my favorite unsolved mystery... D.B. Cooper

The D.B. Cooper Story: A Mystery





The particulars of D.B. Cooper's clever airborne crime and daredevil getaway have been pondered, picked over and recapitulated for three decades now.

In 1971, D.B. Cooper hijacked and threatened to blow up an airliner, extorted $200,000 from its owner, Northwest Orient, then leaped from the airborne 727 with 21 pounds of $20 bills strapped to his torso.

He was never seen again—dead or alive. The crime was perfect if he lived, perfectly crazy if he didn't.

In either case, D.B. Cooper's nom de crime—no one knows his real name—may be the most recognized alias among western felons since Jack the Ripper.

Everyone from dour G-men to giddy amateur sleuths have pored over the details, hoping to wheedle a resolution out of some overlooked aspect, as though a clue concealed in the holdup's hieroglyph of facts might lead to an a-ha!, a la Inspector Clouseau.

Yet the case remains unsolved more than 30 years later, and D. B. Cooper has become the Bigfoot of crime, evading one of the most extensive and expensive American manhunts of the 20th century. The whereabouts of the man (or his remains) is one of the great crime mysteries of our time.

Of course, the annals of wrongdoing are stuffed with titillating unsolved cases, from London's notorious ripper in the 1880s to the Black Dahlia murder of an aspiring actress in Los Angeles in 1947 to the befuddling murder—and muddled investigation—of little Jon Benet Ramsey in 1997 in Boulder, Colo.

But D.B. Cooper's crime was different. First, no innocent bystander was injured, although law enforcers argue that he put several dozen lives at risk.

There was modest collateral damage to Northwest Orient's bottom line, and the FBI's swollen ego was bruised to the bone. Cooper pulled his buccaneering swipe in the twilight of the 47-year tenure of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who died not long after the hijacking. The director no doubt went to his grave with teeth gritted over his agency's inability, in this case, to get their man.

Cooper's crime also was unusual in that it helped rally critical support for sweeping air travel security initiatives, including passenger screening. Until D. B. Cooper's skydive, it was entirely possible to walk aboard a jet carrying a bomb.

Most law-abiders react with revulsion to violent criminals, with disgust to extortionists, and with a tsk-tsk to the preponderate larcenies that fill crime blotters in police stations across America.

Yet Cooper induced more smiles than frowns.

Hijackings became more violent and less palatable as the 1970s wore on, and the destruction of September 11, 2001, makes any such act seem evil.

But D. B. Cooper's crime was of its time, the early 1970s, when antisocial behavior had cache. Many Americans commended his moxie. He was celebrated in a song, film and books. He managed to tweak J. Edgar Hoover's nose and finagle a bag of loot from a big corporation. He was Robin Hood for tie-dyed longhairs—and not a few wearers of more traditional attire.

But did D. B. Cooper get away with it? No one can say for certain. We do know that he could have survived the dangerous nighttime skydive because Cooper's caper, like a crime science experiment, was replicated with complete success by a copycat aerial clip artist just months later. That hijacker hit the ground safely, although the mimic ultimately paid dearly. The copycat case also spawned a controversial theory about the fate of Dan Cooper.

Coincidentally, Cooper himself probably copied a similar hijacking that occurred two weeks before his endeavor.

Many others have tried variations on the airline extortion technique—generally with less success. Some have "splattered," as law enforcers like to say. FBI investigators believe Cooper probably met that fate—a fatal kiss of the ground. But their opinion is far from unanimous.

Books by a half-dozen authors, including three separate tomes by ex-FBI agents, have posited theories—some serious, some spurious—about what happened to Cooper. Several men have stepped forward claiming to be Cooper, although none convincingly so. Some believe Cooper is alive and well and living on a beach in Mexico. Others say he slipped back into an obscure American life and grins like a Cheshire cat at premature reports of his demise.





D.B. Cooper's Parachute Possibly Found In Pacific Northwest, FBI Says


FBI composite sketches show how D.B. Cooper might have looked during the hijacking in Nov. 1971.
SEATTLE - Almost 40 years after one of the most infamous airline hijackings in history, the culprit's "getaway" parachute may have been found in the wilderness of Washington State.

On Nov. 21, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper -- and later became known as D.B. Cooper -- boarded a Boeing 727 at the Portland, Ore. airport with a ticket to Seattle. Once on board, he summoned a flight attendant and displayed what appeared to be an explosive in his briefcase. By the time the night was over, Cooper had jumped from the jet's rear stairwell with approximately $200,00 in cash -- and authorities had no clue as to who he was.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday announced that Cooper's parachute might have been found by children playing in a wilderness area in Washington state.

The FBI, which revived its investigation into the hijacking earlier this year, said it is analyzing a torn and tangled parachute that might, in fact, have come from Cooper's airborne heist.

According to officials, the parachute was found near the childrens' home near the town of Amboy, Washington. The chute was reportedly discovered protruding from the ground.

FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs with the parachute found in North Clark County, Wash., working to find out if it is linked infamous DB Cooper case from 1971 in Seattle on Tuesday, March 25, 2008. (AP Photo/Kevin P. Casey)

After trying to pull up the entire parachute, the children urged their families to contact federal authorities after seeing media coverage of Cooper's heist and subsequent evasion.

If the parachute was used by Cooper, it is the first trace of the infamous hikacker since nearly $6,000 was dug up on the bank of the Columbia River in Feb. 1980.

A boy playing along the river found the cash in the sand 28-years ago, which was partially burned, severely faded and unusable. A check of the money verified that it had been a part of the ransom money paid to Cooper in 1971.

Following the 1971 heist, federal authorities have tried to find Cooper and the remaining cash from the robbery -- but have never been able to so do. It was once mentioned that Cooper might have actually been Richard McCoy-- a criminal killed in a shootout with the FBI in Aug. 1974. However, no official connection between Cooper and McCoy was ever established.

A man named Duane Weber also confessed to his wife in 1995 as being D.B. Cooper, shortly before his death. Though a resemblance exists between Weber and a composite sketch of Cooper, he was never formally identified by police as the skyjacker.

D.B. Cooper hijacked this Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 on Nov. 24, 1971. In this photograph, the plane sits on a runway at Seattle's airport as Cooper waits on board for $200,000 in cash to be delivered.

Also, DNA taken from the suspected hijacker's necktie did not match Weber's -- leading federal investigators to rule him out as a likely suspect.

Also, aside from the cash found along the Columbia River in 1980, little physical trace of Cooper has ever surfaced. In the late 1970s, a piece of a warning sign from the rear of a Boeing 727 was found by a hunter in a Washington forest. Authorities at the time said it might have fell from Cooper's flight.

In Dec. 2007, the FBI announced that it was re-charging the case in an effort to solve the decades-old mystery. As part of the announcement, officials revealed for the first time photographs of Cooper's necktie and one of the parachutes he left on the plane.

As of 2008, not a single dollar of Cooper's ransom cash -- which was all photographed -- has ever turned up in U.S. circulation. Some experts believe that detail means that Cooper either did not make it out of the forest alive, or that he fled the country immediately and exchanged the money for foreign currency.

MORE:
FBI revives search for D.B. Cooper after nearly 40 years - Jan. 2 '08
Slideshow: The D.B. Cooper hijacking
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The Broken Pot: inspiration

The Broken Pot

A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his house.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you. I have been able to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house. Because of my flaws, you have to do a lot of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said.
The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you've watered them.
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Moral:

Each of us has our own unique flaws. We're all cracked pots. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.