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This is the case overview of Dan Cooper (also known as D.B Cooper), the man who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland, Oregon, demanded and received ransom money upon landing in Seattle, then parachuted into the woods and was never found again.
On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, an unmemorable man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington. Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.
Cooper was a quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt. He sat patiently while the flight was waiting to take off. A short time after 3:00 p.m., he handed the stewardess a note indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.
The stunned stewardess did as she was told. Opening a cheap briefcase, Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of wires and red colored sticks and demanded that she write down what he told her. Soon, she was walking a new note to the captain of the plane that demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills.
When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes. Cooper kept several crew members, and the plane took off again, ordered to set a course for Mexico City.
Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: He jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money. The pilots landed safely, but Cooper had disappeared into the night, and his ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day.
During the hijacking, Cooper was wearing this black J.C. Penney tie, which he removed before jumping; it later provided the FBI with a DNA sample.
The FBI learned of the crime in-flight and immediately opened an extensive investigation that lasted many years. Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, they interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, the FBI considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.
One person from their list, Richard Floyd McCoy, is still a favorite suspect among many. The FBI tracked down and arrested McCoy for a similar airplane hijacking and escape by parachute less than five months after Cooper’s flight. But McCoy was later ruled out because he didn’t match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided by two flight attendants and for other reasons.
Perhaps Cooper didn’t survive his jump from the plane. After all, the parachute he used couldn’t be steered, his clothing and footwear were unsuitable for a rough landing, and he had jumped into a wooded area at night—a dangerous proposition for a seasoned pro, which evidence suggests Cooper was not. This theory was given an added boost in 1980 when a young boy found a rotting package full of twenty-dollar bills ($5,800 in all) that matched the ransom money serial numbers.
Although there have been many leads and plausible suspects, this daring hijack and disappearance remains an intriguing, and unsolved, mystery to this day.
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