The Only Unsolved Hijacking In U.S. History
Who was the mysterious hijacker who cemented his name (infamously) in aviation history?
The Story
This historically insane story took place on November 24th, 1971. At 2:00 pm, a man would be at Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon purchasing a one-way ticket. He was heading to Seattle. While paying in cash for the ticket, the man told the woman behind the counter that his name was Dan Cooper. Curiously, Mr. Cooper boarded the plane with no other luggage but an attache case. The man boarded the plane and sat patiently until it elevated off the pavement. Once the Boeing 727 was in the air, the man gave a note to a stewardess by the name of Florence Shaffner. Since a lot of the stewardesses get phone numbers slipped to them all of the time, she didn’t even look at the note for a while. It wasn’t until Cooper urged her to open the note at a later point that she learned the severity of what was inside.
The note told her that there was a bomb in his attache case.
To solidify the scope of his threat, Cooper opened his attache case and showed that it contained sticks of dynamite. He then told the stewardess that he wanted her to pass the note along to the captain of the plane while making sure that no panic ensued. She — along with the crew — would need to act casually and as if everything was perfectly normal. He also made sure to include flight directions in his note that would presumably aid him in his hijacking of the plane. While the pilots followed those directions, they were also able to make air traffic control aware of the fact that their flight was being hijacked. Lastly, Cooper demanded that he be given four parachutes and $200,000 in cash. The plane would not be allowed to land until those demands were met in full.
Once the hijacking was reported, the FBI became involved. As they were putting together the $200,000 in ransom money, the agents were careful to record the serial numbers on every individual bill. This would allow them to trace the money and became notified of where/when it would be spent. The plane would eventually land in Seattle so that the fuel could be refilled. No passengers were allowed to get off of the plane while it remained parked in a remote location at 5:43 pm. During this time, an agent ran the money and parachutes to the plane so that Cooper’s demands would be met. Unbeknownst to all of the parties involved in the situation, one of the parachutes was defective.
With his requests fulfilled, Copper allowed for the passengers to be set free. However, the captain and one of the flight attendants were to remain on the plane. At 7:37 pm, the plane would take off once again and head for Mexico City. The captain was able to get Cooper to agree that they would need to stop in Nevada for refilling the fuel. He followed up that agreement by asking that the back stairwell be let down during the flight. Unfortunately for him, this request couldn’t be done because the plane would have been unable to fly under that condition. That wouldn’t stop him, though. At 8:10 pm, Dan Cooper jumped out of the rear exit door with just his cash and one of the parachutes as the plane flew over the Lewis River. He was never seen again.
With his disappearance into the night sky, this instantly became the only unsolved sky-jacking in United States history (and also the history of aviation in general). Although the man gave the name “Dan” when getting his ticket, the press somehow wound up naming him “D.B. Cooper”. While looking for Cooper, the FBI chased down many leads — one of them leading to even more questions.
The Aftermath
In November of 1978, a group of people found a plastic sign from a Boeing 727 (the same plane Cooper leaped from). It was discovered in the woods around the area where he was last seen…in the air, of course. Then, in February of 1980, children playing near the Columbia River made a startling discovery. In an area twenty-five miles from where he jumped, a partial amount of the ransom money was found in the mud (remember that the FBI recorded the serial numbers so that they could trace the whereabouts of the bills). With these two clues combined, the consensus was that D.B Cooper died during his attempt at completing the hijacking; either he landed harshly in the woods, or he drowned in the river. Others, however, believe that he made it out alive.
While there have been many different theories about D.B. Cooper’s identity, one has always stood out from the others. Richard McCoy was the most likely suspect. The main reason would be that McCoy had actually been involved in hijacking a plane in April of 1972. He was able to demand (and receive) $500,000 in cash during his attempt…but he was ultimately arrested. After escaping from prison, he was shot and killed by the FBI during a standoff. Not only was the hijacking eerily similar, but McCoy was almost a dead ringer for the composite sketch of D.B Cooper (though there is some speculation as to whether or not that sketch was even accurate).
The Present
To date, this is still the only unsolved skyjacking in American history.