McCoy didn’t match Cooper’s description, however, and was in Las Vegas on the day of the 1971 hijacking. He was arrested two days later and killed two years later in an FBI shootout following a prison escape. Read more: Loki on Disney+ and the real-life mystery of DB Cooper
In an almost identical heist, Richard McCoy Jr, an army veteran who served in Vietnam, hijacked a United Airlines 727 on 7 April 1972 after it left Denver, Colorado, jumping out and escaping with $500,000 in cash. He was eventually allowed to hold on to some of the money, and sold 15 of his bills at auction in 2008 for about $37,000, 120 times their face value.Īs for Cooper’s true identity, the FBI processed more than 1,000 potential suspects. Two years later, Brian Ingram's inadvertent find while building a campfire made him a national celebrity.
Seven years later, in November 1978, a deer hunter found a printed instruction card for lowering the rear stairs of a Boeing 727 near Castle Rock, Washington, under what would have been Flight 305’s flight path.Ĭowlitz County Deputy sheriff Bob Nix points to an area on on a map where a hunter found a plastic placard that fell from a Boeing 727 jetliner. The only evidence he left on the plane was a black clip-on tie, a tie clip and eight cigarette butts. Cooper was never found, nor was any of the equipment he used to leap from the aircraft. Investigators would later calculate that Cooper had jumped into darkness in the middle of a heavy rainstorm somewhere over Washington state.Ī huge search operation got underway on foot and by helicopter. It is believed he jumped out of the plane. His simple reply of “No” was the last they heard of him. The pilots asked Cooper over the intercom if he needed assistance. (Getty)Īt about 8pm, a warning light came on in the cockpit to indicate the rear airstair had been activated. However, a reporter mistakenly reported that 'DB Cooper' was the alias used by the hijacker and the name stuck.īrian Ingram, eight, found three bundles of $20 bills from the DB Cooper hijacking on a river bank while trying to build a campfire during a family holiday in 1980. When police and the FBI tried to track him down in the days after the heist, they found an Oregon man named DB Cooper, but quickly ruled him out as a suspect. The man who carried out the hijacking had used the alias “Dan Cooper” when purchasing his $20 airline ticket for Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, from Portland International Airport in Oregon to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a 30-minute trip on a Boeing 727. The day Osama bin Laden accepted responsibility for 9/11 JFK's final hours before he was assassinated When mankind walked on the moon again in 'other' Apollo mission How Coventry bounced back after being bombed in World War II Blitz In the middle of the mystery is a mistake. Cooper was never identified, although the FBI - and conspiracy theorists - came up with a long list of candidates. Cooper’s remains were never found, nor the remainder of the cash, bar the chunk Brian Ingram pulled out of the sand nine years after the hijacking. That question has been left open for five decades. On 24 November 1971, 50 years ago today, a man who came to be known as DB Cooper did the unthinkable, executing an air heist by making his escape from a moving plane at 10,000ft, with $200,000 and a parachute for company. These disintegrated $20 bills taken by hijacker DB Cooper were found nine years after the heist by an eight-year-old boy.
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