Is D.B. Cooper still alive?
On Nov. 24, 1971 -- Thanksgiving eve -- a passenger listed as "Dan Cooper" on his ticket boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, bound from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, Wash. The FBI believes he was the only person on the plane that afternoon who knew that it was about to be hijacked [source: New York Magazine]. Cooper, who wore a black suit and sported a sensible hairstyle, single-handedly took over the Boeing 727 airplane and held its passengers and crew hostage.
Threatening to detonate an explosive device, Cooper demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes. (Today, that amount is roughly equal to 1 to 2.5 million dollars [source: Measuring Worth].) He directed the crew to land as planned at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. There, he released the 36 passengers and picked up the money. He directed the plane to fly toward Mexico [source: CBS News].
But the plane never made it to Mexico. It landed in Reno, Nev., with Cooper no longer aboard. At 10,000 feet above sea level, over the mountainous and remote forests of Washington state, D.B. Cooper strapped the ransom cash to his body, lowered the passenger staircase from the plane's belly, and parachuted out of the 727 and into the annals of mystery. He had pulled off one of the greatest heists in the history of crime.
More than one ballad was written of his crime, and in 1981, a film based on the hijacking supposed that Cooper survived his jump and made off with the money [source: IMDB]. His mysterious persona even turned up in another crime: In 1972, two men tried to extort $45,000 from a reporter in exchange for an interview with a man they falsely claimed was D.B. Cooper [source: U.S. District Court, Wash.].
Exceedingly little is known of the man who hijacked Flight 305. He could be anyone. His demeanor during the hijacking was calm and courteous. His name was a pseudonym. And, most importantly, his body has never been found. Is D.B. Cooper still alive? Who was he? Find out about some of the suspects on the next page.
Who was D.B. Cooper?
The FBI's file on D.B. Cooper has remained open since the skyjacking. Over the years, several agents have taken charge of the case, followed leads, retired and passed it along. More than 800 suspects have been evaluated [source: NPR]. About 20,000 documents and pieces of evidence were accepted, catalogued and stored [source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer]. None have led to a solution to the case.
FBI profilers created two sketches of Cooper early on in the investigation. One was a drawing of the man, generated from descriptions given by two stewardesses aboard the flight. Over the years, agents have stood by this depiction of the hijacker. Both women gave almost identical descriptions of the man who called himself Dan Cooper, and each woman was interviewed separately in two different cities [source: FBI].
The other sketch was a profile of Cooper's character. To undertake such a daring plot, he would have to be a trained parachutist, perhaps a paratrooper. He drank bourbon and chain-smoked cigarettes on the flight. He was polite and mild-mannered. His only threat came when he demanded the money and four parachutes: "No funny stuff or I'll do the job," he allegedly told the crew [source: The Independent]. No one was harmed in any way on the flight. He released the passengers even before receiving the ransom.
As new technology has emerged, it's been used in the Cooper case. The skinny, black clip-on necktie Cooper wore during the hijacking was left behind when he jumped. The FBI was able to cull a DNA sample from it, which ruled out at least one of the suspects who've emerged over the years -- a man named Duane Weber.
In 1996, Weber's widow told the FBI that her husband confessed to being Dan Cooper on his deathbed. She was unaware that Dan and D.B. Cooper were one in the same, and shrugged the confession off [source: U.S. News and World Report]. She was convinced that her husband had been the famed skyjacker until he was ruled out by DNA evidence in 2001.
Many FBI detectives (including one of the case's former lead agents) have fingered a man named Richard McCoy as Cooper. Five months after Cooper hijacked the Northwest Orient flight, McCoy -- a Vietnam veteran and former Sunday school teacher -- pulled a similar heist, jumping out of a plane over Utah with $500,000 in cash. He was soon caught, however, and sentenced to 45 years in prison [source: FBI]. McCoy escaped in 1974 on the back of a garbage truck and died after being shot by police [source: New York Magazine]. The hitch? McCoy didn't fit the stewardesses' description.
In 2007, Kenneth Christiansen emerged as a suspect. Christiansen's brother, Lyle, was convinced that Kenneth was D.B. Cooper. Lyle began a letter-writing campaign to Nora Ephron, a movie director, to share his story. New York Magazine published the story of Lyle's campaign in October of the same year. Kenneth Christiansen fit Cooper's profile in many ways -- he also looked a good bit like Cooper and was an employee of Northwest [source: New York Magazine]. The FBI has rejected him as a suspect, however.
One unlikely suspect is Bobby "Barbara" Drayton, who's thought to be the first gender-reassignment recipient in Washington state. Drayton confessed to the Cooper heist, but recanted later. Her friends still consider her a suspect, believing that she disguised herself as a man during the hijacking [source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer].
The FBI has discounted many suspects. Mysteriously, the real identity of D.B. Cooper remains unknown. Could he still be alive? Find out on the next page.
The Possibility of D.B. Cooper's Survival
As the FBI investigated deeper into the D.B. Cooper case, their initial impression that he must've been a skilled parachutist began to crumble. He clearly had some aviation knowledge -- Cooper had directed the pilot to fly below 10,000 feet and to keep the wing flaps at a 15-degree angle. This would slow the plane to about 200 knots [source: New York Magazine]. But only a madman or an inexperienced skydiver would have made the jump Cooper attempted.
For one, the conditions were terrible for skydiving. The plane's altitude was based on sea level, and Cooper jumped out over the Cascade Mountains. So the actual distance between him and the ground (or the tall trees) below would have been extremely unpredictable. It was rainy and cold when he jumped -- with the wind chill, Cooper's business suit wouldn't have kept him very warm when he dove into below-zero temperatures [source: FBI].
Cooper had also demanded four parachutes. He'd used the lines from at least one to secure the money to his torso, and strapped on two of them -- front and back. Cooper had at least some knowledge of parachutes; he'd requested chutes designed for front and back. But he failed to recognize that the one he'd donned didn't operate. It was for training purposes only [source: FBI].
Even if he did survive the jump with faulty parachutes, one visitor to a party held in Cooper's honor in each year near Woodland, Ore., believes that Cooper might have had another problem to contend with: "encounter[ing] Sasquatch in Washington's woods" [source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer].
Many FBI agents don't believe that D.B. Cooper survived his famous jump from the Northwest Boeing 727. Among the disbelievers is Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the case in 2007 [source: The Independent]. When Karr took over, he released evidence on an FBI Web site (see link on the next page) in the hopes that someone may come forward with clues needed to close the case once and for all.
Among this evidence are the serial numbers from cash discovered in 1980. That year, a boy playing in the woods along the Columbia River found $5,800 worth of $20 bills buried in the muddy banks. The serial numbers matched those given to Cooper as ransom [source: Los Angeles Times]. An intensive search was launched of the surrounding area, which produced a human skull. It turned out, however, that the skull belonged to a woman [source: U.S. News and World Report].
Agent Carr hopes this money will ultimately provide the answer to the whereabouts of D.B. Cooper's final resting place. He's made appeals to hydrologists -- scientists who study the movement of water in nature -- to examine the bills [source: FBI]. Perhaps someone can determine if the money originally landed elsewhere and was carried to the Columbia River years later.
So far, the bills are the only tangible link to Cooper. In 2008, a parachute matching those given to Cooper was dug up by children in southwestern Washington. But it was made of silk; the chutes Cooper had were nylon. The owner of the skydiving business that provided the parachutes to the FBI for Cooper confirmed that they weren't the same [source: AP].
If Cooper survived his jump, he may still be alive. Based on the descriptions given by the two stewardesses on the flight, he'd be in his mid-80s. Until incontrovertible evidence is uncovered, the D.B. "Dan" Cooper case continues. And with a legend as big as Cooper's, even proof probably won't satisfy some who've followed the crime.
For more information on crime and other related topics, visit the next page.
Is D.B. Cooper still alive?: Author's Note
D.B. Cooper was one of the first subjects, like ghosts and trepanation, to catch my attention as a kid. I remember seeing his story first on the old NBC series "Unsolved Mysteries," and I still hear Robert Stack's voice narrate when I imagine the staircase lowering from the jet in flight and Cooper jumping into the night sky over Washington. When I came to HowStuffWorks.com and worked as the history writer for a time, this was one of the first article ideas I pitched.
One of the parts of the D.B. Cooper story that makes it so enduring isn't just the mystery alone. It's also the tantalizing clues or the theories from retired FBI agents that float to the surface of the media from time to time and revive the whole discussion again. The D.B. Cooper mystery is alluring because it may never be solved (and I kind of hope it isn't).
But there is also a darker side to it -- even darker than the crime itself. The Cooper theft led to a new world where hijacking is possible. In just a few short years, taking control of airplanes filled with hostages became too regular an occurrence. I don't think you can pin that trend entirely on Cooper, but his crime did take away a lot of the naïveté that people once had toward air travel.
Sources
- Gray, Geoffrey. "Unmasking D.B. Cooper." New York Magazine. October 22, 2007. http://nymag.com/news/features/39593/
- McNerthney, Casey. "D.B. Cooper, where are you?" Seattle Post-Intelligencer. November 23, 2007. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/340794_cooper23.html
- Pasternak, Douglas. "Skyjacker at large." U.S. News and World Report. July 24, 2000. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/cooper.htm
- Tizon, Tomas Alex. "Trail of hijacker 'D.B. Cooper' may be warming up." Los Angeles Times. March 30, 2008. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/ la-na-dbcooper30mar30,1,6196346.story?track=rss
- "D.B. Cooper." CBS News. Noverber 25, 1971. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5wARW8FcF0
- "D.B. Cooper redux." Federal Bureau of Investigation. December 31, 2007. http://www.fbi.gov/page2/dec07/dbcooper123107.html
- "Famous cases: Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr. -- airline hijacking." Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/mccoy/mccoy.htm
- · "FBI: Parachute isn't D.B. Cooper's." Associated Press. April 1, 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/01/cooper.chute.ap/
- "FBI reopens very cold case of D.B. Cooper." NPR. January 4, 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17840873
- "Plot summary of 'The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper' (1981)." Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082958/plotsummary
- "Sunject: D.B. Cooper." Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://foia.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/cooper_d_b/cooper_d_b_part01.pdf
- "The D.B. Cooper story: A mystery." True Crime Library. http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/DB_Cooper/index.html
- "The unsolved crime of the century: The hunt for D.B. Cooper." The Independent. January 3, 2008. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ the-unsolved-crime-of-the-century-the-hunt-for-d-b-cooper-767808.html
D.B. Cooper: Cheat Sheet
Stuff You Need to Know- On Nov. 24, 1971, a passenger known as Dan Cooper took control of a Boeing 727 bound for Portland from Seattle after he threatened to detonate a bomb.
- Somewhere over Washington, the man had the crew lower the stairs from the plane's belly and, equipped with a parachute, he jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet.
- Although several pieces of evidence linked to the crime, including ransom money and a parachute, no body was ever found.
- One suspect was a transgender woman named Bobby "Barbara" Drayton, who claimed she had disguised herself as a man during the hijacking.
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