On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a quiet, well-dressed man bought a one-way ticket for a short flight from Portland to Seattle. He ordered a bourbon and soda, lit a cigarette, and handed a flight attendant a note.
The note said he had a bomb.
What followed was the only unsolved case of air piracy in American aviation history — a brazen, meticulously executed hijacking that has captivated investigators, amateur sleuths, and the public for over 50 years. The hijacker’s name was almost certainly not D.B. Cooper. But that’s what the world came to call him. And despite one of the longest-running FBI investigations in history, nobody knows who he really was.
The Hijacking
The Man on the Plane
Northwest Orient Flight 305 departed Portland International Airport at 2:50 PM on November 24, 1971. It was a short domestic hop to Seattle — 172 passengers and crew, a routine Wednesday flight.
Seat 18C was occupied by a man who had purchased his ticket under the name Dan Cooper. He was described by flight attendants as middle-aged, somewhere between 40 and 50, wearing a dark business suit, a black tie with a mother-of-pearl tie clip, and a white dress shirt. He was calm. He was polite. He ordered bourbon and soda and paid for it with exact change.
Shortly after takeoff, he passed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. She assumed it was a phone number — men slipped her notes sometimes — and tucked it into her pocket unread. He leaned toward her and said quietly: “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.”
The note described a device in his briefcase. He opened the case briefly to show her what appeared to be red cylinders, wires, and a battery. Whether it was a real bomb or not has never been confirmed.
His demands were specific:
- $200,000 in unmarked, negotiable $20 bills
- Four parachutes — two primary, two reserve
- A fuel truck standing by in Seattle
He was not aggressive. He continued drinking his bourbon. He let the other passengers go.
The Ransom Exchange
The plane circled Seattle for two hours while authorities scrambled to meet his demands. The FBI and Northwest Orient agreed — standard protocol at the time was to comply and attempt capture on the ground.
The $200,000 was assembled from bank reserves. Crucially, the FBI photographed every bill and recorded every serial number. The money was loaded into a single bag. Four parachutes were obtained from a local skydiving school.
When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper released all 36 passengers and one flight attendant in exchange for the money and parachutes. He kept the pilots, a flight engineer, and one remaining flight attendant on board.
His next demand: fly to Mexico City. Refuel in Reno. Fly low — below 10,000 feet — with the landing gear down and the flaps at 15 degrees. Maximum airspeed: 150 knots.
He knew what he was asking for. Those were the flight parameters of someone who understood aviation.
The Jump
At approximately 8:13 PM, somewhere over the Cascade Mountains in southwestern Washington, the crew felt a pressure change at the rear of the aircraft. A warning light indicated the aft airstair — a door at the back of the plane that could be opened in flight — had been activated.
When the plane landed in Reno, D.B. Cooper was gone.
He had jumped into the night, in near-freezing temperatures, in the dark, over dense forest, wearing a business suit and loafers, carrying $200,000 in a bag, with a parachute he had never been seen to inspect.
No body was ever found. No parachute was ever recovered. No confirmed trace of Cooper himself was ever located.
The Investigation
The FBI launched what became one of the longest investigations in the bureau’s history, codenamed NORJAK (Northwest Hijacking). At its peak, hundreds of agents worked the case. Over its 45-year official run, investigators pursued more than 1,000 suspects.
The Composite Sketch
Based on descriptions from flight attendants and crew, the FBI produced a composite sketch of Cooper: a lean, olive-complexioned man with dark hair, dark eyes, and a calm, unremarkable face. The sketch was circulated nationally. Thousands of tips poured in.
None led to a confirmed identification.
The Money
The FBI’s best hope was the ransom money. Every serial number was recorded. If Cooper spent it, the bills would surface.
For nine years, nothing appeared.
Then, in February 1980, an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram was digging in the sand on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington — about 40 miles from the jump zone. He found a small bundle of deteriorating $20 bills. When the serial numbers were checked, they matched Cooper’s ransom money exactly.
$5,800 of the original $200,000 had been recovered. The rest has never been found.
The discovery raised more questions than it answered. The bills were in a location inconsistent with the most likely jump zone. They were partially decomposed but bundled together as if they had been buried or washed there. No explanation has ever been confirmed.
The Parachute Problem
Cooper had been given four parachutes — two functional sport chutes and two military reserve chutes. Investigators later realized that one of the reserve parachutes given to Cooper was a non-functional training dummy — a chute used only for demonstration, not for actual jumping.
If Cooper had used that chute, he would have died on impact.
Whether he was aware of this, whether he used it, or whether he died in the jump regardless remains unknown.
The Main Suspects
Over the decades, dozens of men have been seriously investigated as potential D.B. Coopers. A handful stand out.
Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.
Just four months after Cooper’s jump, a man named Richard Floyd McCoy pulled off a nearly identical hijacking — same type of aircraft, same ransom demand, same method of escape. He was caught, convicted, and sentenced to 45 years in prison before escaping and being killed in a confrontation with FBI agents in 1974.
McCoy matched Cooper’s description closely. FBI agent Russell Calame spent years arguing McCoy and Cooper were the same man. The FBI officially disagrees — agents who interviewed McCoy’s family say witness testimony places him elsewhere on Thanksgiving 1971.
L.D. Cooper
In 2011, a woman named Marla Cooper came forward claiming her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, was D.B. Cooper. She said he had arrived at a family Thanksgiving gathering the day after the hijacking, injured and rambling about having done “something terrible.” The FBI tested DNA from items belonging to L.D. Cooper against genetic material found on Cooper’s tie left on the plane. Results were inconclusive.
Robert Rackstraw
A career criminal and former Army paratrooper, Robert Rackstraw was investigated by the FBI multiple times and named publicly as a suspect by a private investigative team in 2016. They claimed to have found coded messages in Cooper’s ransom note pointing to Rackstraw. The FBI examined the claims and did not pursue charges. Rackstraw died in 2019 proclaiming his innocence.
What the Evidence Tells Us
Despite 50 years of investigation, a few things can be said with reasonable confidence:
He knew aircraft. His flight parameters — altitude, speed, flap settings — were specific and correct. He either worked in aviation or had studied it carefully.
He had some parachute knowledge. He requested both primary and reserve chutes, suggesting familiarity with skydiving equipment. However, he chose a non-steerable military chute over a sport chute — which experts say was a poor choice for a controlled landing.
He was calm under pressure. Multiple crew members described him as relaxed, polite, and in control throughout the ordeal. This was not a panicked or impulsive act.
He may not have survived. The jump conditions were brutal — near-freezing temperatures, darkness, heavy forest below. Many investigators believe Cooper died in the jump or shortly after. The degraded state of the recovered bills suggests the money sat in water or wet ground for years, consistent with a body and cash being lost in the wilderness.
The FBI Closes the Case
In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended active investigation of the D.B. Cooper case, citing the need to redirect resources toward other priorities. The case remains technically unsolved and open, but no agents are actively assigned to it.
The bureau’s final statement noted that despite one of the most exhaustive investigations in its history, no confirmed identification of the hijacker had ever been made.
The file runs to thousands of pages. The answer is not in them.
Why It Endures
D.B. Cooper became a folk hero almost immediately — the everyman who outsmarted the system, took the money, and vanished. Movies were made. Songs were written. Every few years a new suspect emerges, a new theory circulates, a new piece of “evidence” surfaces.
The reality is probably less romantic. A middle-aged man in a business suit, jumping blind into freezing darkness over dense Pacific Northwest forest, likely didn’t make it far. The $5,800 found on the riverbank suggests the money — and possibly its carrier — ended up in the water.
But without a body, without the money, without a name — the legend lives on. D.B. Cooper remains the only person in American history to commit air piracy and never be brought to justice.
Whoever he was.
Key Facts
- Date: November 24, 1971
- Flight: Northwest Orient Flight 305, Portland to Seattle
- Ransom: $200,000 in $20 bills (all serial numbers recorded)
- Money recovered: $5,800 found by a child in 1980
- Jump location: Somewhere over southwest Washington state
- FBI investigation: NORJAK — ran officially from 1971 to 2016
- Status: Officially unsolved, no active investigation
Who do you think D.B. Cooper really was? The debate is still very much alive. Watch our full breakdown on the GrimChronicleShow YouTube channel.