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America’s Greatest Unsolved Mystery:
How D.B. Cooper Got Away with The Crime of the Century
By Winston Burks
Imagine your alarm clock rings. It’s Wednesday morning. You work as a flight attendant and are expecting a regular day on the job. You're scheduled to be aboard an afternoon flight from Portland to Seattle. What you don’t know is that you will be at the epicenter of one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history.
This was the exact situation Florence Schaffner and Tina Mucklow would find themselves in on November 24, 1971. Their plane would be hijacked that day by a man using the alias, Dan Cooper. He used a bomb threat to take a ransom of $200,000 in cash, then parachuted out of the plane, never to be seen again. Never caught. Never thrown in jail. Nor was his body ever found. For years this case has puzzled the brightest minds in the FBI and has sparked the interest of people around the world.
To examine this case, we will take on the role of a detective and see if we can solve this 53 year old mystery. The steps will include the following:
Describing the full sequence of events
Analyzing the available evidence
Laying out the leading suspects and theories
Coming to a conclusion
Sequence of Events
D. B. Cooper bought his ticket at the Northwest Orient Airlines counter for $20 in cash. He was described as a 6 foot tall male, mid-40s, wearing a business suit and horned-rim glasses. Once he boarded the plane, he ordered a bourbon and 7-Up and waited until 3:00 PM to make his move. He would call Schaffner over to him and passed her a note:
“Miss I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”
Cooper then opened his briefcase carrying a bunch of wires, red sticks, and a battery. He asked her to write down his list of demands, which included the following:
$200,000 in $20 bills
Four parachutes
A fuel truck waiting in Seattle
Schaffer alerted her fellow flight attendant, Tina Mucklow, who then told the pilots what was happening. The 30 minute flight turned into 2 hours as the pilots circled the air strip as the authorities raced to acquire all of Cooper’s demands.
Once they finally landed, Cooper exchanged the 36 passengers, who didn't fully understand what was going on, for the cash and parachutes.
Cooper asked Mucklow to help bring the cash aboard the plane. While the plane was being refueled, Schaffer and another flight attendant escaped, while Mucklow could not. Cooper then declared that he wanted to go to Mexico City. With the threat of the bomb still in play, the pilots had no choice but to lift off and head to Cooper’s desired destination.
Around 8:00 pm, somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Cooper grabbed his ransom and asked Mucklow to help him open the door. Once it opened, he told her to reunite with the rest of the crew. Cooper then strapped on his parachute and leaped out of the aircraft into the rainy, dark, wooded area. Never to be seen again.
The FBI searched the forest for days in dense fog. They looked everywhere but to avail. They also soon realized that the name Dan Cooper was fake. Due to a reporter getting the wrong name from a source in the police department, the name D.B. Cooper was etched into history (The New Yorker).
The Evidence
The FBI immediately opened an investigation called NORJACK, for Northwest Hijacking. Here are the items they found:
Cooper’s tie that he took off on the plane
A bag that contained one of the parachutes he did not use
A package of $5,800 in $20s, all matching the serial numbers from the ransom. This piece of evidence was found by a boy along the Columbia River in 1980.
Leading Suspects and Theories
According to the FBI’s website: “We interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we’d considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.”
Suspect #1: Richard Floyd McCoy
McCoy became a leading suspect because he hijacked a plane and escaped via parachute five months after the events of November 24, 1971. It may sound crazy to try and attempt such a feat again but it is not uncommon for criminals to repeat their crimes. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, recidivism, the term used to describe repeat offenses, occurs around 64-68% of the time.
Unfortunately for investigators, McCoy did not match the physical descriptions of Cooper and had to be crossed off the list. (FBI).
Suspect #2: Robert Rackstraw
Rackstraw was an Army veteran with extensive parachute training. He also had several encounters with law enforcement, such as aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud (Washington Post).
Ultimately, Rackstraw could not be convicted because he was much younger than the mid-40s depiction of Cooper.
Geoffrey Gray, the author of “Skyjack” and historian of the Cooper investigation, said Rackstraw was never a serious suspect and is not mentioned once in his book (Washington Post).
Suspect #3: Kenneth Christiansen
Christiansen came into the fold after his brother contacted the FBI stating that he believed his brother was D.B. Cooper. Christiansen was a former military paratrooper and was employed by Northwest Orient Airlines at one time.
In an article written by Geoffrey Gray, he recalls a meeting he had with Florence Schaffner, where he showed her photos of Christiansen. She found the images to have the closest resemblance to the infamous hijacker. However, the conversation ended with Schaffner stating “I can’t say ‘Yay, but I think you might be onto something here.” (New York Magazine).
Surprisingly, Christiansen was taken off the FBI’s list because they did not believe he matched the description. (FBI)
Suspect #4: Duane Weber
Weber’s wife, Jo, claimed Duane confessed on his deathbed that he was Dan Cooper. Jo states that he would talk in his sleep about "leaving fingerprints on a plane," complained about a knee injury that came from jumping out of a plane, and the local library found Weber's handwriting in the margins of a D.B. Cooper book. She also claims her husband took her to the spot where the money was found and had an old Northwest Orient Airline ticket.
FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who was assigned to the case 29 years ago, "He does fit the physical description. He does have the criminal background that I have always felt was associated with the case.” However, Himmelsbach ultimately believed Cooper did not survive the jump. (CBS)
Weber was later ruled out of consideration because his DNA did not match what was found on the tie. (FBI)
Theory: Cooper did not survive the jump
Leaping into the dark, rainy forest, wearing a suit, is not the ideal conditions to complete such a feat. He also used a parachute that could not be steered. All of these points suggest Cooper may not have been the seasoned pro he was theorized to be.
FBI Agent Larry Carr also agrees with this theory. “Clearly [he] didn’t have the experience to pull this off. He was some guy on the fringes who did this audacious thing… I’m firmly in the camp that Cooper died” on the night of the hijacking, Carr said (Oregon Live).
The counter argument to this theory is Cooper’s body was never found. Also only $5,800 of the $200,000 was recovered.
Coming to a Conclusion
However, after going through all the evidence, suspects, and theories it is clear to me that…
I still don’t know.
If I had to make a stance, I would say it is hard for me to believe he made it through the jump. He was ill equipped and the conditions seemed unsurvivable. But again, his body was never found.
But what do you think? Do you believe he survived the jump? Do you think it was someone from the list of suspects? Let me know what your conclusion is.
Sources:
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2007/december/dbcooper_123107
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d-b-cooper-found-at-last/
https://nymag.com/news/features/39593/
https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/db-cooper
https://www.britannica.com/biography/D-B-Cooper
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/db-cooper-hijacking
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/db-cooper-tina-mucklow-untold-story-1111944/
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