I came across an article in the wikipedia - the knowledge base (as usual), that was very much intriguing. Here goes it, but don't miss the epilogue.
Preface
The Case
D.B. Cooper is the name used to refer to a man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft on November 24, 1971, received US$200,000 in ransom, and jumped from the plane in flight with a parachute. The name he actually used to board the plane was Dan Cooper, but through a later press miscommunication, he became known as "D. B. Cooper". Despite hundreds of suspects through the years, no conclusive evidence has surfaced regarding Cooper's true identity or whereabouts, and the bulk of the money was never recovered. The FBI believes he did not survive the jump. Several theories offer competing explanations of what happened after his famed jump.
The nature of Cooper's escape and the uncertainty of his fate continue to intrigue people. The Cooper case (code-named "Norjak" by the FBI) remains an unsolved mystery, is one of the world's only unsolved cases of aircraft hijacking.
The Incident
On Wednesday, November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, a man traveling under the name Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 727-100, Northwest Orient (now known as Northwest Airlines) Flight 305 (FAA Reg. N467US), flying from Portland International Airport (PDX) in Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Cooper was in his mid-forties, and 6 feet tall. He wore a black raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white collared shirt, a black necktie, black sunglasses and a mother-of-pearl tie pin. Cooper sat in the back of the plane in seat 18C. After the jet had taken off from Portland, he handed a note to a young flight attendant named Florence Schaffner, who was seated in a jump-seat attached to the aft stair door, situated directly behind and to the left of Cooper's seat.
Ms. Schaffner thought he was giving her his phone number, so she slipped it, unopened, into her pocket. Cooper leaned closer and said, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."
In the envelope was a note that read: "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."
The note also provided demands for $200,000, in unmarked $20 bills, and two sets of parachutes—two main back chutes and two emergency chest chutes. The note carried instructions ordering the items to be delivered to the plane when it landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; if the demands were not met, he would blow up the plane. When the flight attendant informed the cockpit about Cooper and the note, the pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma air traffic control, who contacted Seattle police and the FBI.
The FBI contacted Northwest Airlines president Donald Nyrop, who instructed Scott to cooperate with the hijacker. Scott instructed Schaffner to go back and sit next to Cooper, and ascertain if the bomb was in fact real. Sensing this, Cooper opened his briefcase momentarily, long enough for Schaffner to see red cylinders, a large battery, and wires, convincing her the bomb was real. He instructed her to tell the pilot not to land until the money and parachutes Cooper had requested were ready at Seattle-Tacoma. She went back to the cockpit to relay Cooper's instructions.
Following Cooper's demands, the jet was put into a holding pattern over Puget Sound, while Cooper's demands for $200,000 and four parachutes were met. In assembling the cash demands, FBI agents followed Cooper's instruction for unmarked bills, but they decided to give bills printed in 1969, that all had serial numbers beginning with the letter L, issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The agents also photographed all 10,000 $20 bills to keep a microfilm record of all the bill serial numbers. Authorities initially intended to obtain military-issue parachutes from McChord Air Force Base, but Cooper said he wanted civilian parachutes, which had manually operated ripcords. Seattle police were able to find Cooper's preferred parachutes at a local skydiving school.
Meanwhile, Cooper sat in the airplane, drinking bourbon whiskey and soda. At 17:24, airport traffic control radioed Scott and told him that Cooper's demands had been met. Cooper then gave Captain Scott permission to land at the flight's intended destination, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) near Seattle, Washington.
The plane landed at the airport at 17:39. Cooper then instructed Scott to taxi the plane to a remote section of the tarmac and also dim the lights in the cabin to deter police snipers. He instructed air traffic control to send one person to deliver the $200,000 and four parachutes, unaccompanied. The person chosen, a Northwest Orient employee, drove to the plane and delivered the cash and parachutes to flight attendant Mucklow, via the aft stairs.
A few minutes after his demands were met, Cooper released all 36 passengers and attendant Schaffner via the aft stairs. Pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, First Officer Bob Rataczak and flight engineer H. E. Anderson were not permitted to leave the aircraft.
The FBI was puzzled regarding Cooper's plans, and his request of four parachutes. The agents wondered if Cooper had an accomplice on board, or if the parachutes were intended for the four people on the plane (the pilot, the co-pilot, a flight attendant and himself). Up to this point in history, nobody had ever attempted to jump with a parachute from a hijacked commercial aircraft.
While the plane was being refueled, an FAA official, who wanted to explain to the hijacker the legal consequences of air piracy, walked to the door of the plane and asked Cooper's permission to come aboard the plane. Cooper promptly denied the official's request. A vapor lock in the fuel tanker truck's engines slowed down the refueling process. Cooper became suspicious when the refueling had still not been completed after 15 minutes. He made threats to blow up the plane, upon which the fuel crew promptly tried to speed up the job until completion.
After refueling, careful examination of the ransom and parachutes, and negotiations regarding the flight pattern and the position of the aft stairs upon take-off, Cooper ordered the flight crew to take the hijacked jet back into the air at around 19:40. The crew was ordered to fly to Mexico City, at a relatively low speed of 170 knots (200 mph or 320 km/h), an altitude at or under 10,000 feet (normal cruising altitude is between 25,000 and 37,000 feet), with the landing gear down and 15 degrees of flap. However, First Officer Rataczak told him that the jet could only fly 1,000 miles under the altitude and airspeed conditions Cooper ordered. Cooper and the crew discussed other possible locations, before deciding on flying to Reno, Nevada, where they would again refuel.
They also agreed to fly on Victor 23 as depicted on the Jeppesen air navigational charts, a low-altitude Federal airway that passed west of the Cascade Range. Cooper then ordered Scott to leave the cabin unpressurized. An unpressurized cabin at 10,000 feet (3,000 m) would curtail the risk of a sudden rush of air exiting the plane (and ease the opening of the pressure door) if he were to attempt to exit the aircraft for a subsequent parachute landing.
Immediately upon takeoff, Cooper asked Mucklow, who had previously been sitting with him, to go back to the cockpit and stay there. Before she went behind the curtain that separates the coach and first-class seats, she watched him tie something to his waist with what she thought was rope. Moments later in the cockpit, the crew noticed a light flash indicating that Cooper attempted to operate the door. Over the intercom, Scott asked Cooper if there was anything they could do for him, but the hijacker replied curtly, "No!"
The crew started to notice a change of air pressure in the cabin (an "ear popping experience"). Cooper had lowered the aft stairs and jumped out of the plane never to be seen again.
That was the last time D. B. Cooper was known to be alive. The FBI believed his descent was at 20:13 over the southwestern portion of the state of Washington, because the aft stairway "bumped" at this time, most likely due to the weight of Cooper being released from the aft stairs. At the time Cooper jumped, the plane was flying through a heavy rainstorm, with no light source coming from the ground due to cloud coverage.
Because of the poor visibility, his descent went unnoticed by the United States Air Force F-106 jet fighters tracking the airliner. He initially was believed to have landed southeast of the unincorporated area of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, 30 miles north of Portland, Oregon (45°57′N 122°39′W / 45.95, -122.65). Later information, including details given by Captain Scott to the FBI in 1980 that led to a more accurate assessment of the flight route, put the jump location about 20 miles farther east. His precise landing zone remains unknown.
Nearly 2 1/2 hours after take-off from Seattle-Tacoma, at approximately 22:15, with the aft stairs dragging on the runway, the Boeing 727 landed safely in Reno. The airport and runway were surrounded by FBI agents and local police. After communicating with Captain Scott, it was determined Cooper was gone, and FBI agents boarded the plane to search for any evidence left behind. They recovered a number of fingerprints (which may or may not have belonged to Cooper), a tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip, and two of the four parachutes. Cooper was nowhere to be found, nor was his briefcase, the money, the moneybag, or the two remaining parachutes. The individuals with whom Cooper had interacted on board the plane and while he was on the ground were interrogated to compile a composite sketch; those interviewed all gave nearly identical descriptions of him, leading the FBI to create the sketch that has been used on wanted posters ever since. As of 2008, the FBI maintains that the sketch is an accurate likeness of Cooper because so many individuals, interviewed simultaneously in separate locations, gave nearly identical descriptions.
Despite an 18-day search of the projected landing zone in 1971, no trace of Cooper or his parachute was found. An exact landing point was difficult to determine, as the plane's 300 feet -per-second speed would make even small differences in timing move the projected landing point considerably. This led the FBI to determine that Cooper could not have known exactly where he would land, and therefore must not have had an accomplice waiting to assist him upon landing.
A ground search, using the assistance of 400 troops from nearby Fort Lewis, was conducted in April 1972. After six weeks of searching the projected dropzone on foot, no evidence was found related to the hijacking. As a result, it remains a widely disputed subject whether he survived the jump and then subsequently escaped on foot. Shortly after the hijacking, the FBI questioned and then released a Portland man by the name of D. B. Cooper, who was never considered a significant suspect. Due to a miscommunication with the media, however, the initials "D. B." became firmly associated with the hijacker and this is how he is now known.
Meanwhile, the FBI also stepped up efforts to track the 10,000 ransomed $20 bills by notifying banks, savings and loans companies, and other businesses of the notes’ serial numbers. Law enforcement agencies around the globe, including Scotland Yard, also received information on Cooper and the serial numbers. In the months following the hijacking, Northwest Airlines offered a reward of 15 percent of the recovered money up to a maximum of $25,000, but the airline eventually canceled the offer as no new substantial evidence seemed to arise. In November 1973, The Oregon Journal, based in Portland, began publishing the first public listings of the serial numbers with permission from the FBI and offered $1,000 to the first person who could claim to have found a single one of the $20 bills. Despite reported interest from around the country and several alleged near-matches, the newspaper never received a claim of an exact serial number match.
Investigation
In late 1978, a placard, which contained instructions on how to lower the aft stairs of a 727, from the rear stairway of the plane from which Cooper jumped, was found by a hunter just a few flying minutes north of Cooper's projected drop zone.
On February 10, 1980, Brian Ingram, then eight years old, was with his family on a picnic when he found $5,880 in decaying bills (a total of 294 $20 bills), still bundled in rubber bands, approximately 40 feet from the waterline and just 2 inches below the surface, on the banks of the Columbia River 5 miles northwest of Vancouver, Washington. After comparing the serial numbers with those from the ransom given to Cooper almost nine years earlier, it was proven that the money found by Ingram was part of the ransom given to Cooper.
Upon the discovery, then-FBI lead investigator Ralph Himmelsbach declared that the money "must have been deposited within a couple of years after the hijacking" because "rubber bands deteriorate rapidly and could not have held the bundles together for very long". However, some scientists noted their belief that the money arrived at the beach as a result of a 1974 Army Corps of Engineers dredging operation. Furthermore, some scientists estimated that the money’s arrival must have occurred even later. Geologist Leonard Palmer of Portland State University, for example, reportedly concluded that the 1974 dredging operation did not place the money on the Columbia's riverbank because Ingram had found the bills above clay deposits put on shore by the dredge. The FBI generally agree now that the money had to have arrived at the location on the riverbank no earlier than 1974. Some investigators and hydrologists have theorized that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries, such as the Washougal River, which originate or run near Cooper's suspected landing zone.
Ingram's discovery of the $5,880 reinforced the FBI's belief that Cooper probably did not survive the jump, in large part because of the unlikelihood that such a criminal would be willing to leave behind any of the loot for which he had risked his life. Ingram was eventually allowed to keep $2,860 of this money. In 2007, he announced that he planned to auction off the few bills that he still maintains in a bank vault. As of 2008, the remaining amount of money has not been found.
Suspects
At various points, several people have been suggested as possible candidates for Cooper, although the case remains unsolved. Over the years, the suspect list has exceeded 1,000 people.
The FBI believed that Cooper was familiar with the Seattle area, as he was able to recognize Tacoma from the air while the jet was circling over the Puget Sound. He also remarked to flight attendant Mucklow that McChord Air Force Base was approximately 20 minutes from the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Although the FBI initially believed that Cooper might have been an active or retired member of the United States Air Force, based on his apparent knowledge of jet aerodynamics and skydiving, it later changed this assessment, deciding that no experienced parachutist would have attempted such a risky jump.
John List
In 1971, mass-murderer John List was considered a suspect in the Cooper hijacking, which occurred only fifteen days after he had killed his family in Westfield, New Jersey. List's age, facial features, and build were similar to those described for the mysterious skyjacker. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach stated that List was a "viable suspect" in the case. Cooper parachuted from the hijacked airliner with $200,000, the same amount List had used up from his mother's bank account in the days before the killing. After his capture and imprisonment in 1989, List strenuously denied being Cooper, and the FBI no longer considered him a suspect. List died in prison custody on March 21, 2008.
Richard McCoy, Jr.
On April 7, 1972, four months after Cooper's hijacking, Richard McCoy, Jr., under the alias "James Johnson", boarded United Airlines Flight 855 during a stopover in Denver, Colorado, and gave the flight steward an envelope labeled "Hijack Instructions", in which he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. He also instructed the pilot to land at San Francisco International Airport and ordered a refueling truck for the plane. The airplane was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs, which McCoy used in his escape. He was carrying a paper weight grenade and an empty pistol. He left his handwritten message on the plane, along with his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading, which the FBI later used to establish positive identification.
Police began investigating McCoy following a tip from Utah Highway Patrolman Robert Van Ieperen, who was a friend of McCoy's. Apparently, after the Cooper hijacking, McCoy had made a reference that Cooper should have asked for $500,000, instead of $200,000. Van Ieperen thought that was an odd coincidence, so he alerted the FBI. Married and with two young children, McCoy was a Mormon Sunday school teacher studying law enforcement at Brigham Young University. He had a record as a Vietnam veteran and was a former helicopter pilot, and an avid skydiver.
On April 9, following the fingerprint and handwriting match, McCoy was arrested for the United 855 hijacking. Coincidentally, McCoy had been on National Guard duty flying one of the helicopters involved in the search for the hijacker. Inside his house FBI agents found a jumpsuit and a duffel bag filled with $499,970 in cash. McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted and received a 45-year sentence. Once incarcerated, using his access to the prison's dental office, McCoy fashioned a fake handgun out of dental paste. He and a crew of convicts escaped in August 1974 by stealing a garbage truck and crashing it through the prison's main gate. It took three months before the FBI located McCoy in Virginia. McCoy shot at the FBI agents, and agent Nicholas O'Hara fired back with a shotgun, killing him.
In 1991, Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame coauthored D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, in which they claimed that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person, citing similar methods of hijacking and a tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip, left on the plane by Cooper. Neither Rhodes nor Calame were involved in the original Cooper investigation, but Calame was the head of the Utah FBI office that investigated McCoy, and eventually arrested him for the copycat hijacking that occurred in April 1972. The author said that McCoy "never admitted nor denied he was Cooper." And when McCoy was directly asked whether he was Cooper he replied, "I don't want to talk to you about it." The agent who killed McCoy is quoted as supposedly saying, "When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time." The widow of Richard McCoy, Karen Burns McCoy, reached a $120,000 legal settlement with the book's co-authors and its publisher, after claiming they misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking and later events from interviews done with her attorney in the 1970s.
Duane Weber
In July 2000, U.S. News & World Report ran an article about a widow in Pace, Florida, named Jo Weber and her claim that her late husband, Duane L. Weber (born 1924 in Ohio), had told her "I'm Dan Cooper" before his death on March 28, 1995. She became suspicious and began checking into his background. Weber had served in the Army during World War II and had later served time in a prison near the Portland airport. Weber recalled that her husband had once had a nightmare where he talked in his sleep about jumping from a plane and said something about leaving his fingerprints on the aft stairs. Jo recalled that shortly before Duane's death, he had revealed to her that an old knee injury of his had been incurred by "jumping out of a plane".
Weber also recounts a 1979 vacation the couple took to Seattle, "a sentimental journey", Duane told Jo, with a visit to the Columbia River. She remembers how Duane walked down to the banks of the Columbia by himself just four months before the portion of Cooper's cash was found in the same area. Weber related that she had checked out a book on the Cooper case from the local library and saw notations in it that matched her husband's handwriting. She began corresponding with Himmelsbach, the former chief investigator of the case, who subsequently agreed that much of the circumstantial evidence surrounding Weber fit the hijacker's profile. However, the FBI stopped investigating Weber in July 1998 because of a lack of hard evidence.
The FBI compared Weber's prints with those processed from the hijacked plane and found no matches. In October 2007, the FBI stated that a partial DNA sample taken from the J.C. Penney department store brand tie that Cooper had left on the plane did not belong to Weber.
Kenneth Christiansen
The October 29, 2007 issue of New York magazine revealed a new suspect, Kenneth P. Christiansen, identified by Sherlock Investigations. The article noted that Christiansen is a former army paratrooper, a former airline employee, had settled in Washington near the site of the hijacking, was familiar with the local terrain, had purchased property with cash a year after the hijacking, drank bourbon and smoked (as did Cooper during the flight) and resembled the eyewitness sketches of Cooper. However, the FBI ruled out Christiansen because his complexion, height, weight and eye color did not match the descriptions given by the passengers or the crew of Flight 305.
Latest on the case
On November 1, 2007, the FBI released detailed information concerning some of the evidence in their possession, which had never before been revealed to the public. The FBI displayed Cooper's 1971 plane ticket from Portland to Seattle, which cost $18.52. It also revealed that he requested four parachutes—two main back chutes and two reserve chest chutes. Authorities inadvertently supplied Cooper with a "dummy" reserve chute—an unusable parachute that is sewn shut for classroom demonstration. The dummy chute was not left behind on the plane, and some theorize Cooper did not realize it was not functional. This piece of information had been revealed in a 1979 episode of TV documentary series In Search of.... The other reserve parachute, which was a functional parachute, was popped open and the shrouds were cut and supposedly used to secure the money bag.
On December 31, 2007, the FBI issued a press release containing never before seen photos and fact sheets online in an attempt to trigger memories or useful information regarding Cooper's identity. In the fact sheets, the FBI withdrew its previous theory that Cooper was either an experienced skydiver or paratrooper. While it was initially believed that Cooper must have had training to have performed such a feat, later analysis of the chain of events led the FBI to reevaluate this claim. Investigators said that no experienced paratrooper or skydiver would attempt a jump during a rainstorm with no light source. Investigators also believe that, even if Cooper was in a hurry to escape, an experienced jumper or paratrooper would have stopped to inspect his chutes.
On March 24, 2008, the FBI announced that it was in possession of a parachute recovered from a field in northern Clark County, Washington, near the town of Amboy. A property owner was in the process of making a private road with a bulldozer when the blade caught some cloth, and his children pulled the cloth until the canopy lines appeared. Earl Cossey, the man who provided the four parachutes that were given to Cooper by the FBI, examined the newly found chute and on April 1, 2008 said that "absolutely, for sure" it could not have been one of the four that he supplied in 1971. The Cooper parachutes were made of nylon, unlike the new chute that was recovered which is made of silk and most likely made around 1945. The FBI later made a press release confirming Cossey's findings. Investigators reached their official conclusion after consulting Cossey and other parachute experts. "From the best we could learn from the people we spoke to, it just didn't look like it was the right kind of parachute in any way," said FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs.[49] Further digging at the site in southwestern Washington turned up no indication that it could have been Cooper's.
Hence, the case closed, cold.
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Preface
The Case
D.B. Cooper is the name used to refer to a man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft on November 24, 1971, received US$200,000 in ransom, and jumped from the plane in flight with a parachute. The name he actually used to board the plane was Dan Cooper, but through a later press miscommunication, he became known as "D. B. Cooper". Despite hundreds of suspects through the years, no conclusive evidence has surfaced regarding Cooper's true identity or whereabouts, and the bulk of the money was never recovered. The FBI believes he did not survive the jump. Several theories offer competing explanations of what happened after his famed jump.
The nature of Cooper's escape and the uncertainty of his fate continue to intrigue people. The Cooper case (code-named "Norjak" by the FBI) remains an unsolved mystery, is one of the world's only unsolved cases of aircraft hijacking.
The Incident
On Wednesday, November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, a man traveling under the name Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 727-100, Northwest Orient (now known as Northwest Airlines) Flight 305 (FAA Reg. N467US), flying from Portland International Airport (PDX) in Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Cooper was in his mid-forties, and 6 feet tall. He wore a black raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white collared shirt, a black necktie, black sunglasses and a mother-of-pearl tie pin. Cooper sat in the back of the plane in seat 18C. After the jet had taken off from Portland, he handed a note to a young flight attendant named Florence Schaffner, who was seated in a jump-seat attached to the aft stair door, situated directly behind and to the left of Cooper's seat.
Ms. Schaffner thought he was giving her his phone number, so she slipped it, unopened, into her pocket. Cooper leaned closer and said, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."
In the envelope was a note that read: "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."
The note also provided demands for $200,000, in unmarked $20 bills, and two sets of parachutes—two main back chutes and two emergency chest chutes. The note carried instructions ordering the items to be delivered to the plane when it landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; if the demands were not met, he would blow up the plane. When the flight attendant informed the cockpit about Cooper and the note, the pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma air traffic control, who contacted Seattle police and the FBI.
The FBI contacted Northwest Airlines president Donald Nyrop, who instructed Scott to cooperate with the hijacker. Scott instructed Schaffner to go back and sit next to Cooper, and ascertain if the bomb was in fact real. Sensing this, Cooper opened his briefcase momentarily, long enough for Schaffner to see red cylinders, a large battery, and wires, convincing her the bomb was real. He instructed her to tell the pilot not to land until the money and parachutes Cooper had requested were ready at Seattle-Tacoma. She went back to the cockpit to relay Cooper's instructions.
Following Cooper's demands, the jet was put into a holding pattern over Puget Sound, while Cooper's demands for $200,000 and four parachutes were met. In assembling the cash demands, FBI agents followed Cooper's instruction for unmarked bills, but they decided to give bills printed in 1969, that all had serial numbers beginning with the letter L, issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The agents also photographed all 10,000 $20 bills to keep a microfilm record of all the bill serial numbers. Authorities initially intended to obtain military-issue parachutes from McChord Air Force Base, but Cooper said he wanted civilian parachutes, which had manually operated ripcords. Seattle police were able to find Cooper's preferred parachutes at a local skydiving school.
Meanwhile, Cooper sat in the airplane, drinking bourbon whiskey and soda. At 17:24, airport traffic control radioed Scott and told him that Cooper's demands had been met. Cooper then gave Captain Scott permission to land at the flight's intended destination, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) near Seattle, Washington.
The plane landed at the airport at 17:39. Cooper then instructed Scott to taxi the plane to a remote section of the tarmac and also dim the lights in the cabin to deter police snipers. He instructed air traffic control to send one person to deliver the $200,000 and four parachutes, unaccompanied. The person chosen, a Northwest Orient employee, drove to the plane and delivered the cash and parachutes to flight attendant Mucklow, via the aft stairs.
A few minutes after his demands were met, Cooper released all 36 passengers and attendant Schaffner via the aft stairs. Pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, First Officer Bob Rataczak and flight engineer H. E. Anderson were not permitted to leave the aircraft.
The FBI was puzzled regarding Cooper's plans, and his request of four parachutes. The agents wondered if Cooper had an accomplice on board, or if the parachutes were intended for the four people on the plane (the pilot, the co-pilot, a flight attendant and himself). Up to this point in history, nobody had ever attempted to jump with a parachute from a hijacked commercial aircraft.
While the plane was being refueled, an FAA official, who wanted to explain to the hijacker the legal consequences of air piracy, walked to the door of the plane and asked Cooper's permission to come aboard the plane. Cooper promptly denied the official's request. A vapor lock in the fuel tanker truck's engines slowed down the refueling process. Cooper became suspicious when the refueling had still not been completed after 15 minutes. He made threats to blow up the plane, upon which the fuel crew promptly tried to speed up the job until completion.
After refueling, careful examination of the ransom and parachutes, and negotiations regarding the flight pattern and the position of the aft stairs upon take-off, Cooper ordered the flight crew to take the hijacked jet back into the air at around 19:40. The crew was ordered to fly to Mexico City, at a relatively low speed of 170 knots (200 mph or 320 km/h), an altitude at or under 10,000 feet (normal cruising altitude is between 25,000 and 37,000 feet), with the landing gear down and 15 degrees of flap. However, First Officer Rataczak told him that the jet could only fly 1,000 miles under the altitude and airspeed conditions Cooper ordered. Cooper and the crew discussed other possible locations, before deciding on flying to Reno, Nevada, where they would again refuel.
They also agreed to fly on Victor 23 as depicted on the Jeppesen air navigational charts, a low-altitude Federal airway that passed west of the Cascade Range. Cooper then ordered Scott to leave the cabin unpressurized. An unpressurized cabin at 10,000 feet (3,000 m) would curtail the risk of a sudden rush of air exiting the plane (and ease the opening of the pressure door) if he were to attempt to exit the aircraft for a subsequent parachute landing.
Immediately upon takeoff, Cooper asked Mucklow, who had previously been sitting with him, to go back to the cockpit and stay there. Before she went behind the curtain that separates the coach and first-class seats, she watched him tie something to his waist with what she thought was rope. Moments later in the cockpit, the crew noticed a light flash indicating that Cooper attempted to operate the door. Over the intercom, Scott asked Cooper if there was anything they could do for him, but the hijacker replied curtly, "No!"
The crew started to notice a change of air pressure in the cabin (an "ear popping experience"). Cooper had lowered the aft stairs and jumped out of the plane never to be seen again.
That was the last time D. B. Cooper was known to be alive. The FBI believed his descent was at 20:13 over the southwestern portion of the state of Washington, because the aft stairway "bumped" at this time, most likely due to the weight of Cooper being released from the aft stairs. At the time Cooper jumped, the plane was flying through a heavy rainstorm, with no light source coming from the ground due to cloud coverage.
Because of the poor visibility, his descent went unnoticed by the United States Air Force F-106 jet fighters tracking the airliner. He initially was believed to have landed southeast of the unincorporated area of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, 30 miles north of Portland, Oregon (45°57′N 122°39′W / 45.95, -122.65). Later information, including details given by Captain Scott to the FBI in 1980 that led to a more accurate assessment of the flight route, put the jump location about 20 miles farther east. His precise landing zone remains unknown.
Nearly 2 1/2 hours after take-off from Seattle-Tacoma, at approximately 22:15, with the aft stairs dragging on the runway, the Boeing 727 landed safely in Reno. The airport and runway were surrounded by FBI agents and local police. After communicating with Captain Scott, it was determined Cooper was gone, and FBI agents boarded the plane to search for any evidence left behind. They recovered a number of fingerprints (which may or may not have belonged to Cooper), a tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip, and two of the four parachutes. Cooper was nowhere to be found, nor was his briefcase, the money, the moneybag, or the two remaining parachutes. The individuals with whom Cooper had interacted on board the plane and while he was on the ground were interrogated to compile a composite sketch; those interviewed all gave nearly identical descriptions of him, leading the FBI to create the sketch that has been used on wanted posters ever since. As of 2008, the FBI maintains that the sketch is an accurate likeness of Cooper because so many individuals, interviewed simultaneously in separate locations, gave nearly identical descriptions.
Despite an 18-day search of the projected landing zone in 1971, no trace of Cooper or his parachute was found. An exact landing point was difficult to determine, as the plane's 300 feet -per-second speed would make even small differences in timing move the projected landing point considerably. This led the FBI to determine that Cooper could not have known exactly where he would land, and therefore must not have had an accomplice waiting to assist him upon landing.
A ground search, using the assistance of 400 troops from nearby Fort Lewis, was conducted in April 1972. After six weeks of searching the projected dropzone on foot, no evidence was found related to the hijacking. As a result, it remains a widely disputed subject whether he survived the jump and then subsequently escaped on foot. Shortly after the hijacking, the FBI questioned and then released a Portland man by the name of D. B. Cooper, who was never considered a significant suspect. Due to a miscommunication with the media, however, the initials "D. B." became firmly associated with the hijacker and this is how he is now known.
Meanwhile, the FBI also stepped up efforts to track the 10,000 ransomed $20 bills by notifying banks, savings and loans companies, and other businesses of the notes’ serial numbers. Law enforcement agencies around the globe, including Scotland Yard, also received information on Cooper and the serial numbers. In the months following the hijacking, Northwest Airlines offered a reward of 15 percent of the recovered money up to a maximum of $25,000, but the airline eventually canceled the offer as no new substantial evidence seemed to arise. In November 1973, The Oregon Journal, based in Portland, began publishing the first public listings of the serial numbers with permission from the FBI and offered $1,000 to the first person who could claim to have found a single one of the $20 bills. Despite reported interest from around the country and several alleged near-matches, the newspaper never received a claim of an exact serial number match.
Investigation
In late 1978, a placard, which contained instructions on how to lower the aft stairs of a 727, from the rear stairway of the plane from which Cooper jumped, was found by a hunter just a few flying minutes north of Cooper's projected drop zone.
On February 10, 1980, Brian Ingram, then eight years old, was with his family on a picnic when he found $5,880 in decaying bills (a total of 294 $20 bills), still bundled in rubber bands, approximately 40 feet from the waterline and just 2 inches below the surface, on the banks of the Columbia River 5 miles northwest of Vancouver, Washington. After comparing the serial numbers with those from the ransom given to Cooper almost nine years earlier, it was proven that the money found by Ingram was part of the ransom given to Cooper.
Upon the discovery, then-FBI lead investigator Ralph Himmelsbach declared that the money "must have been deposited within a couple of years after the hijacking" because "rubber bands deteriorate rapidly and could not have held the bundles together for very long". However, some scientists noted their belief that the money arrived at the beach as a result of a 1974 Army Corps of Engineers dredging operation. Furthermore, some scientists estimated that the money’s arrival must have occurred even later. Geologist Leonard Palmer of Portland State University, for example, reportedly concluded that the 1974 dredging operation did not place the money on the Columbia's riverbank because Ingram had found the bills above clay deposits put on shore by the dredge. The FBI generally agree now that the money had to have arrived at the location on the riverbank no earlier than 1974. Some investigators and hydrologists have theorized that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries, such as the Washougal River, which originate or run near Cooper's suspected landing zone.
Ingram's discovery of the $5,880 reinforced the FBI's belief that Cooper probably did not survive the jump, in large part because of the unlikelihood that such a criminal would be willing to leave behind any of the loot for which he had risked his life. Ingram was eventually allowed to keep $2,860 of this money. In 2007, he announced that he planned to auction off the few bills that he still maintains in a bank vault. As of 2008, the remaining amount of money has not been found.
Suspects
At various points, several people have been suggested as possible candidates for Cooper, although the case remains unsolved. Over the years, the suspect list has exceeded 1,000 people.
The FBI believed that Cooper was familiar with the Seattle area, as he was able to recognize Tacoma from the air while the jet was circling over the Puget Sound. He also remarked to flight attendant Mucklow that McChord Air Force Base was approximately 20 minutes from the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Although the FBI initially believed that Cooper might have been an active or retired member of the United States Air Force, based on his apparent knowledge of jet aerodynamics and skydiving, it later changed this assessment, deciding that no experienced parachutist would have attempted such a risky jump.
John List
In 1971, mass-murderer John List was considered a suspect in the Cooper hijacking, which occurred only fifteen days after he had killed his family in Westfield, New Jersey. List's age, facial features, and build were similar to those described for the mysterious skyjacker. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach stated that List was a "viable suspect" in the case. Cooper parachuted from the hijacked airliner with $200,000, the same amount List had used up from his mother's bank account in the days before the killing. After his capture and imprisonment in 1989, List strenuously denied being Cooper, and the FBI no longer considered him a suspect. List died in prison custody on March 21, 2008.
Richard McCoy, Jr.
On April 7, 1972, four months after Cooper's hijacking, Richard McCoy, Jr., under the alias "James Johnson", boarded United Airlines Flight 855 during a stopover in Denver, Colorado, and gave the flight steward an envelope labeled "Hijack Instructions", in which he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. He also instructed the pilot to land at San Francisco International Airport and ordered a refueling truck for the plane. The airplane was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs, which McCoy used in his escape. He was carrying a paper weight grenade and an empty pistol. He left his handwritten message on the plane, along with his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading, which the FBI later used to establish positive identification.
Police began investigating McCoy following a tip from Utah Highway Patrolman Robert Van Ieperen, who was a friend of McCoy's. Apparently, after the Cooper hijacking, McCoy had made a reference that Cooper should have asked for $500,000, instead of $200,000. Van Ieperen thought that was an odd coincidence, so he alerted the FBI. Married and with two young children, McCoy was a Mormon Sunday school teacher studying law enforcement at Brigham Young University. He had a record as a Vietnam veteran and was a former helicopter pilot, and an avid skydiver.
On April 9, following the fingerprint and handwriting match, McCoy was arrested for the United 855 hijacking. Coincidentally, McCoy had been on National Guard duty flying one of the helicopters involved in the search for the hijacker. Inside his house FBI agents found a jumpsuit and a duffel bag filled with $499,970 in cash. McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted and received a 45-year sentence. Once incarcerated, using his access to the prison's dental office, McCoy fashioned a fake handgun out of dental paste. He and a crew of convicts escaped in August 1974 by stealing a garbage truck and crashing it through the prison's main gate. It took three months before the FBI located McCoy in Virginia. McCoy shot at the FBI agents, and agent Nicholas O'Hara fired back with a shotgun, killing him.
In 1991, Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame coauthored D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, in which they claimed that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person, citing similar methods of hijacking and a tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip, left on the plane by Cooper. Neither Rhodes nor Calame were involved in the original Cooper investigation, but Calame was the head of the Utah FBI office that investigated McCoy, and eventually arrested him for the copycat hijacking that occurred in April 1972. The author said that McCoy "never admitted nor denied he was Cooper." And when McCoy was directly asked whether he was Cooper he replied, "I don't want to talk to you about it." The agent who killed McCoy is quoted as supposedly saying, "When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time." The widow of Richard McCoy, Karen Burns McCoy, reached a $120,000 legal settlement with the book's co-authors and its publisher, after claiming they misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking and later events from interviews done with her attorney in the 1970s.
Duane Weber
In July 2000, U.S. News & World Report ran an article about a widow in Pace, Florida, named Jo Weber and her claim that her late husband, Duane L. Weber (born 1924 in Ohio), had told her "I'm Dan Cooper" before his death on March 28, 1995. She became suspicious and began checking into his background. Weber had served in the Army during World War II and had later served time in a prison near the Portland airport. Weber recalled that her husband had once had a nightmare where he talked in his sleep about jumping from a plane and said something about leaving his fingerprints on the aft stairs. Jo recalled that shortly before Duane's death, he had revealed to her that an old knee injury of his had been incurred by "jumping out of a plane".
Weber also recounts a 1979 vacation the couple took to Seattle, "a sentimental journey", Duane told Jo, with a visit to the Columbia River. She remembers how Duane walked down to the banks of the Columbia by himself just four months before the portion of Cooper's cash was found in the same area. Weber related that she had checked out a book on the Cooper case from the local library and saw notations in it that matched her husband's handwriting. She began corresponding with Himmelsbach, the former chief investigator of the case, who subsequently agreed that much of the circumstantial evidence surrounding Weber fit the hijacker's profile. However, the FBI stopped investigating Weber in July 1998 because of a lack of hard evidence.
The FBI compared Weber's prints with those processed from the hijacked plane and found no matches. In October 2007, the FBI stated that a partial DNA sample taken from the J.C. Penney department store brand tie that Cooper had left on the plane did not belong to Weber.
Kenneth Christiansen
The October 29, 2007 issue of New York magazine revealed a new suspect, Kenneth P. Christiansen, identified by Sherlock Investigations. The article noted that Christiansen is a former army paratrooper, a former airline employee, had settled in Washington near the site of the hijacking, was familiar with the local terrain, had purchased property with cash a year after the hijacking, drank bourbon and smoked (as did Cooper during the flight) and resembled the eyewitness sketches of Cooper. However, the FBI ruled out Christiansen because his complexion, height, weight and eye color did not match the descriptions given by the passengers or the crew of Flight 305.
Latest on the case
On November 1, 2007, the FBI released detailed information concerning some of the evidence in their possession, which had never before been revealed to the public. The FBI displayed Cooper's 1971 plane ticket from Portland to Seattle, which cost $18.52. It also revealed that he requested four parachutes—two main back chutes and two reserve chest chutes. Authorities inadvertently supplied Cooper with a "dummy" reserve chute—an unusable parachute that is sewn shut for classroom demonstration. The dummy chute was not left behind on the plane, and some theorize Cooper did not realize it was not functional. This piece of information had been revealed in a 1979 episode of TV documentary series In Search of.... The other reserve parachute, which was a functional parachute, was popped open and the shrouds were cut and supposedly used to secure the money bag.
On December 31, 2007, the FBI issued a press release containing never before seen photos and fact sheets online in an attempt to trigger memories or useful information regarding Cooper's identity. In the fact sheets, the FBI withdrew its previous theory that Cooper was either an experienced skydiver or paratrooper. While it was initially believed that Cooper must have had training to have performed such a feat, later analysis of the chain of events led the FBI to reevaluate this claim. Investigators said that no experienced paratrooper or skydiver would attempt a jump during a rainstorm with no light source. Investigators also believe that, even if Cooper was in a hurry to escape, an experienced jumper or paratrooper would have stopped to inspect his chutes.
On March 24, 2008, the FBI announced that it was in possession of a parachute recovered from a field in northern Clark County, Washington, near the town of Amboy. A property owner was in the process of making a private road with a bulldozer when the blade caught some cloth, and his children pulled the cloth until the canopy lines appeared. Earl Cossey, the man who provided the four parachutes that were given to Cooper by the FBI, examined the newly found chute and on April 1, 2008 said that "absolutely, for sure" it could not have been one of the four that he supplied in 1971. The Cooper parachutes were made of nylon, unlike the new chute that was recovered which is made of silk and most likely made around 1945. The FBI later made a press release confirming Cossey's findings. Investigators reached their official conclusion after consulting Cossey and other parachute experts. "From the best we could learn from the people we spoke to, it just didn't look like it was the right kind of parachute in any way," said FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs.[49] Further digging at the site in southwestern Washington turned up no indication that it could have been Cooper's.
Hence, the case closed, cold.
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Epilogue
Federal Bureau of Investigation
#935, Pennsylvania Ave. NW,
Washington DC.
Classified Archive Vault
Records Management Division, Administrative Branch
File Name: NORJAK
Case of D. B. Cooper alias Dan Cooper
Case tags:
Federal Bureau of Investigation
#935, Pennsylvania Ave. NW,
Washington DC.
Classified Archive Vault
Records Management Division, Administrative Branch
File Name: NORJAK
Case of D. B. Cooper alias Dan Cooper
Case tags:
D.B.Cooper, Dan Cooper, Hijack, Flight-305, Boeing 727-100,
Unsolved, N467US, Northwest, PDX, , Richard McCoy Jr., SEA
Status: Closed
[Extract from the file – (modified)]
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
As assumed there was no complaint from the subject regarding the unusable parachutes provided to him. He may not have checked them in his urgency of executing his devised plan.
The plan was to prolong the negotiation with the subject in case he comes back discovering the torn parachutes and force the plane to land for refueling and storm in. Or leave the subject to use the parachute.
He used the parachute.
Case closed.
[Extract from the file – (modified)]
… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …
As assumed there was no complaint from the subject regarding the unusable parachutes provided to him. He may not have checked them in his urgency of executing his devised plan.
The plan was to prolong the negotiation with the subject in case he comes back discovering the torn parachutes and force the plane to land for refueling and storm in. Or leave the subject to use the parachute.
He used the parachute.
Case closed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Carlos De Amate
Boulevard Costero 87564,
Ciudad Madero,
Tamaulipas, Tampico, Mexico
Diary
Friday, 25 February, 1972
At last a peaceful weekend to relax with my favorite bourbon whiskey. It’s been almost around 3 months since the ‘fall’. The search is still going on. Federal brasses are not going to reveal what they had really planned – too much of human rights shouts are saving our skins nowadays.
I just want to see how long they are going to take to find out that I had carried another luggage with a parachute intact.
Funny that they had expected that I will be making my plans assuming they will definitely give me a parachute and will use it for my escape.
Thanks for the Tina for missing to identify my own parachute.
Friday, 25 February, 1972
At last a peaceful weekend to relax with my favorite bourbon whiskey. It’s been almost around 3 months since the ‘fall’. The search is still going on. Federal brasses are not going to reveal what they had really planned – too much of human rights shouts are saving our skins nowadays.
I just want to see how long they are going to take to find out that I had carried another luggage with a parachute intact.
Funny that they had expected that I will be making my plans assuming they will definitely give me a parachute and will use it for my escape.
Thanks for the Tina for missing to identify my own parachute.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End.
And the epilogue is a work of fiction, inspired by the case of D.B.Cooper and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental, apart from the facts depicted.
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