A BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
The D. B. Cooper Mystery
11/24/06
On the afternoon of November 24—35
years ago Friday—a non-descript man
calling himself Dan Cooper approached the
counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland,
Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket
on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington.
Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries
in FBI history.
Cooper was a quiet man who appeared to
be in his mid-forties, wearing a business
suit with a black tie and white shirt. He
ordered a drink—bourbon and soda—while
the flight was waiting to take off. A short
time after 3:00 p.m., he handed the stewardess
a note indicating that he had a bomb in his
briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.
The stunned stewardess did as she
was told. Opening a cheap attaché case,
Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of
wires and red colored sticks and demanded
that she write down what he told her. Soon,
she was walking a new note to the captain
of the plane that demanded four parachutes
and $200,000 in twenty dollar bills.
When the flight landed in Seattle, the
hijacker exchanged the flight’s 36
passengers for the money and parachutes.
Cooper kept several crewmembers, and the
plane took off again, ordered to set a course
for Mexico City.
Somewhere between Seattle and Reno,
a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker
did the incredible: he jumped out of the
back of the plane with a parachute and
the ransom money. The pilots landed
safely, but Cooper had disappeared into
the night and his ultimate fate remains
a mystery to this day.
The FBI learned of the crime in flight
and immediately opened an extensive investigation
that lasted many years. Calling it NORJAK,
for Northwest hijacking, we interviewed hundreds
of people, tracked leads across the nation,
and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By
the five-year anniversary of the hijacking,
we’d considered more than 800 suspects
and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.
One person left on our list, Richard
Floyd McCoy
is still a favorite suspect among many. We tracked down and arrested
McCoy for a similar airplane hijacking and escape by parachute less
than five months after Cooper’s flight. But McCoy was later ruled out because he didn’t match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided by two flight attendants and for other reasons.
Or perhaps Cooper didn’t survive
his jump from the plane. After all, the parachute
he used couldn’t be steered, his clothing
and footwear were unsuitable for a rough
landing, and he had jumped into a wooded
area at night, a dangerous proposition for
a seasoned pro—which evidence suggests
Cooper was not. This theory was given an
added boost in 1980 when a young boy found
a rotting package full of $20 bills ($5,800
in all) that matched the ransom money serial
numbers.
Where did “D.B.” come
from? It was apparently a myth
created by the press. We did question a
man with the initials “D. B.” but
he wasn’t the hijacker.
The daring hijack and disappearance remain
an intriguing mystery—for law enforcement
and amateur sleuths alike. To read more about
the NORJAK investigation, see the
files on our Freedom of Information Act website.
Fair warning: you might get hooked on the case!
Editor’s note: See our updated story of December 31, 2007, for more information and photos on the case.
