D.B. Cooper: The mysterious hijacker who vanished without a trace and the legend that endures

In 1971, a man using the alias D.B. Cooper boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper hijacked the plane by informing the flight crew that he had a bomb. He demanded a ransom of $200,000, equivalent to about $1.6 million today, along with four parachutes, which were delivered to him upon arrival in Seattle. The passengers were allowed to disembark, but the crew was instructed to remain on board to assist with Cooper’s escape.

Cooper then directed the crew to fly toward Mexico City, but somewhere over southern Washington, he opened one of the plane’s rear doors and parachuted out into the night. The incident remains one of the most famous in aviation history—not only because no one was injured, but also because the hijacker vanished without a trace.

The few traces Cooper left behind

D.B. Cooper was an alias used by the perpetrator to avoid detection. Perhaps helpfully to Mr. Cooper was the fact that his alias was printed as D.B. instead of Dan, which was the name he intended to use.

Some investigators assigned to the case began to believe that he might have died after his jump, which, particularly at night, would have required some training to time the opening of the shoot. This led them to consider former military personnel, such as paratroopers, who would possess the necessary knowledge to execute the landing successfully.

However, Cooper was bolstered when new evidence was found by a boy exploring the woods in 1980. The FBI says that “a rotting package full of twenty-dollar bills ($5,800 in all) that matched the ransom money serial numbers" was discovered. After searching the area for other pieces of evidence, none were recovered, which led the case to remain open for decades.

New evidence points to an early suspect

In 2024, the case was unofficially reopened, according to Newsweek. The children of Richard Floyd McCoy, a long-time suspect, reported finding a parachute and a logbook while cleaning out a shed on their family’s property in North Carolina. These items were handed over to the FBI, though no official updates have been released.

McCoy had been a suspect early in the investigation and was arrested for attempting to pull off a similar parachute hijacking five months after the incident in Seattle. He was later dropped as a suspect in Cooper’s case after failing to match the physical description provided by the flight crew. Still, the new evidence has reignited interest in one of America’s most enduring mysteries.

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