D.B. Cooper Hijacking

On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, a man in a dark suit and sunglasses boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, bound for Seattle. He handed a note to a flight attendant. He had a bomb in his briefcase, he claimed, and he wanted $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. The airline complied. The passengers were released in Seattle. Then the man who had purchased his ticket under the name “Dan Cooper” ordered the crew to fly south toward Mexico at low altitude. Somewhere over the forested wilderness of southwestern Washington, in the dark and rain and cold, he lowered the rear stairs of the Boeing 727 and jumped into the night. He was never seen again. Despite the largest FBI manhunt in American history, the hijacker who became known as D.B. Cooper vanished completely, and his true identity remains unknown to this day. It is the only unsolved aircraft hijacking in American history.

The Hijacking

The man who would become America’s most famous skyjacker arrived at Portland International Airport on a gray November afternoon. He was middle-aged, perhaps in his mid-forties, with dark eyes and receding hair. He wore a dark business suit, a white shirt, a narrow black tie with a mother-of-pearl tie clip, and dark sunglasses. He looked like a businessman, unremarkable among the travelers passing through the terminal. He paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle on Northwest Orient Flight 305, a short flight of approximately thirty minutes. He gave his name as Dan Cooper.

Once the Boeing 727 was airborne, the man passed a note to Florence Schaffner, one of the flight attendants. She initially tucked it into her pocket, assuming it was a lonely passenger’s phone number. The man leaned over and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.” Schaffner opened the note and read his demands: $200,000 in “negotiable American currency,” four parachutes (two primary and two reserve), and a fuel truck waiting in Seattle to refuel the aircraft.

When Schaffner asked to see the bomb, the man opened his briefcase briefly, revealing red cylinders, wires, and a battery. Whether it was a genuine explosive device or a convincing fake was never determined. The flight crew had no way to call his bluff, and they relayed his demands to the airline and authorities.

The Ransom

Northwest Orient Airlines decided immediately to comply with the hijacker’s demands. The safety of the passengers was paramount, and $200,000, while substantial, was not worth risking lives. The airline scrambled to assemble the ransom in Seattle: ten thousand $20 bills, which had been photocopied to record their serial numbers. Four parachutes were obtained from a local skydiving school and delivered to the aircraft.

Flight 305 landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport shortly after 5:00 PM. The hijacker released the thirty-six passengers and two of the flight attendants, keeping the cockpit crew and one attendant, Tina Mucklow, as his remaining hostages. The ransom money and parachutes were brought aboard. The fuel truck topped off the aircraft’s tanks. Cooper examined the money and parachutes, finding them satisfactory.

Then he gave his final instructions: fly to Mexico City at the lowest possible altitude and airspeed, with the landing gear deployed and wing flaps set to fifteen degrees. These specifications were critical. They would allow the aircraft to fly slowly enough for a parachute jump while maintaining enough lift to stay airborne. Cooper clearly knew something about aircraft capabilities. The crew pointed out that the range would be insufficient to reach Mexico City and negotiated a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. Cooper agreed.

The Jump

At approximately 8:00 PM, Flight 305 took off from Seattle heading south. Cooper directed the crew to remain in the cockpit with the door closed and the cabin unpressurized. He tied the bank bag containing the $200,000 ransom around his waist. He strapped on one of the parachutes, a military surplus unit that was not the best quality among the four provided. For reasons never explained, he also took the reserve chute rather than leaving it behind.

Somewhere over the Lewis River in southwestern Washington, in conditions of heavy rain, near-freezing temperatures, and complete darkness, Cooper lowered the rear airstairs of the Boeing 727, a unique feature of that aircraft model that allowed stairs to be deployed in flight. The cockpit crew detected a change in cabin pressure and a shift in the aircraft’s center of gravity. The hijacker had jumped.

The aircraft continued to Reno and landed without further incident. Authorities searched the cabin and found several of Cooper’s items: his clip-on tie, his tie clip, two of the four parachutes (including the reserve that turned out to be a non-functional training dummy), and eight cigarette butts of his preferred brand, Raleigh filter-tips. The ransom money was gone. So was D.B. Cooper.

The Investigation

The FBI launched the most extensive investigation in its history. The presumed landing zone, a heavily forested area of southwestern Washington, was searched by hundreds of soldiers and FBI agents. Helicopters swept the terrain. Local residents were interviewed. Nothing was found. No body, no parachute, no money, no trace of the hijacker.

The investigation would continue for forty-five years. Thousands of tips were received and investigated. Dozens of suspects were identified, investigated, and ultimately cleared. Composite sketches of Cooper were distributed nationwide. The serial numbers of the ransom bills were provided to banks and financial institutions, with instructions to report any that surfaced.

Cooper had seemingly vanished into the wilderness. The search expanded to examine whether he might have survived the jump. The conditions he faced were severe: jumping at night into unknown terrain, in temperatures near freezing, wearing only a business suit, with rain reducing visibility to near zero. Many investigators concluded that Cooper probably died in the jump or shortly afterward, killed by the impact, exposure, or the unforgiving terrain. But without a body, they could not be certain.

The Money

In February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was vacationing with his family at Tena Bar, a sandy beach along the Columbia River in Washington state. Digging in the sand, he uncovered three bundles of deteriorating twenty-dollar bills. The serial numbers matched the Cooper ransom.

The discovery raised as many questions as it answered. The money was badly degraded, having clearly been exposed to the elements for years. But the location was puzzling. Tena Bar was not in Cooper’s presumed landing zone; it was miles to the southwest, along a river that flowed in the wrong direction to have carried the money there naturally. The bills showed no signs of having been in circulation; they appeared to have gone directly from Cooper to the riverbank without passing through other hands.

How did the money get to Tena Bar? One theory suggested that Cooper had buried it there after the jump. Another proposed that it had washed downstream from an unknown location. A third theory held that Cooper had died in the water and the money had been deposited by river action. None of these explanations accounted for all the evidence. The $5,800 recovered by Brian Ingram represented less than three percent of the total ransom. The remaining $194,200 has never been found.

The Suspects

Over the decades, numerous individuals were proposed as the true identity of D.B. Cooper. Richard Floyd McCoy, a helicopter pilot and Green Beret, committed a nearly identical hijacking just five months after the Cooper case and was eventually caught. The similarities were striking, but the FBI ultimately ruled McCoy out based on physical description discrepancies and witness testimony.

Robert Rackstraw, a former Army pilot with a volatile history, was investigated multiple times and became the subject of documentary films claiming to prove his involvement. He denied the allegations until his death. William J. Smith made a deathbed confession that he was Cooper, but investigation could not confirm his claim. Numerous other candidates have been proposed by amateur investigators, journalists, and family members, but none has been conclusively identified as the hijacker.

The FBI officially closed the active investigation in 2016, forty-five years after the hijacking. The case remains open in the sense that the Bureau will still accept credible tips, but active investigative resources are no longer devoted to finding Cooper. All of the most promising suspects are now deceased.

The Mystery

Why did D.B. Cooper capture public imagination in a way that other hijackers never did? The answer lies partly in style and partly in outcome. Cooper was polite throughout the hijacking, treating the crew and passengers with courtesy. He did not threaten violence beyond what was necessary to obtain compliance. He released all hostages unharmed. And then he disappeared completely, cheating the authorities of the satisfaction of capture.

In the popular imagination, Cooper became a folk hero, a man who had beaten the system and gotten away clean. He was romanticized in songs, films, and television shows. His story became part of American mythology, the mysterious stranger who appeared from nowhere, committed an audacious crime, and vanished back into the unknown.

The reality is almost certainly darker. The conditions Cooper faced during his jump were severe enough that most experts believe he did not survive. He jumped at night, in heavy rain, in freezing temperatures, wearing inadequate clothing, into rough terrain with no clear idea where he would land. Even an experienced skydiver would have found those conditions extremely dangerous. Whatever Cooper’s fate, it is unlikely that he lived to enjoy his stolen money.

Legacy

The D.B. Cooper hijacking led directly to significant changes in airline security. The rear airstairs of the Boeing 727 were modified to prevent deployment in flight, a device now called the “Cooper vane.” Airport security was enhanced nationwide. The era of relatively easy hijacking came to an end, replaced by the screening procedures and security measures that airline travelers take for granted today.

The case also spawned an enduring mystery that has resisted resolution for over fifty years. Who was D.B. Cooper? Where did he come from? What happened to him after he stepped off those rear stairs into the night? These questions have never been answered. The hijacker who gave his name as Dan Cooper took his secrets into the darkness over Washington state and has kept them ever since.

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Somewhere in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, or at the bottom of the Columbia River, or in a grave under another name, the man who called himself Dan Cooper keeps his final secret. He was never identified. He was never captured. The money he stole has mostly never been found. For one night in November 1971, he defied the authorities, committed the perfect crime, and disappeared. The only unsolved hijacking in American history remains exactly that: unsolved, unexplained, and unforgotten.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “D.B. Cooper Hijacking”