In November 1971, DB Cooper was an unassuming middle-aged man. Then he boarded a plane at the Portland International Airport for a thirty-minute flight to Seattle. It would turn out to be one of the most infamous skyjacking/robberies in US history. Has the notorious robber’s identity finally been discovered? Listen and find out!
Apple Podcasts
Stitcher
Pandora
Spotify
Google Podcasts
iHeartRadio
TuneInThe Flight
On November 24, 1971, a middle-aged man wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt, and carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at Portland International Airport.
He identified himself as “Dan Cooper”. He used cash to purchase a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a 30-minute trip north to Seattle. Cooper boarded the aircraft, a Boeing 727, and took a seat in the rear of the passenger cabin. He ordered a drink—bourbon and soda—while the flight was waiting to take off and besides that, he was quiet.
The flight took off on schedule at 2:50 pm and was approximately ⅓ full with passengers.
I Have a Bomb!
Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to Florence Schaffner. She was the flight attendant situated nearest to him in a jump seat attached to the aft stair door. Florence thought the note contained a lonely businessman’s phone number and she dropped it unopened into her purse. Cooper leaned toward her and whispered, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”
When Florence opened the note it was printed neatly in all caps that he had a bomb in his briefcase. Copper then told Florence to move beside him, which she did, and she also asked to see the bomb.
Demands
Copper opened the briefcase slightly. This was enough for Florence to see eight red cylinders attached with insulated wire to what seemed to be a cylindrical battery. He then made his demands, making her list everything out to communicate to the pilot. He asked for:
- $200,000 in “negotiable American currency”
- Four parachutes
- A fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refill the plane
Florence took the instructions to the pilot, William Scott, who communicated with the ground crew. The crew at the Seattle airport communicated with local and federal police to let them know they had a hostage and skyjacking situation on their hands.
The flight to Seattle is only 30 mins, which didn’t give much time for each team to organize and for the ransom to be collected. They also organized emergency personnel on-site.
The plane circled Seattle for almost 2 hours. The other passengers were told that they couldn’t land yet because of a minor mechanical issue. The president of the airline gave the approval to pay the ransom and instructed all employees to comply with Cooper’s demands.
FBI Gathers Ransom
In Seattle, the FBI was able to obtain the ransom with the help of local banks. It consisted of 10,000 $20 bills. Most of the bills were issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, giving them the letter L at the start of the serial number. They took microfilm of each bill so that they could later identify them.
If you find old $20 bills, there are search engines online that you can use to find out if they are part of this ransom.
The FBI was able to get 4 military-grade parachutes. Cooper rejected them and requested civilian parachutes with the manual ripcords.
The military-style includes static lines. A static line is a cord attached at one end to the aircraft and at the other end to the top of the jumper’s deployment bag. The parachutist’s fall from the aircraft causes the static line to become taut and this pulls the chute out of the container on the jumper’s back.
Aircraft Lands
At 5:24 pm they radioed that all demands had been met. At 5:39 p.m. the aircraft landed at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. It was more than an hour after sunset and Cooper instructed the pilot William Scott to taxi the jet to an isolated, brightly lit area. He also requested all window shades be drawn to protect against snipers.
Al Lee, the operations manager of the airline approached the aircraft, dressed in normal clothing. He went up the stairs and delivered the knapsack filled with cash and the parachutes to one of the stewardesses, Tina Mucklow. Once the delivery was completed, Cooper ordered all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane. At this point, only the pilot, co-pilot, Tina, flight engineer HE Anderson, and himself remained on the plane.
Next Steps
While the plane was being refueled, he revealed the next step in his plan, they would be heading to Mexico City. He instructed the pilots to fly at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft – approximately 100 knots (115 mph) – at a maximum of 10,000-foot altitude. He further specified that the landing gear remain deployed in the takeoff/landing position, the wing flaps should be lowered to 15 degrees, and the cabin remain unpressurized.
The copilot explained that under those conditions, they could not make it to Mexico City and that a 2nd refueling was necessary. Together they decided on Reno.
He wanted to take off with the door open and staircase down. The airline objected stating it wasn’t safe to have the staircase down for takeoff. Cooper insisted that it was safe, but said he wasn’t going to argue and that it would be lowered in flight. They took off at 7:40 pm.
The FAA had asked for a face to face meeting with Cooper, but that request was refused.
He Jumps
After takeoff, Cooper told Tina to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed. Tina noticed Cooper tying something around his waist as she headed towards the cockpit. At approximately 8:00 p.m., a warning light flashed in the cockpit, indicating that the stairs had been lowered. The crew’s offer of assistance via the aircraft’s intercom system was curtly refused. The crew soon noticed a change of air pressure, indicating that the aft door was open.
At approximately 8:13 p.m., the aircraft’s tail section sustained a sudden upward movement, significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight.
The plane landed in Reno at 10:15 pm. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, and Reno police surrounded the aircraft. They quickly completed an armed search of the plane and determined he was gone.
The Investigation
The FBI began their investigation, calling it NORJACK, for Northwest Hijacking. Cooper left behind fingerprints, a clip-on JCPenny tie, and a tie clip from which the FBI were able to obtain a DNA sample.
They interviewed eyewitnesses in Portland, Seattle, and Reno, and all those who personally interacted with Cooper. Tina, the flight attendant stated he wasn’t nervous, he seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time.” During the flight, he had ordered a second bourbon and soda, paid his drink tab, and attempted to give Mucklow the change as a tip. Cooper also offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle.
Tina also said that he appeared familiar with the local terrain; at one point he remarked, “Looks like Tacoma down there,” as the aircraft flew above it. He also correctly mentioned that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
DB Cooper?
There was a man named DB Cooper in Oregon that was considered but was quickly ruled out. A local reporter named James Long actually misunderstood or misprinted that the Hijacker had given the name DB Cooper, when in fact it was Dan Cooper.
Many other Media sources picked this up and even today this is known as the DB Cooper hijacking.
Where Did He Land?
Now they were to the point of trying the pinpoint exactly where he had landed. To begin a re-creation Scott piloted the aircraft used in the hijacking in the same flight configuration. FBI agents, pushing a 200-pound sled out of the open airstair, were able to reproduce the upward motion of the tail section described by the flight crew at 8:13 p.m, confirming the jump time.
One of the biggest factors in determining where he could have landed is at what point did he pull the ripcord, which is unknown. At that moment the aircraft was flying through a heavy rainstorm over the Lewis River in southwestern Washington. Initial calculations placed Cooper’s landing zone within an area near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed by a dam on the Lewis River.
FBI agents and sheriff’s deputies from those counties searched large areas of the mountainous wilderness on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. They found no trace of DB Cooper, nor any of the equipment presumed to have left the aircraft with him.
In March of 1972, teams of FBI agents aided by some 200 Army soldiers from Fort Lewis, Air Force personnel, National Guardsmen, and civilian volunteers, conducted another thorough ground search of Clark and Cowlitz counties. They searched for eighteen days in March, and then an additional eighteen days in April.
Electronic Explorations Company, a marine salvage firm, used a submarine to search the 200-foot depths of Lake Merwin. In one of the most extensive searches in history, nothing was found.
Suspect
By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, the FBI had considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.
My favorite suspect.
Walter R. Reca was a Michigan native, a military veteran, and an original member of the Michigan Parachute Team.
Reca gave Carl Laurin permission in a notarized letter to share his story after he died in 2014, aged 80. He also allowed Laurin to tape their phone conversations about the crime over a six-week period in late 2008. In the over three hours of recordings, Reca gave new details about the hijacking that the public had not heard before and wouldn’t be released by the FBI until 2015.
In his account Reca describes the hijacking and where he landed, near Cle Elum Washington which is about 100 miles Northeast from Lake Merwin where the original investigation led. However the pilot, William Scott also stated, prior to the Walter Reca reveal, that the flight pattern was farther East than what was done in the recreation.
Reca also described, after landing, what he did, which matches witness testimony retrieved years later from a dump truck driver in Cle Elum.
Jeff Osiadacz Testimony
According to written testimony, Jeff Osiadacz, a Cle Elum, Washington native, was driving his dump truck near Cle Elum the night of November 24, 1971. He saw a man walking down the side of the road in the inclement weather. Jeff assumed the man’s car had broken down and was walking to get assistance. He did not have room in his truck to pick him up and continued toward his destination, the Teanaway Junction Café just outside Cle Elum.
After ordering coffee, the man from the side of the road also entered the café looking like a “drowned rat”, according to Osiadacz. The man sat next to him and asked if he would be able to give his friend directions if he called him on the phone. Osiadacz agreed to this and spoke with the man’s friend, giving him directions to the café. Shortly after that, Osiadacz left for the Grange Hall to play in a band. The man offered to pay for his coffee, and the two amicably parted.
In 2018, 4 years after Reca’s death he was brought forth as a suspect by his friend Carl Laurin. On January 8, 2019, a book was published on Cooper, titled Getting the Truth: I Am DB Cooper.
Investigation Suspended
On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it was suspending any active investigation of the DB Cooper case, citing a need to focus its investigative resources and manpower on issues of higher and more urgent priority. Local field offices will continue to accept any legitimate physical evidence—related specifically to the parachutes or the ransom money—that may emerge in the future.
Resources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
- D.B. Cooper Hijacking
- A new ‘D.B. Cooper’ suspect? Yet another possible identity for the elusive hijacker.
- D.B. Cooper | Hijacking, Investigation, & Facts | Britannica
- The secret military past of famous hijacker D.B. Cooper