Who Was D.B. Cooper?

     One of the most mysterious unsolved crimes of the twentieth century is the hijacking of Northwest Orient flight 305 on November 24, 1971.  The passengers and crew settled into what should have been a routine thirty-minute flight from Portland to Seattle on the evening before Thanksgiving.  Then, a man seated near the rear of the plane passed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner.  She ignored the note at first without looking at it.  Then, the man told her she should take a look at the note because he had a bomb.

     The man showed Schaffner a brief glimpse of what resembled a bomb in his briefcase and stated his ransom demands; four civilian parachutes, one fuel truck to refuel the plane in Seattle, and two hundred thousand American dollars.  Schaffner communicated what was happening to pilot William Scott.  Scott then radioed Seattle to report the hijacking and ransom demands.  The President of Northwest Orient authorized the ransom.  Authorities in Seattle quickly gather the money and parachutes.

     After the plane was refueled the man instructed the pilot to fly to Mexico City at minimum airspeed and at an altitude of 10,000 feet.  He instructed the pilot to keep the landing gear down and the cabin unpressurised.  The pilot complied with the hijacker's request but said they would need to refuel in Reno.  The hijacker agreed.

     About twenty minutes after takeoff a warning light came on in the cockpit to alert the pilot that the aircraft's rear stairs had been activated.  A few minutes later the plane's tail experienced a sudden upward thrust and the pilot had to make adjustments.  It is widely believed this is the moment the hijacker parachuted out of the plane.

     The plane landed at Reno and was thoroughly searched by authorities but there was no sign of him.  A massive ground search was carried out in the following days along the flight path.  However, there was no sign of the man or the money.  So, who was the man who hijacked flight 305?

     The man used the name Dan Cooper when he purchased the twenty-dollar plane ticket, but it was found to be a fake name.  The two flight attendants, Florence Schaffner and Tina Mucklow, were able to give a description of the man to the FBI and work with a sketch artist. He was described as a white man in his mid-forties with dark hair and brown eyes.  He wore either a black or brown suit, a thin black clip-on tie, a black raincoat, and brown loafer shoes.  Both flight attendance agreed that he didn't seem nervous, although he drank bourbon and smoked several cigarettes.  They said he wasn't rude or nasty to them and seemed rather nice, even offering one of them a cigarette.  One of the flight attendants also noted that the man seemed familiar with the local terrain from the air because he commented on Tacoma and McChord Air Force Base.

     The news media pounced on this story and the fake name Dan Cooper was suddenly spun into the legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper.  But the real identity of the hijacker remains a mystery.  In 1980 a boy on a camping trip with his family uncovered a small portion of the money when he saw it sticking out of the ground.  However, the discovery did not lead investigators any closer to identifying the hijacker.  Over the years citizen sleuths have developed several suspects, but the FBI has made no arrests and in 2016 they announced they were no longer actively investigating the case.

     In recent years new technology and fresh eyes have led to several long-time cold cases being solved, such as the Golden State Killer case.  This has inspired citizen investigators to keep digging for information and striving to solve other cold cases.  A lot of these investigators circle around the D.B. Cooper case because they believe it can be solved.  Only so many people fit the profile of the hijacker.  So, perhaps someday soon we will learn the true identity of the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper.