It was the night earlier than Thanksgiving in 1971 when a person who referred to as himself Dan Cooper walked as much as the ticket counter at Portland Worldwide Airport and paid money for a round-trip ticket to Seattle. He regarded like a businessman to the ticket brokers and the opposite passengers. He was in his 40s, black hair parted within the center, brown eyes, sporting a go well with and raincoat and clip-on tie, clutching a briefcase and a paper bag. Inconspicuously, Cooper took a seat at the back of the Boeing 727 and ordered a bourbon and 7-Up. That’s precisely when all the things modified – and the place Cooper confirmed he wasn’t right here for simply some other enterprise journey.
After the airplane took off a couple of minutes later, he gave a be aware to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. She assumed it was a phone quantity. He advised her, “Miss, you’d higher have a look at that be aware. I’ve a bomb.” The be aware, similar to the flight, was temporary and clear. He wished $200,000 in money and 4 parachutes, to be ready for him when the airplane landed. To bolster his message, Cooper opened his briefcase to disclose a neat row of crimson cylinders, wired to a battery. Captain William Scott was notified, and for the following two hours the jet circled Puget Sound whereas police and FBI brokers frantically tried to assemble the ransom. Passengers had been advised solely that the flight had a minor mechanical downside and can be delayed.
Flight 305 touched down in Seattle at 5:46 p.m. The alternate befell in close to darkness on the fringe of the runway and all the passengers walked free whereas a floor crew positioned $200,000 in $20 payments and the 4 parachutes on a desk. Cooper had stored his promise to let the passengers go, however he ordered the crew to remain on board. Flight attendant Tina Mucklow turned his messenger, carrying the parachutes and the bag of money to the rear of the airplane. With the cash safely in his possession, Cooper made his subsequent calls for. The airplane was to fly south towards Mexico Metropolis, as slowly and as little as attainable, with a cease to refuel in Reno. He even dictated flap settings and insisted the cabin stay unpressurized which steered he had a pilot’s familiarity with the 727’s techniques.
About half an hour after leaving Seattle, the cockpit devices registered the rear staircase reducing. At 8: 13 p.m., the jet gave a sudden upward jolt, as if an awesome weight had abruptly been dropped. By the point the airplane rolled into Reno simply earlier than midnight, it was surrounded by FBI brokers. They swarmed via the cabin, however the hijacker, the money and two of the parachutes, had vanished.
Brokers from the FBI searched the cabin and gathered up his few private gadgets left behind, together with a black clip-on necktie, a mother-of-pearl tie clasp, and a few cigarette butts within the armrest ashtray. Dozens of latent fingerprints had been dusted off the airplane, however none could possibly be definitively matched to a suspect. Each eyewitness was interviewed, and inside days composite sketches of the thriller hijacker had been distributed nationwide.
Figuring out a extra particular space to go looking, nevertheless, proved far tougher than anybody had anticipated. There was no technique to know exactly the place Cooper had left the plane. The jet’s airspeed and altitude had been approximate, the climate was turbulent, and solely Cooper knew how lengthy he’d waited after leaping to deploy his ripcord. Fighter jets monitoring the 727 that night time reported no exercise. Groups of investigators combed the forests, rivers, and farmland of southwest Washington. Helicopters and boats had been deployed, and in a single notably inventive case a submarine was even pressed into service. The group looking the area scoured 1000’s of acres over the following few months, however they discovered no hint of Cooper or his tools.
The FBI would finally evaluate greater than a thousand potential suspects, starting from former paratroopers and convicted embezzlers to beginner skydivers and escaped convicts. One of the vital scrutinized was Richard McCoy Jr., a skydiver who executed a near-identical hijacking simply months later. McCoy was eradicated from consideration by flight attendants who stated he didn’t match the reminiscence of the person they’d recognized. Different suspects had been floated over time: Sheridan Peterson, a Boeing worker and skilled skydiver; Robert Rackstraw, a self-described con man and small-plane pilot with a colourful historical past, and Kenneth Christiansen, a former Northwest Airways worker whose brother later claimed the corporate defrauded him of his id, and who his brother later claimed had confessed to the crime on his deathbed. None of those or the tons of of different leads would show any extra fruitful.
The one actual break within the case got here in 1980, when an eight-year-old boy digging alongside the Columbia River found three packets of decomposing $20 payments partially buried within the sand. The serial numbers matched Cooper’s ransom cost. The discover raised as many questions because it answered. Had Cooper died within the leap, and had the cash been scattered downstream in his fall? Or had he hidden it, and solely the river later uncovered it years later? No further payments have been discovered.
For years, beginner sleuths and seasoned investigators obsessed over each element of the case. The FBI would even conduct experimental check flights, utilizing weighted sleds to recreate Cooper’s leap with the intention to higher perceive the turbulence and situations he would have confronted. In 2016, after 45 years of investigation, the FBI introduced they had been formally closing the case, saying their sources can be higher spent on different, extra tangible instances. The information nevertheless, sure all 66 volumes, full with handwritten notes and sketches stay publicly obtainable.
Theories about Cooper’s final destiny stay break up amongst investigators to today. Many are satisfied he died within the leap, falling into the dense, mountainous forests with no survival tools, solely to be consumed by the weather. The sheer improbability of his escape and the truth that a considerable quantity of his ransom money has by no means been discovered suggests to many who he lived. Copycat hijackers within the years that adopted managed to parachute from 727s and survive, and that truth retains alive the idea amongst many who Cooper did too, and lived quietly for years beneath one other title. One factor is for sure, no conclusive proof has ever been recovered, and no suspect has ever been definitively recognized. Fifty years later, D.B. Cooper’s dive into the storm over the Pacific Northwest stays one of many best unsolved mysteries in American historical past.
