D.B. Cooper
ON A MISTY WINTER NIGHT, a mysterious man jumped off a plane with 200,000 dollars and disappeared into the night.
Many years ago, a man arrived at an airport in Portland, Oregon. On the outside, he looked like any other businessman in a black suit and tie, holding a suitcase. His hair was carefully groomed to the back. He approached the ticket agent and asked for a ticket to Seattle, Washington, under the name Dan Cooper.
He then boarded the plane.
While they were in the air, he handed a note to the flight attendant, who dismissed him at first.
“I think you’re going to want to see this,” Cooper said.
In his hand, the typed-out note informed the flight attendant that the man had a bomb in his suitcase. He was now hijacking the plane.
Cooper opened his suitcase for her to see the bomb, which had wires wrapped around a couple of red sticks. He demanded 200,000 dollars in ransom, four parachutes, and a fuel truck at the airport.
In 1971, identification was not required to board a plane, and less advanced technology was used for security screening. Skyjacking was not uncommon during that time.
The flight attendant informed the pilot, who contacted the land and notified the authorities, but Cooper had everything figured out. Once he received the ransom, he demanded the pilot fly the plane to Mexico City at no higher than 10,000 feet at minimum speed with the rear staircase open.
“But sir, there’s not enough fuel to make it to Mexico.”
“How about Reno?”
Approximately 15 minutes after the plane took off, they felt a sudden bump upward. And when the plane landed in Reno, Cooper was long gone.
The FBI immediately began their search of the surrounding area. They investigated every D. Cooper from Oregon to Washington to Reno, who might have been the hijacker, ruling them out one by one. One of those men was D.B. Cooper, who had nothing to do with the hijack. But a reporter wrongfully referred to the hijacker as D.B. Cooper, and the name caught on.
The FBI spent months searching every inch of the ground where D.B. could have landed. They traced everything he had touched in the plane: the glass he drank from, a click tie, a piece of fabric, and a few cigarette butts, but all led to dead ends.
What about the ransom money? He had to spend it at some point. The FBI released the serial numbers of Cooper’s ransom money, but the money seemed to have vanished alongside him and his parachutes on that cold winter night.
Because the money was never spent, people suspected that Cooper didn’t survive the jump. Some said he walked out of the street in plain sight while the police searched at the wrong place. Others didn’t believe Cooper was alone in the heist. Conspiracy even had the skyjacker making a political statement rather than hijacking for wealth.
One detail tied the man to a possible military background. The plane Cooper hijacked had a particular build with a drop-down rear staircase. In 1971, this knowledge wasn’t available to the general public but to military personnel. Because of this, many also speculated that Cooper might have been a veteran pilot.
Without any new information, the D.B. Cooper case remained open and unsolved. Ten years later, a hiker came across a small amount of D.B.’s money at the bank of a River, which shed light on what happened that night.
The examiners tested the soil and sprout remains on the money. The residuals date back to around the time of the skyjack. They concluded that D.B. couldn’t have gone back to plant the money at a later date, so the money was likely lost during the jump.
Since Cooper’s hijack, five other men also attempted to replicate history, but none of them got away from their crime. The airlines have since then updated their security methods.
Eventually, the FBI closed the case.
If Cooper had survived the jump, he’d be over a hundred years old, and his case remained the only unsolved skyjack in history.
