D. B. Cooper
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D. B. Cooper (aka "Dan Cooper") is a pseudonym given to a notorious aircraft hijacker who, on November 24, 1971, after receiving a ransom payout of $200,000, leapt from the back of a Boeing 727 as it was flying over the Pacific Northwest.
No conclusive evidence has ever surfaced regarding Cooper's whereabouts, and several theories offer competing explanations of what happened after his famed jump. The only clues to have turned up in the case are ambiguous: around $6,000 that washed up on the banks of the Columbia River and part of a sign believed to be from the rear stairway of the plane from which Cooper jumped. The nature of Cooper's escape and the uncertainty of his fate continue to intrigue people. Today, the Cooper case (code-named "Norjak" by the FBI[1]) remains unsolved.
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[edit] The hijacking
[edit] A briefcase with a bomb
At 4:35pm on Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971, in the United States, a man travelling under the name Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727-051, (FAA Reg. N467US)[1] flight 305, flying from Portland International Airport (PDX) in Portland, Oregon, with the threat of a bomb (he had a briefcase containing wires and "red sticks").
Cooper boarded the plane of only 36 passengers and 6 crew. He wore a black raincoat, loafers, a dark business suit, a neatly pressed white shirt, a narrow black necktie, and a mother-of-pearl stickpin. He also had black wrap-around sunglasses.
[edit] "You are being hijacked"
The jet was barely in the air before he paged his flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, sitting nearby, for his drinks. As he paid her, he also handed her a note. She thought he was giving her his phone number, so she slipped it, unopened, into her pocket. Cooper leaned closer, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb." In the envelope was a note that said, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked."
When the flight attendant informed the cockpit about Cooper and the note, the pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma air traffic control and was instructed to cooperate with the hijacker. Scott instructed Schaffner to go back and sit next to Dan Cooper, who opened his case a crack and closed it again, long enough for Schaffner to see red cylinders and wires. He instructed her to tell the pilot not to land until the money and parachutes were ready at Seattle-Tacoma. She went back to the cockpit to relay Cooper's instructions.
[edit] Releasing passengers in exchange for demands
When the plane landed at its intended destination, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport near Seattle, Washington, at 5:45pm, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 in all 20 dollar bills (the government had stamped them so that he had ever spent them they could track Cooper) and four parachutes, believed to be for the four people on the plane (the pilot, the co-pilot, a flight attendant and himself). This is thought to have been a way for D.B. to make sure that the parachutes given to him weren't fakes. At 7:45pm he had the flight crew take the plane back into the air, ordering them to fly towards Mexico at relatively low speed and altitude, around 10,000 feet (normal cruising altitude is around 25,000 feet to 37,000 feet), with the landing gear down and 15 degrees of flap. At some point during the journey he jumped out of the rear stairway of the aircraft with the money and parachutes. The FBI believed his descent was at 8:11pm over the southwestern portion of the state of Washington, because the rear stairway "bumped" at that time. Due to poor visibility, his descent went unnoticed by the United States Air Force F-106 jet fighters tracking the airliner. He was believed to have landed southeast of the town of Ariel by the edge of Lake Merwin, 30 miles north of Portland, Oregon.
[edit] Nothing found after an 18-day search
Despite an eighteen-day search of the projected landing zone, no trace of the man or his parachute was ever found, and it remains unknown whether he survived the escape. On February 13, 1980, $5,800 in the same type of bundles the airport gave D.B. Cooper and they also had the same tracking stamp (www.wheresgeorge.com) of the ransom money was found by a family on a picnic five miles northwest of Vancouver, Washington on the banks of the Columbia River. The FBI questioned and then released a man by the name of D. B. Cooper, who was never considered a significant suspect. Due to a miscommunication with the media, however, the initials "D. B." became firmly associated with the hijacker and this is how he is now known.
Following three similar (but less successful) hijackings in 1972, the Federal Aviation Administration required that all Boeing 727 aircraft be fitted with a device known as the "Cooper Vane", a mechanical aerodynamic wedge that prevents the rear stairway from being lowered during flight.
[edit] Suspects
[edit] Richard McCoy, Jr.
One of the 1972 hijackings was carried out by Richard McCoy, Jr. On April 7, 1972, four months after D. B. Cooper's hijacking, McCoy boarded United Flight 855 during a stopover in Denver. It was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs, the same type used in the Cooper incident, which McCoy used to escape after giving the crew the same type of instructions as Dan Cooper.
Police started to investigate McCoy after a tip. Married, with two young children, he was a Mormon Sunday school teacher studying law enforcement at Brigham Young University. He was also a Vietnam veteran, a former Green Beret helicopter pilot, and an avid skydiver.
Following a fingerprint and handwriting match, McCoy was arrested two days after the hijacking. Ironically, McCoy was on National Guard duty flying one of the helicopters involved in the search for the hijacker. Inside his house FBI agents found a jumpsuit and a duffel bag filled with cash totalling $499,970. McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted of one of the 1972 hijackings and received a 45-year sentence.
Once incarcerated, using his access to the prison's dental office, McCoy fashioned a fake handgun out of dental paste. He and a crew of convicts escaped in August 1974 by stealing a garbage truck and crashing it through the prison's main gate. It took three months for the FBI to locate McCoy, in Virginia. McCoy shot at the FBI agents and agent Nicholas O'Hara fired back with a shotgun, killing him.
D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, co-authored by former FBI agent Russell Calame, was published in 1991. The book made the case that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person, citing similar methods of hijacking and a tie left by Cooper similar to those worn by Brigham Young students. The author said that McCoy "never admitted nor denied he was Cooper." And when McCoy was directly asked whether he was Cooper he replied "I don't want to talk to you about it." The agent who killed McCoy is quoted as saying, "When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time." The widow of Richard McCoy, Karen Burns McCoy, sued and won a legal settlement from both the book's coauthors and its publisher.
[edit] Duane Weber
In July 2000, U.S. News and World Report ran an article about a widow in Pace, Florida named Jo Weber and her claim that her late husband, Duane Weber, had told her "I'm Dan Cooper" before his death in 1995. She became suspicious and began checking into her late husband's background. Duane Weber had served in the Army during World War II and later had served time in a prison near the Portland airport. Mrs. Weber recalled that her husband had once had a nightmare where he talked in his sleep about jumping from a plane and said something about "Leaving my fingerprints on the aft stairs." She had once found an old plane ticket in his papers for Northwest Airlines that said SEA-TAC (Seattle-Tacoma Airport). Jo recalled that shortly before his death, Duane had revealed to her that an old knee injury of his had been incurred by "jumping out of a plane."[2]
Mrs. Weber also recounts a 1979 vacation the couple took to Seattle, "a sentimental journey," Duane told Jo Weber, with a visit to the Columbia River. She remembers how Duane oddly walked down to the banks of the Columbia by himself just four months before the portion of Cooper's cash was found in the same area. One of the most convincing pieces of evidence Mrs. Weber related was the fact she had checked out a book on the Cooper case from the local library and saw notations in it that matched her husband's handwriting. Mrs. Weber began corresponding with FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, the chief investigator of the Cooper case. Himmelsbach has said Weber is one of the best suspects he has come across.[2] Although the match between the composite drawing and pictures of Duane Weber must be considered inconclusive, recently, facial recognition software was used on 3,000 photographs (including that of Weber and two other suspects) to identify him as "the best match" of the 3,000.
[edit] John List
In 1971, List was considered a suspect in the D. B. Cooper hijacking, which occurred just after his family's murders. List's age, facial features, and build were similar to the mysterious skyjacker's. Cooper parachuted from the hijacked airliner with $200,000, the same amount as List's debts. From prison, List has strenuously denied being Cooper, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect.
[edit] Cultural influences
- The community of Ariel in Cowlitz County, Washington, commemorates the incident with an annual celebration called "D. B. Cooper Days."
- In 1981 an adventure movie titled The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper was released starring Treat Williams as Cooper and Robert Duvall as a police officer pursuing him. It was directed by Roger Spottiswoode.
- The television series NewsRadio featured a story arc in which the character Jimmy James was arrested in the belief that he was D. B. Cooper. During trial, Cooper was actually found to be Adam West. Earlier in the series, James had been revealed to be Deep Throat.
- One edition of the comic strip The Far Side showed a parachuting man holding a briefcase about to land in "Ben & Vera's Rottweiler farm". The caption read, "The untold ending of D. B. Cooper."
- In the movie Without a Paddle three friends go on a trip to find D. B. Cooper's treasure. They eventually find Cooper's remains (having died after breaking his leg on impact) along with his money.
- Oregon-native singer-songwriter Todd Snider wrote and performs a song about the famous mystery titled "D. B. Cooper."
- Singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky also has included a song titled "The Ballad of D. B. Cooper" on his 2006 CD, Tulips for Lunch.[3]
- Rap/Rock Artist Kid Rock refers to "D. B. Cooper and the fall he took" in his 1998 song "Bawitdaba."
- Underground hip-hopper MF DOOM likens himself to D. B. Cooper in the song "Hoe Cakes", off the 'MM..Food' LP (2005) : "Average MCs is like a T.V. blooper. MF DOOM, he's like D.B. Cooper - out with the moolah".
- In the Fox television program Prison Break the character Charles Westmoreland is suspected by his fellow inmates to be D. B. Cooper. After repeatedly denying it throughout the first season, Westmoreland finally admits that he is Cooper and that the money he got away with was actually $5 million. However, the real D.B. Cooper is alleged to have only escaped with just 4% of this amount (Westmoreland explains that the FBI lied about the real amount of money Cooper got away with in order to avoid public humiliation). In addition, Westmoreland hints to the lead character that he is Cooper by showing a 100-dollar bill with the same serial number used for the ransom payment; however in reality the ransom was paid in $20 bills. Another glitch is that this 100-dollar bill was printed in 1972, one year after the heist actually happened.
- Elwood Reid published a novel in 2004 titled D. B. In Reid's version, D. B. Cooper is a Vietnam vet named Fitch.
- An FBI Special Agent from David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper, shares the initials of the skyjacker, his full name being "Dale Bartholomew Cooper."
- Roger McGuinn's self-titled 1973 solo album contains the song "Bag Full of Money" referring to Cooper's hijacking: "In the course of Korea I learned how to jump, In the card game of life I was holding a trump, -- Floating I'm floating on down through the sky, Never had no ambition to learn how to fly, Be glad when it's over be happy to land, With this bag full of money I've got in my hands"
- In the late 1980s an American TV series named Unsolved Mysteries ran a segment speculating on Dan Cooper and came to the conclusion the drawing the FBI made was wrong and they had the face redrawn. They concluded it was probably McCoy.
- A Fox station aired the movie The Search for D.B. Cooper[4] and received a $27,500 FCC fine due to foul language.
- A New Wave band named D.B. Cooper released three albums in the early 80's.
- A bar named DB Cooper's is located on 39th street in Kansas City, MO.
- The Cooper hijacking is briefly mentioned in Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, where the character Andy Dufresne, half-jokingly, believes D.B. Cooper to be an old inmate of Shawshank prison who had escaped some years previously.
- A Dilbert comic features the remains of D.B. Cooper in the "Dogbert's Museum of The Strange and Amazing".
- Talk radio host Steven Rinehart has interviewed several authors and FBI agents about the Cooper case and McCoy on the air. His interviews can be heard online. See reference section below.'[5].
[edit] See also
- Aircraft hijacking
- Airport security
- List of people who have disappeared
- "Cooper vane"
- Cold case
- Ransom
[edit] References
- ^ Himmelsbach, Ralph P., Worcester, Thomas K. (1986). Norjak: The Investigation of D. B. Cooper. West Linn, Oregon: Norjak Project, 135. ISBN 0-9617-4150-3.
- ^ a b Pasternak, Douglas. "Skyjacker at large." U.S. News & World Report, July 24-31, 2000.
- ^ http://www.chuckbrodsky.com/lyrics.html
- ^ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002197348
- ^ http://www.stevenrinehart.com/pages/?section=2&page=9
