Today’s Suicidally Stupid Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A police sketch of D.B. Cooper.
On the cold, rainy Thanksgiving Eve of November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper paid $20 cash for a seat on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. Midway through the flight, “Cooper” gave a stewardess a note claiming to have a bomb in his briefcase and demanding $200K in “negotiable American currency” plus four civilian parachutes, two main and two reserve. The plane circled Puget Sound for two hours while the ransom money was collected, the bills photographed and the serial numbers recorded, and the parachutes were prepared. The plane then landed and all passengers were allowed to disembark; once the chutes and the money were delivered, Cooper ordered the plane to take off, heading for Mexico City. When informed by the pilot that they would need to refuel along the way, Cooper consented to a stop in Reno. He then asked the one stewardess still aboard to show him how to open the rear door and lower the aft stairs, then told her to go into the cockpit and stay there.
Around eight PM the flight crew saw a warning light and felt a change in air pressure as the door was opened and the aft stairs were lowered, followed by a shift in the plane’s equilibrium, presumably caused by someone jumping from the plane. This occurred over a remote area of southwestern Washington, one of the most densely forested areas in the Lower 48 states. Visibility was poor and the military fighter planes shadowing Flight 305 saw nothing. And there the mystery remains. Dan Cooper, through a misunderstanding between an FBI agent and a reporter, saw his (presumed) alias changed to D.B. Cooper, and a slew of people have claimed to be him or to have known him, but his identity has never been ascertained. A bundle of $5800 of the ransom was discovered washed up and buried in sand along the Columbia River in 1980, but the rest of the money is still missing. “Cooper” is still technically charged with air piracy, and his is the only unsolved American skyjacking.
The general consensus is that “Cooper” did not survive his parachute jump. He appeared to know only a little about parachutes, because of the four chutes he was provided, he chose the technically inferior model as his main chute, and completely missed the fact that his chosen reserve chute was actually a dummy model, sewn shut and intended only for classroom demonstration. This dummy chute was clearly marked and anyone with any skydiving experience at all would have understood the markings. In addition, “Cooper” wore a lightweight trench coat, an ordinary suit and slip-on loafers. At the time of his jump, the outside air temperature was well below zero with a windchill of minus 70 degrees, windspeed 200 mph. It was pitch dark and the terrain below was heavily wooded. The odds of surviving such a jump are slim at best, even for an experienced parachutist.
Culled From: Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper
Submitted by: Aimee
I highly recommend the above book, there is so much morbid and not-so-morbid info in it. A side note: The dummy parachute was not intentionally provided to “Cooper” though the fact that he chose it for his reserve chute does tend to indicate that he was no paratrooper or skydiving enthusiast as he was originally thought to be. The rigger who packed his parachutes, one Earl Coseey, was murdered in his home in April 2013, and despite the fact that the police believe he was killed during a botched burglary, conspiracy theorists are having a field day. – Aimee
I was going to comment. But after reading the line about $20 for an interstate flight– within my lifetime! –I am crying too hard to see the screen.