D B Cooper

A  FB I composite drawing of

D.B. “Dan” Cooper … Then & Now

It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, November 24, 1971.  Northwest Airlines Flight 305, from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, sped along the runway preparing for liftoff, the person in Seat 18C, was wearing sunglasses and a dark suit, he handed a nearby flight attendant a note. It said he had a bomb and would blow up the Boeing 727 unless he received $200,000 cash and four parachutes when the plane landed. The individual in Seat 18C purchased his ticket under the name "Dan Cooper."

After receiving his ransom at the Seattle Airport, he released the 36 passengers on board as well as two members of the flight crew. He then ordered the pilot and remaining crew to fly to Mexico and to maintain an altitude of 10,000 feet or less at the lowest possible speed, with winds gusting at 80 knots and a freezing rain pounding the airplane, Dan Cooper, who was later mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper by a reporter then walked down the rear stairs of the 727 (which had been extended during flight) into sub-zero conditions and parachuted into history.

What followed remains one of the most extensive as well as expensive manhunts in the annals of American crime. For five months, federal, state, and local police combed the dense hemlock forests north of Portland, Organ, which was the area believed to be his “jump-site”.  Dan “D.B.” Cooper became an American folk icon who is the inspiration for books, rock songs, and a 1981 movie.

His FBI description goes like this: 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) to 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) tall, 170 to 180 pounds (77 to 82 kg), mid-40s, with brown eyes and dark skin; familiar with the Seattle area; familiar with the 727 aircraft; the FBI came to believe that he lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience, due to several “blunders” or “mistakes” you might say regarding his jump from the plane; in addition they thought that he could have be a aircraft cargo loader because of his familiarity with the planes operational techniques. 

Indeed, most investigating agents have argued from the beginning that Cooper did not survive his jump in the first place.

The suspect purchased his airline ticket under the alias Dan Cooper, but due to a news media miscommunication he became known in popular lore as “D. B. Cooper.” There have since been hundreds of leads pursued in the ensuing years but no conclusive evidence has surfaced regarding Cooper's true identity or whereabouts, and the majority of the ransom money has never been recovered.

In late 1971, the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers (on all of the bills) to various financial institutions, casinos, race tracks, and other such businesses routinely conducting cash transactions, as well as to law enforcement agencies around the world.   Additionally, in early 1972, then U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public.

In February 1980, an 8 year-old lad named Brian Ingram, who was on vacation with his family by the Columbia River found three packets of the ransom cash; though it was significantly disintegrated it was still bundled in rubber bands. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper back in 1971. Yet here, there is an added mystery: how did the rubber bands survive decomposition?

To date, not one of the other 9,700 remaining bills has turned up in circulation, anywhere in the world. Their serial numbers remain available online for public search.

In 2003 a resident of Minnesota by the name of Lyle Christiansen, after watching a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking became convinced that his elder brother Kenneth was in fact D. B. Cooper.

Kenneth had enlisted in the Army in 1944, and was trained as a paratrooper. After leaving the Army he joined Northwest Orient in 1954 as a mechanic in the South Pacific, and subsequently became a flight attendant, and later a purser, based in Seattle. He was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking, but he was shorter (5 ft. 8 in. instead of 5 ft. 10 in. or 6 ft. even), thinner (150 pounds as opposed to 170 or 180 lbs.), plus he was lighter-completed than eyewitness descriptions.  He was also balder; but his brother Lyle claims he wore toupees routinely prior to the Cooper hijacking, and never wore one again after 1971.  Is that damning evidence or what?

Another witness, and a longtime friend, confirmed that Kenneth stopped wearing his toupee after the hijacking, and claimed (as have proponents of other suspects) that she recognized the hijacker's tie clip (allegedly left behind by Cooper) as one belonging to Kenneth. He was a smoker (as was the hijacker), and had a fondness for bourbon (Cooper's preferred beverage). Kenneth was also left-handed, which witness reported of Cooper as being also because his black tie clip was applied from the left side, thus suggesting a left-handed wearer.

Regardless, the FBI insists that Kenneth Christiansen cannot be considered a prime suspect.   Foremost, they cite a poor match to eyewitness physical descriptions such as height, skin tone and the presence of hair on his head (despite his Brother Lyle’s toupee theory), plus Kenneth’s  level of skydiving expertise was above that predicted by their suspects profile, along with an absence of untold incriminating evidence.   But were they wrong?  Probably not.

In a death bed confession in 1995 a man named Duane Weber claimed to be D B Cooper; another man named William Pratt Gossett claimed late in his life that he was the notorious hijacker; Bobby (aka Barbara) Dayton claimed she was Cooper but recanted when she learned that the statute of limitations would not prevent a prosecution.

As recently as July 2011, the late Lynn Doyle Cooper was suggested to the FBI by his niece, Marla Cooper, as a candidate.  She claims she knows this is true because she overheard her Uncle Lynn (he died in 1999) and his brother talking about something “very mischievous”, involving the use of “expensive walkie-talkies”, at her grandmother's house no less in Sisters, Oregon, when she was 8 years old way back in 1971.

You may be wondering what $200,000.00 in 1971 would be worth today? The answer is: It would take $7.63 in today’s dollars to buy what one 1971 dollar could buy, which would exceed 1.5 Million Dollars today.

That’s not chump change for jumping out of an airplane (with a reliable parachute) even by today’s standards. That’s not to say that I would consider trying to duplicate his “attempt”, but I’m told that some folks pay money to try.   That’s why I expect the investigation continues.

Sources …

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/cooper.htm        

ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper                                               http://www.chacha.com/question/how-much-was-200000-dollars-in-1971-compared-to-today's-value-in-dollars

Post Script:

On April 7^th of 1972 a man named Richard McCoy, Junior successfully duplicated a similar “copy-cat” hijacking of a 727.  He jumped out over Provo, Utah but was caught 2 days later with all of the ransom money… Sent to prison for a 45 year term, he escaped within 2 years and was then shot dead by the FBI in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA  3 months later.

Although the agent who shot him claimed McCoy acknowledged being D. B. Cooper before dying, the general theory by the FBI is that McCoy who was only 29, was simply too young plus he had other physical discrepancies which eliminated him as a Dan Cooper suspect.