The world is one step closer to solving one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in US history – ‘DB Cooper’.
From Seat 18C on the Northwest Orient flight, he told a flight attendant he had a bomb. If they gave him $200,000 – the equivalent of about $15,500,000 today – he would free the 36 passengers.
And just that happened. He later threw on a parachute and leapt from the near-empty plane over Washington. His body was never found.
More than five decades later, later, the family of a hijacker suspected to be Cooper discovered the parachute he used in his heist.
Richard Floyd McCoy carried out a similar hijacking and escaped by parachute less than five months after the Cooper flight. However, the FBI ruled him out as a suspect for not matching witness descriptions.
But the family of the late McCoy have now handed over a modified military surplus bailout rig to FBI investigators, amateur sleuth and YouTuber Dan Gryder said in a video posted today.
Gryder first contacted McCoy’s family in 2020 before being welcomed to their North Carolina office two years later following the death of McCoy’s mother.
He uploaded footage of himself on November 19 in McCoy’s mother’s storage unit holding the parachute and rig.
‘We just solved it,’ Gryder remarked. ‘Literally. This is the rig because they know what rig he used when he jumped that night. They supplied him the rigs.’
Gryder added that all evidence he’s unearthed since October 2023 – including the parachute set – has been handed to FBI. Officials have unofficially re-opened their investigation of the hijacking, he claimed.
The bureau ended its pursuit of Cooper in 2016, referring to it as one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in its history. The case file is 40 feet long.
‘Although the FBI will no longer actively investigate this case, should specific physical evidence emerge—related specifically to the parachutes or the money taken by the hijacker—individuals with those materials are asked to contact their local FBI field office,’ the FBI said at the time.
No one knows! But someone might – maybe you? Or if you are Cooper, drop us an email.
He was, according to the FBI, a mild-mannered ‘nondescript’ man who appeared to be in his 40s.
Cooper would be in his 90s by now. Here’s hoping the $200,000 was spent on cheese so he lives longer.
‘DB Cooper’ probably isn’t his name. It was just an alias he gave when buying his $20 plane ticket. It… also wasn’t his actual alias, it was ‘Dan Cooper’ but a reporter misheard it.
‘Dan Cooper’ wore a black suit, a white dress shirt and a black JC Penny tie, which was recovered by detectives.
The passenger’s drink of choice was a bourbon and soda. Between sips, he slipped a note to a flight attendant.
‘Miss, you’d better look at that note,’ he said. ‘I have a bomb.’ He clicked open his briefcase to reveal what was possibly an explosive device lost inside a mess of wires.
The passenger ordered the flight to land in Seattle to allow all the passengers off. Now armed with a sack of dollar bills and four parachutes, he and a skeleton crew took back off and flew south.
A little while later, the pilot clocked the cockpit warning lights were flashing – the rear suitcase had been opened. Cooper had jumped.
Neither the money nor Cooper ever turned up. Though, in 1980, a boy found a package of rotting $20 bills along the Columbia River worth $5,800 that matched the ransom money serial numbers.
If Cooper survived parachuting from the plane, he would have fallen about 10,000 feet in subzero darkness. Officials believe he fell just near the southwest small town of Ariel.
The FBI has some 1,000 suspects of who Cooper is. They include Ted Braden, a master skydiver and felon; Kenneth Peter Christiansen, a paratrooper whose sister was convinced was Cooper and Lynn Doyle Cooper, a leather worker whose niece is convinced is a suspect.
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