The Strange Disappearance of D.B. Cooper

**The Strange Disappearance of D.B. Cooper** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on March 10, 2017. It was the twelfth episode of the first season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime, and the nineteenth episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

The F.B.I.'s greatest unsolved case! Presented by Trial & Error. Tuesdays 9/8c only on NBC.

## Notable Events

This is the first episode where Ryan and Shane drink alcohol during filming.

## Background

On Wednesday, November 24, 1971, a man under the name of Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket from Northwest Orient Airlines for Flight 305, that flew from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington.

Cooper was described to be in his mid-forties, wearing a business suit, overcoat, white shirt, brown shoes, and black tie. He carried a briefcase and a paper bag. Before the plane took off, Cooper ordered a bourbon and soda.

Around 3:00 p.m., after the plane had taken off, Cooper handed the stewardess a note. However, when she put it in her pocket, Cooper threatened, "Miss, you better look at that note. I have a bomb." He asked her to sit next to him, and when she did so, he opened his briefcase to show what appeared to be an array of wires and dynamite. Cooper then asked her to write down what he was saying and take it to the captain.

The transcription read, "I want 200,000 dollars by five p.m. in cash. Put in [sic] a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff, or I'll do the job." Cooper also asked for the money to be only in twenty-dollar bills.

When the flight landed in Seattle, Cooper exchanged the thirty-six passengers on the plane for money and parachutes, and directed the pilot and some of the crew members to stay on the plane and fly to Mexico City, staying below 10,000 feet. William Scott, the pilot, told officials that he himself had chosen the route, not Cooper. As the flight progressed, Cooper put on a pair of dark, wraparound sunglasses, which would later be featured in his composite sketch.

Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, Cooper jumped out of the rear doors of the plane with two of the requested parachutes and the money. He was never seen again.

After jumping, the plane safely landed. Staff were questioned, and the plane was searched for evidence. The FBI found that since Cooper left his black clip-on tie on the plane, they were able to procure a DNA sample from it, and then launched the case known as NORJAK (Northwest Hijacking). More than 800 suspects were considered in the first five years, but were eventually narrowed down to twenty-four.

Flight attendants Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner spent an extended amount of time with Cooper, and were subsequently interviewed by the FBI. They both remembered that Cooper was 5' 10"- 6', 170-180 lbs, and had brown eyes. Other staff members noticed that his voice was low, spoke with no particular accent, and had an intelligent vocabulary.

The FBI made the serial numbers of the twenty-dollar bills public in an effort to find the money, but were unsuccessful until 1980, when a young boy found a rotting package filled with 5,800 dollars' worth of twenty-dollar bills. The package was found at Tina Bar in Vancouver, Washington, where he was making a campfire with his father. The twenty-dollar bills' serial numbers all matched the ones put out by the FBI. From this discovery, it was generally thought that when Cooper jumped out, the money fell into the Washougal River, making its way to Tina Bar.

In 1972, letters were sent to *The New York Times,* *The Washington Post,* *Los Angeles Times,* and *The Seattle Times,* either confessing to the crime, eulogizing a recently-deceased D. B. Cooper, or claiming to be his brother. However, most of these are thought to be fake. In November of the same year, Donald Murphy and William Lewis were taken into federal custody on charges of extortion and impersonating Cooper to write his tell-all story and sell it to tabloids.

Something to consider is that the initials "D. B." are not actually relevant to the case. The hijacker was referred to as Dan Cooper until, reportedly, a wire service made a mistake and referred to him as "D. B." instead of Dan.

Although Cooper was originally charged with air piracy, it was later changed to avoid the five-year statute of limitations, which would mean that five years after NORJAK, he could not be charged. A grand jury then indicted Cooper for violating the Hobbs Act, a federal statute designed to prevent extortion, which had no statute of limitations. This meant that no matter when Cooper was found, even if the FBI investigation had been closed, he could still be charged.

Richard McCoy, Duane Weber, and Kenneth Christiansen were all suspected, along with others, to be D. B. Cooper. McCoy was suspected for similarities in his heist to Cooper's, Weber for his deathbed confession and claims made by his wife, and Christiansen for his deathbed "confession" and connections to Northwest Orient Airlines.

Richard McCoy died on November 9, 1974 due to a shootout with FBI agents in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Kenneth Christiansen died in 1994, and Duane Weber died in 1995. The case was finally closed in 2016, but the FBI is still willing to listen to any possible leads.

## Theories

* Richard Floyd McCoy was D. B. Cooper. This theory was popularized by Russell Calame, former FBI agent, and Bernie Rhodes, former probation officer.
	+ Five months after NORJAK, in April 1972, McCoy was arrested for hijacking an airplane, in a similar fashion to Cooper's. Both men were calm throughout the heist, passed a note to the steward about the bomb on board both containing the phrase "no funny stuff," requested four parachutes, and parachuted off the rear of a Boeing 727.
	+ Both heists occurred while Brigham Young University was on break, where McCoy was a student.
	+ According to Calame and Rhodes, members of McCoy's family identified an object left on the plane by Cooper, although the object was never publicly identified. Although believed by some to be a Brigham Young University medallion, the claim has never been verified.
	+ However, the FBI eventually ruled out McCoy because he did not fit the description provided by the flight attendants. Additionally, according to FBI archives, McCoy was home with his family the day after the heist for Thanksgiving dinner.
* Duane Weber was D. B. Cooper. This theory was made public by his wife, Jo Weber.
	+ Jo Weber claimed that on Duane's deathbed, he pulled her close and said, "I have a secret to tell you... I'm Dan Cooper." After learning this, Jo apparently revisited clues in Weber's life.
	+ Jo also claimed that Weber would have nightmares and would sleep-talk about "leaving fingerprints on a plane." He had also apparently taken her to Tina Bar, where the money had eventually been found.
	+ Weber's handwriting was also apparently found in the margins of a book about D. B. Cooper, and Weber also had a knee ailment that he claimed he had received by jumping out of a plane. It was also reported by Jo that Weber had possessed an old Northwest Airlines ticket for no apparent reason.
	+ Ralph Himmelsbach, a former lead FBI agent, professed that "[Weber] does fit the physical description. He does fit the criminal background that I have always felt was associated with the case," but ultimately did not believe Weber was Cooper.
* Kenneth Christiansen was D. B. Cooper. This theory was purported by his brother, Lyle Christiansen, and supported by author Geoffrey Gray.
	+ Lyle Christiansen, brother of Kenneth, came up with the theory after watching an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries." Lyle was convinced Christiansen was Cooper and even cited a deathbed "confession" from him that stated "There is something you should know... but I cannot tell you."
	+ Christiansen was a flight purser, or a head flight attendant, for Northwest Orient Airlines. He also loved bourbon, and bought a house shortly after NORJAK occurred.
	+ When Gray showed a picture of Christiansen to a flight attendant that had interacted with Cooper, she agreed that it was the closest match out of all the suspects presented, "but [she couldn't] say yea."
	+ However, the FBI later debunked Christiansen on the basis he did not fit the description, and that Christiansen was a paratrooper―the FBI believed that Cooper was not a skilled jumper.
* D. B. Cooper did not survive the fall from the plane. This theory is widely believed, including by Larry Carr, FBI special agent.
	+ Larry Carr, taking over the case in 2007, had this to say about Cooper's flying skills: "We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper... we concluded after a few years this was simply not true."
	+ This was backed up by the finding that only one of Cooper's parachutes was a functioning chute. The other was a training chute that could not be opened, and the functional one was a military chute that could not be steered.
	+ The weather conditions were also inadvisable for jumping. Carr said that "No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat." Cooper also jumped over a wooded area with no visibility to the ground below, as there was a cloud cover at 500 feet.
	+ However, Cooper's body and parachute were never found.
* D. B. Cooper worked as an employee at Boeing. NORJAK was therefore an inside job. This theory is also widely believed, notably by the online organization CitizenSleuths.
	+ CitizenSleuths discovered cerium, strontium sulfide, and pure titanium particles on Cooper's tie through the use of an electron microscope. Tom Kaye, lead CitizenSleuth, noted that "These are what they call rare Earth elements. They are used in very narrow fields, for very specific things."
	+ Although these elements were rare during 1971, they were being utilized at Boeing in the creation of an advanced supersonic transport plane. If Cooper had worked at Boeing at the time, it would explain the elements being on his tie. Kaye added that "The tie went with him into these manufacturing environments, for sure, so he was not one of the people running these [manufacturing machines.] He was either an engineer or a manager in one of the plants."
	+ Kaye believes that the key to identifying Cooper is in the memory of a person in the Pacific Northwest, who was involved with the aerospace industry at the time. He asks that any person who fits this profile should contact him through citizensleuths.com.

## Quotes

* Shane: "He seems like a cool dude."
	+ Ryan: "I don't think he even ordered the bourbon and soda to calm his nerves, I think he just did it because he's a badass."
	+ Shane (over Ryan): "No, he was probably just like, 'Bourbon. Soda. Now. I'm D. B. Cooper, I'm a mystery man, give me a bourbon.'"
	+ Ryan: (wheeze)
* Shane: "I think it's funny that he passed her a note to be discreet about it, like, 'Hey... uh, keep this on the down low―' and then she was just like, 'Thanks!' and walked away, and he was like, 'Hey, ah... mi―you might want to read that, 'cause I've got a bomb! Oh―oh, God damn it, uh, yeah, I got a bomb, everybody.'"
* Shane: "[McCoy] was a *student?*"
	+ Ryan: "In this theory, yes."
	+ Shane: "I was thinking about it in, like, a―a cold, hard, criminal way, I wasn't thinking, like, 'SPRING BREAK!'"
	+ Ryan: (wheeze) "Spring―"
	+ Shane: "That sounds kinda fun!"
	+ Ryan (laughing): "Do you think that's what he yelled when he jumped out the plane? 'Spring break!' and then he just falls down to his death?"
* Ryan: "The whole time he's like 'Yeah, bourbon, soda, mm, bomb. Here's your note, I'm a cool guy, sunglasses.' Jumps out the plane―" (screams)
	+ Shane: (also screaming)
	+ Ryan: "Splat."
	+ Shane: "It's not a splat, I think―uh, I think a pine tree just *whoosh―*he's just like, 'No, no, no, no―huagh!'" (imitating Cooper dying, choking)
	+ Ryan: (imitating Cooper dying) "K-K-Kill me!"
	+ Shane (imitating Cooper dying): "A lil' squirrel runs up to him, like 'Get out of here... augh..."

## Trivia

* This episode, along with The Shocking Case of O.J. Simpson, was sponsored by NBC's *Trial & Error.*
* This episode was voted the fourth best *BuzzFeed: Unsolved* episode of all time. However, Mark Celestino, the camera operator who filmed the episode, has no memory of shooting it.