db cooper thesis statement

A Staggering New Clue on D.B. Cooper's Tie Has Blown the 52-Year-Old Case Wide Open

“I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was.”

You wouldn’t jump out of an airplane wearing a tie. So, naturally, the most famous skyjacker to never be found, the dapper D.B. Cooper , took his tie off on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, just before dropping out of a Northwest Orient Airlines plane somewhere south of Seattle.

Now, 52 years later, Eric Ulis—the amateur sleuth who has made it his mission to solve the enduring D.B. Cooper mystery—thinks the infamous tie yields enough clues to finally reveal the skyjacker’s true identity.

“I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was,” Ulis recently told Fox 13 Seattle .

Ulis has been fighting to free D.B. Cooper’s tie from FBI holds, even suing the government for access , saying that the 100,000 particles left behind on the clip-on fashion accessory can tell the definitive story about just who the tie belonged to, and where it traveled.

While hampered by the non-compliance of the FBI, Ulis says the $1.49 tie—purchased from JCPenney around Christmas 1964, and found on seat 18-E of the fateful airliner—contained a unique particle that was part-stainless steel and part-titanium.

Ulis tracked that smidge of detail from a decade-old scientific report on the Cooper case and used U.S. patent information to trace various particle fragments from the tie to Crucible Steel of Pennsylvania. Now, Ulis just needs access to the tie to bring modern technology into the fray.

“Headquartered in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, a significant subcontractor all throughout the 1960s, it supplied the lion’s share of titanium and stainless steel for Boeing’s aircraft,” Ulis said of the metal-fabric shop.

Experts believe that anyone skyjacking the plane the way D.B. Cooper did must have possessed insider knowledge of the Boeing 727 and of the Pacific Northwest. Crucible Steel workers regularly made the trip from Pennsylvania to Boeing’s headquarters in Seattle.

Ulis tracked the now-defunct company’s assets over the decades and picked through historical records to land on a specific person of interest: a man who worked at the company and was also in Seattle around the time of the skyjacking.

“This is also the time, 1971, when Boeing had this significant downturn,” Ulis said. “It’s reasonable to deduce that D.B. Cooper may well have been part of that downturn.”

Pinpointing his fixation on a specific titanium research engineer from Pittsburgh, Ulis thinks he has a strong lead. “I can put him in Seattle, I can put him at Boeing,” he said about the man that died in 2002. “He’s a compelling person of interest. He’s definitely someone I’m going to continue to dig into.”

When it comes to cold cases, few continue to simmer quite like the D.B. Cooper case , the only unsolved commercial airline hijacking in history. The unknown skyjacker—he called himself Dan Cooper, but the media misreported the name as D.B. Cooper, which stuck— paid $18.52 cash for a one-way ticket to Portland and boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971, boarding the flight without offering up identification due to a lack of regulations at the time.

Along with a strong knowledge of airplanes and parachutes, law enforcement officials believe D.B. Cooper had a solid connection to the Pacific Northwest based on comments he made during the flight about the terrain below.

Carrying with him a briefcase and paper sack, Cooper passed a note to a flight attendant seated behind him halfway through the flight and whispered that she better look at the note since he had a bomb. Cooper opened his briefcase to reveal what appeared to be a bomb and then relayed his demands of $200,000, multiple parachutes, and a refueling truck on the ready in Seattle so he could take off again, bound for Mexico City.

The demands were met, and the planned 30-minute flight turned into two hours of circling the Puget Sound as crews readied on the ground. The airliner’s 35 passengers were released, along with some of the crew, and Cooper negotiated the specifics of the flight path and plane setup—he required a set speed, flap angle, and plenty more—before he took off again with four crew on board.

Somewhere still over Washington, Cooper then opened the rear staircase and parachuted from the plane, but the exact location and timing is unknown. Immediate searches yielded no evidence, and over the years, experts have been unable to determine an exact search area due to the multiple variables involved in the night jump.

In 1978, a hunter found a placard with instructions for lowering the aft stairs of a Boeing 727. Then, in 1980, an 8-year-old vacationing along the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, found three packets of the ransom money in the sand along the river’s edge.

The FBI still has that necktie, though, so the quest for D.B. Cooper answers continues to raise new questions.

Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland. 

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The Mystery of D.B. Cooper, Essay Example

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Introduction

That the legend of the man known as D.B. Cooper persists in American culture is both surprising and explicable. On one level, Cooper’s hijacking of a plane, with the subsequent ransom delivered and his parachuted escape, occurred 43 years ago, in 1971. In no uncertain terms, a great deal more has occurred since to fuel public and governmental inquiry. Then, there is a strangely non-sensational quality to the entire Cooper affair, at variance with the drama, tensions, and even violence usually associated with other such incidents. In simple terms, Cooper’s agenda appears to have succeeded, and in a remarkably calm way. It is therefore reasonable to assume the episode would fade in the nation’s consciousness, certainly after so much time has passed.

These same aspects, however, also go to the endurance of the legend and continued efforts to ascertain the reality of the crime’s aftermath. Time itself takes on a different quality when a crime remains unsolved; rather than weaken interest, it gives the crime the air of mystery, so interest in the Cooper case is more likely enhanced by the passing of the years. Added to this is the irrefutable public fascination with the “outlaw,” particularly when the outlaw is not guilty of actually harming others. The glamorous robber has been a fixture in the public imagination since Robin Hood, and Cooper conforms to the role, notwithstanding his lack of Robin Hood-like altruism. Simply, he endures because he is the man who smoothly planned and executed a theft of money, as it is likely he still commands admiration due to the skill the operation evinced. Most importantly, to date no D.B. Cooper has been identified by the authorities, so the mysterious criminal is elevated to the status of ghostly legend.

The reasons for the mystique, however, do not alter the fact that the legend has survived because the actual reality of much of it remains unknown. A variety of issues surrounds the Cooper affair, and the most effective means of comprehending the true nature of it, from start to finish, is the path of logic. In the following, that process will be employed to illustrate, if not explain, the most likely scenarios and provide the most rational explanations for what D.B. Cooper actually did, what became of him, and how the nation reacted then and since.

It is ironic, but the first thing a logical approach notes in regard to the case is that a great deal is established fact. On November 24 th , 1971, a man who presented himself as “Dan Cooper” bought a ticket for a Northwest Airlines flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. Various descriptions differ in small ways, but the generally accepted appraisal is that Cooper was a white man of early middle age, dressed in a clean dark suit and carrying a black briefcase. There was nothing whatsoever remarkable about his appearance or demeanor. Shortly after take-off, and after ordering a drink and having a cigarette, Cooper passed a note to the flight attendant. It expressed that he was carrying a bomb, and requested she sit by him. Briefly, the attendant related Cooper’s demands to the pilot, and arrangements commenced to have $200,000 and four parachutes waiting upon touchdown in Seattle. On the landing field, the plane was refueled, the ransom provided, and Cooper flew off accompanied by only a minimal flight crew, directed by him to fly to Mexico City. After requesting to be left alone in the passenger cabin, Cooper then opened the plane’s back stairs and parachuted out over the Pacific Northwest (Thomas). Two FBI planes covertly accompanying Cooper’s flight, along with assorted governmental and police authorities, confirmed upon the plane’s landing that Cooper had clearly taken this mode of escape.

Immediately afterward, massive manhunts were conducted, to no avail. FBI efforts were unstinting for years, and over 1,000 suspects have been seriously investigated over the years following the crime. A boy discovered $5,800 in S20 bills while walking by the Columbia River in 1980; as the money provided to Cooper had been photographed and selected by serial codes, there was no doubt that the money found was part of the ransom paid to Cooper. Consequently, intense speculation was generated as to Cooper’s having survived his fall (Durante). More recently, a woman claiming to be Cooper’s niece has apparently offered the FBI evidence linking her uncle to the incident. Marla Cooper claims that the identity of the man has been her family’s oppressive secret since, when she was eight years old, the hijacking took place. She has testified that this uncle, Lynne Doyle Cooper, came to her family’s home for Thanksgiving that year, badly injured. This was the day after the crime, and Cooper asserts that her uncle attributed his injuries to a car crash. She also claims that her parents realized what L.D. Cooper had done and resolved to keep silent, as she has provided the FBI with a guitar strap with her uncle’s fingerprints. Marla Cooper further asserts that neither she nor her family had contact with Cooper after this time; that she believes he had children and died in 1999; and that her only motive in coming forward now is her realization that her childhood memories are applicable to the case. The FBI, meanwhile, is still investigating, having found no fingerprints on the guitar strap (Thomas). Despite this media flurry of 2011 and press focus on Marla Cooper, then, the D.B. Cooper case appears to remain as unsolved, and as mysterious, as ever.

As noted, logic demands that certain elements be noted as established realities. Names and speculation aside, a man did indeed buy that ticket for Flight 305 and systematically engage in a hijacking and ransom scheme. That the man has never been apprehended in no way eviscerates these realities. Consequently, in logically assessing the case and determining the most probable outcome regarding Cooper’s survival, it is necessary to gain as exact as possible an idea of the man himself, and thus his actual agenda. Conjecture must play a part here, but nothing beyond reasonable assumptions will be entertained.

As so little evidence relates to the aftermath of the crime, a great deal exists regarding Cooper, insofar as physicality and behavior are concerned. It is documented that he was, again, a middle-aged white man dressed well. Nothing in any reports indicates anything other than a courteous and calm behavior manifested by him. For instance, upon first passing the note to the flight attendant, she disregarded it as likely only a telephone number or invitation to go out. Upon seeing this reaction, Cooper said, “Miss, you should read the note I gave you. I have a bomb in my briefcase” (Olson 14). Given the tension any person planning a hijacking would be undergoing at such a time, that Cooper maintained his composure – and his manners – indicates an extraordinary degree of self-possession. Furthermore, and even more remarkably, this same demeanor was in place throughout the entire episode. No report has Cooper flaring up, or irrationally reacting to the phases of the process he himself had set in motion. When the authorities attempted to stall Cooper’s agenda on the Seattle landing field by claiming that it was too cold to refuel, Cooper did demand that they proceed (Beck). Even impatience here, however, is explicable and reasonable, as a man of Cooper’s evident intelligence foresaw the nature of the tactic. Interestingly, even a passenger returning to the plane to retrieve a forgotten item, after all passengers were evacuated, did not create a change in Cooper’s demeanor (Beck). Such an occurrence would likely excite a hijacker dangerously, yet Cooper maintained his equanimity.

More to the point, there is no threat of violence beyond, of course, the reference to the bomb in the briefcase; Cooper never emphasized his agenda by referring to killing innocent people or made it known to the passengers that he had a bomb, which indicates that he rationally did not foresee the event of exploding it as likely. All of this goes to refuting one possibility, that of Cooper’s having desired to commit suicide. Simply, if this was a man with a death wish, he went to remarkable extremes to complicate a suicide agenda unnecessarily. All of Cooper’s actions, in fact, systematically go to defying any possibility of a self-inflicted death. Assuming a man seeks to kill himself on a plane, this presupposes that the necessary bomb would also kill many others, altering the desire for suicide into another ambition entirely. Then, following the basic logic, such a man equipped with a bomb for this purpose would not take the steps of informing others of it, employing it as an instrument in extortion and, most importantly, permit the extortion scheme to proceed to the degree that the flight lands. To then argue that the real suicide intent was planned for the second flight begs the question of why the first was necessary at all. Certainly, a man with the implacable desire to die while in the air could arrange a non-passenger flight.

There is also the inescapable reality of the demands themselves. The ordering of parachutes contradicts suicidal impulses regarding air travel, certainly. Then, the funds demanded in cash further eviscerate any motive for suicide; hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and on one’s person, are somewhat extraneous elements when the individual’s death is the object. In virtually everything regarding the activity and behavior of Cooper, then, the only logical determination is that this was a rational man who had carefully set out a complex plan to commandeer a plane, extort money, and escape with that money. Equally important here is that no other motive is suggested by Cooper’s actions or instructions. It is interesting to note how this sole purpose of robbery, and robbery that, again, leaves no one harmed, has likely enhanced the mythic status of Cooper.

In regard to what actually happened to Cooper, there is extensive room for speculation. Not unexpectedly, thinking that he escaped to enjoy the stolen money alternated, and alternates today, with convictions that he must have died in the fall. Logic here must look at all the identified circumstances, piecing together a reasonable conclusion as it can. When this is done, the result is that Cooper’s having survived the parachuting, and then having successfully escaped detection, seems to be the most probable reality.

To begin with, there is the known fact that Cooper was clearly versed in flight mechanics. While a man with military or commercial aviation experience would have the knowledge Cooper utilized, it is equally true that any man of reasonable intelligence, planning such an enterprise, could have done the necessary research. What matters in this question of survival, then, is only that Cooper had a real understanding of what he required from the escape plane and in all logistic matters. He knew what types of parachutes to demand. He knew that the Northwest flight would need refueling. More tellingly, he dictated altitude levels and speed to the second craft’s crew, along with demands that the landing gear remain down and the flaps stay at 15 degrees. Much has been made of Cooper’s knowing what non-civilians could not know, that it was possible for a Boeing 727 to fly with its aft stairs down, as Cooper also directed (Beck). However, and again pursuing only a logical course, the source of Cooper’s knowledge is irrelevant. What matters is that he clearly knew precisely what he needed in order to enable as safe an escape as possible.

This evident foresight on the part of Cooper logically indicates further knowledge in parachuting. Certainly, he comprehended how essential it was that the plane’s speed and altitude best facilitate his jump, and this type of awareness would necessarily encompass knowledge of the weather conditions at the projected time. As Cooper dictated the basic flight plane to the crew of the second plane, he clearly knew over what terrain they would be flying, as he surely was aware of the windy weather conditions. That he elected to jump over the Cascades indicates, in fact, that wind was precisely what he desired. Any man who so carefully plans such an episode is likely to know, as Cooper suspected on the Seattle field, that every effort would be made to apprehend him. Similarly, such a man would not be likely to risk his entire effort on a skill with which he was unfamiliar, such as parachuting, and that the terrain and weather were unfavorable more strongly supports that Cooper had experience in jumping. All of this reinforces the logical assumption that Cooper survived the fall, and successfully escaped.

This assumption is further reinforced by the facts of the initial investigation. The immediate search for Cooper was hindered by several factors. To begin with, as noted, the jump was made during stormy weather over the Cascades. As Cooper probably anticipated, the winds would have greatly affected the trajectory of the leap, one already difficult to isolate because of the plane’s velocity. A 28 square mile range was searched in the days following the hijacking, engaged in by FBI agents and sheriff’s deputies. Helicopters and foot patrols were employed, and boats were used to investigate Lake Merwin, within the search perimeters (Olson 33). A range of 28 miles, however, is not particularly expansive given all the variables noted, and this does not take into account the strong possibility of Cooper’s having directional skill in parachuting. Based on the known components of Cooper’s demands and the actual circumstances, the matter of his having survived becomes one of a logical negative; namely, there is no reason to assume a man parachuting in these admittedly unusual circumstances would die as a result.

Other Issues

It is very interesting that so much of the Cooper mystique relies on what has never been discovered, in terms of both the man and the money. The discovery of the $5,800 in 1980, definitely part of the ransom, has been employed to fuel wild speculations of all kinds, when the most evident and logical conclusion regarding it is that these bills were lost mid-jump by Cooper. They were in a suitably decayed condition, and the fact that Cooper did not retrieve them himself points to the probability that his landing occurred some distance from them, and/or that he was not aware of the loss until he had reached safety.

Marla Cooper’s recent and ongoing claims assert that her uncle had planned the hijacking with another man, as she recalls from her childhood memories of comments from her parents. Ms Cooper’s testimony, however, must be viewed with extreme skepticism. It is suspect, for example, that her memories, clearly not of an especially traumatic nature, should have been suppressed until 2011. Living in the region, she certainly had been long exposed to the legend and the case, and that her name is Cooper, one would suppose, would have triggered parallels long before. Even the end of contact with this uncle after the hijacking is illogical; if, as she relates, her parents knew of it, then Cooper had revealed it to them, was relying on their discretion and loyalty, and would have had no reason to vanish from their lives. It may be argued, in fact, that Marla Cooper’s sudden revelations – linked to a book on the subject she is writing – echo the incentives likely behind those who have claimed to be Cooper over the years. The logic here is not difficult; as Cooper committed no violent crime and seemingly orchestrated a perfect robbery and getaway, his allure as a “folk hero” of a kind is attractive, and it seems highly probable that many would seek to exploit this status. More pragmatically, the legal repercussions after so many years would pale against the publicity and opportunity for gain through media exposure.

When an event becomes embedded in the national consciousness as the Cooper hijacking has, the ongoing inability to “solve” the crimes only further enhances the mystique. Years pass, and a wanted criminal becomes something of a folk hero, and certainly a legend, simply because he has never been found. The same years then enable vast speculation, and ideas once improbable, as in Cooper’s being insane or suicidal, gain some level of legitimacy. As a mystery lives on, in a word, anything goes. A logical examination of the facts and real circumstances, however, presents a more practical reality. In basic terms, a middle-aged man carefully carried out a plan that was just as carefully orchestrated. Equipped with vital knowledge regarding what he would encounter, he entered into his plan minimizing risk to himself, and the fact that no Cooper has yet been identified, living or dead, serves to reinforce the strong likelihood that Cooper fully succeeded in his scheme. Fractional amounts of ransom money found point to nothing more than a minor mishap, just as the limitations of the original search further go to likelihood of success. Based on the actual, available knowledge, it appears that the legendary D. B. Cooper does indeed deserve some of his mythic stature, in that he executed a nearly perfect crime.

Works Cited

Beck, K. “Dan Cooper parachutes from skyjacked jetliner on November 24, 1971” HistoryLink.org, 1997. Web. <http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm? DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=1997

Durante, T. “DB Cooper Case ‘Solved’” News, The Daily Mail, 2011. Web.

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070038/DB-Cooper-case-solved-FBI-tells-niece-skyjacking-suspect-matching-fingerprint.html#axzz2KQkRIVfj>

Olson, K. M. The D.B. Cooper Hijacking: Vanishing Act. Mankato: Compass Point Books, 2010. Print.

Thomas, P. “D.B. Cooper Exclusive: Did Niece Provide Key Evidence?” ABC News, 2011. Web. <http://abcnews.go.com/US/db-cooper-exclusive-niece-provide-key- evidence/story?id=14219052>

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A Mystery We Really Don’t Want to Solve

By Geoffrey Gray

• Aug. 6, 2011

Geoffrey Gray is a contributing editor at New York magazine and the author of “Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper.”

THE guy is dead.

The man known as D. B. Cooper — who in November 1971 hijacked an airplane en route from Portland, Ore., to Seattle; let the passengers exit in exchange for a few parachutes and $200,000; and once airborne again, jumped from the plane, and has been missing since — is almost certainly no longer with us.

He either never pulled the ripcord and plunged into the forests of the Pacific Northwest like a golf ball on a soggy fairway, or, parachuting through the stormy night sky, he speared himself on a giant fir tree.

Or bears ate him. Or maybe cougars. Or Big Foot — one legend devouring another?

Even if Cooper survived the jump, lived to a ripe old age and appeared today as a guest on David Letterman’s “Late Show,” it would be very difficult to confirm that he was who he said he was. The long and fruitless history of Cooper suspects and hoaxsters reminds us how little physical evidence there is to prove or disprove anyone’s claim. Even the DNA sample from the case (a trace of saliva on Cooper’s clip-on tie that may or may not be from his mouth) isn’t good enough to allow a definitive match.

We’ll probably never know who Cooper was. So why, as we approach the 40th anniversary of the hijacking, do we continue to hold out hope, to grasp at whatever new lead appears, however thin and unpromising it may be?

Last week, following news accounts that the F.B.I. was close to cracking the case, a woman named Marla Cooper surfaced, claiming in interviews on ABC News and CNN that Lynn Doyle Cooper, her long-lost uncle L. D., was the hijacker. Despite her slim evidence — she says she overheard her uncle discussing the hijacking when she was 8 years old — a media scrum raced to find L. D.

Soon after, photos surfaced of L. D.’s grave, in Bend, Ore. All that was missing was a posse clutching shovels in front his tombstone, ready to dig. Those fellows might be out there by now. Ready, boys?

To me, what’s noteworthy about L. D. as a suspect is the surprisingly high level of interest in him. After researching the case for a few years and analyzing hundreds of F.B.I. files on the hijacking, I can tell you that the tale of uncle L. D. is as unremarkable as they come in Cooperland, that metaphorical place where nieces like Marla Cooper and so many others — widows, brothers, sons, scientists, lawyers, airplane and parachute buffs, amateur sleuths, conspiracy theorists — all gather to search for, and offer up, answers to the riddle of D. B. Cooper.

It’s unclear if they’re really looking for Cooper at all. Going through the files, I found a gripping firsthand account of the hijacking itself. But the bulk of the material the F.B.I. has compiled has nothing to do with the case.

Archived in the basement of the agency’s Seattle field office, the Cooper file is a depository of paranoia, suspicion and mistrust. Over the years, the F.B.I. has explored more than 1,000 suspects and people of interest in the case, and one reason the number is so high is that people keeping turning one another in. I found screeds from fathers accusing their incorrigible sons, countless alleged confessions, photographs of neighbors drinking cans of beer (suspicious, right?), even letters ending relationships. “You’ve meant so much to me this past year,” one man wrote to an ex-girlfriend. “I’ll always love you (which you have to hear) but always felt that this is temporary and we would both move on.” She later sent it to the F.B.I. for fingerprint analysis.

The Cooper hunters themselves have become part of the legend. One source of mine is Jerry Thomas, a retired drill sergeant and survival expert. He is something of a celebrity among Cooper followers because he’s been trekking through the woods of southwest Washington for some time trying to find Cooper’s loot. “I’ve done this so long I figure if I can find something, then people won’t think I’m such a lunatic,” he told a reporter — 15 years ago.

Others seek a different prize: glory, a voice. “The chance to hold the microphone,” as Tom Kaye, a paleontologist who has been researching the case, put it to me. He was in his basement lab in Arizona, inspecting pollen samples found on Cooper’s tie. Mr. Kaye actually made a discovery: the pollen was from the flower genus impatiens. “The problem,” he told me, “is there’s about a thousand different varieties of impatiens.” Yet another dead end.

What drives these Cooper hunters? The not-knowing. In an age when we receive answers to our questions so quickly — now as fast as a midsentence trip to Wikipedia — the fact that we still don’t know who Cooper is feels somehow unfair. We’ve developed a sense of entitlement about the facts. We have a right to know! We deserve it!

And yet we still know very little about D. B. Cooper. Why did he pull the job? Was it the daring act of the folk hero he has been made out to be? Or was it a black-bag job, criminal work for hire? Was he coaxed into the jump, as some have speculated, so that legislators in Washington would finally pass laws mandating that airlines install metal detectors in airports? Or was he none of these things, just a sad and suicidal soul who, after years of depression and failure, felt the urge to achieve one fine thing?

It doesn’t matter all that much. For all the clamoring hope for the day that Cooper is identified and the mask is finally pulled back, we want Cooper to keep getting away. After all these years we need him to continue to escape.

Even some lawmen who scoured the woods for Cooper four decades ago suggested they hoped they would come up short.

“If he took the trouble to plan this thing out so thoroughly, well, good luck to him,” one local sheriff said.

Whoever Cooper was, and whatever his motive really was, he achieved what we all want and rarely have: The courage to be bold, and the guts to break free. Once Cooper’s caught for good, so are we.

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The Vanishing Skyjacker: Unraveling the Mystery of DB Cooper

In 1971, the enigmatic figure known as D.B. Cooper etched his name into the annals of criminal history, orchestrating a daring hijacking that continues to baffle investigators to this day. Boarding Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle, Cooper’s cool demeanor belied the gravity of his actions. A simple order for bourbon and 7-up would soon escalate into a high-stakes game of negotiation and intrigue.

Mid-flight, Cooper confided in a stewardess, revealing a chilling truth: a bomb nestled within his bag, its ominous presence marked by four red dynamite cylinders. Demands were swiftly communicated – four parachutes and a staggering sum of 200,000 US dollars. The FBI , faced with an unprecedented situation, acquiesced, meeting Cooper’s requests as the plane landed in Seattle.

A calculated strategist, Cooper orchestrated the evacuation of passengers, leaving only the flight crew on board. With the demands met, the aircraft soared back into the night sky, guided by the mysterious man who now sought passage to Mexico City. However, logistical constraints forced a change of plans, diverting the flight to Reno, Nevada.

As the plane approached Reno, Cooper ordered the crew to the cockpit and executed a daring escape. A warning signal alerted the pilot that the back stair door had been opened. The aircraft touched down in Reno with law enforcement encircling it, but Cooper had vanished without a trace.

Decades of investigations yielded little, until a recent discovery reignited interest. A white sheet , reminiscent of the one covering Cooper’s bag of ransom money, surfaced in the Pacific Northwest. Is this the breakthrough investigators have awaited for years? Will the elusive D.B. Cooper finally be unmasked?

The answers remain as elusive as the man himself, leaving us to ponder the mysteries that persist in the story of one of the most audacious unsolved crimes in aviation history. Join us in the Lancer Media Podcast as we delve into the tantalizing clues and the enduring enigma of D.B. Cooper.

• Northwest Airlines
• White Sheet

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A Dazzling Piece of Evidence Might Finally End the Mystery of D.B. Cooper’s Identity

The FBI closed the notorious 51-year-old skyjacking case—but one man says he knows exactly how to solve it.

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A former professional blackjack player might be on the cusp of cracking one of the most notorious cold cases in history—one so puzzling, even the FBI couldn’t solve it. But first, the sleuth just needs to get his hands on a discarded black tie.

In 2022, Ulis laid out his theory on how the remnants of an alloy that the FBI reportedly found on Cooper’s tossed tie pinpoint the skyjacker’s workplace to a “Midland, Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of titanium-antimony.” All Ulis needs now, he feels, is the samples off the tie, which is why he’s pursuing litigation to procure them.

Ulis, like many other amateur sleuths, hopes to finally answer the 51-year-old question: Who was D.B. Cooper? But before he can address that one, we first have to ask another: Why do people still care about D.B. Cooper?

Let’s start with the fateful day that we (sort of) met the man (incorrectly) called D.B. Cooper.

D.B. Cooper: The Mystery Man

It’s November 24, 1971.

The No. 1 movie in America is The French Connection , a gritty neo-noir where handsome Hollywood stars Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider get stylishly dirtied up to play New York Police Department officers chasing down heroin smugglers. At the same time, the No. 1 song on the radio is Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft ,” the iconic song soundtracking a film about the impeccably tailored detective John Shaft, who would just as soon work with the pushers and pimps of Harlem than take help from the NYPD, as long as he gets justice. Which is all to suggest that in November 1971, the United States hasn’t quite figured out who to root for in the proverbial game of “cops and robbers.”

But the mystery man of the hour on that November afternoon looked nothing like the gritty-but-glamorous stars of the day’s premier crime dramas. He was, as the FBI described him , a “white male, 6’1” tall, 170-175 pounds, age-mid-forties, olive complexion, brown eyes, black hair, conventional cut, parted on left.”

He purchased, in cash, a one-way ticket aboard Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. He paid $18.52 and gave the name “Dan Cooper.” There was no ID checked, no security protocols of any kind. “Dan Cooper” was permitted to board his flight unencumbered.

This might be the point in the story where you think, Well, they couldn’t have expected that somebody would hijack the plane. But while apparently they didn’t, they absolutely should have.

These days, our idea of plane hijackers is either D.B. Cooper, the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks , or those scrappy prisoners from Con Air . But by 1971, skyjacking was a fairly regular occurrence. In fact, Vox notes that “between May 1961 and the end of 1972, there were 159 hijackings in American airspace.” Hijackings, or as they were colloquially called, skyjackings, were common enough that the year prior to the D.B. Cooper affair, the British comedy troupe Monty Python aired a sketch mocking the absurd frequency of the act.

D.B. Cooper’s Skyjacking, Explained

“Onboard the Boeing jet, [Cooper] had a bourbon and soda, smoked cigarettes, and gave a flight attendant a note that said he had a bomb,” Biography previously reports. In fact, the flight attendant to whom the note was passed, Florence Schaffner, didn’t even read the note initially.

Geoffrey Gray’s Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper goes into great detail on the degree to which flight attendants of the time were subject to harassment and inappropriate behavior from passengers. Schaffner likely assumed the note was merely a suggestive missive from an amorous traveler until the man whispered to her, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

But did Cooper really have a bomb? Well, he certainly had “a case containing wires and red sticks,” and that was enough for him to get his demands heard. What did Cooper want? “$200,000 in $20 bills, as well as four parachutes.”

The Great D.B. Cooper Escape

Here’s where we get our first bit of evidence that Cooper knew a bit more than your usual hijacker. Cooper’s request of four parachutes was made so that those on the ground would think he intended to take a hostage with him. Had he only requested two (parachuting always involves two chutes: the primary and the backup), there was a chance he would have been given dummy chutes so that he would plummet to his death rather than get away with the money. (Our anti-hijacking strategies back then were pretty bad, and this one wasn’t even the dumbest idea we had.) But they wouldn’t risk that happening to an innocent hostage. Cooper was in control.

That meant Cooper got his way. The plane landed in Seattle, the hostages were exchanged for the ransom, and a skeleton crew (“two pilots, a flight engineer, and a flight attendant”) took Cooper back in the air, toward Mexico City. Cooper instructed the pilots to “fly lower than 10,000 feet, at a speed under 200 knots” and to lower the plane’s aft stairs. He then descended those stairs, unseen, and parachuted into the night, with $200,000 in tow, leaving behind only a black necktie, plus some cigarette butts that have since gone missing.

How Dan Cooper Became D.B. Cooper

What Cooper couldn’t control, however, was whether anyone got his fake name right.

You’ll recall that he gave the name Dan Cooper when he purchased his plane ticket. He possibly took the moniker from a Franco-Belgian comic book entitled Les Aventures de Dan Cooper , whose stories notably involved “jumping out of a plane with a parachute, as well as a ransom being delivered in a knapsack.” So how did it become D.B.? Simple. Reporter James Long, of the Oregon Journal in Portland, simply got the name wrong. “Either because the Northwest [source] gave it to me wrong or because the noisy [phone] connection helped me misunderstand it,” Long later confessed to The Los Angeles Times .

But it stuck, and D.B. Cooper became the name that earned both infamy and, in some corners, folk-hero status amongst a fading counter-culture desperate for remnants of the “anti-establishment.”

What Happened to D.B. Cooper?

So what became of D.B. Cooper? No one truly knows. While the ransom money never entered circulation, some of it did turn up in 1980, badly decomposed and buried on the north shore of the Columbia River, discovered by 8-year-old Brian Ingram.

Though suspects emerged throughout the years, the FBI ruled them all out for various reasons. And in 2016, the agency officially closed the book on the D.B. Cooper investigation , choosing to devote its resources elsewhere.

But that hasn’t stopped citizen detectives like Eric Ulis from trying to crack the Cooper case.

Why Do We Still Care About D.B. Cooper?

Which brings us back to the why —What keeps people coming back to D.B. Cooper, long after the crime, the investigation, and that entire era of unsecured, casual air travel are all consigned to the history books?

Sean and Carrie McCabe, whose true-crime podcast Ain’t It Scary? with Sean & Carrie covered Cooper in an early episode , have a hunch about why the intrepid airplane criminal in the cool eyewear remains in the public consciousness.

“First, like all of the best true crime stories, it’s because there’s no clear answer,” Sean recently told Popular Mechanics . “We don’t know who the guy was, and we likely never will know for sure. And that leaves room for everyone to bring their own opinion and their own investigator hat, and speculate without any fear of ever really being proven wrong.”

Carrie suggests that it’s also the nature of Cooper’s crime that keeps people coming back to it:

“D.B. Cooper was kind of a cool figure. He didn’t hurt anybody (aside from maybe himself) in his crime, he didn’t use aggressive physical force. I think that makes him an object of fascination that people can be more openly interested in than, say, a serial killer . Being interested in true crime often comes with a lot of caveats—“I don’t like Jeffrey Dahmer , I just like learning more about his pathology,” etc.—but with Cooper’s relatively victimless crime, you don’t have to feel creepy if you’re interested.”

“We don’t have to co-sign Dan Cooper’s actions for a little tiny part of us to wish we were him,” Sean concurs.

When pressed if they think the D.B. Cooper case will ever be solved, the podcasters concede it’s unlikely. “God, I’m trying to think of the ‘fun’ answer, but... no?” Sean says. “Probably not. None of the money has ever been spent, which makes me think our ‘Mr. Cooper’ probably died in the jump.”

“I think the only way it’ll ever be cracked is if,” Carrie adds, “someone comes forward with concrete proof that their deceased relative was Cooper, like a stack of the missing money.”

Or maybe, just maybe, some residue of alloy on a tie could be the thing to crack this whole case wide open.

Michael Natale is the news editor for Best Products , covering a wide range of topics like gifting, lifestyle, pop culture, and more. He has covered pop culture and commerce professionally for over a decade. His past journalistic writing can be found on sites such as Yahoo! and Comic Book Resources , his podcast appearances can be found wherever you get your podcasts, and his fiction can’t be found anywhere, because it’s not particularly good. 

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Home > ETDS > Dissertations and Theses > 4342

Dissertations and Theses

You are d. b. cooper.

James Bezerra , Portland State University Follow

Portland State University. Department of English

First Advisor

Gabriel Urza

Date of Publication

Winter 4-12-2018

Document Type

Degree name.

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing

D. B. Cooper -- Fiction, Hijacking of aircraft -- Oregon -- Fiction, Criminals -- Oregon -- Biography -- Fiction

10.15760/etd.6235

Physical Description

1 online resource (ii, 197 pages)

This thesis is a novel about the 1971 skyjacking of a plane out of Portland Airport. The novel is structured in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book. It investigates the nature and identity of the skyjacker, who is known as D. B. Cooper.

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

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https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25507

Recommended Citation

Bezerra, James, "You are D. B. Cooper" (2018). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4342. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6235

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The 8 Most Intriguing Theories About Skyjacker D.B. Cooper

Who is D.B. Cooper? The question has persisted since November 24, 1971, when a mysterious man hijacked a flight from Portland to Seattle, demanded parachutes and $200,000, and skydived into folk-hero history. Cooper’s identity and fate remain unknown — and many theories about both abound.

Related Content

Cooper (who actually bought his plane ticket , which cost $2o including tax, under the name “Dan Cooper;” the “D.B.” was misreported early on, and stuck) left very few clues behind. One pictured below is his clip-on tie, from which DNA was extracted in 2001 — a forensic advancement that has helped rule out a few promising suspects. He also left behind a parachute and its bag (he used part of the chute to tie up his money). In 1980, $5,800 of Cooper’s ransom money was found by an eight-year-old boy on a camping trip.

The Cooper case is alluring to law enforcement like FBI agent Larry Carr, who reignited interest in the case in 2007 (he’s featured in the video at the end of this post), and amateur detectives, who pore over its details in online message boards. And Cooper is still a pop-culture touchstone; there’s even a music festival named after him. But who WAS he, and what happened after he leaped away from Flight 305? Here are just some of the explanations that’ve been considered over the past four decades.

1. He died in the fall

The first and most obvious conclusion is that D.B. Cooper, whoever he was, did not survive the jump. The FBI considers this a possibility :

“We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper,” says Special Agent Carr. “We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve chute was only for training and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked.”

And even if he made it to the ground alive, it was winter, and he was dressed for air travel, not forest survival. It’s almost certain he had no accomplices waiting to meet him. For one thing, there would have been no way for anyone to track his location; his instructions to the pilot were just “Fly to Mexico,” and he jumped at a random location with zero ground visibility, according to Carr. What’s more:

As many agents before him, Carr thinks it highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump. “Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open.”

However: his body, and the parachute he used, have never been found.

The tie left behind, and the money found in 1980. Source: FBI.gov

2. Kenneth Christiansen

In 2007, Geoffrey Gray’s New York Magazine article, “Unmasking D.B. Cooper,” and subsequent book, Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper , offered an in-depth look at the case. He was the first reporter given access to the FBI’s Cooper case files , so his perspective is unusually detailed. The starting point for Gray’s story: a New York private detective who was contacted by an elderly man, Lyle Christiansen, who had become convinced that his late brother Kenneth was Cooper, and who was obsessed with getting Nora Ephron to make a movie (his suggested title: Bashful in Seattle ) about how he “solved” the case.

Kenneth Christensen had been a paratrooper whose first deployment came just after World War II; after he left the military, he worked as a mechanic and a flight purser for Northwest Orient Airlines, the carrier that Cooper chose for his hijack. There were other eerie similarities, too, like the fact that Kenneth loved bourbon, and that he’d bought a house (a modest one) not long after the crime. Author Gray showed Kenneth’s photo to the only hijack witness who’s still alive, a woman who’d been a flight attendant that November night, and she acknowledged the resemblance (with reservations). Most intriguingly, there was this, as Gray writes:

On his deathbed, Lyle remembers, his older brother pulled him close. He then said something that didn’t make sense to him then. It does so now. Kenny said, “There is something you should know, but I cannot tell you!” Lyle didn’t want to know. “I don’t care what it is you cannot tell me about. We all love you.”

Need more? Check out t his exhaustive, 25-point evidence list of all the reasons Christiansen could be Cooper.

But the FBI isn’t so sure; its response to Gray’s initial article pointed to the fact that Christiansen had been a paratrooper (since the agency thinks the hijacker could not have been one), and the fact that Christiansen was shorter and slighter than eyewitnesses descriptions of Cooper. Also, the hijacker had hair, while Christiansen was balding ... though, as an acquaintance recalled, “ Kenny sometimes wore a toupee .”

The parachute and bag left behind. Source: FBI.gov

3. Lynn Doyle Cooper

In 2011, a woman named Marla Cooper publicly suggested her late uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper (or “L.D.”), was D.B. Cooper. Her mother, Grace Hailey, was L.D.’s sister. She agreed with her daughter’s theory, and had some interesting evidence to back up the family’s claims.

According to an ABC News report :

Hailey doesn’t remember much about that Thanksgiving in 1971 where her brother-in-law returned to the house in Sisters, Oregon, but she believes he could be the hijacker. Hailey’s statements are one reason why the FBI thinks the tip from Marla Cooper is credible. “I’ve always had a gut feeling it was L.D.,” Hailey told ABC News. “I think it was more what I didn’t know is what made me suspicious than what I did know, because whenever the topic came up it immediately got cut off again.” Hailey says that L.D. grew up in Sisters and was familiar with the area where the hijacker jumped — a fact that is consistent with the FBI’s theory that D.B. Cooper knew the Pacific Northwest. He was also a war veteran, which matches the theory that the hijacker had a military background, [and he] was a logger and an outdoorsman — tough enough, Hailey believes, to leap out of plane into the wilderness.

He also showed up to a family Thanksgiving gathering in 1971 looking quite beat up; there’d been a car accident , he claimed. For the purposes of fingerprint testing, Marla Cooper gave the FBI a guitar strap that L.D. left behind, but it was found “not conducive to lifting fingerprints.” DNA evidence taken from the sample pulled from the hijacker’s tie, assumed to be from the elusive Cooper (but a matter of some contention ; more on that below), did not match L.D.’s DNA .

However, according to CNN :

Despite the failed link, the new suspect “has not been ruled out as a suspect,” FBI Special Agent Frederick Gutt said.

4. Duane Weber

The FBI will have you know that “Duane Weber, who claimed to be Cooper on his deathbed, was ruled out by DNA testing,” but in 2000, he was still a promising suspect. According to a CBS News report at the time:

Hospitalized in Florida with kidney disease, Duane Weber motioned to his wife to come close. After 17 years of marriage, there was something she needed to know. ” He says, ‘Come here. Come closer.’ He wanted me about two feet from his face,” Jo Weber recalls. “He says, ‘I have a secret to tell you.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘I’m Dan Cooper.’” Since her husband’s death in 1995, Jo Weber started to piece together the clues dropped over the years: Jo recalled the sleep-talking nightmare Duane had about “leaving finger prints on a plane,” an old knee injury he claimed he got from jumping out of a plane, the local library book on D.B. Cooper with Duane Weber’s handwriting in the margins — the items she stumbled across during 17 years of marriage. “I can’t walk away from it,” Jo says now. “Why would he have an old Northwest Airline ticket? Why would he take me to a place where eventually the money was found. Why all of this? There’s too many pieces of the puzzle that fit.”

At the time, the former lead FBI agent on the case, Ralph Himmelsbach , believed her story, citing Weber’s physical resemblance to Cooper, and his criminal background. And about that DNA test ruling him out — as Skyjack author Gray pointed out in a 2011 New York Magazine article, “inconclusive” is kinda “inconclusive” unto itself:

Special Agent Fred Gutt said the DNA sample found on the tie had come from three different people and was not enough to rule Uncle L.D. out. In the past, other agents have used the partial DNA sample to rule out suspects, most notably Josephine Weber, who for the last fifteen years has been aggressively claiming her ex-husband Duane Weber (a career felon and con artist who also lived under the name John C. Collins until late in life) was Cooper ... Initially, Jo had no idea what he was talking about, and since she read about the actual alias the hijacker gave her (“Dan Cooper”) she’s been trying to prove her case. Agents took forensic samples from Duane, such as hair from his razor. Once the partial DNA sample was discovered on the tie in 2007, agents ruled Duane out, despite Jo’s shrill frustration about the quality of the sample. So if the DNA on the tie isn’t good enough to rule out Uncle L.D., is Cooper suspect Duane Weber back in? What about the others?

5. Richard McCoy

D.B. Cooper’s daring (and apparently triumphant) escapade inspired no small amount of copycat crimes. The most high-profile was perpetrated by a man who some suspected wasn’t a copycat at all: Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr., “ a Vietnam veteran, a former Green Beret helicopter pilot, and an avid skydiver ” who was studying law at Brigham Young University.

McCoy hijacked a plane in 1972 and parachuted to freedom with half a million dollars, but he was captured days later, having left behind way more evidence than whoever committed the 1971 heist. Convicted of the 1972 crime, he busted out of jail in August 1974 and was killed in three months later in an FBI shootout. Though his age (29 at the time of the Cooper hijack) and the fact that he had an alibi cast some serious doubts, a 1991 book about his exploits raised his ranking on the “Who Was D.B. Cooper?” matrix:

D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, co-authored by an ex-FBI agent named Russell Calame, was published in 1991. The book made the case that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person, citing similar methods of hijacking and a tie left by Cooper similar to those worn by Brigham Young students. 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 saying, “When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time.” The widow of Richard McCoy, Karen Burns McCoy, sued and won a settlement from both the book’s co-authors and its publisher.

Image source: FBI.gov

6. Barbara Dayton

Could D.B. Cooper have been a woman? Pilots-turned-authors Pat and Ron Forman believe so, citing a confession, later recanted , made to them by their friend Barbara Dayton — a World War II veteran who was born Robert Dayton. (The FBI never commented on her.) In 2008, the Formans spoke about their book, The Legend of DB Cooper: Death by Natural Causes , to fellow author and Cooper enthusiast Bruce A. Smith, who writes :

The Formans say Dayton told them bits and pieces of her famous story over a life-long friendship that began in 1977. Perhaps even more startling than the notion that DB Cooper was a woman, the Formans verify Dayton’s claim that she received the first sex-change operation in Washington, which was performed in 1969. Thus, the Formans say, Dayton donned the supreme disguise by reverting to her male persona to become DB Cooper. One indisputable fact is that Barbara Dayton was a highly skilled pilot and parachutist, showing a fearlessness that bordered on reckless. In addition, she was a proficient machinist and explosive expert, all skills that DB Cooper displayed during his hijacking. ...The Formans also say that Dayton never spent the money, and only did the crime to satisfy personal issues relating to her sex-change operation. “Barb was a woman who always lived on the edge,” said the Formans. “She was a fascinating and remarkable woman.”

7. William Gossett

Described as a “ quirky guy ” with a military background and the necessary physical characteristics, college instructor Gossett, who died in 2003, and told both of his sons several times that he was the hijacker. His son, Kirk, recalls taking a “strange trip” to Vancouver, Canada with his father two years after the hijacking , possibly to stash the ransom money in a safety-deposit box there.

ABC News reports that the FBI was “skeptical” of William Gossett’s claims.

“There is not one link to the D.B. Cooper case other than the statements (Gossett) made to someone,” said FBI Special Agent Larry Carr, who is overseeing the Cooper investigation.

Others disagree:

Galen Cook, a Spokane, Wash., lawyer who has been investigating the Cooper case for more than two decades, said he submitted a fingerprint of Gossett’s to the FBI’s Seattle office and hopes it will confirm his theory, which he plans to publish in a book. Gossett had military experience, including wilderness survival, and resembled the FBI composite sketch of Cooper, Cook said.

8. John List

This irresistibly insane theory is included here because how could we not? John List killed his entire family in 1971 , the same year D.B. Cooper took to the air. He was captured in 1989 after living under a false identity for 17 years (thanks to a tip generated by America’s Most Wanted .)

Could he have been Cooper? Probably not, but why not throw his name in there anyway? In 1989, in the wake of List’s high-profile arrest, the LA Times offered the following speculation:

“John List is one of any number of people suspected in the D. B. Cooper case,” FBI spokesman John Eyer said. “He will be investigated until he is eliminated.” Ralph Himmelsbach, a retired FBI agent who investigated the hijacking, believes Cooper died, but said List warrants investigating. Himmelsbach, who now lives in Portland, Ore., said List and Cooper have similar descriptions. Cooper was described as in his mid-40s. List was 44 at the time of the slayings. Both were about the same height and weight and wore glasses. Himmelsbach also said List had spent the last $200,000 of his mother’s savings account shortly before the killings. Cooper demanded and received $200,000 before parachuting from the plane near Mt. St. Helens in Washington state. He was never found.

For more stories like this, check out io9’s new subsite, True Crime !

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A Startling Confession May Have Just Revealed D.B. Cooper's Real Identity After 52 Years

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

This story is a collaboration with Biography.com .

The case of the elusive D.B. Cooper stands as aviation’s most captivating unsolved mystery since Amelia Earhart vanished without a trace. For over half a century, the identity of the infamous skyjacker, who boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971, parachuted into the night, and disappeared with $200,000, has remained an enigma. Despite Cooper’s discarded tie and the countless theories spun from thin air, not a single individual has been definitively unmasked as the man behind the moniker.

But that may soon change, as the U.S. Sun reports a startling new claim: a man says he knows the true identity of D.B. Cooper, because he received a confession from none other than his own mother.

No, Richard “Rick” McCoy III isn’t claiming that his mom was the skyjacker who daringly dove from the plane clutching all that cash. Rather, he firmly believes the mystery man is his father, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., a Vietnam veteran and seasoned skydiver.

Rick says that it was his mother, Karen McCoy, who stood as his father’s accomplice. In a series of candid disclosures, Karen McCoy allegedly revealed to her children that she assisted in orchestrating not just the most notorious skyjacking in history, but also an additional one, confessing she “helped plan both of his heists.”

Of course, only one heist was ever attributed to D.B. Cooper, who actually called himself “Dan Cooper,” according to Biography . The other crime that Rick McCoy references has unequivocally been credited to his dad, Richard. Unlike Cooper’s unsolved caper, Richard McCoy’s skyjacking on April 7, 1972, led to his quick capture just three days later.

After his arrest, Richard was sentenced to 45 years in prison, “but escaped after two years and was killed in 1974 in a shootout with cops in Virginia,” per the Sun . According to their report, Rick has even provided DNA evidence to the FBI in hopes of finally resolving the long-standing mystery of D.B. Cooper’s identity. Rick had previously refrained from collaborating with the Bureau, choosing to wait until after his mother’s death in December 2020.

So, that should solve it, right? Since law enforcement seemingly has a Cooper confession, that means we can answer the question, “What happened to D.B. Cooper?” with, “We shot him 52 years ago! Case closed!”

Except, not quite. It’s going to take much more than a confession to truly identify D.B. Cooper. This alleged new lead will need to be subject to heavy scrutiny. Why? Because if you’re inclined to take a D.B. Cooper confession at face value, then it would appear as though the fateful Flight 305 had more hijackers on board than passengers, as Rick McCoy is hardly the first person to claim a Cooper confirmation.

The 6 Other D.B. Cooper Confessors

On Thanksgiving Eve 1971, the man we now call D.B. Cooper “used a bomb threat to hijack a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle,” according to Biography . He demanded “$200,000 in $20 bills” as well as four parachutes. After his terms were met, he jumped from the aircraft, never to be seen again.

In 2016, with no announced solution for who was behind the famously misstated alias, “the FBI said it was closing its investigation.” However, the U.S. Sun also reports that the FBI has “quietly reopened” the case, in relation to the new McCoy leads.

Based on eyewitness statements, the FBI described Cooper as a “white male, [6-foot-1], 170-175 pounds, age-mid-forties, olive complexion, brown eyes, black hair, conventional cut, parted on left.” With more than a half-century passing since that middle-aged man pulled off his heist, it’s likely that whoever made away with all that money won’t see a jail cell before they skydive off of this mortal coil.

What isn’t so certain is that the mastermind behind the famous NORJAK heist carried their secret to the grave. So let’s meet six more possible D.B. Coopers, who may or may not have told the truth when they confessed to the legendary crime.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #1

Bryant “jack” coffelt.

Would you believe that D.B. Cooper has a connection to Abraham Lincoln ? Would it stretch credibility to think that the individual who famously parachuted from Flight 305—his only remnants being a “clip-on necktie and eight cigarette butts”—also served as both chauffeur and companion to Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, the great-grandson of the 16th President of the United States? If this tale seems plausible to you, then you just might have been an ideal target for the notorious swindler Bryant “Jack” Coffelt. And you certainly wouldn’t have been alone.

In 1972, Coffelt reached out to his former cellmate, a man named James Brown (not “The Godfather of Soul” James Brown ) with a confession that he was behind the D.B. Cooper hijacking. As the book NORJAK: The Investigation of D.B. Cooper lays out, Coffelt claimed he landed near Mount Hood, injuring himself and losing the money in the process. He then burned his parachute with magnesium powder and fled in a Jeep he had stashed nearby.

At Coffelt’s urging, Brown pursued a movie deal for this dubious confession. FBI records show that the Bureau was aware of Coffelt’s claims, as well as Brown’s assertion that they had embarked on a camping expedition to retrieve the missing money, though they returned without a dime. But the particulars provided by Coffelt and Brown about the incident didn’t match up with confidential case details, leading both the FBI and Ralph Himmelsbach, the original head investigator of the case and author of NORJAK , to suspect that Coffelt, a known scam artist, was merely attempting to pull another con.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #2

Duane l. weber.

It’s quite likely that Duane L. Weber harbored some secrets. As a World War II veteran with a post-war record of incarceration spanning over 20 years for crimes like forgery and burglary, it stands to reason that a man with such a checkered past might have some skeletons in his closet.

So when Jo Weber heard her husband’s confession from his Florida hospital bed during his final days, as reported by CBS News , she may not have been entirely surprised.

“He says, ‘Come here. Come closer.’ He wanted me about two feet from his face,” Jo Weber told CBS News. “He says, ‘I have a secret to tell you.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘I’m Dan Cooper.’”

The bombshell confession meant little to Jo at first. She didn’t know who “Dan Cooper” was. But over time, CBS News reported, she began to put together the pieces:

“Jo recalled the sleep-talking nightmare Duane had about ‘leaving finger prints on a plane,’ an old knee injury he claimed he got from jumping out of a plane, the local library book on D.B. Cooper with Duane Weber’s handwriting in the margins.”

However, the problem with Weber’s confession is that if he claimed to have left fingerprints on the plane during the NORJAK heist, they weren’t his own. The prints and DNA found on the plane didn’t match Weber’s, leading the FBI to rule him out as a suspect based on this evidence.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #3

Barbara dayton.

The description of D.B. Cooper that every FBI agent and amateur sleuth has been relying on for 52 years starts with “white male.” This detail has been one of the few consistent elements accepted in the Cooper case—but maybe that’s why they’ve never caught the culprit.

Geoffrey Gray’s Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper includes the story of Barbara Dayton. The aviation enthusiast, World War II veteran, and U.S. Merchant Marine, who died in 2002, may have been the first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in the state of Washington, in 1969.

Dayton purportedly made a bold confession to her friend Ron Forman and his wife, claiming that two years after undergoing a gender reassignment surgery, Dayton boarded a plane while presenting as a male, altered her voice, and carried out the greatest unsolved aviation heist ever. Dayton, who had been denied a commercial pilot’s license, allegedly sought revenge on the airline industry with this act and proclaimed to have hidden all the stolen money in a cistern in Woodburn, Oregon.

At least, that’s what Dayton said until she realized that the government was still ready, willing, and able to prosecute whoever committed the hijacking. Then, she swiftly recanted her confession and swore she had made the whole thing up. To date, there has been no actual evidence linking Dayton to the crime.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #4

William pratt gossett.

What did your father give you for your 21st birthday? A car? A savings bond? Your first legal beer? How about the keys to a safety deposit box at a bank in Vancouver that he claimed was full of money stolen during a plane hijacking?

If you answered “yes” to that final one, then hello to you, Greg Gossett. We have some questions.

According to an ABC News article from 2008, Greg Gossett claimed that on his 21st birthday, his father, William, showed him two keys for a safety deposit box, claiming that within that box was the money from the D.B. Cooper heist, which he himself had committed. “He said that I could never tell anybody until after he died,” Greg said. Greg’s brother, Kirk, also claimed their dad told the story several times: “He had the type of temperament to do something like this.”

But it seems the FBI requires more concrete evidence than someone’s temperament and an old family tale. “There is not one link to the D.B. Cooper case other than the statements (Gossett) made to someone,” FBI Special Agent Larry Carr said in the ABC News piece.

But would William Gossett, a man who “worked as a radio talk-show host in Salt Lake City, where he moderated discussions about the paranormal” really make up a story like that? Surely, there’s an easy way to prove the story. Greg Gossett merely needs to take that key to Vancouver and open the box that’s apparently filled with bills with serial numbers the FBI can verify.

It’s been more than 15 years since that ABC News story, and it doesn’t appear anyone has bothered to check that alleged safety deposit box.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #5

Walter r. reca.

D.B. Cooper enthusiasts are quite familiar with the name Walter Reca. Compared to other alleged confessions to being D.B. Cooper, often told vaguely to friends or relatives, Reca’s case sticks out. In his confession, the former paratrooper specifically described how he pulled off the heist—and anyone can hear it. Reca’s close friend, Carl Laurin, recorded his confession and released it to the public via the Daily Mail .

Laurin, who wrote D.B. Cooper & Me: A Criminal, a Spy, My Best Friend , claimed he had additional evidence beyond the audio recordings. Oregon Live reported that Laurin possessed documents detailing how he allegedly used a large portion of Reca’s $200,000 heist money. As for the “Spy” in the book’s title, Laurin contended that after the heist, Reca served as a high-level covert intelligence operative for various governments, as noted by the Daily Mail.

In Reca’s version of events, after jumping from the plane, he landed in Cle Elum, Washington, where he went to a roadside diner and asked a dump truck driver to give his friend directions to the diner over the phone.

Decades after the alleged encounter, Laurin said he found Jeff Osiadacz, who reportedly recalled a man at a diner requesting that he provide directions to someone else on the phone. This man, similar to Walter Reca, did not match the sketched composite of D.B. Cooper. This discrepancy is offered as a reason why Osiadacz remembered the unusual diner meeting for so long, yet never mentioned it in connection with the D.B. Cooper case.

But many skeptics find Osiadacz’s memory hard to believe, especially since Cle Elum is over 150 miles from D.B. Cooper’s presumed landing area, given the aircraft’s position during his jump. King5.com highlights these and other inconsistencies, casting doubt on the purported confession. Reca may have the most thorough and detailed confession, but within those details is room for reasonable doubt.

D.B. Cooper Confessor #6

Robert rackstraw.

Hijacking a plane and parachuting away with $200,000, hoping to never be caught, is a wildly risky move. And if a disposition for wildly risky moves is key to profiling potential D.B. Cooper suspects, then Robert Rackstraw should be a prime candidate The pilot and Vietnam veteran was on U.S. law enforcement’s radar in 1977, when he was “suspected of kiting checks for $75,000,” the Daily Mail notes. Yet, he managed to elude capture and flee the country.

Now, leaving the U.S. for Iran in the late 1970s to “teach the Shah’s men how to fly helicopters” during the 1978 Qom protests—a precursor to the Iranian Revolution —is an entirely new level of death-defying. Rackstraw was eventually extradited back to the U.S. after authorities discovered 14 rifles and 150 pounds of dynamite in his storage units.

Then, of course, there’s his arrest for the alleged murder of his stepfather, a charge for which he was later acquitted.

That’s when Rackstraw decided the only real course of action left for a man who had generated that much heat from the Feds was to die himself. So Rackstraw faked his own death, by pretending to crash his plane into Monterey Bay.

Rackstraw was never formally linked to the D.B. Cooper case by any law enforcement agency, but author and amateur investigator Tom Colbert went to great effort to prove that Rackstraw was the man behind the heist.

Colbert pressured the FBI to release its D.B. Cooper case files via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and utilized this information to build his case against Rackstraw. He highlighted letters sent to The Seattle Times , The New York Times , The L.A. Times , and The Washington Post , allegedly from Cooper himself. While some wrote these off as hoaxes, Colbert argued that they were, in fact, coded admissions of guilt from Rackstraw.

Indeed, Rackstraw frequently suggested he was D.B. Cooper. He even said it to Colbert’s face. In Colbert’s 2016 HISTORY Channel documentary series, D.B. Cooper: Case Closed? , Rackstraw is captured on camera telling Colbert, “I told everybody I was,” after Colbert proposed to pay him $20,000 for the storytelling rights to his life.

But Rackstraw was simply confirming that he had claimed to be D.B. Cooper, not that he actually was the skyjacker. This is a distinction he doubled down on when the surge of interest from the HISTORY series led to attention Rackstraw found unwelcome. “It’s a lot of [expletive],” he told PEOPLE following the show’s airing, and he later said the notoriety cost him a job. Rackstraw passed away in 2019, having firmly denied any involvement in the D.B. Cooper case until the end.

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• Case Evidence
• Video/Audio

Meet The Case Breakers

Live on National TV News: ‘D.B. Cooper’ No Longer a Mystery

NW Indiana Times: The Cryptic ‘D.B. Cooper’ Connection

Deadline: ‘D.B. Cooper’ Series Parachutes Onto Netflix

San Jose Mercury News: Was Hijacker from Santa Cruz?

Catching D.B. Cooper

End of the mystery?

CBS NEWS: Has vet’s “remarkable” code-breaking found Cooper?

Hoosier says he broke Cooper’s secret code, then shows us how

Rackstraw’s 32 Criminal Titles in the 1970s:

Burglar, wife-beater, vigilante, explosives merchant, drug runner, gangster, check forger, gunrunner, union buster, violent sociopath, dead-beat dad, army poser, poacher, vandal, plane thief, con man, drunkard, identity thief, check kiter, grifter, dynamite thief, bar brawler, car thief,  dui driver, adulterer,  weapons thief, terrorist, military-v ehicle thief,  tax-dodger,  bulldozer thief, 4-time felon  and, family members claim, a cold-blooded killer who executed his own stepdad – the man who hid him after the hijacking..

The FBI Evidentiary Cover-Up: Twelve Incidents (For 3-page summary,  click here )

For detailed article on Cooper’s escape by small plane, click this link:

DBC–Escape Evidence: 4-Page Research Article from L.A. Times, 12/3/71

Click on links to view FBI documents below:

1) FBI “Declarations of Proof” revealing interest in Rackstraw (as late as 10/17/15)

2a) FBI “John Doe Indictment” Planning (2/25/76)

2b) FBI “John Doe Indictment” (11/24/76)

3) FBI “News Release on Columbia River Cooper Cash Discovery” (2/12/80)

4) “Low-Flying Jet, then Witness Spots a Well-Dressed Man Walking” (12/8/76 & 1/17/77)

5) “Lab Results to J. Edgar Hoover — DB Cooper Letter #1 vs. Zodiac’s Letter” (12/7/71)

6) “Lab Results to J. Edgar Hoover — Airline Ticket” (12/15/71)

Santa Cruz Sentinel , 5/17/70

Stockton Record,  2/3/79 — Cops Discover “Rackstraw-Cooper Link” (3 pages)

Court-Documented Lies

D.b. cooper headlines.

Stockton Record ,  7/6/78 — Rackstraw Interview #1 (PDF, 2 pages) – click link below:

11-Article-RWR StRec Interview1, 7-6-78

Stockton Record , 2/6/79 — Rackstraw Interview #2 (PDF, 4 pages) – click link below:

12-Article-RWR StRec Interview2, 2-6-79

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