道他有一颗炸弹并威胁要炸掉飞机，除非在飞机降落后给他提供20万美元现金和四个降落伞。这个坐在18C的男子买票时用的名字是Dan Cooper。
当他的要求在S－T机场被满足后，他释放了36名乘客和2名机组人员，而后他命令飞行员将飞机飞往墨西哥。当飞机达到10000英尺高风速达到80哩/时并伴有冻雨时，Dan Cooper 从飞机上跳了下去。他的名字却被一名记者错误地报道为D.B.Cooper从而写进了历史。
接下来发生的就是美国刑侦史上规模最庞大花销最昂贵的大搜捕。在接下来的5个月里，联邦政府、州警还有地方警察在波特兰北部茂密的针叶林里进行了规模空前的大搜捕但一无所获。D.B.Cooper逐渐成为了美国人的偶像，他成为了小说和摇滚的创作灵感甚至于1981年拍成了电影。在过去的30年里，联邦调查局调查了超过 1000名嫌疑犯还有那些自称是D.B.Cooper的人，但绝大多数都已经排除。这个案子重新回到人们的视野中是因为上个月FBI在调查一个在哥伦比亚河旁发现的20年前的一个头骨的案子。不过事后证实那个头骨应该是一个印第安妇女的。直到今天，D.B.Cooper这个案子是世界上唯一的悬而未决的劫机案。
在1995年3月，一个佛罗里达的叫Duane Weber 古董商在他弥留之际对自己的夫人Jo说自己就是Dan Cooper。在Duane死后两个月，Jo卖掉了他的小货车，新买主在驾驶室的顶棚里发现了一个皮夹，里面有一张以Duane名字的美国海军解雇书，一张社会保障卡和一张以John C. Collins名字的密苏里州立监狱的假释证明。Jo后来回忆道Duane曾跟他说过他曾以John C. Collins的名字因入室行窃坐过牢，他还告诉她自己在佛州的Pace有一处不动产。
在1996年的4月，Jo和一个朋友在议论Duane的过去时回忆道，在Duane离世之前他曾跟他透露过自己的膝伤是因为从飞机上跳下来的缘故。
这片报道美国海军报2000年7月24日
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