The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper

Hello and welcome to what may be my favorite case of all time! You might have not heard of D.B. Cooper before, and if not, strap in because this is a lot. A lot in a good way though, I promise.

Let's start with what we know for sure. We know that on Wednesday, November 24, 1971, a man by the name Dan Cooper bought a $20 dollar one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle. By the end of the day, when the plane was somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, Cooper jumped out of the rear door with two of the parachutes and about $200,000 in cash. He hasn't been seen since then.

Taking us back to the beginning, Cooper boarded the plane wearing a suit, black trench coat, and carrying a briefcase and brown paper bag. Once seated, he handed a flight attendant a note, which she first tucked into her pocket, not even glancing at it. He then told her to read the note immediately. In the note, he said to her that he had a bomb. (Shocker !)

Cooper was pretty needy, as he had the flight attendant write down some demands to give to the pilot. These demands included $200,000 in cash stored inside a book bag, two back parachutes, and two front parachutes. He also demanded that when the plane landed, a fuel truck needed to be waiting ready to refuel. 

Oddly, Cooper requested that the cash be exclusively in $20 bills. I can't imagine how heavy that book bag must have been. 

Anyways, when the plane landed at its destination, Cooper exchanged the passengers for the money and parachutes. He requested that they fly to New Mexico, but this is weird, since Cooper knew in his mind he would jump out before then. 

After he jumped out of the plane, he was never seen again. A sketch was released of him, but with no luck, as he is still missing over 40 years later. Many wonder where he went, and there are plenty of speculations, but we may never know for sure.

If you're thinking, "Well... can't the FBI just track the serial numbers on the bills??" then nice thinking, but they already tried that. 8 years after the infamous disappearance,  a young boy found a rotting package containing $5,800, with serial numbers matching the stolen money. The FBI scoured the surrounding beaches and found nothing else. 

Before we begin talking about why may have happened to him, we must acknowledge the very unlikely possibility that he had an accomplice. The pilot was the one that chose the route to Mexico City, not Cooper, so it seems pretty difficult to imagine his accomplice knowing where exactly Cooper was going to jump.

Now, let's get into some theories. 

The main suspect in this case is Richard McCoy. McCoy himself was apart of another heist that, when observed, looks reallyyyy similar to the one of D.B. Cooper. They both hijacked a plane and jumped out of it (the rear of a Boeing 727, in fact,) they both requested 4 parachutes, and they both passed notes about the bomb. 

It's pretty suspicious that they seem so similar, but the FBI eventually ruled him out because he didn't resemble the sketch of Cooper too well. (We'll never know for sure, either, as he later died in a gunfight with police while escaping prison.)

With McCoy no longer a suspect, Duane Weber was high on the list. According to his wife, Weber confessed on his deathbed that he was, in fact, D.B. Cooper. With him now dead, the police had to find facts to back this claim up. 

Spoiler, it isn't really that much, at least in my opinion. His wife reported that her late husband used to sleep talk about leaving fingerprints on a plane. He also had a knee injury, and his handwriting was found in the margins of a book about D.B. Cooper (Probably not something like "hey, that's me!" or something similar, that would be pretty dumb). To top this all off, his wife also claimed that he took her to the beach where the boy found the bag of money.

It isn't much, and I frankly don't believe it. It's all just speculation at this point, and there's no way to tell if the wife is just lying about all of this. However, I will admit that if she was telling the truth, and he did make the confession, than that would no doubt be super compelling. 

What does sound more compelling to me, however, is the idea that Cooper didn't make the landing, and died after parachuting out. Many experts said that the man who jumped from the plane did not seem trained to do so. It was reportedly pitch black when he jumped, in the rain, into about 200 mph of wind in only a trench coat and loafers. A parachute used by Cooper when he jumped was also a military chute, meaning it was not steerable. If he did land safely and survived, missing trees and other obstacles, it sure was a miracle.

Maybe it's just because I don't have the same mind as that of a criminal, but that seems like a stupid decision to me. However, if an unskilled parachutist jumped out of a plane, they likely would have died and, if you don't recall, the body of D.B. Cooper has not been found. 

With all of these theories having their pro and cons, it's tough to come up with a clear idea of what exactly happened on that fateful day in 1971. Perhaps it was someone else, disguised under a fake name, or maybe Cooper was just too unskilled to do the job. I personally believe either McCoy conducted the heist, or Cooper di not survive the fall.

However, with no clear evidence or lead, this theory may alway be just that. A theory. 

What do you believe?