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 somewhere over the southern Cascades.
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 $5,800 that washed up on the banks of the Columbia River found by school children, 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 an envelope. 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 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 5:45 p.m., he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 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 were not fakes. At 7:45 p.m. 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 8:11 p.m. 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. Later pilot information puts the jump location about 20 miles further west.
[edit] Vanished (almost) without a trace
Despite an eighteen-day search of the projected landing zone, no trace of Dan Cooper or his parachute was ever found, and it remains a widely disputed subject whether he survived the jump and the subsequent foot escape. 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. Metal detectors were added to the airports by the airline companies and the newly formed FAA set a number of related flight safety rules in place.
On February 13, 1980, a family out for a picnic found $5,800 on the banks of the Columbia River five miles northwest of Vancouver, Washington. The bundles were determined to be from the ransom given to Cooper because the serial numbers on the bills were recorded to track and apprehend him should he attempt to spend or deposit them. The rest of the money has never been found, but there is reliably believed to be another $150,000+ somewhere in that river bed, perhaps still in a milk can, or by now, rotted into nonexistence.
[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. McCoy was carrying a paper weight grenade and an empty pistol. He left his fingerprints on a magazine he read on the plane. He also forgot to retrieve his hand written message, giving the FBI all they needed for identification.
Police started to investigate McCoy after a tip from a motorist who picked up a hitch-hiker (in a jumpsuit, carrying a duffel bag) at a fast-food place where he had stopped to get a milk shake. He had talked to a number of people about how easy it would be to carry out the hijacking. Married, with two young children, he was a Mormon Sunday school teacher studying law enforcement at Brigham Young University. He was provided with a hero's record as a Vietnam veteran, he was a former Green Beret helicopter pilot, and an avid skydiver. His dream was to be an FBI or CIA Agent.
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. An appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court.
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 supposedly 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. Supposedly, McCoy shot at the FBI agents and agent Nicholas O'Hara reportedly fired back with a shotgun, killing him. Other witnesses dispute this claim.
D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, co-authored by Bernie Rhodes and 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 and Brigham Young Medallion with McCoy's initials on the back, left on the plane by Cooper. 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 supposedly 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, reached a legal settlement with the book's co-authors and its publisher. They agreed not to do a movie on the theory that McCoy was Cooper.
[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. Mrs. Weber related that 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.
There has also been a positive identification made by Robert Knoss of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a former acquaintance of Duane Weber, identifying him to be also known as Dan Cooper, who resided in Bloomington, Minnesota, where he practiced to be a skilled parachutist three years prior to the hijacking.
[edit] John List
In 1971, mass murderer John 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
[edit] Books
- The Cooper hijacking is briefly mentioned in Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and 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.
- Cooper is also mentioned in Dean Koontz's The Husband, when Mitch's situation is compared to that of Cooper's, with each disappearing while wanted for a crime and therefore becoming legendary.
- D.B. Cooper's infamous hijacking also recieves a brief cameo on pg. 51 of Michael E. Wetzstein's Microeconomic Theory: Concepts & Connections (2005, Thomson South-Western).
- Richard T. Tosaw released a book in 1984 published by TOSAW PUBLISHING CO., INC titled D.B. COOPER Dead or Alive which outlines the events in the highjacking. It also has a full list of serial numbers from the $20 notes that were given to Dan Cooper.
[edit] Film, TV and Radio
- 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.
- A Fox station aired the movie The Search for D.B. Cooper[3] and received a $27,500 FCC fine due to foul language.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In the Fox television program Prison Break the character Charles Westmoreland is suspected by and later proved to be D. B. Cooper by his fellow inmates.
- 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.[4]
- An episode of "Quincy, Medical Examiner" starring Jack Klugman in the 1980s centered around a "ripped from the headlines"-type storyline where a man who had hijacked a plane using anthrax in a glass vial had disappeared. Skeletal remains were found in a tree and Quincy was called in to investigate whether this was the suspect.
- An episode of the 70's crime-action drama "Charlie's Angels" featured a love interest for Sabrina who turns out to be a Cooper-esque hijacker. Episode 28. "Angel in Love" (10/26/77): While the Angels are tracking down clues to the murder of health resort employee it leads them to a $2 million skyjacking mystery.
- An episode of the television show Renegade entitled The Ballad of D.B Cooper details how D.B Cooper hijacks a plane, steals 200 000 dollars and lands in a small town where he uses the money to reopen an old factory.
[edit] Music
- Oregon-native singer-songwriter Todd Snider wrote and performed 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.[5]
- Rap/Rock Artist Kid Rock made reference with the lyrics "And for D.B. Cooper and the money he took" in his 1998 song "Bawitdaba."
- 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"
- A New Wave band named D.B. Cooper released three albums in the early 80's.
- An FM Radio Deejay named Ken Klinzman on WMXQ, West Palm Beach, Florida, used the air name D.B. Cooper in the early 80's. This air name was also used by Mr. Klinzman on WXOU radio at Oakland University on the radio show "Basement of the Blues".
- Rap Artist MF Doom made reference with the lyrics "Average MCs is like a TV Blooper/MF Doom... he's like D.B. Cooper" in the song "Hoe Cakes" from the 2004 album, MM..Food?
[edit] Places
- The community of Ariel in Cowlitz County, Washington, commemorates the incident with an annual celebration called "D. B. Cooper Days."
- A bar named DB Cooper's is located on 39th street in Kansas City, MO.
- D.B. Cooper's was a bar in the Fremont district of Seattle, Washington.
- A bar named D.B. Cooper's Hideaway is located on Motor Parkway in the Palms area of Los Angeles.
- A gentleman's club in the Houston, TX area goes by DB Cooper's Mansion
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Himmelsbach, Ralph P.; Worcester, Thomas K. (1986). Norjak: The Investigation of D. B. Cooper. West Linn, Oregon: Norjak Project, 135. ISBN 0-9617415-0-3.
- ^ a b Pasternak, Douglas. "Skyjacker at large." U.S. News & World Report, July 24-31, 2000.
- ^ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002197348
- ^ http://www.stevenrinehart.com/pages/?section=2&page=9
- ^ http://www.chuckbrodsky.com/lyrics.html
