D. B. Cooper is a news pseudonym for an unknown man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 jet controlled by Northwest Orient Airlines, on November 24, 1971, in US aviation. The plane was on its way from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. The hijacker demanded $200,000 in payment (equivalent to ₹15,972,901.80 (INR)), and after discharging the passengers in Seattle, requested to be airlifted to Reno, Nevada, before parachuting to an unknown destiny over southwestern Washington midway through the second flight.
A tiny proportion of the protection money was discovered along the Columbia River’s banks in 1980, igniting growing interest but ultimately deepening the puzzle; the great majority of the money remains unfound. The person described himself as Dan Cooper but became famous worldwide as D. B. Cooper due to news confusion. For 45 years after the hijacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) kept an official investigation going. Amidst constructing a large case file during that time, the FBI came to no final conclusions about Cooper’s personality or destiny.
The crime stays the only active mystery of commercial airline piracy in historical memory. Over the years, investigators, reporters, and aspiring enthusiasts have proposed a wide range of theories with wide variations of logic. Let’s see what is Dan Cooper Mystery.
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The Day The Hijack Took Place
A mid-person holding a black attaché case reached the Northwest Orient Airlines flight counter at Portland International Airport on Thanksgiving Eve, November 24, 1971. He paid cash for a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a thirty-minute flight north to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac). Cooper hopped the Boeing 727-100 (FAA registration N467US) with a briefcase and a brown paper bag in tow. He sat in rows 18-E and did order a bourbon and 7-Up.
Cooper was mentioned by witnesses as being middle-aged, in his mid-40s, and dressed in a black or brown tuxedo, a black rain jacket, a thin black tie, and a white shirt. Flight 305, which was roughly one-third full, took off from Portland on time at 2:50 p.m. PST. Cooper delivered a note to Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant in the jump seat straight behind him, soon after takeoff.
Schaffner tossed the note into her purse, guessing it contained the phone number of a lonely businessman. Cooper tilted in close and whispered, “Miss, you should take a look at that note. I’ve got a bomb.”
Release Of The Hostages
Captain Scott was informed at 5:24 PST that all of the chutes had reached the airport and that they would be touching down soon. At 5:46 p.m. PST, the plane touched down at Seattle Tacoma Airport. Scott went to ask Cooper’s consent to park the plane on a partly illuminated runway far from the main terminal, and Cooper approved. Cooper had demanded that only one airline member approach the plane with his things and that the only way in and out of the plane would be through the front door via portable air stairs. Mucklow (flight attendant) went to retrieve the ransom amount, as ordered by Cooper, and with the travelers still in their seats, preparing to leave the plane through the front door once the mobile stairway was connected. As a result, she was required to carry the big cash bag from the front of the plane to Cooper, who was sitting in the back. Cooper agreed to free up the passengers in exchange for the cash.
Again Air-borne
The Boeing 727 ended up taking off around 7:40 p.m., with only Cooper, Mucklow, Captain Scott, First Officer Rataczak, and Flight Engineer Harold E. Anderson on board. Two F-106 fighter planes from McChord AFB trailed the airliner, one above and one below, out of Cooper’s sight. A Lockheed T-33 trainer shifted from an unlinked Air National Guard mission, also followed the 727, with all three jets flying in S patterns to keep up with the slow-moving 727. Flight 305 touched down at Reno-Tahoe International Airport at 11:02 p.m., with the wing stairs still deployed. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, and Reno police officers were present, but they avoided approaching the aircraft in case the bomb was still overboard. Captain Scott clarified Cooper was no longer on display, and after a thirty-minute movement, an FBI bomb squad confirmed the cabin was okay.
After Investigations
Agents from the FBI managed to recover 66 unnamed underlying fingerprints back on board the plane. The agents also discovered Cooper’s black clip-on tie, tie clip, and two of the four parachutes, one of which was open and two shroud lines cut from the canopy. Eyewitnesses were interrogated by authorities in Portland, Seattle, and Reno. A set of composite sketches was created. Local police and FBI agents began questioning potential suspects right away.
One of the first was D. B. Cooper, an Oregon man with a minor police record who was approached by Portland police on the possibility that the hijacker had used his real identity or a similar pseudonym in a previous crime. He was easily ruled out as a strong suspicion, but a local reporter named James Long, hurry to fulfill a deadline, confused the rejected victim’s name with the hijacker’s false identity. According to many accounts, a wire service journalist (Clyde Jabin of UPI) republished the error, which was then picked up by many other news organizations. The most well-known screenname was “D. B. Cooper.”
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