F.B.I. composite drawing of D. B. Cooper, Flight 305's hijacker . . .
A media label, or epithet, popularly used to refer to an unidentified individual who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft on November 24, 1971 (the day after Thanksgiving), in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, in what would turn out to be one of historys most notorious unsolved crimes.
Flight 305 was carrying 36 passengers and crew, originating in Portland, Oregon with the final destination of Seattle, Washington. The plane was hijacked just prior to its arrival in Seattle. In Seattle, the hijacker allowed the passengers and two stewardesses to depart the plane. Northwest Orient Airlines paid the hijacker $200,000. The plane then departed Seattle for Reno, Nevada.
While on flight, Cooper ordered the pilot to fly to Mexico. It is believed the hijacker parachuted from the plane during this flight, at 10,000 feet, with winds gusting to 80 knots and a cold rain.
I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.
This was the content of a note handed to flight's 305 stewardess by a mild-mannered passenger. It was the beginning of one of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of American crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline, then parachuted into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and into oblivion.
Pan American's Tri-Engined Boeing 727 Jet, 1965 - The type of plane hijacked by the infamous D. B. Cooper. . . Buy this art print at AllPosters.com
Who was this man calling himself Dan Cooper, and it was even possible to survive a jump from that altitude in that freezing and stormy weather? These are the questions everyone, including the authorities, have been asking since that faithful day, but to the present date none has been able to answer.
Authorities, the FBI, and personnel from Fort Lewis, Washington, searched extensively for Mr. Cooper, but he was never found. In 1980, an 8-year-old boy found $5,800 on the banks of the Columbia River. This is the only money ever recovered from the ransom.
Aircraft at Jackson Hole Airport Surrounded by Snow-Covered Fields and Hills, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by Richard Cummins. . . Buy this art print at AllPosters.com
Official records only show that a man bought an airplane ticket in the name of Dan Cooper, mistakenly identified as D. B. Cooper by a reporter, a name which was from then on attached to this mysterious character. Until today, many years after Cooper's jump, his whereabouts have never been discovered, despite extensive FBI investigations and extensive and successive searches made by other people (a real hunt). Over the years, the FBI investigated over a thousand suspects, but most of them were discarded. There were a few exceptions, but no real proof that they were Cooper was ever discovered. Surrounded by all this mystery, Cooper became an enigmatic character who inspired books, songs and movies. While FBI investigators have insisted from the beginning that Cooper probably did not survive his risky jump, the agency maintains an active case file.
D. B. Cooper infamous leap into the history books is the only unsolved crime of its kind in U.S. history, but in 1972 an United Airlines flight was hijacked by a man, also calling himself D. B. Cooper. This man parachuted from the aircraft with $500,000, pretty much in the same manner as the original D. B. Cooper. He was later identified as Richard McCoy, a Mormon Sunday School teacher and criminal justice student at Brigham Young University. Mr. McCoy was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, but he escaped and was killed in a shoot-out with law enforcement officials in 1974.
Sources: (1) Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.; (2) Gunther, Max, D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened, NTC/Contemporary Publishing Co.; (3) Anciaes, A. M.; article research, composition and editing.
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