Despite the foregoing, the location of the recovered $5,800 dollars of ransom money on Tina Bar is hard to interpret in a positive way.

   Geologist Leonard Palmer noted the conundrum. The money was found in various layers down to 3 feet from the surface. Yet it was found over a layer of silt deposited in 1974 during major dredging of the Columbia River. Therefore the tattered, soaked wads of money had come to Tina Bar years after the skyjacking.

     Where had it been in the interim?

     The bills were corroded and rotten. They had been in water for some time.

     Even more perplexing, the location of Tina Bar proved that the FBI computer generated drop zone had been completely wrong. No one jumping near Ariel could drift to the Columbia River. FBI agents in charge of the dig, Jack Pringle and Ken Moore, speculated that Cooper had come down in the Washougal River Valley. East of Vancouver, this river flows into the Columbia just east of Portland. We are left to speculate that it may have taken years for the money to finally flood into the Columbia and wash ashore at Tina Bar.

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