Fifty years ago today, 1971-11-24, a man identified as D. B. Cooper highjacked a Boeing 727-100. Sometime that day he disappeared.
A middle-aged man stood at Northwest Orient Airlines’ flight counter at Portland International Airport, identified himself as Dan Cooper and purchased a one-way ticket in cash for a 30-minute trip north to Seattle. After boarding the aircraft he, in all likelihood, sat in seat 18C.
Flight 305, with 36 passengers and a crew of six, departed Portland on schedule at 14:50 PST. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. Although she initially put it in her purse, Cooper asked her to read it. It mentioned a bomb and directed her to sit beside him, which she did. Cooper showed her the bomb, then demanded $200 000 in “negotiable American currency”, four parachutes (two primary and two reserve), and a fuel truck to stand by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft upon arrival. Schaffner conveyed Cooper’s instructions to the pilots in the cockpit, then returned.
William A. Scott (1920–2001), the captain, contacted Seattle–Tacoma Airport air traffic control, which informed local and federal authorities. The passengers were told that their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a minor mechanical difficulty. Northwest Orient’s president, Donald Nyrop, authorized payment of the ransom, and ordered all employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker’s demands. The aircraft circled Puget Sound for about two hours while the parachutes and ransom money were assembled, and emergency personnel mobilized.
FBI agents assembled the ransom money, 10 000 unmarked 20-dollar bills and microfilmed each of them. Cooper rejected military parachutes, and obtained civilian parachutes with manual ripcords.
At 17:39, the aircraft landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The aircraft taxied to an isolated, but brightly lit section of the apron. All window shades in the cabin were closed. Northwest Orient’s Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, delivered a cash-filled knapsack and parachutes to flight attendant Tina Mucklow on the aft stairs. Once on board, Cooper allowed all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane.
Cooper’s flight plan involved a southeast course toward Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft—approximately 100 knots = 185 km/h at a maximum 3 000 m = 10 000-foot altitude, with landing gear remaining in the takeoff/landing position, and wing flaps set at 15 degrees, and the cabin unpressurized. This meant that a second refuelling would be necessary. Cooper and the crew discussed options and agreed on Reno, Nevada, as the refuelling stop.
At about 19:40 the aircraft took off with only Cooper, Scott, Mucklow, first officer William J. Rataczak and flight engineer Harold E. Anderson on board. Two F-106 fighters shadowed the airliner, one above and one below, along with a Lockheed T-33 trainer, for part of the trip.
After takeoff, Cooper asked Mucklow to show him how to open the door to the aft staircase. He then ordered her to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed. At about 20:00, a warning light indicated that the aft airstair had been lowered. At 20:13, the aircraft’s tail moved upward movement, requiring trim to level it. The plane landed at 22:15, at Reno Airport. Cooper was no longer on board.
From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of the case has to do with investigators describing the highjacker as D. B. Cooper, rather than the name he used on his ticket, Dan Cooper. Agents theorized that Cooper took his alias from a popular Belgian comics series of the 1970s featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot in a Belgian comic book/ graphic novel series, who participants in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. These comics were never translated into English, nor imported to the U.S. Thus, there are suggestions that Cooper was Canadian. In particular, the phrase “negotiable American currency”, aroused attention, because it would seldom be used by Americans.
Albert Weinberg (1922 – 2011) and published in 41 albums from 1957 to 1992.
On 1980-02-10, Brian Ingram (ca. 1972 – ) uncovered $5 800 of the ransom from the Columbia River bank at Tina/ Tena Bar, about 14 km downstream from Vancouver, Washington. This is the only money from the highjacking that has ever been recovered.
There have been any number of suspects. Only one will be mentioned. In an article by Jake Rossen, writing in Mental Floss, in 2016, he suggests that D. B. Cooper may have been Barbara Dayton (1926 – 2002), who, before gender-reassignment surgery in 1969, was born Bobby. For the high-jacking she had disguised herself as a man. Pat and Ron Formans’ book, The Legend of D. B. Cooper (2008) gives a more detailed version.
There are any number of sources of information about D. B. Coooper, including a Wikipedia article that has provided much of the information here.
On 1971-11-24 someone using the pseudonym D.B. Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Details about this are found in the weblog post. On 1972-04-07, James Johnson, later determined to be Richard McCoy II (1942 – 1974), hijacked United Airlines Flight 855, that used another Boeing 727 after a stopover in Denver, Colorado, en route from Newark, New Jersey to Los Angeles. Both 727 aircraft were equipped with aft stairs. McCoy escaped in mid-flight by parachute after giving the crew similar instructions as Cooper had. McCoy had obtained a $500 000 cash ransom, and carried a hand-grenade and a pistol.
McCoy was convicted of this hijacking, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He escaped along with other convicts in a stolen garbage truck. He was found three months later by the FBI, but was killed after he attempted to escape.
In 2016 the FBI made a public statement, declaring the D.B. Cooper case closed pending new evidence. That new evidence may have been found: a modified military surplus bailout rig, allegedly used by D.B. Cooper. The rig belonged to and was stored by Karen Louise Burns McCoy (1945 – 2020), who had marrried Richard McCoy II in 1965, until her death. The rig was inherited by Richard III = Rick, their son.
McCoy’s children, Chanté and Rick believe their father was D.B. Cooper, but stayed silent out of fear of implicating their mother, whom they believe was complicit in both hijackings. Upon her death in 2020, they broke their silence.
Dan Gryder documented some aspects of the case related to the McCoys in two videos, published on YouTube in 2021 and 2022. The second video shows a parachute found in an outbuilding on the McCoy family property in North Carolina in 2022-07.
After this second video, FBI agents contacted the McCoys. In 2023-09 FBI agents took the harness and parachute into evidence, along with a skydiving logbook found by Chanté where some entries aligned with the timeline for both hijackings.
Later, the FBI searched the family property in Cove City, North Carolina, where the parachute and canopy had been found. Rick provided a DNA sample to the FBI, and was told a next step might be exhuming his father’s body.
McCoy’s children are eager for closure and hope that the FBI finds the evidence agents need to close the D.B. Cooper case once and for all.
On 2024-11-18, Gryder released a third video, D.B. Cooper: Deep FBI Update.