A new Netflix documentary is investigating the mystery surrounding D.B. Cooper, but who was the skyjacker who got away with $200,000?
On July 13, D.B Cooper: Where Are You? drops on the streaming site and looks into one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century, the disappearance of D.B Cooper.
D.B Cooper: Where are you?
The series looks at the 50-year quest to find the mysterious man who hijacked a Northwest Airlines passenger jet in November 1971 and escaped with $200,000, never to be seen again.
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Five decades later with few clues and too many suspects, the documentary will look at all the evidence and attempt to get to the bottom of one of the greatest mysteries of the last century, figuring out the identity of skyjacker D.B. Cooper.
In the trailer, one voice can be heard saying: ‘This case forces you to question your own sanity. While another adds: ‘I know who he is in my heart.’
And people have wondered for decades who was D.B Cooper?
What did D.B Cooper do?
According to the FBI archives on the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a ‘nondescript man’ calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon, where he handed over cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington.
Now people did meet and see Cooper, he wasn’t wearing a mask, and got on the plane like every other passenger, so there are several witnesses and those who actually spoke to him. He was described as a ‘quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt’.
Like other passengers when he sat down on the internal flight he ordered a drink while waiting for the flight to take off – FBI reported he ordered a bourbon and soda, perhaps to work up the courage for what he’d do next.
Just after 3pm, Cooper hands a note to a flight attendant that said he had a bomb in his briefcase and she had to sit next to him – Cooper even opened the case and showed the attended a mass of wires and ‘red coloured sticks’ and told her to note down what he said and take it to the pilots.
She then took the note to the captain of the plane which stated Cooper wanted four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills.
When the flight landed Cooper allowed the 36 passengers to exit the plane in exchange for his demanded money and parachutes then ordered the plane to take off to Mexico City.
However, just a few hours later Cooper jumped out the back of the plane, with a parachute and the money, somewhere between Seattle and Reno. The pilots then landed the place safely and the FBI got to work trying to figure out who Cooper was and what happened to him.
Who was D.B Cooper?
For years the FBI has sought to find out the identity of the Cooper and so far recovered several pieces of evidence including money he was given, an unused parachute, the J.C Penney tie he was wearing and a canvas bag he was given that contained a parachute.
The FBI even managed to recover DNA from the tie – but there has been no confirmed match for that, but they do have a theory about who Cooper may have been.
In the five years following the hijacking, the FBI considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration and even had one favourite suspect: Richard Floyd McCoy.
McCoy was even tracked down and arrested for a similar hijacking – where he’d escaped by parachute less than five months after Cooper’s flight – but he was ruled out because he didn’t match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided by two flight attendants and for other reasons.
Perhaps his true identity will remain unknown but D.B Cooper was and will always be one of the mysteries of the 20th century.