Who Was D. B. Cooper?

😎 The Man:

Who exactly was D. B. Cooper: the infamous skyjacker in dark glasses, who stole a bag full of cash, and escaped by parachuting out of a passenger jet?

FBI artist sketch of D. B. Cooper, created in collaboration with eyewitnesses

It was November 24th, 1971, the day before American Thanksgiving. An era with no modern airport security, when anyone could buy plane tickets for cash under a false name.

That afternoon, a man in a dark suit and tie and black overcoat, and carrying a briefcase, gave his name as Dan Cooper. He bought a one-way ticket from PDX Airport, on a Northwest Airlines 727 jet. Cooper was about to commit his unforgettable crime of the century.

✈️ The Crime:

Just before 3 pm, the plane was taxiing for takeoff from Portland, Oregon, en route for Seattle, Washington. That's when Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant.

"MISS, I have a bomb in my briefcase and want you to sit by me."

Northwest Airlines Flight 305 was hijacked on the afternoon of November 24th, 1971, by the mystery skyjacker who came to be known as D. B. Cooper.

The hijacker showed the flight attendant an apparent explosive device inside his briefcase. He then demanded $200,000 in cash, and four parachutes.

Once landed at the airport in Seattle, the skyjacker received the ransom money and parachutes, and released the passengers and two of the crew members.

The plane was refueled, ready to fly to Mexico as Cooper demanded. The next refuel stop would be Reno, Nevada.

🪂 The Escape:

After the plane took off, heading south, Cooper made the remaining flight attendant show him how to lower the plane's back stairs. He then sent her to join the flight crew in the cockpit, at 7.40 pm.

This was the last time that the skyjacker 'Dan Cooper' was seen, alive or dead.

D. B. Cooper parachuted out the aft exit of the Boeing 727 jet, and into history.

Somewhere during the flight, the hijacker disappeared out the rear stairway of the plane into the dark night... disappeared together with the $200,000 in 20-dollar bills.

👤 The Mystery:

To this day, nobody knows whether the Northwest Flight 305 skyjacker lived, or died. Even his true identity remains unknown.

In this era before airport CCTV cameras, there was no known photograph of Cooper either. The hijacker left no clear fingerprints; and took away the ransom notes, and the cigarette pack and matchbooks that he had brought with him. Oddly, however, he left behind his neck tie on his seat.

The hijacker left his black clip-on tie behind on the seat of the plane.

FBI agents and other law enforcement investigated tirelessly, following leads across the country, and searching Cooper's suspected landing zone in Washington state, without success.

Local treasure hunters also converged on the area, hoping to find Cooper's cash! But there was no sign of the man, a body, a parachute, or the money.

🕶 The Legend:

The case was widely reported, although due to a media error, the name Dan Cooper was misreported as D. B. Cooper. 'D. B. Cooper' caught on and stuck.

The sketches of Cooper's face were developed and circulated, and hundreds of suspects were evaluated and eliminated.

The FBI sketches of hijacker D. B. Cooper were widely publicized, and became iconic.

The name and image of D. B. Cooper soon popped up in songs, in print and broadcast media, and on teeshirts, sometimes glamorizing him as a cool rebel or a folk hero.

🔎 The Enduring Enigma:

There have been many surprising D. B. Cooper confessors, hoaxers, & frauds over the years, as well as amateur sleuths, and true crime mystery fans following the case. Still, D. B. Cooper has never been officially indentified.

The only surprise break in the case was in February 1980, when a small boy found $6000 of Cooper's ransom money on a beach called Tena Bar, on the bank of the Columbia River near Portland. Law enforcement immediately swung into action, but the rest of the ransom money was never found, and the badly decomposed cash from the beach did not lead them to Cooper. How or why this cash came to be on the beach has never been satisfactorily explained.

Money recovered in 1980 that matched Cooper's ransom money serial numbers

The FBI appears to be no longer actively investigating the Cooper hijacking case.

Nevertheless, despite the lack of physical evidence and official interest, many mystery enthusiasts from around the globe are still researching the D. B. Cooper case. As the only unsolved skyjacking in American history, the mystery of the man on Northwest Flight 305 ranks among the top aviation mysteries of all time, like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart's plane, or Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

D. B. Cooper: where he came from, his true identity, and what became of him after his hijacking, is still an enduring enigma to this day. This blog is the story of the continuing search to investigate and solve the D. B. Cooper mystery.

~ D. B. Cooper Investigator 😎🔍🐊