Posted by On November 24, 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle, threatening to set off a bomb. Having obtained $200,000 and four parachutes, he jumped from the rear door over the forests of Washington State and vanished. In 1980 about $6,000 of the ransom was found. In 2016 the FBI suspended the investigation: it is the only unsolved hijacking in history.
D.B. Cooper is the name given to an American aircraft hijacker. Cooper hijacked a plane in 1971 demanding a ransom of $200,000. After getting it he jumped with a parachute, and neither he nor the money has ever been found.
The D.B. Cooper hijacking
On November 24, 1971, the eve of Thanksgiving, a well-dressed man in a dark suit, a thin black tie and carrying a black briefcase bought a one-way ticket to Seattle at Portland airport, Oregon. He paid in cash, gave his name as Dan Cooper and boarded the Boeing 727-100 of Northwest Orient Flight 305.
The flight was short, just 30 minutes. According to witnesses the man was in his mid-40s, with dark hair and brown eyes. He sat in seat 18E, in the last row, lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda.
After takeoff Cooper passed a note to the flight attendant sitting near him, Florence Schaffner. Thinking it was his phone number, she put it in her purse without opening it. Then Cooper said to her:
Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.
Florence read the note, which said:
I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked.
The flight attendant sat next to Cooper and asked to see the bomb. He opened the briefcase and Florence saw eight red cylinders, like sticks of dynamite, with wires attached to a battery.
Then Cooper closed the briefcase and made his demands
- $200,000 in “negotiable American currency”
- four parachutes, two main and two reserve
- a fuel truck ready in Seattle to refuel the plane on arrival
Florence took the instructions to the pilots. Captain William Scott alerted the control tower and the police were notified. The passengers were told nothing: it was only announced that the landing in Seattle would be delayed by a minor technical problem, and the plane circled for two hours while everything was prepared.
The airline’s president, Donald Nyrop, authorized the payment. The money, 10,000 unmarked twenty-dollar bills whose serial numbers had been photographed, was delivered to the plane along with the parachutes. Cooper let all the passengers and two of the flight attendants get off, and explained his plan to the pilots.
He wanted to go to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. He gave precise instructions about route, speed and altitude and wanted to take off with the rear door open and the airstair lowered.
The pilots objected that it was too dangerous, and Cooper agreed to lower the stairs in flight. After refueling the plane took off and Cooper sent the last remaining flight attendant, Tina Mucklow, to the cockpit. About 20 minutes later the pilots saw the warning light indicating that the rear airstair had been opened.
When the plane landed in Reno, police surrounded it, but the hijacker was gone: he had jumped with a parachute and the ransom over the forests of Washington State.
The search
The point where Cooper would have jumped and where he would have landed were immediately calculated, and the search involved hundreds of people, but with no results. A composite sketch of the man was released. All he left on the plane was his black tie, with a clip.
Police also questioned a Portland man named D.B. Cooper, who had a minor criminal record, in the hope that the hijacker had used his real name. But it was a dead end.
It was because of this interview that the hijacker became famous as D.B. Cooper: a reporter mixed up the names and the mistake was picked up by every newspaper.
Nothing more was heard of Cooper until February 1980, when an 8-year-old boy, Brian Ingram, found about $5,800 in decaying twenty-dollar bills on a beach on the Columbia River, near Vancouver, Washington. The serial numbers matched those of the ransom. It has never been established how they got there, whether carried by the current or buried by someone.
The rest of the money has never been found.
Cooper’s hijacking, and those of his imitators the following year, changed airport security forever: metal detectors and mandatory baggage checks arrived. It is still the only unsolved hijacking in the history of commercial aviation.
The suspects
Over the years investigators have considered many suspects, but there has never been enough evidence to link them to Cooper. Partial DNA profiles have been taken from the tie, along with particles of titanium and other metals, suggesting a man who worked in the aerospace industry.
Among the best-known suspects is Richard McCoy, a Vietnam veteran and expert skydiver who in April 1972 carried out a very similar hijacking, was arrested and died in 1974. In 2024 his children publicly stated that their father was D.B. Cooper, after a YouTuber found a parachute on a property belonging to his family.
In July 2016, after 45 years, the FBI officially suspended its active investigation. But journalists, private investigators and enthusiasts keep searching for the truth about the mysterious D.B. Cooper.
D.B. Cooper was also mentioned in the popular TV series Prison Break (which I recommend to everyone!).
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