I didn’t remember that the DB Cooper case is now more than 50 years old. It seems more recent to me. The trail is cold, and Cooper is almost certainly dead, since the descriptions indicate that he was born in the 1920s. Not only do we not know what happened to him, we don’t even know who he was, but he certainly captured the public’s imagination. He inspired multiple copycat hijackings, a slew of investigations, and a CooperCon, where Cooper researchers and true crime enthusiasts still gather annually to exchange info and debate their theories.
It’s possible that Cooper died during his jump or in the wilderness afterwards, but no likely corpse has ever been found. Since so many of the copycats survived, Cooper’s survival also seems to be a possibility. About $6,000 of the ransom money turned up on the bank of the Columbia River in 1980, apparently washed there by the natural forces of the river and/or its tributaries, but none of the other ransom funds ever appeared in public (the serial numbers were all known), so not a single bill was ever spent, implying that if Cooper lived, he lost the loot.
(A reasonable alternate hypothesis is that he lived but kept the money stashed, knowing it was “hot,” then passed away before he felt he could risk spending it.)
They kinda solved the Cooper thing, but can’t prove it. I forget what doc revealed their main candidate. At the time, he was in his 80s and living in a beach community in SoCal. The theory being he got away with way less money than they thought and that was always the plan. Ditch about 1/3 so it’d be found and they’d think he was dead, when in reality he was further out than they thought and had two accomplices he had to pay out.
Still had enough for all three (all ex military) to live comfy. But as it wasn’t THAT much money, it didn’t show up on any radar. Just three guys who kept living fairly modestly yet never really went into the office.
It’s the old bank robbery rule: don’t get greedy and don’t get in a hurry. Rob one or two, make good profit, then sit on it for a long time, and then only spend it in small amounts. They’ll never find you. They catch the idiots who want tons of cash, keep hitting banks, or instantly buy a new caddy and a vacation home.
Stewardess Tina Mucklow was shown pictures of him, some in color, and a video where Rackstraw talks to reporters on the steps of a California courthouse not long after the hijacking about some other charge he was facing. She said he definitely was NOT Cooper. (The documentary didn’t see fit to include this.)
More recently, a pair of siblings came forward to claim they had found the parachute used in the hijacking, in their mother’s shed, and that D.B.Cooper was their father, Rick McCoy III. He was also too young, and all three of the stewardesses from the Cooper hijacking were shown photographs of McCoy and agreed that he was not the guy. (He, at least, seemed a good suspect in that he was jailed for committing almost an identical crime. But of course that also means the parachute could have been from the other crime, or a practice run.)
Basically there is a DB Cooper industry that continues to sell a lot of books, and documentaries, and everyone wants a piece of the action.
Those who try to view it objectively don’t find any of the well-known suspects to be any better than 20-1 shots. Rackstraw is more like 100-1.
I guess the FBI knows more than I do about these kinds of things, but if I had been in charge of the investigation, my starting point would have been to find anybody who disappeared on November 24 and was never heard from again (presuming he died in the jump). I would have asked the local TV stations to ask if anyone at home or work matched that description.
From there, I would have asked if that person smoked Raleighs and drank bourbon.
By the way, the only suspect who did smoke Raleighs and drink bourbon was Ken Christianson.
I’m inclined to think that nobody has any idea who it was.
Back in my skydiving days, I used to attend the “World Freefall Convention” in Quincy, IL every August. They would bring in “specialty” aircraft to jump from, like helicopters and hot air balloons as well as some vintage planes like a Super Constellation or even a B-17 (you jumped out of the bomb bay).
One of the most popular tickets was the 727 jet – they called it a “DB Cooper jump.” The plane they used was a cargo model with all the seats removed. They also took out the “air stairs” under the tail which is where Cooper exited his 727.
Even “slowed down” to 200 mph for jump run it was still a punishing exit, and that’s without trying to hold onto a bag full of cash.
The name given by ‘D.B’ Cooper was actually Dan Cooper. When I first heard that I thought it was possible he was just thinking of Vancouver (either Vancouver Washington or Vancouver British Columbia) as that sounds reasonably similar, but there was a comic book at the time that featured a Dan Cooper who jumped out of airplanes.
There has been a lot of speculation about that comic book. Some say that is a coincidence, while others read deep meaning into it. Some say that since it’s a French-language comic book, the real hijacker must be French-Canadian, or at least fluent in French.
I still say they’re barking up the wrong tree. All of the suspects they discuss are men who were alive after the incident. I think they should be looking for somebody who didn’t show up for work the next day and then was never heard from again (because he probably died in that adventure). Or perhaps a landlord was unexpectedly stuck with an abandoned rental. Something of that nature.
Another mystery – what happened to his briefcase bomb? He didn’t leave it on the plane. He had a bunch of money to carry, so I can’t picture him also trying to hold a briefcase full of electronics while he descended. Plus he had no reason to keep it. Therefore, he must have tossed it out of the plane before he jumped. But it couldn’t have landed anywhere near him if it was free-falling. (And if he survived, he would have had neither time nor motivation to look for it.)
So why did nobody in the search parties ever find a random briefcase in the middle of the forest?
1.No body has been found either.
2.While this was long before the internet (except for some email) as I’m sure you remember, fanzines and mailing lists (real mailing lists, not email lists) did exist. So, it was very likely possible for ‘Dan Cooper’ to have heard of this comic book character without having to read French.
Last year’s Netflix series This is the Zodiac Speaking made it seem like Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac, but there was no hard evidence, as to be expected.
DB Cooper is one of the most fun to speculate because he was sort of a Robin Hood theft and it didn’t involve any murders.
I don’t think I understand this article when it says that the Black Dahlia murder of 1947 is LA’s oldest unsolved murder. There must be lots of them from before than that were never solved. A famous one is the WIlliam Desmond Taylor murder of 1922. The second paragraph of this article says “the murder remains an official cold case”. Maybe it wasn’t in LA?
Your point sounds correct to me.