Dead or Alive: Schrödinger's Cooper

The biggest debate in the D. B. Cooper world, other than his true identity, is undoubtedly: Did the hijacker live, or die, after his jump from the jet?

🤷‍♂️ Since no confirmed trace has been found of either a living hijacker or his dead body post-skyjacking, either could be true.

📦 Some of us are reminded of the thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. Until we open the box to verify, we don't know whether this cat's dead, or it survived. Physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who originated the hypothetical feline as an analogy for quantum states, intended to show the absurdity of supposing a cat to exist simultaneously in a state of both dead and aliveness until examined by an observer.

😎 And yet here we are, and here Cooper isn't.

D. B. Coopaw?

🏕 Most followers of the case, however, seem to belong firmly to the school of thought that Cooper survived; or else subscribe to the Dead Camp. This second camp - which believes Cooper didn't survive after his crime - is the smaller of the two, but has been growing over the past year, according to polls conducted in D. B. Cooper cold case groups online. This death scenario is certainly an appealing viewpoint, since if D. B. Cooper died that night, it eliminates most suspects, and seems to explain how the man was never caught alive.

📕 I recently read a guest blog article by author Jude Morrow, published on D. B. Cooper investigator Pat Boland's blog, Negotiable Currency. Jude Morrow, whose exciting historical novel 'Dan Cooper' gives a fictional twist to the hijacking mystery, has frequently been described as the Captain of the Dead Camp - though that title could perhaps be better applied to former lead Cooper case agent for the FBI, Special Agent Larry Carr (now retired). Nonetheless, Jude remains by far the loudest spokesperson for Cooper not surviving, and is generally implacable and self-professedly unreasonable in his advocacy for a dead hijacker - and definitely not retiring.

💀 In Jude's article '"Dan Cooper": The Man Who Died', the logical leaps (pardon the pun!) do not persuade me of the hijacker's deadness. In fact, reading the article led me to wonder whether the probabilities of Dan Cooper's death have been greatly exaggerated.

🪂 Let's start with the facts, as Jude's article puts it. In the first place, the article states that "FBI records show Cooper had a 24-foot canopy parachute" - which is perfectly true, but by no means complete. Other FBI records clearly show that Cooper had a 28-foot canopy. Which to believe? A 24-foot chute canopy might lead to a rough landing, whereas a 28-footer might be considered much more desirable. Since the parachute canopy size that the hijacker used is not a certainty, we shouldn't be ascribing the man's demise to a small chute, however much we feel he deserved a big smack from the ground.

🤷‍♀️ The blog article continues to project a persona of an incompetent and inexperienced loser onto Cooper - a quite possible but completely unsubstantiated depiction. Saying that D. B. was "likely without military or skydiving expertise" while giving no basis for such an assumption is unconvincing. Yes, if the hijacker were inexperienced, he might be injured. The posited question, though, is whether Cooper died versus lived, not whether he landed unscathed.

🤦‍♂️ And on that note, there are also projections of exaggerated beliefs and improbable motives onto people who don't fall for (I don't even expect forgiveness for this pun!) the dead-Cooper narrative. I can understand if this hyperbole was for humorous effect, but I haven't seen many serious fans of this case who believe, as the article suggests, that Dan the Man "stuck a perfect landing" and "walked away unharmed[.]" Some of the most intriguing suspects are those who had mysterious limps or suspicious impact injuries around 1971.

✈️ As usual, there are also comparisons between D. B. Cooper's vanishing and other high profile cases, like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. This analogy doesn't really fly (ahem!), because Earhart, her plane and her navigator vanished over open ocean, while having difficulties with her aircraft. Both Cooper and Earhart are widely considered to be among the top aviation mysteries in history! Their cases are not really parallel, though. With Cooper, we just don't know whether he got into difficulties or not. I would love Cooper's parachute jump to have landed him in the Columbia River that night, but no-one's been able to prove that's how it actually went down (figuratively or literally). Moreover, the article's comparison of Cooper to copycat hijackers who landed injured but alive is rather an own goal, since it suggests that skyjacking jet jumps like Cooper's were survivable. This comparison leads me to feel that survival is the more probable possibility, based on the data of so many hijacking copycats who landed alive, and were only caught later due to other errors they made. None of the copycat jumpers died due to injuries, or any other cause, during their parachute landings or exfiltration.

👔 My favourite parts of the blog post were the same thing that attracted me to the story of fictional 'Dan Cooper' in the author's novel. Jude helps us visualize a plausible character, a middle-aged man with a lack of ties (loved that pun!), desperate for money. I can certainly see D. B. Cooper as being that dangerous personality, a man who didn't care if he lived or died - and whose hijacking was an act of desperation. This depiction is possible whether Cooper lived or died, as Morrow concludes in his article.

🤕 I get the appeal of a dead Cooper, I really do. One of my favourite quotes from this mystery Vortex is from the mother of hijacked Flight 305's first officer, Bill Rataczak: "I hope he landed on his head!" Mrs Rataczak made a great point. If anyone deserved instant karma, it was the man who hijacked, abducted, threatened and terrorized a planeful of innocent people, including that good lady's son, then jumped out with a fat sackful of extorted loot.

🐱 Yet, however much I might want to agree with the wish of Mrs Rataczak and the conclusions of the quoted article, there's nothing truly persuasive in its arguments that the man who called himself Dan Cooper didn't survive. While I'm not opposed to the notion that Cooper may have died - and in fact I find the idea intriguing - I'm not ready to pitch my tent in Camp Dead Cooper. Perhaps that's the reason why the D. B. Cooper Dead Camp is so small: we need stronger arguments for it. Meanwhile, I am still Team Schrödinger's Cooper, and the real truth is still in the box.

~ D. B. Cooper Investigator 😎 🔍 🐊 

P.S. Check out Patricia Boland's fascinating D. B. Cooper blog here:

https://www.negotiablecurrency.com/blog

and Jude Morrow's thrilling D. B. Cooper novel here:

'Dan Cooper': Based on the Real Story of the Relentless Pursuit of the Northwest Orient Flight 305 Hijacker D.B. Cooper