The Enigmatic D. B. Cooper

On 24 November 1971, a man in his mid-forties, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, calling himself Dan Cooper, purchased a one-way ticket in cash from the Northwest Orient Airlines flight counter at Portland International Airport for flight 305, a short 30 minute hop to Seattle. He boarded the aircraft, a Boeing 727-100, settled himself into seat 18C and ordered a bourbon and soda. Shortly after take-off at 2.50pm PST, the man handed a note to Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant seated nearest to him at the rear of the aircraft. The note informed her that he had a bomb in his briefcase. Cooper told Florence to sit beside him and proceeded to explain his demands. He required $200,000 in “negotiable American currency”, four parachutes and a fuel truck to be on stand-by at Seattle in order to re-fuel the aircraft upon arrival. Calmly, Schaffner asked to see the bomb. Dan obligingly opened the briefcase just wide enough to reveal eight red cylinders, four on top of four, attached to wires coated with red insulation, and a large cylindrical battery. Florence informed the flight crew in the cockpit of Cooper’s demands. When she returned she noticed that the hijacker had donned a pair of dark sunglasses.

Pilot William A. Scott relayed the information to air traffic control, who in turn notified local and federal authorities. Donald Nyrop, President of Northwest Orient Airlines promptly authorised payment of the ransom and directed all employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker. The aircraft flew in a holding pattern over Puget Sound for approximately two hours, to allow sufficient time for police and the FBI to assemble the money and parachutes. Another of the flight attendants, Tina Mucklow, recalled Cooper as being calm and polite, she said he also appeared to be familiar with the local terrain from the air. Meanwhile, FBI agents collected the ransom money from several local banks in 10,000 unmarked 20-dollar bills, although the serial numbers were recorded. During this time police also obtained the parachutes from a local skydiving school.

Once in place, Cooper was advised that everything had been arranged as instructed, and at 5.39pm the aircraft landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Al Lee, the airline’s Seattle operations manager, cautiously approached the aircraft and handed a rucksack containing the cash, and the parachutes to Mucklow via the rear stairs. Once the delivery had been completed, Cooper allowed all passengers, plus Schaffner, and the senior flight attendant, Alice Hancock, to leave the plane.

Whilst the aircraft was being refuelled and prepared for take-off, Dan informed the flight crew that they were to fly the plane to Mexico City, but with very specific instructions as to the aircraft’s configuration. They were to fly at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft, which was about 185 kmh or 115 mph and at a maximum altitude of 10,000 ft or 3,000 m. He also instructed that the landing gear remain deployed throughout, that the wing flaps be lowered 15 degrees, and the cabin should remain unpressurized. Realising that this flight configuration would limit the range of the aircraft to approximately 1,000 miles or 1,600 kilometres, co-pilot William J. Rataczak explained to Cooper that they would be unable to reach Mexico City without a second refuelling stop. The crew discussed the options with Cooper and agreed on Reno, Nevada.

At around 7.40pm the aircraft took-off, heading for Reno. An unusual design feature of the Boeing 727 was that it had its own integral staircase at the rear of the aircraft, via which passengers boarded and alighted. Once airborne, Cooper instructed Mucklow to join the flight crew in the cockpit and to remain there with the door closed. At approximately 8pm a warning light lit up in the cockpit indicating that the rear staircase had been deployed into the lowered position and a change in air-pressure soon confirmed that this was in fact the case. About thirteen minutes later an upward motion was felt in the tail section, consistent with someone jumping off of the staircase and causing it to recoil upwards, that required corrective action on the part of the pilots. When the aircraft landed at Reno Airport at around 10.15pm, the staircase remained in the lowered position. The Boeing 727 was surrounded by FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, and Reno police, as it had not yet been established whether the hijacker remained aboard. However, an armed search soon revealed that Dan Cooper was no longer on board the aircraft. Somewhere en-route to Reno he had bailed out with $200,000 in cash. But where? $200,000 in 1971 is equivalent to approximately $1,300,000 in 2020.

Although the name Dan Cooper was almost certainly an alias, all lines of enquiry were pursued. One suspect who was quickly ruled out was an individual known to police as D. B. Cooper. However, due to a misunderstanding between police and journalists, the hijacker was referred to in the media as going by the name of D. B. Cooper. Perhaps because the name D. B. Cooper is more enigmatic than plain old Dan Cooper, to refer to an unknown outlaw, the moniker stuck, and despite the individual in question never using the initials, he is known today as D.B. Cooper.

Despite an extensive manhunt and a protracted FBI investigation, the man who hijacked flight 305 has never been located or identified. Many theories and suspects have been investigated with no firm leads. Could he have even survived the descent? It was cold and raining heavily and he was wearing just a business suit. Opinion is divided on this one, although no remains have ever been found. Only two pieces of evidence were ever discovered on the ground, and they tend to suggest that he did indeed survive the jump.

In November 1978, a placard printed with instructions for lowering the rear stairs of a Boeing 727 was found by a deer hunter within Flight 305’s basic flight path. And on 10 February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram was playing at a beachfront known as Tena Bar, when he discovered three packets of the ransom cash buried in the sandy riverbank. The bills were in poor condition, but still bundled in rubber bands. The money uncovered consisted of two packets of 100 twenty-dollar bills each, and a third packet of 90, amounting to $5,800 in total, still arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper. Might he, fearing being caught, have decided to bury a small proportion of the loot, as a little nest egg to come back for, in case he was apprehended and imprisoned? Whatever the truth, on 8 July 2016, the FBI announced that it was finally suspending active investigation of the Cooper case. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in aviation history.

So, what conclusions can we draw with regard to the seemingly inscrutable D. B. Cooper? Well, the whole operation seems to have been well planned and preprepared. He had good knowledge of or both the aircraft and the terrain below, and the fact that he ordered four parachutes was surely to ensure the authorities did not tamper with them, for fear that he would make some innocent party jump with him. Additionally, the hijack took place on Thanksgiving eve, meaning a four day weekend lay ahead. Might it have been possible that he was able to complete the hijacking, and use the long weekend to get back home in time to go back to work on Monday morning as normal? Certainly, the FBI investigation did not reveal anyone who disappeared over that weekend, suggesting the perpetrator could well have simply returned to his day job, albeit as a much wealthier person. But for me, it is the fact that no-one was hurt, and no lives were lost that speaks volumes about the man. Indeed, it seems as though D. B. Cooper was a thoroughly courteous individual. A latter day Raffles or Robin Hood, perhaps!

Due to advances in forensic techniques, in 2020, American television series Histories Greatest Mysteries, was able to extract sufficient DNA, taken from a clip-on tie Cooper left behind when he jumped, that identification of the perpetrator ought to be possible, if it could be matched with a sample of DNA from the hijacker or his descendants. Although the FBI, I am sure would beg to differ, I for one, will be a little disappointed if the authorities finally fathom the mystery that is D. B Cooper.

Sources:

Britannica.com D-B-Cooper

Wikipedia.org D._B._Cooper

Histories Greatest Mysteries 2020