"Do You Really Want This Mystery Solved?"

From time to time, someone always asks the question. "Do you really want this case to be solved?"

The hijacked Boeing 727, Northwest Flight 305, on the tarmac at Sea-Tac Airport, Washington, November 24, 1971.

❓️ Maybe they're thinking, with no obvious investigative progress in 53 years, we can't realistically expect it to be solved. Everyone has got used to this eternal mystery. If ever the solution to the case, namely Cooper's identity, were suddenly announced, would we all be disappointed? Our favourite mystery hobby would be gone, all our swirling theories wiped out by fact.

💯 My answer is simple. Do I want this mystery solved? 100 percent Yes!

🔎 It's endlessly fascinating to me to learn facts about the case; and more than the facts, I want to learn the truth.

😎 Quite apart from the satisfaction for me as an investigator finally knowing the answer to this mystery, more importantly there are people out there who deserve to know the truth about the criminal known as D. B. Cooper.

👨‍✈️ Firstly, there are the crew members who flew on Northwest Flight 305 that November night in '71. Five of the six crew are still with us - though sadly the plane's Captain passed away without ever learning who it was that hijacked him, or why. The other two gentlemen from the cockpit crew are still here, as are the three cabin crew ladies, who interacted the most with the hijacker. All these amazing people were skyjacked, abducted and held hostage for hours by Dan Cooper and his bomb threat. They likely all believed at some point that they were going to die that day, but they all did their jobs bravely, and helped keep the passengers and plane safe. These former Northwest Airlines crew above all deserve the truth, instead of being left always wondering.

The crew members whose plane was hijacked deserve to know the truth.

💺 Next there are the plane's passengers to consider. Many of them have since passed, again without the answers they deserved. As for the remaining passengers, most keep a low profile these days. Some, though, have given public interviews in recent years. They still think of the unsolved crime that they endured over 53 years ago, and it still affects them to this day. Like the airplane crew, they were all hostages to a callous criminal on that fateful November 24th in 1971. Many passengers didn't learn that it was a hijacking until after they'd landed and disembarked. Imagine the sudden panic of realizing you could have been blown up midair... and the nightmare of trust issues you'd have over ever travelling again, if you'd experienced that hijacking yourself! I want the case solved for the victims of Cooper's crime to rest easier.

📺 The third group of people deeply and unjustly impacted by this unresolved NORJAK case are: the families of men wrongfully accused of being D. B. Cooper and of committing his unsolved skyjacking! While the mystery remains open to interpretation, every man and his dog [hair] can be "connected" to the crime by the speculative theories of amateur sleuths, and there is little to no recourse. The number of names put forward as potential Cooper "persons of interest" is shocking. Worse yet, some researchers think nothing of dragging people's names through the media on the flimsiest excuse, or harassing the relatives of men who were clearly (to anyone unconcerned with cherry-picking) not Cooper. These gentlemen's memory is being desecrated with no due diligence in "news" publications, and publicly on the internet, which lasts forever. Whether these Cooper world sleuthing characters double down on their unsubstantiated claims, or later say Oops and move on to another non-Cooper "suspect", the damage has already been done by their unethical conduct.

⚖️ It's time to learn the truth, and to put a stop to this injustice. I care about justice, and I want the D. B. Cooper case solved. Justice for those no longer alive to advocate for themselves; and justice for the living, before it's too late.

🧩 In the end, the reason I love puzzles and mysteries is because I want to find the answer so that it all makes sense. Wishing that a case never gets solved makes no sense to me. I enjoy detective fiction because the criminal gets found out, and justice prevails. And that's why I love following and researching the real life D. B. Cooper cold case: because I believe there's still a chance we can find the solution to this mystery, and finally achieve some measure of justice for all concerned. I especially love the camaraderie of researching toward an important common goal like this.

🌪 And never fear, Investigators! I'm quite sure that this Vortex of Cooper research won't end if the hijacker's identity is discovered. It'll then be a matter of investigating Cooper's pre-NORJAK past, turning his motives inside out, seeing if he was involved in other crimes, and finding witnesses who knew him in life. I know this crowd - however much we learn, we still always love a deep-dive to find out more. So let's find out more, and help find the real Cooper.

~ D. B. Cooper Investigator 😎🔍🐊