The db cooper mystery is one of American history’s greatest unsolved legends. It is not as scary as the legend of the Bell Witch but the unprecedented nature of the hijacking and the calm calculated nature of the perpetrator makes the mind run wild with possibility.
DB Cooper
On Wednesday, November 24, 1971 a man hijacked a Boeing 727 and extorted $200,000 dollars from the airline. This is equal to nearly $1.3 million in today’s dollars.
bought an airline ticket as Dan Cooper. The media after miscommunications spelled it incorrectly. Later this became D.B. Cooper as a result.
- Was this a test by the CIA to understand airline hijackings?
- Was D.B. Cooper ex-government or ex-military special forces maybe?
- Did he simply die on impact from his parachuting and decompose?
The FBI considers the case active and has never concluded who the man is or what happened to him.
Hijacking
A day before Thanksgiving on November 24, 1971 Dan Cooper arrived at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at the Portland International Airport and bought a ticket to Seattle.
The man who claimed to be Dan Cooper according to his ticket purchase was by appearance a middle-aged man. His clothing was typical for the attire of flights in the 1970s, but one could say he was dressed for a special occasion.
He wore a black suit with a black tie. With a bourbon soda drink order in his hands Dan Cooper quietly wrote a note on a piece of paper on the plane.
Once the note was written Cooper handed the note folded to the nearest flight attendant, Florence Schaffner. She recalls that she assumed it to be flirtation by a traveling businessman and never opened the note.
The mysterious man that handed a note to the irritated flight attendant now insisted that she read it. “Miss you better read the note, I have a bomb,” he said to her.
The flight attendant accepted the reality of the situation and upon waiting for her next instructions sat down next to the man. His next words to her were specific in their intention, these were his demands.
- $200,000 in U.S. Dollars
- 4 parachutes
- Fueling truck in Seattle to refuel the hijacked plane
- How did this man know so much about aviation and the Boing 727 at a time before the internet?
Florence verbally confirmed that she understood his demands and then upon instruction delivered them to the pilot. It’s at this point that Dan Cooper put on his dark sunglasses.
1968-1972 air piracy events were previously the result of the tensions between Cuba and the United States. Tina Mucklow remembers Cooper’s disposition, he was polite and in control. This was something entirely different and never seen before in American airline history.
The rise in public fear after the hijackings led to an amendment in the Cuban Law making hijacking a crime. It even resulted in the implementation of metal detectors in U.S. airports in 1973.
William Scott the pilot of the hijacked plane let Florence know he understood the situation and continued to radio to the Seattle-Tacoma airport which the plane was approaching.
The airport phoned the local police who in turn alerted the federal authorities about what was happening.
Landing
At 5:39 PM PST the hijacked Boing 727 landed at the Seattle-Tacoma airport and the air radio tower communicated to pilot William Scott that the hijacker’s demands had been met.
Scott then relayed this information to Cooper who then motioned that the passengers on board be released. The passengers including flight attendant Florence Schaffner got off the plane.
Cooper’s next instructions for Scott and the remainder of the flight attendants was to have them place the window curtains down over the windows to deter snipers.
The hijacker then went over his plan for their next course they would chart leading the plane to Mexico City. With the air stars still deployed the air control center argued with Cooper against the safety of launching a plane with the stairs out.
Around 7:40 pm PST the plane took off once more, Cooper agreed to pull the air stairs up. This time they had company, two F-106 Airforce planes were following behind the plane. Three other planes would join them in following the hijacked plane.
DB Cooper Disappears
At around 8 pm PST the remaining members of the flight were told by Cooper to remain in the cockpit for the rest of the flight. In the cockpit the crew noticed an alert go off about the air pressure changing.
Cooper was opening the air stairs once more as he had done to accept the his ransom demands at the Seattle-Tacoma airport. Minutes later the plane again felt a shift in its operation suggesting that something had moved the cabin.
This was Dan Cooper falling out the back of the plane via the air stairs supposedly to make his descent made possible by the parachutes he requested and received earlier.
FBI Investigation
Neither the crew left in the cockpit nor the five total planes following the hijacked Boing 727 noticed or saw Dan Cooper leaving the plane. When the plane landed the authorities swarmed its arrival and cleared the plane with no signs of the hijacker.
What they did find was his black clip on tie, his leftover parachutes, and fingerprints. FBI composite sketches were developed and released all over the country.
Of course the first thing the FBI did was identify all the D.B. Coopers from the northeast area, since flight attendant Tina Mucklow recalls the man acted as though he was familiar with the area.
The feds found one D.B. Cooper with a prior police record and upon investigating him interested media sources who mistaked the actual alias of the hijacker, Dan Cooper and D.B. Cooper. The name stuck and has since.
To this day noone is sure about who D.B. Cooper is and what happened to him.
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