Infamous Hijacker Case Closed
The FBI closed the D.B. Cooper Case this past July. This is the only unsolved aircraft hijacking case in American history.
I was shocked to learn that none of my fellow newspaper writers knew who he was? I mean haven’t they ever seen Without A Paddle? Assuming there’s more like them, let me explain the whole situation and why you should care.
On November 24, 1971 a Boeing 727 aircraft was hijacked by a man known to some Americans by the name of D.B. Cooper. The plane was flying to Seattle, Washington from Portland, Oregon. That flight takes less than 30 minutes to travel. On this trip, Cooper successfully hijacked the plane and took $200,000 ransom, which is today’s equivalent of $1,170,000. After stealing the money, Cooper parachuted out of the plane. All of the other 42 people on the plane survived.
Cooper’s crime was experienced by many witnesses and had plenty of evidence against him. Evidence including his airline ticket under the name Dan Cooper, 2 of 4 parachutes he left behind, and his black tie. The FBI predicted from the beginning that Cooper didn’t survive the jump, but they proceeded to launch a huge manhunt and followed up on all credible leads in hopes to convict Cooper of his crimes. Despite 45 years of searches leading nowhere, Cooper was ever seen again.
Money and another parachute were found near the plane’s path during the investigation, but neither are certainly tied to Cooper’s crime.
That lays a solid foundation for conspiracy theories. I’m going to take a moment to mention, again, one of my favorite movies from my childhood, Without A Paddle. It stars Dax Shepard, Matthew Lillard, and Seth Green and is rated PG-13, so I highly recommend watching this comedy. Its about three life-long friends going on a journey to find D.B Cooper and his money, set years after he jumped from the plane. At the end of the movie, the friends find Cooper’s skeleton, parachute, and a suitcase with fragments of burned money. There is much more to the story than that, but, nonetheless, Without A Paddle comedically explains just one conspiracy theory of the Cooper Case.
A different theory is that there is a (very slim) chance that Cooper is still alive and dwelling in a secret location.
Alive or not, D.B. Cooper got away with hijacking an airplane and stealing thousands of dollars for the first time in American history.
After the case was closed, the History Channel made a 2 part documentary that you can watch here.
