The Legend of D.B. Cooper

At approximately 2:45 PM, on November 24, 1971, a man identifying himself as Dan Cooper paid $20 in cash to purchase a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington, from his current location in Portland, Oregon.

‘Cooper’ then boarded Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 — a Boeing 727 aircraft — took his seat on the aisle, in seat 18C, and exchanged numerous pleasantries with the flight crew and other passengers as he waited for the flight to lift off at approximately 3:30 PM.

While waiting, ‘Cooper’ smoked numerous cigarettes (you could smoke on commercial flights in those days), consumed a bourbon and soda, and, by all accounts, was extremely calm, very pleasant, and seemed to be fully relaxed.

Shortly after 4:00 PM, about halfway through the flight, exhibiting his now usual nonchalance, the man calling himself ‘Cooper’ caught the attention of Tina Mucklow, one of the flight attendants working the flight, and slipped her a small scrap of paper.

Tina didn’t look at it right away, assuming it was some sort of ‘love letter’ or the like. When she did finally look at the hand-scrawled note, she was shocked to see that it actually claimed that the ‘nice man’ in 18C had a bomb in his briefcase. The note also asked her to sit with him and demanded $200,000 (about 1.2 million in today’s money) all in $20 bills, along with 4 parachutes, or he would blow up the plane.

Mucklow did as the man asked and eventually made her way to the cockpit to hand the captain the note. He, in turn, radioed the demands to the air traffic control tower, informing them that there was a bomb on board and that the plane was being hijacked.

When the plane landed in Seattle, ‘Cooper’ exchanged the 36 passengers on the aircraft for the duffel containing the cash and the 4 parachutes he had requested — being sure to maintain enough of the flight crew to prevent the authorities, or the military, from trying to take out the plane, mid-flight.

While waiting, the plane was refueled and by 7:30 PM, the flight was once again airborne, this time headed for Mexico City, Mexico — exactly what happened next can only be speculated.

Shortly after 8:00 PM, the cockpit flight crew took note that the aft hatch of the plane was opening, and the stairs were being deployed. The crew reports that shortly after, they felt a shudder, which they assumed was the hijacker making his escape into the damp and frosty northern Pacific night — but did he?

And if he did, did he survive the jump?

After the plane landed in Reno, Nevada, and was predictably swarmed and boarded by a phalanx of local and federal law enforcement authorities, the investigative teams found several cigarette butts that the man calling himself 'Cooper' had left behind - those butts have long since vanished from FBI evidence storage - two of the four parachute riggings the man had requested, and this, the black clip-on tie he had been wearing when he boarded the plane.

Of the scant evidence recovered after his historic, mid-air departure, the tie was the only part of it that would ultimately offer any evidentiary value whatsoever.

On it, a rare combination of titanium alloys and other rare minerals that are most commonly found in airplane manufacturing plants, of which, Boeing, the maker of that specific aircraft, had its largest assembly plant and corporate headquarters in Seattle.

These details led some to believe that the mysterious man may have actually been a Boeing employee.

I don't believe the evidence pans that out as I explain in my podcast. Instead, I found that the same mineral combination exists in a much more ominous location - Federal law enforcement ballistic jackets.

If you're intrigued by those implications, you can listen to even more details of the infamous actions of the man calling himself Dan Cooper by tuning in to The Veritas 7 - True Crime Podcast.

There, I meticulously spell out all of the nuances of this case and go into even more of the previously untold details of the case that were revealed within the 273,512 pages of FBI documents I received in response to my Freedom of Information Act queries.

But the quest doesn't end here. I hope you'll join me as I evaluate all of this evidence and much much more while investigating one of the most enduring mysteries in American Criminal history — The Legend of D.B. Cooper!