D.B. Cooper mystery
The D.B. Cooper mystery is an enigmatic case from 1971 involving an unidentified man who hijacked a commercial flight, demanded a ransom, and then parachuted out of the plane, disappearing without a trace. The incident began when Cooper, who used the alias "Dan Cooper," boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, armed with what he claimed was a bomb. After receiving $200,000 in ransom and allowing the other passengers to leave, he instructed the crew to take off again, ultimately leaping from the aircraft into the night sky near Portland. Despite extensive searches and investigations, including the discovery of some ransom money years later, Cooper’s fate and identity remain unknown, making it one of the most famous unsolved crimes in American history.
Over the years, various suspects have emerged, but none have been definitively linked to the case. The FBI officially closed the investigation in 2016, marking it as the only unresolved instance of air piracy in the U.S. The D.B. Cooper case has had a lasting impact on popular culture and aviation security, leading to significant changes in airline safety protocols. Annual gatherings and media representations continue to keep public interest alive, as amateur sleuths and enthusiasts explore the many theories surrounding Cooper’s mysterious disappearance.
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D.B. Cooper mystery
TheD.B. Cooper mysteryrefers to an unsolved 1971 crime in which an unknown man who later became known as D.B. Cooper hijacked a commercial airliner, demanded a $200,000 ransom, parachuted out of the plane, and disappeared. Despite an exhaustive investigation that went on for several decades, the case was never solved and Cooper's identity was not determined. There have been many attempts to explain the hijacking and uncover Cooper's identity over the years. Despite offering a few potential leads, none of these attempts has led to any meaningful results. In addition to sparking decades of conspiracy theories, the D.B. Cooper incident's biggest impact was the changes it led to in the air travel industry, such as the installation of a peephole in cockpit doors and the introduction of mandatory passenger and luggage screening at airports. Decades after Cooper's disappearance, the mystery surrounding his spectacular hijacking remains one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in American history.
Background
On November 24, 1971, an unknown man who identified himself as Dan Cooper entered Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon, and approached the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter. Wearing a business suit with a white shirt and a black clip-on tie, Cooper paid $20 cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington, on Flight 305. Upon boarding the plane with thirty-six other passengers, he ordered a drink and waited for takeoff. Shortly after Flight 305 went airborne, Cooper called a flight attendant and handed her a note. Initially assuming that Cooper, who appeared to be in his mid-forties, was attempting to slip her his phone number, the flight attendant took the note and slipped it into her pocket without looking at it. When she later passed by Cooper again, he called her over a second time, told her to read the note, and informed her that he had a bomb. To convince her that he was serious, Cooper also opened a briefcase he was carrying to reveal that it was filled with wires and what appeared to be some sort of explosive.
At this point, Cooper sent the flight attendant to the cockpit with another note demanding $200,000 in $20 bills and a set of four parachutes. When he received the note, the pilot contacted air traffic control and was ultimately told to follow Cooper's instructions. Eventually, the plane landed in Seattle, and Cooper was given his ransom money. With the cash in hand, Cooper allowed the other passengers and some of the flight crew to disembark the plane while he and several crew members stayed aboard. He subsequently ordered the pilot to take off again and set a course for Mexico. Because the plane did not have a fuel tank large enough for such a long flight, Cooper gave his consent for a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. At 7:46 PM, with Cooper alone in the cabin and the remaining flight crew members forced inside the cockpit, the plane took to the skies again. At 8:24 PM, when the plane was about twenty-five miles north of Portland, Cooper, having apparently donned one of the parachutes, opened the plane's aft stairs, jumped out, and disappeared into the night sky, never to be seen again.
Overview
In the aftermath of the hijacking, an effort to locate Cooper was quickly undertaken. The search focused primarily on an area of wilderness near Amboy, Washington, south of the Lewis River near the Cascade Foothills. Investigators combed through the area for a week but failed to find any trace of Cooper or the money. Some believed that Cooper was likely killed during his escape and were hopeful that his remains would turn up when the ground eventually thawed. No remains were ever found, however.
While the search for Cooper was called off after only a week, public interest in the case continued unabated. In large part, this was because the hijacking garnered a great deal of media attention. In at least one important way, all this attention actually had a direct impact on the case. At one point, the police searched through their criminal records for the name Dan Cooper. Their search led to a man named D.B. Cooper who was briefly considered a suspect before being cleared. One reporter who wrote about all this confused D.B. Cooper's name with the alias used by the hijacker. The mistake was subsequently repeated in other articles and Dan Cooper came to be known as D.B. Cooper from that point forward.
The most notable break in the Cooper investigation came when a young boy found several bundles of $20 bills with serial numbers matching those from the hijacking along the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, in 1980. Although it was widely speculated that this discovery supported the theory that Cooper did not survive his ordeal, no definitive conclusion was made. Some speculated that the March 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, due to its proximity to one of Cooper's possible landing sites, may have destroyed surviving evidence from the hijacking.
Over the years, there have been more than one thousand suspects in the Cooper hijacking. One of the best known was William Gossett, a military veteran who had parachute training and reportedly owned a safety deposit box containing $200,000. Gossett was obsessed with the case and even claimed to be Cooper in his final days, but there was never evidence to support such an assertion.
Another notable suspect was Kenneth Christiansen, a former paratrooper who worked for Northwest Orient as a mechanic, flight attendant, and purser for a time after returning from World War II. He died in 1994, but was identified as a possible Cooper suspect when his brother saw a documentary on the case and came to believe that Christiansen could have been Cooper. Again, there was never enough evidence to determine if this was true.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officially closed the Cooper case, which it referred to as the Northwest Hijacking (NORJAK) case, in July 2016. The closure of this case made the D.B. Cooper hijacking the only unsolved instance of air piracy in US history. The following year, a new lead emerged when the FBI released several letters that Cooper allegedly sent to newspapers in the days after the hijacking as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. One of the letters included a nine-digit code that implicated a possible subject named Robert Rackstraw. Some amateur investigators believe that the coded sequence of numbers was intended to serve as signal to Cooper's coconspirators that he survived the hijacking. Rackstraw denied the allegations and adamantly contended that he had nothing to do with the Cooper case, maintaining his innocence until his death in 2019.
The Cooper case had a large impact on American popular culture and was featured in, or helped inspire, a number of books, films, songs, and other works of media. A number of documentaries, including the 2022 Netflix documentary D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!, provided an overview of the case and prompted further speculation on possible suspects. An annual convention of people interested in the case, initially known as D.B. Cooper Day and later renamed CooperCon, was first held in Ariel, Washington, in 1974 and eventually relocated to Seattle in 2023.
Bibliography
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DeMay, Daniel. "Investigators: Codes in D.B. Cooper Letter Confirm Suspect." Seattle PI, 4 Jan. 2018, www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/Investigators-Codes-in-D-B-Cooper-letter-12472032.php. Accessed 17 Jan. 2018.
Fawzy, Farida. "D.B. Cooper: FBI Closes the Books 45 Years after Skyjacking Mystery." CNN, 14 July 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/07/12/world/d-b-cooper-fbi-closes-case/index.html. Accessed 17 Jan. 2018.
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Hannaford, Alex. "The 40-Year Mystery of America's Greatest Skyjacking." Telegraph, 30 July 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8667855/The-40-year-mystery-of-Americas-greatest-skyjacking.html. Accessed 17 Jan. 2018.
Hayes, Christal. "Mysterious D.B. Cooper Hijacking: FBI Accused of Cover-Up after New Letter Surfaces in Notorious Cold Case." Newsweek, 20 Nov. 2017, www.newsweek.com/who-db-cooper-fbi-releases-letter-might-be-infamous-hijacker-claiming-he-knew-717197. Accessed 17 Jan. 2018.
Krakow, Morgan. "He Died Claiming to be a Disabled Veteran. But Many Believe He Was Hijacker D.B. Cooper." The Washington Post, 11 Jul. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/07/10/he-died-claiming-be-disabled-veteran-many-believe-he-was-hijacker-db-cooper/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.
Natale, Michael. "A Dazzling Piece of Evidence May Finally End the Mystery of D.B. Cooper's Identity." Popular Mechanics, 26 Oct. 2023, www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a45639586/who-was-db-cooper/. Accessed 9 Aug. 2024.