Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice S. Gibson, Joints Day by my very
Speaker 1: favorite staff writer, Joshua M. Clark's going, it's going well.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Candice, You're so welcome. So, Candice,
Speaker 1: I know you're kind of into true crime, right, So
Speaker 1: have you heard much about dB Cooper. I've heard a
Speaker 1: whole lot, but I'm not going to steal your thunder fantasy.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. So I think dB Cooper is
Speaker 1: well perpetrated the greatest tist of all time. Um, let
Speaker 1: me tell you about Okay nine Thanksgiving Eve. I think
Speaker 1: it was November. This guy named dB Cooper. Well that's
Speaker 1: what it said on his ticket um boards his flight
Speaker 1: from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. It's a pretty short flight, um,
Speaker 1: but he has time to settle back, order a bourbon
Speaker 1: and soda chain smoke back when you could smoke on
Speaker 1: the plane. Um. And also he had time to pass
Speaker 1: a ransom note to one of the stewardesses. Um and
Speaker 1: it said that he was going to blow up the
Speaker 1: plane if they didn't give him two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and four parachutes. Well he took it pretty seriously. UM,
Speaker 1: hijackings weren't, you know, really a widespread thing at the time.
Speaker 1: So they land the plane in Seattle, Tacoma. Um, he
Speaker 1: lets the passengers go, keeps the crew on board, and
Speaker 1: then has them bring the money on board and the parachutes.
Speaker 1: And I think he let the crew go but kept
Speaker 1: the pilot on and told the pilot to go to Mexico.
Speaker 1: But the plane never made it to Mexico. It made
Speaker 1: it to Reno, and when it did, D B. Cooper
Speaker 1: wasn't on board. At about ten thousand feet over Washington.
Speaker 1: He had jumped out on this cold, rainy, cloudy night
Speaker 1: over the Cascade Mountains in that state, never to be
Speaker 1: heard from again. The FBI thinks he's dead. Is that
Speaker 1: fact or fiction? From what you know, Well, it's really
Speaker 1: tough to day whether it's a fact or fiction that
Speaker 1: DBI Cooper is still alive. And you know, the FBI
Speaker 1: has actually profiled about eight hundred people whom they believe
Speaker 1: could possibly be DBI Cooper. UM. One man, Dwayne Weber,
Speaker 1: actually confessed on his deathbed to his wife that he
Speaker 1: was dB Cooper, but DNA evidence later ruled him out,
Speaker 1: so we're not quite sure why he made that confession.
Speaker 1: He was a little bit blacky. Maybe he liked the
Speaker 1: tale just like us. Then Richard McCoy, who was a
Speaker 1: Vietnam veteran and a Sunday school teacher, he pulled a
Speaker 1: pretty similar sort of highest hijacking a plane, making all
Speaker 1: of some cash, but he was ruled out too. And
Speaker 1: there have been all sorts of suspects in this case,
Speaker 1: and as far as any hard evidence, it's been pretty
Speaker 1: few and far between. Back in ninety a boy playing
Speaker 1: by the Columbia River found a couple of wads of
Speaker 1: twenty dollar bills, which is the denomination DBI. Cooper demanded
Speaker 1: his two thousand dollar ransom in and on these bills
Speaker 1: the serial number actually matched the numbers of the bills
Speaker 1: have been given to Deep It was money, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't around nobody nothing. And then in two thousand and eight, uh,
Speaker 1: some other boys found part of a parachute and they
Speaker 1: thought maybe it's DBS. But these parachutes were made of
Speaker 1: silk and not made of nylon, which his wise. So
Speaker 1: the case is still ad opens, so we don't know
Speaker 1: if it's factor fiction, we don't, and we've fairly scratched
Speaker 1: the surface. So to learn more, Bread is dB Cooper
Speaker 1: still alive On how stuff works dot com. We're more
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