Who Was D.B. Cooper?

Skyjackings

By 1971, the golden age of air travel had reached fever pitch. Fares were cheaper than they ever had been–passengers could simply buy a ticket with cash and board moments later—no ID, no security check, no questions asked.

But as more Americans took to the skies, so too did a dangerous new trend: aeroplane hijackings.

Between 1961 and 1973, nearly 160 hijackings occurred in U.S. airspace, averaging more than one per month. Most were politically motivated. During the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, a travel ban was imposed between the United States and the communist nation of Cuba. The result was that if a Communist sympathiser stuck on American soil wanted to fly to Cuba, they had to commandeer an aircraft.

Skyjackings were not uncommon at the time. They were going on multiple times a day. Hijackings at the time tended to be for political reasons.

Darren Schaeffer, host of The Cooper Vortex, a podcast about the D.B. Cooper case

The Hijacking

At approximately 2:50 pm, Northwest Airlines Flight 305 departed Portland for a short flight to Seattle. On board were 36 passengers and six crew members, including Dan Cooper, who was described as being in his mid-40s, with a calm voice, slightly thinning brown hair, and wearing sunglasses.

Once airborne, Cooper revealed a briefcase containing red wires and a battery—his supposed bomb. He calmly issued his demands: $200,000 in cash, four parachutes

The FBI scrambled, and authorities complied. When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers in exchange for the money and parachutes. He retained four crew members and ordered the plane to take off again, this time heading south toward Mexico City.

More important than where to fly, he tells them how to fly there. He wants the plane to fly no higher than 10,000 feet and no faster than 200 miles per hour. He wants the landing gear down. He also wants to take off with the plane's aft stairs down.

Darren Schaeffer, host of The Cooper Vortex, a podcast about the D.B. Cooper case

At 7:40 p.m., Flight 305 took off again. Somewhere over the rain-soaked forests of southwestern Washington, Cooper lowered the stairs and jumped into the freezing darkness—parachute on his back, money strapped to his body.

He was never seen again.

The Investigation

From the moment Cooper jumped, the FBI launched one of the most extensive manhunts in its history. Led by Special Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, agents scoured the rugged terrain on foot and by air. They even brought in a military submarine to search nearby lakes. When that proved fruitless, they checked records for anyone with parachuting experience and even looked into military personnel who might have had the skills to pull off the stunt.

They found… nothing.

No body. No parachute. Not a trace of Cooper.

Hundreds of suspects were questioned, some of whom described him as over six feet tall; others maintained he was five ten at most. Some remember blue eyes, while others remember brown. One witness claimed that the man had a dark, olive-skinned complexion and was possibly Hispanic, while the majority insisted that he was Caucasian.

One of the individuals interviewed was a Portland man called D.B. Cooper. Rushing to meet a deadline, a local journalist confused this name with the alias chosen by the hijacker. When the United Press International wire service reprinted the journalist’s error, the name “D.B. Cooper” became the official epithet for the hijacker.

In 1980, a break seemed to come at last. Eight-year-old Brian Ingram found $5,800 in decaying $20 bills buried along the Columbia River, matching serial numbers from the ransom. But the discovery only deepened the mystery. Why would Cooper bury or lose some of the money? Was he dead, or had he escaped and hidden the rest?

Did Cooper strike again?

On April 7th 1972, a Vietnam veteran named Richard McCoy hijacked United Airlines Flight 855 from Newark to Los Angeles. Wielding an unloaded pistol and a fake hand grenade, McCoy managed to obtain a $500,000 ransom before parachuting out of the moving Boeing 727. It was almost an identical crime to Cooper’s, and given the physical similarities between the two hijackers, it was no surprise that McCoy became a leading suspect in the D.B. Cooper case.

But unlike Cooper, McCoy made mistakes. He bragged about the heist to a friend, who alerted authorities. FBI agents raided his home and found a duffel bag filled with ransom money. He was arrested and convicted.

But that wasn’t the end of Richard McCoy. Shortly after being thrown in jail, he pulled off an improbable escape by commandeering a garbage truck and smashing through the prison gates. Three months later, the FBI tracked him down to Virginia Beach, North Carolina. On November 9th, 1974, he arrived home to find three federal agents waiting for him. Never one to give up without a fight, he started shooting. The agents returned fire, and McCoy was killed in a hail of bullets.

Richard McCoy was undoubtedly a daring crook. But was he D.B. Cooper?

The FBI agent who fired the lethal shot was convinced of it. However, despite their similarities, there were also numerous differences. 

The fact that he did a similar skyjacking doesn't mean that he was Cooper. The M.O. is different. There's just no evidence. 

Darren Schaeffer, host of The Cooper Vortex, a podcast about the D.B. Cooper case

A Folk Hero?

Unlike most hijackers, Cooper has fascinated the public for decades. He didn’t hurt anyone. He outwitted the authorities. And he vanished, as if into legend.

Cooper’s story has inspired movies, TV shows, documentaries, and comic books. When the FBI officially closed the case in 2014 due to a lack of new leads, interest didn’t fade—it shifted online.

Today, the mystery lives on in internet forums and at an annual event called CooperCon, where enthusiasts gather in Washington State to debate theories, analyse evidence, and toast the man who pulled off the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history.