The most mysterious hijacking case that FBI couldn't solve in 45 years!
In 1971, a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington. Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.
The “quiet” and well dressed man ordered a bourbon and soda while waiting for takeoff. In midair just after 3 p.m., from seat 18C, he handed the flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb in his briefcase and showed her a glimpse of wires and red sticks. She wrote down his demands — four parachutes, $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and the plane should fly under 10,000 feet — and passed them to the captain. The pilots forwaded his demands to the control tower.
In Seattle, the plane was landed and 36 passengers were exchanged for the money and parachutes. The flight resumed with “Mr. Cooper” and the crew en route for Mexico City, with the plane flying no higher than 10,000 feet, as he demanded.
After 8 p.m., somewhere between Seattle and Reno, the hijacker did the incredible, he jumped out of the back of the plane into a wooded area with a parachute and the ransom, and disappeared and was never seen again.
Using an inflation calculator, the ransom of $200,000 in 1971 would be equivalent to demanding about $1.2 million today.
But who exactly was “D.B. Cooper,” the mysterious man who managed to pull off the heist and disappear without a trace?
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The FBI learned of the crime in-flight and immediately opened an extensive investigation that lasted many years. Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest Hijacking, FBI interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence.
More than four decades later, three amateur scientists think they may have found evidence that would narrow down Cooper’s identity to that of an aerospace engineer or a manager. The scientists, working for a group called Citizen Sleuths, said they have been analyzing particles found on a clip-on necktie that Cooper left on his seat — 18E — before jumping out of the plane.
To the naked eye, the piece of fabric was a nondescript black tie from J.C. Penney. But to the modern-day scientists, the tie was an “incredibly fortunate” piece of evidence in the investigation. Scientists think he may have worked at Boeing, which at the time happened to be developing a Super Sonic Transport plane that used those elements, Tom Kaye, a lead researcher with Citizen Sleuths, told King 5 News.“The tie went with him into these manufacturing environments, for sure, so he was not one of the people running these [manufacturing machines],” Kaye told the news station. “He was either an engineer or a manager in one of the plants.”
Soon after the FBI dropped the case, Geoffrey Gray, the author of “Skyjack,” announced that he would make available hundreds of FBI files related to the Cooper case on True Ink, an online magazine Gray founded.
“We’re trying to solve one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of our time,” he wrote on True Ink, “and we need your help.”
The Cooper case baffled the FBI for 45 years, and in July, the agency announced it would no longer actively pursue the “NORJAK investigation,” or Northwest hijacking.
To this day, the high-flying exploit of the man known as D.B. Cooper infused American popular culture. The parts of his story that were known were dramatic enough to inspire writers, directors and musicians, many films and music have been written and broadcasted on D.B Cooper including
-The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper (1981)
-The skyjacker that got away (2009)
-The ballad of D.B Cooper by Chuck Broadsky (song).
Sources:
- www.fbi.gov
- thewashingtonpost.com
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