D.B. Cooper: The Gentleman Hijacker

November 24th, 1971. A polite businessman in a suit and tie boards a flight from Portland to Seattle, orders a bourbon and soda, then calmly tells the flight attendant he has a bomb. Two hours later, he's jumping out of the back of a Boeing 727 into a freezing storm with two hundred thousand dollars, never to be seen again. For fifty-three years, nobody knew who D.B. Cooper really was. Then in 2024, two siblings stepped forward with a shocking claim about their father. Today, we're solving America's greatest unsolved hijacking.

The Setup

You know how some people have that one coworker who's always polite, pays for coffee, holds doors open, and you think they're harmless? Well, on November 24th, 1971, a guy like that walked onto Northwest Orient Flight 305 in Portland, ordered a bourbon and soda, and proceeded to pull off the only unsolved commercial aircraft hijacking in American history. And here's the wild part - in 2024, more than fifty years later, two siblings stepped forward claiming they know exactly who he was. Their father.

So let's start with what happened that Thanksgiving Eve. It's 1971, and air travel was different. You could walk right onto a plane without metal detectors, take your shoes off because you wanted to, not because some TSA agent demanded it. Flying was still kind of glamorous, flight attendants were called stewardesses, and apparently, hijacking planes was so common that some crew members thought bomb threats were pranks.

The Hijacking

Our guy walks onto this Boeing 727 looking like he sells insurance for a living. Mid-forties, business suit, black tie, white shirt, and the kind of unremarkable face that blends into any office building in America. Thirty-six passengers on board, typical short flight from Portland to Seattle. He sits in the back, orders his drink, pays cash, tips the flight attendant well. Model passenger.

Then he hands flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note. She glances at it and thinks, "Great, another weirdo hitting on me." Because that happened constantly back then. She starts to put it in her pocket without reading it when the guy leans over and says, very politely, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."

Now Florence looks at the note. It says he has a bomb and he's hijacking the plane. She looks at him like, "Really? You?" Because this guy has the energy of someone who apologizes when other people bump into him. But then he opens his briefcase, and there are wires, a battery, and what definitely looks like dynamite.

Florence sits down next to him. He closes the briefcase and tells her his demands: two hundred thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills and four parachutes. Two hundred thousand in 1971 money, by the way, which is about one point four million today. The man knew inflation was coming.

The Exchange and Escape

So the plane lands in Seattle, and while the FBI is scrambling to get the money together, Cooper is being the most considerate hijacker in history. He lets all the passengers go. He orders dinner for the crew. He examines the money carefully when it arrives, like he's checking for counterfeit bills at a garage sale. Then he looks at the parachutes they brought him and rejects one because it has an inoperable reserve chute. This guy knows parachutes.

The FBI gives him what he wants, the passengers are safe, and Cooper tells the crew to fly toward Mexico City. But here's where it gets interesting. He gives very specific instructions: fly low, keep the speed under two hundred knots, lower the landing gear and flaps. Basically, he's turning this Boeing 727 into the world's slowest, lowest-flying getaway car.

They take off around seven PM, and somewhere over the dense forests of southwestern Washington, Cooper does something that still seems impossible. He lowers the aft stairs of the plane. Boeing 727s had this unique feature where you could actually open stairs from the back of the plane while in flight. Cooper knew this. He puts on one of the parachutes, takes the money bag, walks to the back of the plane, and at eight PM, in the middle of a storm with freezing rain, two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds, and zero visibility, wearing a business suit and loafers, he jumps into the night.

His last words to the crew? "Thank you for your cooperation and courtesies." Even while committing a federal crime, this man had better manners than most people at Thanksgiving dinner.

The Investigation

The FBI launched their biggest investigation at the time. They called it NORJAK for Northwest Hijacking, though the media started calling him D.B. Cooper. Funny thing is, he actually told them his name was Dan Cooper. The media got it wrong, and somehow D.B. Cooper stuck. Even his fake name got rebranded.

They found sixty-six fingerprints on the plane, got DNA from his clip-on tie, and had detailed descriptions from the crew. They searched the wilderness where he jumped for months. The area was brutal terrain - dense forest, steep ravines, rivers everywhere. And remember, he jumped during one of the worst storms of the year, wearing office clothes.

Most skydiving experts said his survival chances were basically zero. You don't jump out of a plane in a business suit during a storm and live to tell about it. But here's the thing - they never found a body. They never found the parachute. And here's the really weird part - they recorded the serial numbers of all ten thousand twenty-dollar bills, and despite those bills circulating for years, almost none ever turned up.

The only money they ever found was in 1980 when a kid discovered fifty-eight hundred dollars in deteriorating bills along the Columbia River. The serial numbers matched, but the condition of the bills suggested they'd been buried or underwater for years. That's it. Out of two hundred thousand dollars, they found less than three percent.

The Suspects

Over the decades, the FBI investigated dozens of suspects. There was Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., who pulled an almost identical hijacking several months later. Former Green Beret, experienced paratrooper, similar build and appearance. He died in 1974 during a prison escape shootout, so they couldn't question him properly, but the FBI officially ruled him out.

Then there was Robert Rackstraw, another military guy with paratrooper experience and a criminal background. Kenneth Christiansen, who actually worked for Northwest Orient and would have known about the 727's aft stairs. Guy looked exactly like the FBI sketch, but he died in 1994 with no conclusive evidence.

The case became this weird cultural phenomenon. Cooper became a folk hero because he was polite, didn't hurt anyone, and stuck it to both the airlines and the establishment. There are annual conventions where people dress up like Cooper and share theories. Some people have spent their entire adult lives trying to solve this case, and honestly, some of their research is better than what the FBI did back in the seventies.

In 2016, after forty-five years of investigation, the FBI officially suspended the case. They still maintained that Cooper probably died in the jump, but they said they'd examine any significant new evidence that came forward.

The 2024 Revelation

Well, guess what showed up in 2024?

Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.'s children, Chanté and Rick McCoy, decided to go public with something they've apparently known their whole lives. They claim their father was D.B. Cooper. And they say they have proof.

We're talking about physical evidence here. They claim to have items their father brought home after the Cooper hijacking - parachute equipment and money they say came from that flight. They have family stories about where McCoy was and what he was doing in November 1971. According to them, the timeline works perfectly for him to have been in Portland for the hijacking.

Now, remember, McCoy died in 1974, so these kids were young when all this happened. They've been living with this secret for fifty years. But recent documentaries and renewed interest in the case apparently convinced them it was time to come forward.

The FBI has agreed to examine their evidence. No official word yet on whether they buy it, but the fact that they're looking at it seriously is significant. Remember, they'd previously ruled McCoy out as a suspect.

If the McCoy children are right, it would solve the greatest unsolved hijacking in American history. It would also mean that Cooper actually survived that impossible jump, lived for three more years, and died not as a mysterious folk hero but as a convicted hijacker shot by federal agents during a prison break.

The Legacy

The case remains officially open while the FBI examines this new evidence. After fifty-three years of mystery, we might finally know who D.B. Cooper really was. Though honestly, part of me kind of hopes we never find out for sure. Some mysteries are more fun unsolved.

But if Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. really was D.B. Cooper, then the polite gentleman who thanked the crew for their cooperation before jumping into a storm wasn't the mild-mannered insurance salesman type he appeared to be. He was a highly trained military operative who knew exactly what he was doing when he stepped onto that plane.

Either way, Cooper's legacy is secure. He pulled off the only unsolved commercial aircraft hijacking in U.S. history, did it without hurting anyone, and created a mystery that has captivated people for more than half a century. Not bad for a guy who started the whole thing by politely asking a flight attendant to read his note.

Whether he was Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. or someone else entirely, D.B. Cooper remains the most successful unsuccessful criminal in American history. And honestly, in a world where most criminals are either incompetent or awful, there's something almost refreshing about a polite hijacker who said please and thank you while committing federal crimes.

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