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smoak

Is DB Cooper a genius or dead?

By smoak, in The Bonfire

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steveorino    7

steveorino
Call me a romantic, but I'd like to think he got away with it. Maybe not all the money (he either lost some or all of it -- or even planted some as a few bills were found in a sand bank. However none were ever found in circulation)

Back in 1980 I thought about drawing a cartoon strip about DB cooper and have him wear those funny looking glasses, big nose, mustache disguise with an inept FBI always on his tail -- ever so close, but never gets his man.

Now that I think about it, he'd be a good character for my cartoon DZ.B|

steveOrino

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masterrig    1

masterrig
I read in the news paper a couple years ago, where a 'similar' attempt was made but thwarted by authorities. The man was arrested and met the description of 'D.B. Cooper'. The arrested man was about the same age. He could not be questioned in regard to the original sky-jacking due to the fact, the 'statute of limitations' had run-out. Supposedly, the original D.B. Cooper, had broken a leg on landing and was helped by a woman who lived in a cabin in the woods. She supposedly set his leg and let him stay till he healed-up and took him to a near-by town where he just walked away. This is probably one of the most interesting cases ever. It also started the 'sky-jacking craze'.


Chuck

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timber    3

timber
I believe that D.B. Cooper was actually a guy named Richard Floyd McCoy. Mr McCoy also staged a successful high- jacking and jump getting $ 500,000. He was also a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. The resemblance to the D.B. sketch matches. Mr. McCoy was finally arrested and sent to prison. Sometime later Mr. McCoy escaped from prison and robbed a few banks and died in a shoot out.
Blue Skies, Timber

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4201    0

4201
Correct me if i'm wrong, but; I heard he was a stupid ass that had little jumping experience!!! Heard something like he had a choice between a skydive sport rig or an emergency bail out rig. Of course he took the bail out rig!

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Tonto    1

Tonto
Well... having jumped a Boeing 727 at WFFC in 1992, and having "survived" many, many 200 MPH exits from C-130's and Antonov 26's and 32's, and having done a bunch of jumps on round canopies with from mounted reserves, and with about 50 night jumps..
I struggle to beleive the guy died.

I think the "He died!" crew are a bunch of Whuffos who cannot grasp the fact that we do things a million times more demanding and dangerous than this every year - and video it for our friends.

Dead? Maybe now, 32 years after the jump - but the day after?
I don't think so.

t
It's the year of the Pig.

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freeflyflunky    0

freeflyflunky
***

Heard something like he had a choice between a skydive sport rig or an emergency bail out rig. Of course he took the bail out rig!
__________________________________________

Yeah, I believe this was the case. A local dropzone owner was contacted by the FBI and asked to provide two rigs (as D.B. requested,) one of which was a new sport rig, and the other was the obviously inferior bail out rig; Cooper chose the latter.
Despite this, I'd like to think that Cooper made it...although the fact that none of the cash ever made it into circulation makes it hard to believe he got to spend any of it.
On a side note, anyone know anything about the 727 he jumped out of being used (temporarily) as a jumpship? A couple of older jumpers have told me stories of making a couple jumps out of the plane in the 80s or 90s.

_______________________________________________
_______________________________________

Oh, and one more thing...Ninjas ARE way cooler than pirates.

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masterrig    1

masterrig
Quote

Correct me if i'm wrong, but; I heard he was a stupid ass that had little jumping experience!!! Heard something like he had a choice between a skydive sport rig or an emergency bail out rig. Of course he took the bail out rig!


________________________________________

From all reports of investigators, 'D.B. Cooper', had a good knowledge of the aircraft and especially the exits, he exited from and a knowledge of parachutes and jump skills. From what I read, the theory is; he used untraceable equipment which he could leave behind after landing. There have been one or two claims to the name but, so far, noone who has come forward, has proven to be the 'real' D.B. Cooper.


Chuck

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flyingloom    0

flyingloom
D.B. LIVED!!
An old time jumper once told me he actually knew the man from his days working with the CIA and that Cooper went to Rhodeisa after the hijacking where he most likely died. The man was a mercenary. He did the deed to show how easy it can be done. He could had easily asked for more than $200,000 and got it. Most likely he did not jump over the area suspected but waited untill he was closer to Reno at a preplanned spot. I like to believe he made it.




The particulars of D.B. Cooper's clever airborne crime and daredevil getaway have been pondered, picked over and recapitulated for three decades now.

In 1971, D.B. Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up an airliner, extorted $200,000 from its owner, Northwest Orient, then leaped from the airborne 727 with 21 pounds of $20 bills strapped to his torso.

He was never seen again—dead or alive. The crime was perfect if he lived, perfectly crazy if he didn't.

In either case, D.B. Cooper's nom de crime—no one knows his real name—may be the most recognized alias among western felons since Jack the Ripper.

Everyone from dour G-men to giddy amateur sleuths have pored over the details, hoping to wheedle a resolution out of some overlooked aspect, as though a clue concealed in the holdup's hieroglyph of facts might lead to an a-ha!, a la Inspector Clouseau.

Yet the case remains unsolved more than 30 years later, and D. B. Cooper has become the Bigfoot of crime, evading one of the most extensive and expensive American manhunts of the 20th century. The whereabouts of the man (or his remains) is one of the great crime mysteries of our time.

Of course, the annals of wrongdoing are stuffed with titillating unsolved cases, from London's notorious ripper in the 1880s to the Black Dahlia murder of an aspiring actress in Los Angeles in 1947 to the befuddling murder—and muddled investigation—of little Jon Benet Ramsey in 1997 in Boulder, Colo.

But D.B. Cooper's crime was different. First, no innocent bystander was injured, although law enforcers argue that he put several dozen lives at risk.

There was modest collateral damage to Northwest Orient's bottom line, and the FBI's swollen ego was bruised to the bone. Cooper pulled his buccaneering swipe in the twilight of the 47-year tenure of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who died not long after the hijacking. The director no doubt went to his grave with teeth gritted over his agency's inability, in this case, to get their man.

Cooper's crime also was unusual in that it helped rally critical support for sweeping air travel security initiatives, including passenger screening. Until D. B. Cooper's skydive, it was entirely possible to walk aboard a jet carrying a bomb.

Most law-abiders react with revulsion to violent criminals, with disgust to extortionists, and with a tsk-tsk to the preponderate larcenies that fill crime blotters in police stations across America.

Yet Cooper induced more smiles than frowns.

Hijackings became more violent and less palatable as the 1970s wore on, and the destruction of September 11, 2001, makes any such act seem evil.

But D. B. Cooper's crime was of its time, the early 1970s, when antisocial behavior had cache. Many Americans commended his moxie. He was celebrated in a song, film and books. He managed to tweak J. Edgar Hoover's nose and finagle a bag of loot from a big corporation. He was Robin Hood for tie-dyed longhairs—and not a few wearers of more traditional attire.

But did D. B. Cooper get away with it? No one can say for certain. We do know that he could have survived the dangerous nighttime skydive because Cooper's caper, like a crime science experiment, was replicated with complete success by a copycat aerial clip artist just months later. That hijacker hit the ground safely, although the mimic ultimately paid dearly. The copycat case also spawned a controversial theory about the fate of Dan Cooper.

Coincidentally, Cooper himself probably copied a similar hijacking that occurred two weeks before his endeavor.

Many others have tried variations on the airline extortion technique—generally with less success. Some have "splattered," as law enforcers like to say. FBI investigators believe Cooper probably met that fate—a fatal kiss of the ground. But their opinion is far from unanimous.

Books by a half-dozen authors, including three separate tomes by ex-FBI agents, have posited theories—some serious, some spurious—about what happened to Cooper. Several men have stepped forward claiming to be Cooper, although none convincingly so. Some believe Cooper is alive and well and living on a beach in Mexico. Others say he slipped back into an obscure American life and grins like a Cheshire cat at premature reports of his demise.
The Crime




D. B. Cooper gained infamy on Thanksgiving Eve 1971, a dank, chilly day in the American Northwest. At 4 o'clock that Wednesday afternoon, a man wearing a modest businessman's suit stepped to the Northwest Orient counter at Portland International Airport and paid $20 cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The man, roughly 45 years old, gave the name Dan Cooper. Ticket agent Hal Williams assigned him aisle seat 18C in coach aboard Northwest Flight No. 305, scheduled to depart at 4:35 for a half-hour journey to Sea-Tac.


Piedmont 727, actual plane


Flight 305 was a Boeing 727-100 that had begun the day in Washington, D.C. It carried passengers to the Northwest hub in Minneapolis, then made stops in Great Falls and Missoula, MT, before continuing west to Portland. The brief flight to Seattle would conclude its long day. The jet could seat 94 passengers—66 in coach and 28 in first class—but it carried just 37 customers as the five crew members secured doors and prepared for takeoff.

The Minneapolis-based crew included the pilot, Capt. William Scott, 51, a 20-year Northwest veteran; First Officer Bob Rataczak; Flight Engineer H.E. Anderson, and two young flight attendants, Tina Mucklow, 22, and Florence Schaffner, 23, each with less than 24 months in the air.

Before takeoff, no crew member took particular note of Dan Cooper, a fit 6-footer who weighed perhaps 175 pounds. D. B. Cooper's wardrobe was the definition of nondescript in 1971: a dark suit and tie and a white shirt with a pearl tie tack. Like so many other American males of that day, he wore a homburg hat—felt, with a dented crown and narrow brim. He carried a dark raincoat and a brief case. He had brown eyes, short brown hair and no whiskers. He was white and spoke with no accent. He was tan or had a Mediterranean complexion described as swarthy or olive.

Cooper handed a note to Flo Schaffner moments after the jet was airborne. Men traveling alone often passed phone or hotel room numbers to the attractive young stewardess. She assumed another come-on and gave the note her usual treatment, sticking it unread in a uniform pocket.

The next time Schaffner passed, Cooper gestured for her to lean close. He said, "You'd better read that. I have a bomb." He nodded toward the briefcase in his lap. Schaffner went to the galley, read the note, then shared it with fellow attendant Tina Mucklow. They hurried to the cockpit, where Capt. Scott had a look. The pilot immediately radioed Sea-Tac air traffic control, who alerted Seattle police, who in turn alerted the FBI. The feds placed an urgent call to Northwest Orient's president, Donald Nyrop, who ordered full compliance with Cooper's demands. Nyrop no doubt hoped to avoid the negative publicity that a disaster aboard a Northwest flight would bring. By comparison, $200,000 was a pittance.

The precise wording of Cooper's extortion note has been lost because the hijacker insisted the crew return the note since it was potential evidence. But Schaffner would later recall that the note was hand-printed in ink with precise demands and simple instructions for $200,000 in cash and two sets of parachutes (two backpacks and two chestpacks, which serve as emergency backups). He ordered the items delivered to the jet when it landed at Sea-Tac, and he said he would blow up the plane if the airline failed to comply. Schaffner and others who read the note later agreed it included the phrase "no funny business."

Capt. Scott sent Schaffner back to the hijacker. She sat in Cooper's aisle seat. He had moved to the window. Cooper opened his briefcase wide enough to give her a glimpse at wires and two red cylinders that might have been sticks of dynamite. Cooper told her to tell the pilot to stay aloft until the money and chutes were ready in Seattle. She hurried back to the cockpit with the latest message.

Scott soon announced over the intercom that a mechanical problem would require the jet to circle before landing. All but a few passengers apparently were unaware of a hijacking, although it would not have come as a great surprise in 1971.
The Hijacking Dilemma




The 1960s and early '70s were the heydays of hijacking. More than 500 incidents of air piracy have been reported around the globe over the past 70 years, and about two-thirds of them happened from 1960 to 1973.

America has suffered its share—115 successful hijackings in 225 attempts against commercial airplanes owned by U.S. firms, according to the federal Transportation Safety Administration. The first reported airplane hijacking happened in 1931 in South America, when a Pan American mail plane piloted by an American was commandeered by revolutionary political faction in Peru. The commandos wanted to use the plane to drop propaganda leaflets. The pilot refused to fly, and the plane sat at an airfield for 11 days before the revolutionaries scratched the plan.

Political ideology played a role in most early hijackings, including about 25 airplane takeovers from 1947 to 1958 by Eastern Europeans attempting to flee Communism.


John "Jack" Graham, escorted


Financially motivated hijackings were rare but not unknown. On November 1, 1955, a United Air Lines flight from Denver to Seattle crashed 11 minutes after takeoff, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members. Investigators found indications of a bomb in the cargo hold. Evidence eventually cast suspicion on Jack Graham, a married father of two who managed a drive-in restaurant in Denver. Forensic experts determined the explosion was centered in a gift-wrapped parcel in luggage checked onto the jet by Daisie King, Graham's mother, who died in the crash. Graham had given the package to his mother as she prepared to leave on a trip to Alaska via Seattle. Evidence would show that Graham had hoped to collect an inheritance and $50,000 in insurance policies. Instead, he was convicted of murder and executed.

Hijackings spiked sharply during in the 1960s, when "Take me to Havana" became a reliable laugh line for comedians as backers of revolutionary Cuban leader Fidel Castro and others loyal to the man Castro deposed, Fulgencio Batista, crisscrossed the Straits of Florida aboard hijacked airplanes. This led President Kennedy in 1961 to initiate America's first anti-hijacking measures, which are well-known today: armed Border Patrol agents assigned to select flights and cockpit doors equipped with locks. Congress also approved the death penalty for air piracy.

In 1968, a new era in air piracy commenced as disaffected Palestinians and other Arabs used passenger jets to lash out against Israel. The first such hijacking happened on July 23, 1968, when three Arabs seized a Tel Aviv-to-Rome flight of El Al, the Israeli airline. The plane was diverted to Algiers, where the passengers were eventually released, although some were held for a month.

El Al became an industry leader in airline security by screening passengers, posting armed guards on its flights and equipping cockpits with armored doors. Political hijackers then began focusing on other airlines that serviced Israel, including a number of American air carriers. In 1970, Palestinians achieved the landmark coordinated hijackings of three jets—one each from TWA, Swissair and British Airways. The planes were diverted to Jordan, emptied of passengers and crew, and blown up. (Many terrorism experts view that hijacking as a blueprint for the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001.)

But American authorities were loath to make sweeping changes in air security, even after the trio of hijackings to Jordan. President Nixon ordered the usual response of armed sky marshals on some flights. More aggressive measures, including baggage inspection and metal detectors, were rejected as being bad for the air travel business: They would make passengers jittery.

Against that backdrop, Dan Cooper was able to walk unchallenged aboard Flight 305 with a bomb—or what he claimed was a bomb—even though everyone in the air travel industry understood that the lack of security meant any individual passenger could take down a plane.
Meeting the Demands




The hijacking crisis crew on the ground, including Seattle cops, FBI agents, Northwest employees and Federal Aviation Administration officials, had roughly 30 minutes to meet Cooper's demands. The FBI scrambled to assemble the $200,000 cash while Seattle cops worked on the two sets of parachutes.

Cooper had specified $20 bills—an indication of his attention to detail in the planning. He apparently had calculated that 10,000 $20 bills would weigh just 21 pounds. Smaller denominations would add weight and danger to his skydive. Larger denominations would be more conspicuous and therefore more difficult to pass.

Cooper specified the bills should have random, not sequential, serial numbers. FBI agents followed his instructions but made sure each bill began with the code letter L, issued by the Federal Reserve office in San Francisco. Nearly all of the bills were dated 1969. Against a ticking clock, the agents held a hurried session in which each bill was photographed to create a microfilm record of all 10,000 serial numbers.

Meanwhile, the search for suitable parachutes was more difficult than acquiring $200,000 cash.

The task at first seemed simple. Authorities at Tacoma's McChord Air Force Base agreed to provide military-issue chutes. But Cooper—through a flight attendant messenger—rejected the military chutes, which have automatic opening mechanisms. Cooper insisted on civilian chutes, with user-operated ripcords. After a series of urgent phone calls, Seattle cops managed to make contact with the owner of a skydiving school. The business was closed, but the owner was pressed into service. He met officers at the school, and soon a police car with lights flashing and siren screaming raced to Sea-Tac Airport with a precious cargo of four parachutes.

Cooper's hijacking note did not spell out his plan to skydive with the loot, but the authorities were able to deduce his intentions. They puzzled over his request for two sets of chutes. Did he plan to take along a passenger or crew member as an airborne hostage? The question negated any thoughts of using dummy parachutes that would end the hijacking—and the hijacker's life—with a splat. To some, it was another brilliant detail of his plan.

Aboard the jet, Cooper drank a bourbon and water—and, oddly, offered to pay Mucklow for the highball. Cooper's manners and temperament have been the subject of some disagreement. By the FBI's account, he was boozy and rather raunchy. Ralph Himmelsbach, a lead FBI investigator on the case, has said the hijacker used "filthy language" and was "obscene."

Yet Mucklow, who spent more time with Cooper than any other crew member, has described him as a gentleman. She said, "He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm." One example was Cooper's request that meals for the crew be brought on board once the jet was on the ground in Seattle.

Investigators surmised that Cooper was native to the Seattle area or was born in the Northwest and had spent some years around Puget Sound. The Northwest agent at Sea-Tac had discerned no regional accent when Cooper bought his ticket. Cooper had recognized Tacoma from the air while the hijacked jet was circling, and he knew that McChord Air Force Base was 20 minutes from Sea-Tac, based on a comment he made to Mucklow.

He was well-acquainted with skydiving and schooled in jet aerodynamics, including such details as the specs for wing flap angles and minimum air speeds for the Boeing 727. Some believe he was an active or retired airman who had spent time stationed at McChord.
'Everything Is Ready'




With the cash and parachutes on hand, the ground team radioed Capt. Scott at 5:24 p.m. with a simple message: "Everything is ready for your arrival." The plane landed at 5:39, barely 30 minutes behind schedule. Cooper ordered Scott to taxi to a remote, well-lit position on the tarmac. He ordered the cabin lights dimmed—a deterrent to police marksmanship. He specified that no vehicle should approach the plane and that the person chosen to deliver the chutes and money—a Northwest employee, it turned out—should arrive unaccompanied.

The airline employee drove a company vehicle to a point near the plane. Cooper ordered Mucklow to drop the aft stairs. The employee carried two parachutes at a time to the stairs, where he handed them over to Mucklow. The same courier then delivered the cash in a large, canvas bank bag.

With his demands met, Cooper got busy. He allowed his 36 fellow passengers and attendant Flo Schaffner to leave the jet via the same aft stairs. He did not release Tina Mucklow or the three men in the cockpit, Scott, Rataczak and Anderson.

Through Capt. Scott, an FAA official asked Cooper for permission to come aboard the jet. He apparently wanted to warn the hijacker of the consequences of his air piracy—including a possible death sentence. Cooper told him to stuff it and denied the request.

Meanwhile, as Mucklow stood by Cooper read an instruction card for operation of the aft stairs, which lowered by gravity from the underside of the rear of the fuselage through employment of a simple lever similar to an automobile emergency brake. Cooper questioned Mucklow carefully about the stairs, and the flight attendant said she did not believe they could be lowered during flight. Cooper told her flatly that she was wrong.

The hijacker then used the flight attendant's cabin phone to give the cockpit personnel instructions on how and where to fly. He ordered an altitude not to exceed 10,000 feet, with wing flaps set at 15 degrees and airspeed of no more than 150 knots. Cooper warned the pilot he was wearing a wrist altimeter to monitor the altitude.

Larger jets could not have maintained such a low airspeed. But Cooper obviously knew that the lightweight 727 (just 50 tons without fuel) could fly as slowly as 80 knots in the dense air at 10,000 feet. Even with a full load of fuel the jet would have no problem maintaining a speed of 100 knots.

Skydivers prefer slower airspeeds to diminish the buffeting effects of the wind, but a dive at 150 knots is acceptable for an experienced jumper. And Cooper chose Flight 305 as much for its airplane as for its destination. The Boeing 727-100 has three engines, one high on the fuselage immediately in front of the vertical tail fin and two others on either side of the fuselage just above the horizontal tail fins. He knew that neither engine intakes nor exhaust would interfere when he lowered the aft steps and stepped out into the night sky.

Cooper told the crew he wanted to go to Mexico City, but First Officer Rataczak said the jet would have a range of just 1,000 miles at the altitude and airspeed the hijacker had ordered, even loaded to capacity with 52,000 gallons of fuel. Mexico City was 2,200 miles away. After a brief back-and-forth, the crew and Cooper agreed to an intermediate refueling stop in Reno, Nevada.

Before leaving Seattle, Cooper ordered a full refueling. A tanker truck was hurried to the jet, but a vapor lock slowed the process. Cooper again displayed his detailed knowledge of the 727. He apparently knew the jet could take on 4,000 gallons of fuel per minute. When the refueling process was not complete after 15 minutes, he demanded an explanation and made threats. Chastened by a man with an apparent bomb, the fuel crew soon completed the job.

In the meantime, the hijacker and cockpit crew negotiated the flight path. A straight-line route from Seattle south-southeast to Reno was impossible at Cooper's assigned altitude of 10,000 feet. The 727 would have passed perilously close to several high peaks of the Cascade Range, including Mt. Rainier (14,411 feet), Mount St. Helens (9,677) and Mt. Adams (12,276). Capt. Scott and Cooper compromised on a standard low-altitude route—known as Vector 23 in the Jeppesen air navigational charts—that passed safely west of the high peaks. Vector-23 allows planes to maintain altitudes as low as 5,000 feet.

Finally, Cooper told Capt. Scott that the cabin should not be pressurized. The hijacker understood he could breathe normally at 10,000 feet, and he also knew the equalized air pressure inside the jet and out would minimize the potential for a violent surge of air when he dropped the aft stairs.

With all the essential flight details settled, Cooper ordered a prompt departure. The 727 taxied, rumbled down the runway, went aloft and tucked its wheels. The time was 7:46 p.m., two hours and six minutes after Flight 305 had landed in Seattle.

The Jump




After takeoff, Cooper ordered Mucklow to the cockpit with the rest of the crew. The cockpit door had no peephole, and the jet was not equipped with the remote cameras and monitors now employed on many commercial planes. The crew was left wondering as Capt. Scott did his best to maintain the mandated elevation and airspeed against a bucking wind.

At 8 p.m., a red light illuminated on the instrument panel to warn of an open door on the aircraft—the aft stairs.

Over the intercom, Scott said, "Is there anything we can do for you?" The response was curt: "No!" It was the last word the crew heard from Dan Cooper.

At 8:24, Scott noticed the slightest dip in the jet's nose, followed by a correcting dip of its tail. He suspected the aft stairs had been lowered, causing the jet to genuflect. Scott marked the spot, near the Lewis River, 25 miles north of Portland. The crew considered the possibility that Cooper had jumped, but it had no choice but to continue to Reno since there was no way to confirm the suspicion short of disobeying his order to stay in the cockpit.

The plane touched down in Reno at 10:15 p.m. The crew waited nervously for five minutes. Capt. Scott spoke over the intercom. Receiving no response, he cautiously opened the cockpit door. The passenger cabin was empty. The hijacker was gone, and he had taken with him most everything he carried on board, including his hat, overcoat and the briefcase bomb. The cash and one set of parachutes were gone, as well.


Pursuit of DB Cooper video highlights the daring leap


The leap was a remarkable feat.

Cooper had ambled down the aft stairs wearing both backpack and chestpack parachutes. He had a bag of money the size of a chubby toddler lashed to his body with nylon cords cut from the spare parachutes. He was either carrying or wearing a suit jacket, hat and raincoat. On his feet were leather street shoes. He stood at the bottom step, buffeted by a stinging wind and icy rain, and confronted a blind leap into unknowable terrain on a dark, stormy night. The air temperature at 10,000 feet was an estimated 7 degrees below zero. At Cooper's moment of truth, the plane was traveling at slightly faster than his mandated airspeed—170 knots, or about 195 mph. Yet Cooper followed through on his plan. He took a dive into the inky darkness. Waiting to greet him were the spiked tops of 150-foot Douglas firs and the dangerous crags and crevasses of mile-high mountains.

Cooper, of course, was never heard from again. No one has been able to prove that he got away. But no one has proven that he didn't.
The Investigation




Cooper left behind a few things, including the spare chutes and 8 Raleigh-brand cigarette butts. Authorities were surprised also to find the hijacker's black tie and tie tack, with a mother-of-pearl detail—an overlooked potential bit of evidence that was perhaps the only mistake he made. FBI crime-scene experts catalogued 66 fingerprints that could not be matched to the crew or other passengers. They led nowhere.

In retrospect, a simple cops-and-robbers approach might have been the best chance to catch the hijacker: follow the plane, wait for him to jump, then track him to the ground. Law enforcers tried to do this, but the opportunity was lost in a questionable choice of a chase plane. The Air Force scrambled up two F-106 fighter jets from McChord. Those pilots were instructed to follow at a safe distance and watch for a jumper. But the fighters are built to fly at speeds of up to 1,500 mph. They were useless in slow-motion, low altitude surveillance. The authorities tried to recover by sending up a slower-flying Air National Guard Lockheed T-33, but Cooper probably had already jumped by the time it arrived.

Nasty weather on the night of the jump led authorities to put off a ground search until the next day, Thanksgiving. An exhaustive search, by land and by air, over several weeks failed to turn up any trace of the hijacker or his parachute, an eye-catching yellow and red, although they did find the body of a missing teenager. Searching was difficult in the vast timberlands of the jump area—much of it owned by the giant paper firm Weyerhauser. But many Cooper-philes contend that the fruitless searches after the hijacking disprove the splatter theory about the hijacker's fate.

On Thanksgiving, the FBI mounted a search of its national crime records for known felons named Dan Cooper, just in case the hijacker had been foolish enough to use his real name. The agency dispatched a Portland-based agent to police headquarters in that city to check the rap sheet of a local man, D.B. Cooper. Joe Frazier, a news wire service reporter in Portland, heard the FBI was nosing around police headquarters. A records clerk told him they were checking on D.B. Cooper regarding the Northwest Orient hijacking. The man was cleared, but the name D.B. Cooper was hung on the hijacker, and the alias stuck like Velcro.


DB Cooper Wanted Poster


A widely circulated composite drawing of the suspect, based on recollections by the Northwest Orient crew and passengers, shows a man who bears a vague resemblance to Bing Crosby—probably as much for the skinny tie as the facial features. The hijacker ("John Doe AKA Dan Cooper") was charged with air piracy in abstentia in federal court in 1976. The charges stand today, and the case is technically still open. The FBI says it has checked out nearly 1,200 potential suspects and compiled enough paperwork and reports on the case to fill a 727. The tips continue to trickle in—some from citizens who call with a hunch about a friend, relative or colleague, others from people claiming to be Cooper.

The FBI no doubt would love to solve the case of the man who made a monkey out of law enforcers.

"It's that desperado mystique," Walt Crowley, a historian who lives in the vicinity of the jump, told Susan Gilmore of the Seattle Times. "It was an extraordinary audacious act to lower that rear gangway in flight and jump into a dark and stormy night. He didn't hurt anybody ... and we all love a mystery."

FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach who spent eight years as lead investigator in the case before retiring in 1980, sees it differently. He has called Cooper "a rodent," "a bastard," "a dirty, rotten crook" and "nothing more than a "sleazy, rotten criminal who jeopardized the lives of more than 40 people for money."

"That's not heroic," he once told a newspaper reporter. "It's selfish, dangerous and antisocial. I have no admiration for him at all. He's not at all admirable. He's just stupid and greedy."

In his book about the case, "NORJAK: The Investigation of D.B. Cooper," Himmelsbach promoted the splatter theory. And how did the body, the cash and the parachute escape detection, after years of searching by armies of law enforcers, volunteers and even Boy Scouts? Himmelsbach says they may have been looking in the wrong place.

The jump area was believed to have been roughly 10 miles east of Interstate 5, near Ariel, Wash., and the Lake Merwin Dam of the Lewis River, which separates Clark and Cowlitz counties. The FBI helped pinpoint that location by staging a reenactment of the jump. A 200-pound sled attached to a parachute was heaved from the aft stairs of a 727 traveling at the same speed and altitude as the Cooper jet at the precise place where Capt. Scott felt the jet genuflect.

But later calculations placed the jump just west, not east, of I-5, near the village of Woodland, Wash., and the Columbia River. The costly searching near Ariel was wasted, Himmelsbach said. Remarkably, he said this revelation occurred to him in 1980 when, on the day of his retirement, Capt. Scott paid him a courtesy visit. They got to talking, and Scott let drop that the jet was traveling west of where the FBI believed it had been. No one with the agency has ever offered an explanation as to how such a goof could have gone undetected for nine years.

Clues and More Theories




On February 10, 1980, an 8-year-old boy digging in the sand along a Columbia River bank unearthed three bundles of deteriorating currency—all $20 bills, and $5,800 in all--whose serial numbers matched the Cooper loot. Himmelsbach took this as evidence of his splatter theory, although the cash was found some 40 miles upstream from the newly pinpointed Woodland jump site. A geologist reckoned the money had been deposited on the river bank in August 1974, nearly three years after the jump. He said the money probably was carried along by the river current and deposited where it was found. Perhaps it had been hung up in some other location on the river. Perhaps the bag Cooper had lashed to his body was at the bottom of the river, hung up on something, and had decomposed enough by 1974 to begin releasing bundles of cash.


Mount St. Helens spews ash


The discovery of the cash gave impetus to new searches in that area until nature intervened. On May 18, 14 weeks after the bundles were found, the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens carpeted the region with a thick coating of ash and touched off vast fires. Many fear the eruption may have permanently obscured additional Cooper clues that may have been waiting in the Woodland vicinity.


Retired FBI agent Richard Tosaw


Richard Tosaw, a former FBI agent from California, declared the riverbank find as proof that Cooper splashed, a variation on splatter. He told a newspaper reporter, "I'm convinced he's on the bottom of the Columbia River. I have no doubt that his skeleton will be found there, along with his parachutes and the rest of the money." Tosaw mounted searches with scuba divers, sonar and grappling hooks in the Columbia not far from where the money was found. He found nothing, but published a book about his search, "D.B. Cooper: Dead or Alive."


Money found in riverbank


Beyond the FBI, few Cooper sleuths believe that the money found in the riverbank was incontrovertible evidence of Cooper's demise. Some contend he made his way to Vancouver or Portland and threw the money in the river because he learned the serial numbers had been recorded and he judged the loot too hot to spend. Still others say that a few bundles of cash fell from Cooper's bag as he descended by parachute.

Of course, theories abound in crime cases were evidence is scarce.

According to a scenario favored by the mountain-dwellers of the jump region, Cooper hid his chute in an animal den or beneath a forest rock ledge, hiked to a planned rendezvous with an accomplice and hightailed it to Mexico, where he spent his loot, one bottle of tequila at a time. And what of the cash in the river? They say he may have paused at a Columbia bridge to toss in a few bundles, just to confound the cops.

That theory has several faults. Cooper was wearing street shoes that would have blown off in his skydive. If he hiked, he hiked with bare feet. Also, he was rather nonchalant about the precise line of the flight path from Seattle to Reno, accepting Capt. Scott's suggestion of the low-altitude route, Vector-23. A planned rendezvous with an accomplice would have required a dive at a pinpointed location.

And then there is the problem of the missing money.

Cooper has not used his hijacking loot on tequila or anything else. The FBI distributed to law enforcers and banks 100,000 copies of a 34-page pamphlet listing all the serial numbers from the Cooper $20 bills. Besides those found on the Columbia River, not a single bill has ever shown up in circulation, as far as the FBI admits. In his book, former G-man Tosaw offered a $100,000 reward in exchange for one of the bills. No one stepped forward, just as there were no takers on rewards totaling $30,000 offered by Northwest Orient and a Seattle newspaper. If Cooper had accomplices, they have been extraordinarily loyal.

The Copycats




The famous crime alias D.B. Cooper has been kept alive in the popular media by anniversary look-backs at his crime—e.g., "The Legend of a Jet Age Jesse James," a 3,000-word opus published in The Los Angeles Times in 1996, 25 years after the hijacking. But Cooper's name also has lived on in periodic news reports each time someone has attempted a variation of his caper.

There have been many copycats, some more cockeyed than others.

Most recently, on May 25, 2002, a man named Augusto Lakandula, distraught over financial problems and armed with a grenade and a pistol, robbed many of the 277 passengers aboard a Philippine Airlines jet, then jumped from the plane at 6,000 feet wearing a homemade parachute. His body was scraped off the forest floor 40 miles east of Manila.

Such news stories always refer to Cooper as the grandfather of such crimes. But he was really only a great uncle.


Poster of the movie Airport


Two weeks before Cooper's hijacking, a passenger named Paul Cini brandished a handgun aboard an Air Canada flight over Montana. He extorted money and a parachute, just like Cooper, but he was rushed and subdued by the jet's crew when he put down the gun to don the parachute. The FBI's Himmelsbach has said he believes Cooper borrowed his basic plan from Cini and the detail of a bomb in his briefcase from the plot of "Airport," the disaster flick released six months before the Cooper hijacking.

Three other hijackers copied the Cini/Cooper scheme in 1972 alone. All three survived the skydive—more "proof" for those who believe Cooper lived. One was shot dead and the others captured on the ground.

Of the three, a hijacking that occurred on April 7, 1972, about four months after Cooper's, was perhaps the most interesting to law enforcers.

A man using the name James Johnson boarded United Flight 855, from Newark to Los Angeles, during a stopover in Denver. The jet was a Boeing 727, with aft stairs. Like Cooper, the man was described as nondescript. Just before takeoff, he went to the lavatory and donned a disguise of sunglasses, a wig and a fake mustache. When he returned to his seat, another passenger noticed that he was holding what appeared to be a grenade.

The hijacker discreetly revealed a pistol to a stewardess then gave her an envelope labeled "Hijack Instructions." She hurried to the cockpit. The orders to the pilot were explicit:

Land at San Francisco International Airport and park at the remote Runway 19 Left.
Order a refueling truck, but allow no other vehicles to approach without permission.
Direct United Air Lines to provide four parachutes and a ransom of $500,000.
The pilot diverted as ordered, and the demands were met—a virtual replay of the Cooper hijacking at Sea-Tac. Back in the air, Johnson prescribed an east-northeast flight path, toward Provo, Utah, at 16,000 feet and 200 mph. After 90 minutes aloft, the hijacker ordered the cabin depressurized. A copilot peeked under the cockpit door and watched as Johnson skillfully donned jump gear, as though he had done it many times before. The man double-checked the jet's airspeed and altitude, as well as wind direction and sky conditions. He killed the cabin lights for a better view of the ground, then bailed out over central Utah from the rear stairs. The FBI began a by-the-book investigation the moment the 727 landed at Salt Lake City. Crime technicians checked seat belts, gum wrappers, cigarette butts and the like for fingerprints. A single note left behind by the hijacker was sent to the FBI lab for scrutiny. An army of law enforcers scoured the Provo countryside for clues.

Unlike Cooper, James Johnson helped out investigators with the usual criminal's bugaboo: He had a big mouth. After news of the hijacking broke, a Utah man called the FBI in Salt Lake. An acquaintance, Richard F. McCoy Jr., had told him about a "foolproof" ransom scheme. Its details were identical to the United hijacking. Police learned that McCoy, 29, was a former Mormon Sunday school teacher who was studying law enforcement at Brigham Young University. He was married with two children.

He had no record, but his bio was titillating. A Vietnam veteran, he was a former Green Beret helicopter pilot and avid skydiver. The FBI pulled a fingerprint from the United in-flight magazine at the hijacker's seat. It matched McCoy's Army prints, and the handwriting from the hijacker's note was a dead-on copy of the soldier's.

Meanwhile, a boy found a parachute stuffed near a culvert outside Provo. Cops who flashed McCoy's photo in that area found a burger stand griddle jockey who sold a milkshake to a man resembling McCoy just before midnight on the night of the hijacking. The man paid a teenager $5 for a ride into town.

On April 9, two days after the hijacking, the FBI arrested McCoy on air piracy charges as he prepared to leave home for a routine National Guard drill. In his house agents found a jumpsuit and $499,970. McCoy insisted he was innocent, but the cash was a hurdle for his defense. He was convicted at trial. Prosecutors asked for a stiff sentence to make a point about America's air piracy intolerance. The judge complied, handing down a 45-year sentence.

McCoy was shipped to a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa. Facing a caged life, he and another desperate inmate escaped from the medium-security joint in August 1974. Three months later, a tip led the FBI to a house in Virginia Beach, VA. McCoy fired a pistol at agents serving the arrest warrant. Agent Nicholas O'Hara fired back with a shotgun, and McCoy fell dead.


DB Cooper, the Real McCoy


In 1991, Russell Calame, yet another book-writing ex-FBI agent, co-authored "D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy," which made the case that Cooper and McCoy were the same man. His theory was based on the similar methods of the hijackings, as well as an extrapolation drawn from a key piece of evidence that Cooper left behind on the Northwest jet: the skinny black tie with a mother-of-pearl clasp. The tie was like those worn by McCoy and other male Brigham Young students, and McCoy owned a mother-of-pearl clasp identical to the one left behind by Cooper.

Calame told the Salt Lake Tribune that McCoy "never admitted nor denied he was Cooper." Calame said McCoy was asked directly whether he was Cooper during interrogation following his arrest. According to Calame, McCoy responded, "I don't want to talk to you about it.'' He went to his grave with sealed lips.

O`Hara, the agent who killed McCoy, bought his colleague's theory, saying, "When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D.B. Cooper at the same time."

But the FBI paid no public credence to Calame's idea, and Karen Burns McCoy, widow of the second hijacker, sued and won a cash settlement against the book's co-authors and publisher. Despite that, Calame has stood by his theory about Cooper/McCoy.
"I'm Dan Cooper. So Am I."




Over the years, thousands of Americans have dropped dimes on friends, relatives and colleagues who resemble the famous "Bing Crosby" Cooper sketch. The FBI says some 10,000 names have been whispered to the agency. Many of those fingered were experienced skydivers with vaguest likeness—especially if you squint.

Some of those fingered missing persons, but no lead ever panned out. It seems unlikely that someone could disappear and not leave a single friend or relative wondering—a parent, spouse, child or sibling. But the FBI says that may have been the case with Dan Cooper, if in fact he splattered. The agency says Cooper may have been a loner who had isolated himself.

Dozens of men have confessed to loved ones that they are Cooper, and the FBI has quietly checked out a number of them. The identities of a few have made their way into the media, often posthumously.


Duane Weber headshot


In 1995, for example, Duane Weber, a Florida antiques dealer who was dying of kidney disease, told his wife, "I'm Dan Cooper." After Weber died, his widow found a hidden wallet that indicated the man had had a previous life as one John C. Collins. His resume of wrongdoing included a bad conduct discharge from the Navy and six prison sentences, one of them served 20 miles from Sea-Tac Airport. The widow claimed Weber took her on an unexplained "sentimental journey" in 1979 to a remote place in the woods of Clark County, Washington. She said the husband looked like the Cooper sketch, knew Seattle well, smoked cigarettes, drank bourbon, and sometimes talked in his sleep about aft stairs and fingerprints.

Another Cooper claim involved a San Diego cabby who stepped forward in 1986. He said a friend who died that year of a cocaine overdose had recited intimate details of the Cooper skydive and survival. The man said he landed in a tree near a river and suffered knee and rib injuries. He managed to crawl to a cave and then hitchhike to Portland, where he recuperated before moving to San Diego. He said he laundered the cash on a Montana Indian reservation in 1978. The cabby said the Cooper claimant explained that the cash found on the Columbia River fell from his money pouch during his parachute descent.

But the FBI rejected the story for lack of evidence, just as it rejected Duane Weber's. For example, no fingerprint found on the jet matched either man's.

As Himmelsbach, the retired FBI man, put it, "Every so often one (of these) would come along, and I'd get the rush of adrenaline. There's a guy in a bar with a bunch of $20 bills, he's limping on one leg and someone asks where he got the roll, and he says he might have hijacked an airplane. You track those things down, and they just burn out."

One of the more peculiar Cooper stories involved Elsie Rodgers, a grandmother from Cozad, Nebraska. She enjoyed telling her grandchildren about the day in the 1970s when she found a human head near the Columbia River in Washington. The kids thought she was crazy—until she died in 2000 and they found a skull in a hatbox in her attic. The FBI conducted DNA tests but reported it was unable to prove that the skull was Cooper's.

Perhaps the most elaborate claim was laid out in "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," a 1985 book by Max Gunther based on six telephone conversations in 1982 with a woman who identified herself only as "Clara." She explained she discovered an injured Cooper holed up in her garden shed near rural Longview, Ore., on Nov. 26, 1971, two days after the hijacking. She nursed his broken foot, and they fell in love. She said Cooper was an affluent family man from Connecticut who abandoned his family and moved west, fell in with a group of skydivers and conceived his plan. She claimed he had read books to become an aircraft expert and studied air routes and boarding procedures as his scheme began to take shape over many months. She said they settled on Long Island, New York, after the hijacking, and Cooper took jobs under assumed identities. The woman said they laundered the loot in Atlantic City and Reno casinos. The woman said Cooper died of natural causes in 1982.

The FBI once again rejected the account. There were at least two problems with the story: the laundered bills never turned up, according to the feds, and her account of Cooper's meticulous planning relegates the Montana hijacking two weeks before Cooper's to an astonishing coincidence of timing.

If Gunther was hoodwinked by a Cooper tale, he wasn't the first. Not long after the hijacking, Newsweek magazine reportedly nearly published a cover-story exclusive featuring an interview with Cooper. It turned out the magazine was the victim of two hoaxers who were later convicted of fraud.
Postscripts




Hijackings: The Cooper hijacking and his copycats finally helped drive home the vulnerability of jets to acts of air piracy. In 1973, a device known as a Cooper Vane was added to Boeing's 727-100s to disable the use of the aft stairs during flight. Also that year, the FAA mandated screening of passengers and carry-on luggage. Hijackings declined, but violent political acts against innocent air travelers grew more deadly. A September 1974 bombing of a jet from Tel Aviv to New York killed 88 people. Other notable incidents included 1988's Libya-sponsored bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 perished. Security enhancements during the 1990s led to an unprecedented decade without a hijacking in America, beginning in 1991. That ended on September 11, 2001, with the most deadly series of hijackings ever.

The Jet: The "Cooper" 727-100, registered with the FAA as aircraft No. N467US, was manufactured in 1964-65 and delivered to Northwest Orient on April 9, 1965. It was the 137th jet of that model manufactured by Boeing. Northwest sold the jet to Key Airlines in 1984. It was retired in the early 1990s and disassembled for spare parts at an airplane graveyard at Greenwood-Leflore Airport in Mississippi. The plane was declared defunct in 1996, although pieces of the Cooper plane continue to fly today as replacement parts in the Federal Express 727 fleet.

The Crew: Capt. William Scott, pilot of the Cooper jet, died of prostate cancer in March 2001. Scott never talked much about the case, said his widow, Frances, but he had a theory. "He felt he jumped into Lake Merwin and got tangled up in dead trees and died," she told a reporter. William Rataczak, first officer on the Cooper flight, retired in 1999 after 34 years with Northwest.

The Enduring Mystery:


FBI sketch of DB Cooper age progression


The mystery of D.B. Cooper's whereabouts has a marathoner's legs. The case continues to bubble up frequently in crime, air travel and skydiving circles. The November 2003 issue of Parachutist, the official magazine of the United States Parachute Association, carries a long feature article about the hijacking. And dozens weighed in on a recent chat thread at dropzone.com, a Web site for skydiving enthusiasts, which asked the familiar question, "Is Cooper dead or alive?" As a parachuting wag with the handle "skydiventom" put it: "I think he's gotta be either dead or the luckiest human in history."

Were he so lucky, Dan Cooper is in his late 70s now. If not, he splattered 32 years ago, and counting.


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NickDG    23

NickDG
I sometimes think there never was a D.B. Cooper. I think the ticket seller who gave the initial description, the flight attendant (the only one who saw him on the plane) and the pilots were all in it together and they split up the money. That amount was pretty large back then. The money found by the little boy was real but probably not related to the case. We were just told that, along with the jump most likely killed him, to dissuade others from trying the same thing as hijackings were a big problem in those days.

On the other hand, I'm sure there will come a day four guys take over an Airbus A380 which in certain configurations can carry 840 passengers and rob everyone of their cash and jewels. They'll then leave the aircraft using tandem rigs with the loot up front. That will also be the day you'll never be able to carry a parachute onboard ever again . . .

Note to Bill Booth – shave off the beard, it will be a dead giveaway!

NickD :)BASE 194

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BillyVance    34

BillyVance
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I believe that D.B. Cooper was actually a guy named Richard Floyd McCoy. Mr McCoy also staged a successful high- jacking and jump getting $ 500,000. He was also a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. The resemblance to the D.B. sketch matches. Mr. McCoy was finally arrested and sent to prison. Sometime later Mr. McCoy escaped from prison and robbed a few banks and died in a shoot out.
Blue Skies, Timber



I remember watching a documentary on TV about that. That's exactly what the documentary showed...

Of course, it's a theory only as far as whether he was the DB Cooper hijacker in the famous case.
"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

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Guest   

Guest
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Correct me if i'm wrong, but; I heard he was a stupid ass that had little jumping experience!!! Heard something like he had a choice between a skydive sport rig or an emergency bail out rig. Of course he took the bail out rig!



Not so. The sport rigs that Cooper used were provided by the Issaquah Parachute Center, packed by none other than retired Snohomish DZO Jamey Woodward.

mh

.
"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

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NickDG    23

NickDG
That's how I heard it too. And he asked for more than one rig to give the impression he might take someone from the crew along. This would make it impossible to give him a fouled rig. Plus, and I haven't looked at the timeline lately, but I think he was back there long enough to do an I&R . . .

NickD :)BASE 194

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