This 2016 resource redirection is sometimes described as the FBI “closing” the case. This description is not quite accurate. The case remains officially open in the sense that no one has been charged and the crime remains unsolved. What changed in 2016 was the allocation of active investigative resources, not the case’s legal status.
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## What the Money’s Condition Reveals—and Hides
The condition of the Tena Bar bills has been examined and argued over for decades, and the debate touches on the central unresolved question of the whole case: did Cooper survive?
If Cooper died in the jump—in the forest or in a river—his remains would presumably have been accompanied by the money. The most common survival theory involves Cooper landing successfully, making his way out of the wilderness, and eventually spending or hiding the money. The problem with this theory is that only $5,800 of $200,000 has ever surfaced—and it surfaced in a deteriorated state at a river beach, not in circulation at a bank or a casino.
The FBI recorded the serial numbers of all 10,000 bills. The bureau circulated the numbers widely to banks, businesses, and casinos, specifically asking that anyone who received one of these bills report it. In more than fifty years, not a single bill outside the Tena Bar group has been reported. This near-total absence of the money in circulation is consistent with two scenarios: either Cooper died with the money and it was lost or buried somewhere no one has found, or—in the most dramatic version of the survival theory—he survived and was careful enough never to spend a single bill.