On Nov. 24, 1971, a middle-aged man in a suit, trench coat and sunglasses sits in the back of Northwest Airlines Flight 305 enroute to Seattle, Washington. With him was only a briefcase and a small paper bag. He hands a note to the flight attendant. She drops it into her purse, assuming it’s some lonely businessman’s phone number. The man whispers for her to look at the note, which reads:
“Miss – I have a bomb in my briefcase and I want you to sit with me.”
After holding the flight crew and passenger’s hostage, the FBI gave into the man’s demands: $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. The passengers were released. None of them knew they were being held hostage. By nighttime, the flight took off again. The man is its only passenger. He wants to fly to Mexico, but the flight needs to stop in Reno, Nevada, for refueling. The crew is to remain locked in the cockpit. Flight 305 lands in Reno. The stairwell on the backside of the plane is opened. The man is gone.
Although the name on the man’s ticket was “Dan Cooper,” a miscommunication with the media led to the creation of “D.B. Cooper,” the infamous hijacker who remains missing to this day. The FBI officially closed the D.B. Cooper case in 2016 and suspended all investigations. Most agents claim that he died after his daring jump, and investigators have failed to uncover any clue of Cooper’s motive. However, plenty of armchair detectives, internet sleuths and historians believe Cooper’s story has a different ending.
I believe that the D.B. Cooper stunt was all done for the sake of proving it could be. Not only did he survive his jump, but he continued to baffle the FBI for decades after the incident. D.B. Cooper is the world’s most infamous phantom thief, and I believe that he got away with it.
Analyzing Cooper’s story in full reveals that this stunt was no easy feat. After threatening the flight attendant, he proceeded to show her the contents of his briefcase, which she believed to be four sticks of dynamite attached to a battery. He issued his demands to her, which she relayed to the pilot, who then relayed them to the FBI. Once the flight landed and the money and parachutes were given to Cooper, the passengers exited the plane.
The four parachutes Cooper demanded were for two people, since a parachuter would use both a back and front parachute for additional safety. Cooper likely did this so that the FBI did not sabotage the parachutes, since he may have used the second set to take a hostage. During refueling, the flight attendant asked him why he was doing all this, and he laughed and told her:
“It’s not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it’s just because I have a grudge.”
After the plane departed for Reno, Cooper asked the flight attendant to instruct him on opening the “aft stairwell,” or the door that opens via the underside of the plane. After she did, he sent her to the cockpit, where she remained for the rest of the flight. This was the last time the crew saw or heard from Cooper.
Given the evidence remaining on the plane, it is theorized that Cooper was an inexperienced parachutist. Only one parachute remained on the flight, and it was opened with a knife and had the cords removed. One of the parachutes was a teaching chute which did not open, and this is one of them that Cooper used.
The FBI believes that Cooper jumped to his death with an unfunctional chute, but I believe that claim can easily be refuted. I think that Cooper was not only a parachutist, but a parachutist with military training. Out of the parachutes at Cooper’s disposal, the one he cut into was a brand-new civilian chute which would require minimal experience to use. The two Cooper used were old military chutes that would require some degree of military experience to operate. Cooper was an ex-soldier, returning to America with a grudge against the government that sent him to war. He likely used the teaching chute as a bag for the money, which was given to him in a loose bank bag, and then used the cords from the civilian chute to tie all three bags to his body before jumping.
There is even more evidence pointing to Cooper’s military background. In 1954, a comic series titled “Dan Cooper,” the same name D.B. Cooper used on his ticket, was published in France, featuring the tales of a daring parachutist. However, this comic was never translated into any other language other than French. I believe this points to D.B. Cooper being a military soldier stationed in Europe or France during the Cold War who held a grudge against the country due to something that happened during his deployment.
Cooper is regarded by the FBI as a common thief, but I believe he was much more of a master criminal. The flight attendant was charmed by him, stating how gentlemanly and polite he was to her, and even shared a cigarette with him on the flight.
The hijacking may have been Cooper’s first stroke of genius, but it was not his last. The money the FBI used for the ransom had its serial numbers recorded. Any bank or business that processes money with these serial numbers is required to contact the FBI, but no contact was ever made. Cooper never spent the money, as it would be nearly impossible to. Once the serial number was reported, the FBI would have known his approximate location. So, it is likely that Cooper hid the money with the intention to keep it hidden.
However, even though Cooper did not use the money, he certainly kept it. In 1980, nearly a decade later, an 8-year-old boy and his father were camping along a river in Vancouver, Wash. The boy discovered three bundles of cash, totaling to be $5,800, buried in the sand. The money was reported to the FBI, and it was revealed that these bundles were in fact three of the same bundles given to Cooper as part of the $200,000 dollar ransom.
However, this only led to more questions than answers. The money was found nearly 17 miles away from Cooper’s projected drop zone, meaning it would be impossible for it to have fallen from the sky during his jump. The money was found upstream of the river, which means even if it had fallen, it would have had to float against the current to reach its location. And to top it all off: the rubber bands on the bundles were new.
Although this left the FBI stumped, I believe that it is evidence of Cooper’s survival. Cooper returned a decade later and planted this money. With his case starting to get cold, he decided to warm it back up with some new evidence in an ingenious way: purposely placing it in an impossible location.
The D.B. Cooper case is a fascinating mystery. The FBI seems to insist that Cooper was a common crook who died during his jump, but I believe that this is only to mask the fact that they failed to solve the case. D.B. Cooper was likely a trained military paratrooper turned mastermind thief, and his successful hijacking was merely a stroke of criminal genius to get back at the country that deployed him.
Looking back on the case 52 years later, I believe that the evidence, though rather speculative, is clear: D.B. Cooper pulled off an impossible crime, left the FBI clueless and stole not only the money but the hearts and minds of Americans fascinated by his escapade to this day.