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 to bling a chalk reboarding and I'm fair douty.
Speaker 1: And it has been a great couple of months for
Speaker 1: history news, hasn't it. Yeah, there's been this new theory
Speaker 1: about Butch Cassidy's demise. Blackbeard's ship was positively identified, which
Speaker 1: was really cool, and there was a new lead in
Speaker 1: the subject we're going to talk about today, the D B.
Speaker 1: Cooper mystery. And if you've never heard of DV. Cooper,
Speaker 1: we're referring to the nineteen seventy one hijacking of the
Speaker 1: Northwest Orient Airlines flight, which is to this day, as
Speaker 1: of this podcast, still unsolved. The man who did it
Speaker 1: was never caught or positively identified, and we're not even
Speaker 1: sure if he lived past the day that the crime
Speaker 1: was committed. A mystery indeed, But over the years this
Speaker 1: has become one of America's favorite mysteries. People love to
Speaker 1: just obsess over the clue, in the suspects, and there
Speaker 1: are even informal groups of amateur investigators who have essentially
Speaker 1: devoted their lives to trying to solve this case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a recent CNN story about that. But if you're
Speaker 1: a long time listener of this podcast, you're probably thinking
Speaker 1: when you saw the title dB Cooper, hey, that looks
Speaker 1: pretty familiar. And it's true. Candice and Josh touched on
Speaker 1: this topic back in the Factor Fiction days. The format
Speaker 1: of the show then wasn't much shorter, so it only
Speaker 1: got three minutes and forty nine seconds, And we've gotten
Speaker 1: requests over the years to address some of these topics
Speaker 1: in our longer format, and dB Cooper was just one
Speaker 1: that we thought definitely deserved more attention. People want more
Speaker 1: from dB Cooper, they want answers, So here we want
Speaker 1: to take a closer look at the case and some
Speaker 1: of the theories surrounding it and the leads that have
Speaker 1: come up over the years, including a very recent lead.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen dB Cooper's name in the news in
Speaker 1: the past weeks even, but we're going to start by
Speaker 1: talking about what actually happened the day of the hijacking,
Speaker 1: sort of go blow by blow with it. So just
Speaker 1: to set it all up, on November nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: which was the day before Thanksgiving, a man who gave
Speaker 1: the name Dan Cooper, showed up at the airport in Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon and paid cash for a one way ticket on
Speaker 1: the Northwest Orient Airlines flight three oh five to Seattle.
Speaker 1: So those are that's how it started, and nothing about
Speaker 1: Cooper's appearance that day really raised any red flags for everyone.
Speaker 1: He just looked like this, a regular guy. He was
Speaker 1: wearing a dark business suit and a narrow dark tie
Speaker 1: with a pearl tie tack. He also had a homburg
Speaker 1: hat on and carried a dark raincoat and a briefcase.
Speaker 1: According to witnesses, he was about six ft tall and
Speaker 1: one seventy five pounds, and he was probably in his
Speaker 1: mid forties. He had short brown hair, a receding hairline,
Speaker 1: brown eyes, and he was clean shaven, very average sounding. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and he was assigned to aisle seat eighteen C on
Speaker 1: the The plane itself was a Boeing seven twenty seven,
Speaker 1: so not like a super tiny prop plane or something
Speaker 1: like that. Even though it was a very short, around
Speaker 1: thirty minute flight to Seattle. The plane could actually seat
Speaker 1: around ninety four passengers, but there were only thirty six
Speaker 1: on board, which comes into play later. Does so well.
Speaker 1: Cooper was waiting for the plane, he lit up a cigarette,
Speaker 1: ordered a bourbon and soda, and just hung out in
Speaker 1: the afternoon waiting for the flight to take off. Then
Speaker 1: shortly after the plane was airborne, he handed the flight attendant,
Speaker 1: Florence Schaffner, a note. Yeah, and Schaefer was twenty three
Speaker 1: and pretty, and according to an article by Jeffrey Gray
Speaker 1: and New York Magazine, she was used to passengers hitting
Speaker 1: on her, and so that's basically what she thought was
Speaker 1: happening when she got the note, she said, she tried
Speaker 1: to kind of shrug it off, like, oh yeah, just
Speaker 1: another note from a guy. I'm gonna put it away.
Speaker 1: But Cooper said to her, miss you better take a
Speaker 1: look at that note. The note was written in felt
Speaker 1: pen in all caps, and it said quote, I have
Speaker 1: a bomb in my briefcase. I want you to sit
Speaker 1: beside me. So she did as she was told, and
Speaker 1: Cooper gave her a glimpse inside his briefcase. And when
Speaker 1: he opened it up, she saw this mass of wires,
Speaker 1: a battery, six red sticks, so it looked like it
Speaker 1: could be It looked like it could be a bomb.
Speaker 1: And he made her write down some instructions what he wanted,
Speaker 1: which included two d thousand dollars and used twenties two
Speaker 1: parachutes and two backup shoots, so two front and two
Speaker 1: back shoots, and he wanted a fuel truck ready to
Speaker 1: refuel when the plane landed. He told her no funny stuff,
Speaker 1: or I'll do the job. So the crew in the
Speaker 1: airline did what he wanted. They had to circle the
Speaker 1: airport for a little bit while the people on the
Speaker 1: ground put the demands together. And after the plan landed
Speaker 1: and parked on this remote part of the airfield, Cooper
Speaker 1: let all of thirty six passengers plus Schaffner get off
Speaker 1: the plane, and that left three flight officers and another
Speaker 1: flight attendant on the plane with him, and he requested
Speaker 1: that meals be brought to them and asked for his
Speaker 1: note back. It seemed like he had all of this
Speaker 1: really carefully prepared. Then they took off from the Seattle
Speaker 1: Tacoma Airport at about seven forty six PM, which was
Speaker 1: two hours approximately after they landed, and at first Cooper
Speaker 1: told the pilot that he wanted to go to Mexico,
Speaker 1: but he had really specific instructions for him to He
Speaker 1: told the pilot to keep the plane below ten thousand
Speaker 1: feet and he claimed that he had a risk altimeter
Speaker 1: to actually check up on that too, and ordered him
Speaker 1: to fly no faster than one fifty miles per hour
Speaker 1: with the flap set at fifteen degrees. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: the pilot told him at that point that they couldn't
Speaker 1: make it to Mexico City under those conditions without refueling
Speaker 1: and Reno, so Cooper agreed to that. After they were airborne, though,
Speaker 1: Cooper ordered the flight attendant to go into the cockpit,
Speaker 1: so he was alone in the cabin. Then around eight pm,
Speaker 1: a light on the instrument panel indicated that the door
Speaker 1: to the f stairs had been opened, and about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes later, the crew noticed a slight change in the
Speaker 1: plane's altitude. The nose dipped first and then the tail,
Speaker 1: which is apparently what happens when aft stairs are lowered.
Speaker 1: So when the plane landed in Reno, Cooper was gone.
Speaker 1: So now let's look at the time frame a little judging.
Speaker 1: By the time they noticed that the aft stairs had
Speaker 1: been opened and lowered, they estimated that he had come
Speaker 1: down near the Lewis River, which is north of Portland,
Speaker 1: and authorities combed that area really thoroughly, bit by bit
Speaker 1: over the next few weeks looking for anything, you know,
Speaker 1: a scrap of parachute money, just something that could be
Speaker 1: connected to him, but absolutely nothing came up, and the FBI,
Speaker 1: of course immediately opened an investigation on this whole thing
Speaker 1: and called it nor Jack for the Northwest Hijacking, a
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic sounding name. But by the five year anniversary
Speaker 1: of the crime, they had considered more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: suspects and eliminated all but two dozen, So it seems
Speaker 1: like maybe they were getting somewhere. And the thing is, though,
Speaker 1: suspects and leads continue to come up even to day,
Speaker 1: so surely that number has only grown since them. So
Speaker 1: what types of suspects are they looking for? Though, let's
Speaker 1: break that down a little bit. Well, there's the physical
Speaker 1: description we mentioned earlier, and witnesses seemed to agree on
Speaker 1: that there were at least two flight attendants who gave
Speaker 1: pretty much the same exact description, and a composite drawing
Speaker 1: was made from that, and that's been published everywhere by now,
Speaker 1: so geting hairline man wearing glasses in one picture, no
Speaker 1: glasses in the other, and the name also a sort
Speaker 1: of an interesting point here. It's very likely that Dan Cooper,
Speaker 1: of course, wasn't the hijacker's real name, but the FBI
Speaker 1: has investigated some people with the last name Cooper over
Speaker 1: the years, and that's how the dB thing came into
Speaker 1: the picture. They questioned a man with those initials early on,
Speaker 1: but it turned out that he had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. The press ran with it, though, and it
Speaker 1: kind of caught on. And I guess dB Cooper just
Speaker 1: sounds way sexier and cooler than Dan Cooper. It's more distinctive,
Speaker 1: for sure. So investigators have also tried to gather clues
Speaker 1: from the hijackers, behave to try to figure out what
Speaker 1: his occupation might have been, what his background might have been.
Speaker 1: And at first, because of his detailed instructions to the
Speaker 1: crew about how to fly the plan, you know that
Speaker 1: the degrees of the flaps and the altitude and all
Speaker 1: of that in his very specific parachute request, and and
Speaker 1: just the fact that he knew how to open the
Speaker 1: aft door, many assumed that Cooper had some sort of
Speaker 1: familiarity with aviation, maybe he had been in the Air Force,
Speaker 1: or maybe he was an experienced skydiver, but that that
Speaker 1: kind of idea about him changed pretty dramatically over the years.
Speaker 1: It has now they really don't think that he was
Speaker 1: such an experienced skydiver. After all, according to the FBI's
Speaker 1: website quote, no experienced parachutist would have jumped in the
Speaker 1: pitch black night, in the rain with a two d
Speaker 1: mile an hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and
Speaker 1: a trench coat. It was simply too risky. Also, that
Speaker 1: reserve parachute that Cooper chose to take along with him,
Speaker 1: I think, if you'll remember, we mentioned that he took
Speaker 1: he had for four, so he took two of those,
Speaker 1: and one of them was actually a training shoot that
Speaker 1: had been sown and he took with them. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: a skilled skydiver or so authorities think, probably would have
Speaker 1: noticed that that was the case, although you never know
Speaker 1: in the heat of the moment. So those are just
Speaker 1: some of the details that the FBI has used to
Speaker 1: try to put together a profile on who this hijacker
Speaker 1: really was. And we've got to look at hard clues
Speaker 1: though not just this background information profile business. So the
Speaker 1: only physical evidence that was left behind on the plane
Speaker 1: or eight Raleigh cigarette butts, a black J. C. Penny
Speaker 1: tie and a tie tack, and there were also sixty
Speaker 1: six unaccounted fingerprints on flight three or five that they
Speaker 1: could compare to suspects prints and it. You know, they
Speaker 1: were prints that didn't match any of the known passengers,
Speaker 1: any of the known crew, and were therefore assumed to
Speaker 1: be those of dB Cooper. Later, though, they got something
Speaker 1: a little bit better. They were able to actually lift
Speaker 1: DNA from the tie in two thousand one, which helped
Speaker 1: them to rule out a couple of suspects. In February
Speaker 1: nine eight, a boy playing on the bank of the
Speaker 1: Columbia River also found five thousand, eight hundred dollars of
Speaker 1: the payoff money. The FBI had actually written down the
Speaker 1: serial numbers, but even though the authorities secured the area
Speaker 1: again and kind of scoured it, they haven't found anymore.
Speaker 1: During the search, they did find a human skull, though,
Speaker 1: but this turned out to be a woman's and possibly
Speaker 1: Native American, so it wasn't related to the case. There
Speaker 1: was one other false alarm, kind of like that skull.
Speaker 1: A parachute matching the shoots given to Cooper was found
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight by some children who were playing
Speaker 1: in southwestern Washington. They dug it up, but the shoot
Speaker 1: that they found was silk and Cooper's were nylon, so
Speaker 1: it was ruled out as possible evidence. There is an
Speaker 1: interesting clue, though, regarding Cooper's name that the FBI has
Speaker 1: shown an interest in in recent years, with some of
Speaker 1: these more dramatic clues or possible leads drying up. There's
Speaker 1: a French comic book series about a Royal cannyd An
Speaker 1: Air Force test pilot named Dan Cooper, and Dan Cooper
Speaker 1: has adventures, sometimes in outer space, but also sometimes during
Speaker 1: real events of that era. And in one episode, which
Speaker 1: was published near the date of the hijacking, the cover
Speaker 1: illustration shows our hero Dan Cooper parachuting. And I love
Speaker 1: this clue because to me, it's just like something out
Speaker 1: of the show Heroes, you know. The comic book is
Speaker 1: illustrated and it predicts the future and then something happens.
Speaker 1: Um But that was possibly something that influenced the hijacker
Speaker 1: to pick that shas that name. So though the FBI
Speaker 1: has looked into several leads for this case over the years,
Speaker 1: including people who have actually confessed to this crime, a
Speaker 1: few really stand out from the rest. One involved a
Speaker 1: man named Richard F. McCoy, and as we get into
Speaker 1: McCoy's story. We should say that there were lots of
Speaker 1: copycat attempts after dB Cooper hijacked Flight three oh five,
Speaker 1: and McCoy's was just one of them. He hijacked a
Speaker 1: United flight over Utah in April nineteen two and got
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand dollars, but he made a mistake. He
Speaker 1: told a buddy about his plan and that friend turned
Speaker 1: him in. Everyone was really shocked about it. To this guy.
Speaker 1: He was a Sunday school teacher, a student at b
Speaker 1: i U, and also an ex Green Beret helicopter pilot,
Speaker 1: which is why some people thought that there was a
Speaker 1: strong Cooper connection there. But McCoy was later ruled out
Speaker 1: because he didn't match the physical description of Cooper and
Speaker 1: he had an alibi for the crime that happened on
Speaker 1: that the day before Thanksgiving up that year. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: McCoy was convicted for the United hijacking and he was
Speaker 1: sent to jail for forty five years. He escaped in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four and he was killed in a shootout
Speaker 1: with the FBI. So just a side note on that
Speaker 1: lead there. But then there was also a guy named
Speaker 1: Dwayne Weber, and on his deathbed he whispered to his
Speaker 1: wife of seventeen years, I'm Dan Cooper. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a strange thing to say, yeah, And she didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was talking about because of the whole Dan
Speaker 1: Cooper DV. Cooper confusion. But once she figured out that
Speaker 1: Dan Cooper was in fact d B. Cooper, it sent
Speaker 1: her down this crazy road of remembering clues that connected
Speaker 1: her husband to the crime. And I would say remembering
Speaker 1: with air quotes, because it seemed almost like she was
Speaker 1: sort of putting pieces together after the faking the story fit,
Speaker 1: making the story fit. And he's also spent time in
Speaker 1: the Army and he matched the physical description, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't just her. The FBI got interested in this too,
Speaker 1: and the d n A that they got off that
Speaker 1: tie in two thousand one, though, actually ruled Weber out
Speaker 1: as a suspect, so we have a few more. Though.
Speaker 1: There was another suspect named Kenneth Christiansen that New York
Speaker 1: Magazine did an article on back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: but the FBI felt that he didn't match Cooper's physical
Speaker 1: description enough, and they also thought that the fact that
Speaker 1: Christiansen was a skilled paratrooper made it unlikely he would
Speaker 1: have jumped out under those conditions, and I was pretty
Speaker 1: fascinated that that was that had become one of the
Speaker 1: qualifications they were looking for, going from uh, Dob Cooper
Speaker 1: probably knew what he was doing to any skilled parachutists
Speaker 1: would never have done this or or might not have
Speaker 1: done it. And then of course that brings us to
Speaker 1: the most recent lead that just made the headlines. In August,
Speaker 1: A woman named Marla Cooper came forward and said that
Speaker 1: based on some childhood memories when she was eight years old,
Speaker 1: she believes that her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper was actually
Speaker 1: the hijacker. She remembers seeing her uncle show up that
Speaker 1: night that night before Thanksgiving of at a family member's
Speaker 1: home with serious injuries. Again, here though, DNA testing failed
Speaker 1: to connect the new suspect to dB Cooper's tie, and
Speaker 1: in that case, the tests are still inconclusive, though they're
Speaker 1: still looking for better prints from Lynn Doyle Cooper to test.
Speaker 1: I think he was estranged from his family, so they're
Speaker 1: having to dig that kind of stuff up. But for
Speaker 1: now this lead has gone cold, so so maybe more
Speaker 1: to come from that. Maybe not well, and we could
Speaker 1: really keep on going with these leads and these theories
Speaker 1: and investigations that are going on even now forty years
Speaker 1: later to try to get to the bottom of this
Speaker 1: mysterious case. So sorry, if we've skipped over your favorite
Speaker 1: dB Cooper theory, you can always write in and let
Speaker 1: us know at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: But people's attitude is really interesting. And you actually blogged
Speaker 1: about this, didn't you. Yeah? I did. I kind of
Speaker 1: couldn't get it out of my head when I was
Speaker 1: reading the news about Linde Oyle Cooper and Marla Cooper
Speaker 1: coming forward and the new lead, and then even after
Speaker 1: it went cold, I was just fascinated by how most people,
Speaker 1: it seems that they don't want this case to be solved.
Speaker 1: You've seen a lot of articles probably about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: people aren't really upset that the mystery still continues for
Speaker 1: some reason, but they also don't want Cooper to be
Speaker 1: caught in a sense, even if he's not alive. And
Speaker 1: some articles even suggest he's become a Robin Hood style
Speaker 1: folk hero and they have people rooting for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I never thought about it that way. I always
Speaker 1: kind of thought that the reason that people were so
Speaker 1: drawn to the story is just because it's a mystery.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to find out the answer, you
Speaker 1: want to catch the guy. But I never thought that
Speaker 1: people would actually sympathize with Cooper. I could, I guess
Speaker 1: I can see the argument. You know, he went up
Speaker 1: against the big corporation in a way and got away,
Speaker 1: and that might be easy to do. I mean, he
Speaker 1: didn't kill anyone, and most people who interacted with him
Speaker 1: on that day remember him as polite. He's been called
Speaker 1: the gentleman hijacker. He even insisted on paying for his
Speaker 1: bourbon that day. He paid the flight attendant twenty bucks
Speaker 1: and you know, told her to keep the change. And
Speaker 1: of course it's just a great story. And when I
Speaker 1: was telling Sarah, I was getting like a research high
Speaker 1: from from working on this because there's so much more.
Speaker 1: There's always more, like Sarah said, there's always more theories,
Speaker 1: there's always more to find out about this case. See
Speaker 1: why people get obsessed with it. But I mean that
Speaker 1: Robin hood angle aside. He's still a criminal and what
Speaker 1: he did was really scary and and probably did a
Speaker 1: lot to influence the way we traveled today, the way
Speaker 1: air travel and airport security is or I mean at
Speaker 1: least that started to change around that period. Yes, that's true,
Speaker 1: And it's also interesting to read this interview with Schaefner
Speaker 1: in New York Magazine and hear her talk about how
Speaker 1: decades later she was still afraid that Cooper might come
Speaker 1: after her because she was a witness to this crime.
Speaker 1: So even though he didn't kill anyone, he did do
Speaker 1: some damage certainly, And I mean what he did would
Speaker 1: have been really terrifying for the people involved. Something to
Speaker 1: consider for sure, and something to consider whenever we talk
Speaker 1: about kind of glamorized criminals like the bush Rangers and
Speaker 1: all of those fellows. Yeah, we do that quite a
Speaker 1: bit in covering history, I think, and you know it's
Speaker 1: not intentional, but people just really get into the stories
Speaker 1: because they're such fascinating characters of the events surrounding them
Speaker 1: are so interesting. But um, you know, we never lose
Speaker 1: sight of the fact that they remember what's really at state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the dB Cooper mystery continues. As Sarah said, please
Speaker 1: right in with your favorite DV Cooper theories if we
Speaker 1: missed them, or your favorite leads if we didn't cover them. Wait, sorry,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to cover everything here, but we
Speaker 1: would love to hear about them at History podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com or you can look us
Speaker 1: up on Facebook or we're on Twitter at Nston History.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about some of the dB Cooper theories through the ages,
Speaker 1: we do have an article called is dB Cooper Still Alive?
Speaker 1: And you can find it by looking on our homepage
Speaker 1: at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
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