Crime History: The Mysterious D. B. Cooper Skyjacks A Plane And Skydives Into Legendary Status

D.B. Cooper is not the actual name of “D. B. Cooper.” In fact, no one knows what he’s really called or even who he really was. The moniker stems from an errant media report that arose (and stuck) after this mysterious figure purchased a Portland-to-Seattle flight ticket using the alias “Dan Cooper” on November 24, 1971 — the night before Thanksgiving.

From there, the man who would forever after be known as D. B. Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Boeing 727. Midway through the half-hour flight, Cooper said he had a bomb on board and demanded $200,000 cash to not set it off.

The pilot landed, Cooper got his loot (which would be worth about $1.2 million in 2016), and he released the other passengers unharmed. Cooper then ordered the craft back up into the air.

Upon hitting the proper altitude, the hijacker grabbed his ransom money, threw open a door, and parachuted out of the 727 into the open sky over the thick and lush Pacific Northwest woodlands.

At that point, D. B. Cooper vanished in every sense, except for the impact he’s made on American crime history and popular culture.

He was never found, alive or dead. Only $6,000 of the heisted cash ever turned up, and then only after a kid who was camping discovered three badly beaten up bundles along the Columbia River in 1980 — nearly a decade later.

The FBI worked the case tirelessly, especially as a rash of copycat hijackings cropped up (none of those would-be Coopers made it). The agency made various theories public through the years, and even compiled an array of suspects, many of whom had military or government backgrounds.

One noteworthy figure that came under investigation was John List, a war veteran who, 15 days before the Cooper hijacking, murdered his mother, his wife, and their three teenage children. List then emptied $200,000 from his mother’s bank account and disappeared for 18 years, only getting busted in 1989. In time, though, the FBI ruled List out as a suspect.

Other high-profile suspects include William Gossettt, an Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps veteran who was utterly obsessed with the Cooper case and went on to host a radio show about the paranormal; Richard McCoy, Jr., who almost pulled off the most notorious of the copycat hijackings; and Barbara Dayton, a transgender recreational pilot who wanted to go pro and blamed the FAA’s anti-trans regulations for preventing her from doing so.

As with every other D. B. Cooper lead, the feds eventually cleared or dismissed all these suspects, along with many others.

Ultimately, on July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it was suspending investigation into D. B. Cooper. Forty-five years had passed, and 60 volumes of files sat on agency shelves. The case, officially, is cold.

For the public, however, the mystery, outlaw spirit, and daredevil pizzazz of D. B. Cooper captured the collective imagination and never let go.

The skydiving skyjacker became a folk hero, even as law enforcement hunted for years to track down a serious felon, who did, in fact, terrorize innocent holiday travelers and put a multitude of lives at grave risk.

Still, for many, it’s just hard not to be impressed with how the son-of-a-gun got away with it.

For example, the town of Ariel, Washington, one of the areas where Cooper was thought to have landed, commemorates the escape on the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year with a celebration called “D. B. Cooper Day.”

In addition to myriad TV specials, documentaries, and true-crime books dedicated to the case, numerous songs have paid tribute to Cooper, and he’s turned up as a character in a continuing array of novels, comic books, and TV programs.

Among the most high profile examples are the 1975 fiction best-seller Rainbow’s End by legendary crime writer James M. Cain, and the fact that Agent Dale Bartholomew, Kyle McLaughlin’s character on the definitively Pacific Northwest–set cult series Twin Peaks, is directly named after D. B. Cooper.

The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, a 1980 movie adaptation of the book Free Fall by poet J. D. Reed, stars Treat Williams in the title role and Robert Duvall as the FBI agent on his trail.

As a publicity stunt, Universal Pictures offered a $1 million reward for any information that would lead to the arrest of D. B. Cooper. To date, no one has ever claimed the money.

Main image: D. B. Cooper, FBI composite sketches