[plane engine whirring] BRAD MELTZER: What
if I were to tell you that of all of
America's skyjackings, only one remains unsolved? [camera snapping] On November 24,
1971, a passenger using the name Dan Cooper
hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 headed
from Portland to Seattle. After threatening to blow
up the plane with a bomb, Cooper demanded four
parachutes and $200,000. Fearing the worst,
Northwest Airlines agreed. Once on the ground in Seattle,
Cooper let the other passengers and some of the flight
crew off the plane and had both the money and
parachutes brought onboard. The plane refueled, took off
again, and at 10,000 feet, Cooper jumped from the back
stairs of the Boeing 727 into the Pacific
Northwest night. He was never seen again. [camera snapping] The press began calling
the skyjacker DB Cooper, and the FBI investigated
thousands of leads. Suspects included a mass
murderer, a college professor, a career criminal, and
a World War II veteran. But they were all ruled
out as the culprit. In the last 40 years, new
suspects have emerged. And now, we have an
unexamined lead that may point to an inside job. We need to decode who he was
and how he may have managed to pull off this unbelievable
stunt without ever getting caught. Whatever the case, I
can tell you one thing-- when someone commits
the perfect crime, I want to know who he is. [engine revving] I'm Brad Meltzer. I've spent my life
collecting stories. The best include signs, symbols,
and codes, secret meanings that are hidden in plain sight. Some have become the
basis for my novels, but I've only scratched the
surface of what's out there. And now, history has
given me the resources to investigate the rest. This is "Decoded." [music playing] BUDDY LEVY: You guys, just
think about this for a minute. There's many, many
suspects over the years, and this is, like,
the oldest cold case-- the only unsolved hijacking
in aviation history. The problem is, there's been,
like, hundreds of people that have either claimed to be this
guy or and they know this guy, they were related to this guy. So I'm a little
skeptical whether this is going to be the one. BRAD MELTZER: Buddy,
Mac, and Scott are chasing down leads that
point to Kenny Christiansen-- a former Northwest Airlines
employee-- being DB Cooper. Kenny was never really
a suspect in the 1970s, but the book "Into the
Blast" uncovered new evidence that points to Christiansen. And I was able to get the
co-author, Robert Blevins, to agree to talk. You believe that Kenny
Christiansen was DB Cooper. Is that right? I would say 90% to
95% certain that he was. He worked for the airline. He paratrooper training. He had the opportunity. He had a lot of unexplained
spending within a few months after the hijacking. He lent his best friend's sister
$5,000 in cash to buy a house. Then he used another $16,000 to
buy another house for himself. As far as we can tell,
Kenny Christiansen had one life before
the hijacking, and a completely
different one afterwards. BRAD MELTZER: Christiansen
was making $512 a month-- that's a month-- working for Northwest. So for him to suddenly
have money to throw around was definitely suspicious. The FBI, though,
ruled Christiansen out as a suspect for three reasons. One, he didn't match
eyewitness descriptions. Two, he wasn't a
career criminal. And three, they don't
believe that the hijacker had military training. BUDDY LEVY: The parachute
rig that the hijacker chose-- The parachute that DB
Cooper actually jumped with was called a Navy Backpack Six,
and it's a smaller parachute, more of a military type. But a guy like
Kenny Christiansen might pick that one over a
big newer sport parachute, especially a person who
hadn't jumped in a while. Because he would be
familiar with how it worked? That's right. The fact that Kenny
Christiansen was a paratrooper-- and obviously,
DB Cooper jumped out of a plane-- what
helps match that up? I mean, was there something
specific about the training? The skyjacker was a pretty
tough guy, and so was Kenny. And Kenny went through
paratrooper training, where they started
out with 262 men and ended up with 80
that actually finished, and he was one of them. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So
you think Kenny did this, and he survived the jump? ROBERT BLEVINS: Yes,
I think he jumped out of the back of that 727 and
hit the ground, popped off his parachute, disconnected
the harness and the container from it, buried the silk
part, and put his briefcase and the money bag into the
container for the parachute, put it on his back, and
walked out of the woods. Another kind of
crazy coincidence is this comic book here, made it
into a hardback book, but the-- CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Dan Cooper. BUDDY LEVY: Dan
Cooper is the name he used boarding the plane. It's-- yes-- the name he
put on his boarding pass. The FBI has that
picture on their website and lists it as
an official clue. One, I love comic books. Two, I love comic books. And three, you know what I
love more than comic books? The possibility that the
alias Dan Cooper actually comes from one. It's a way better
alias than Clark Kent. Of course, I want understand
more about why the FBI ruled Christiansen out so quickly. But first, Buddy, Mac,
and Scott are headed to see Kenny's brother Lyle. Lyle cooperated
with Robert Blevins when he was writing his book
and provided him with access to some of his brother's
personal effects. And now, we're going to
get to see them, too. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
We'd like to know more about your brother, Kenny. How did you start
putting this together? Before he passed away, he
told me, on his deathbed, there's something
you should know. But I cannot tell you. BUDDY LEVY: So you kept
that secret to yourself? LYLE CHRISTIANSEN:
Yes, I kept it secret. I didn't want to know
anything bad about him. BRAD MELTZER: You
know how they say, don't believe
everything you hear? There's only one
exception to that-- a deathbed confession. It is the only reason I'm
so obsessed with this case. After his
almost-confession, Lyle decided he needed to examine his
brother's possessions way more carefully. LYLE CHRISTIANSEN: I could
start from the beginning. This is Kenny when he's about
the age of the skyjacking. SCOTT ROLLE: What kind of
upbringing did you guys have? Were you-- were you wealthy? Were you middle class? Middle class growing
up on the farm. Kenny joined the army
right after high school. And he decided to go
into the paratroopers, because the pay was better. And he'd make extra pay for
jumps and everything else. They had to train them to land
in trees or water, anything. They could land in anything. He was in the military
for two years. Then, he applied for a job
with Northwest Airlines, and they shipped him to
Shemya, the Aleutian Islands. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
The islands in Alaska? LYLE CHRISTIANSEN: Yeah. The Americans had a Northwest
Airlines base there. He spent five years up there
in that lonesome place, and then he applied to
be a flight attendant. He took training for that. So then he got to be
a flight attendant. BUDDY LEVY: It was a
Northwest Airlines flight that was hijacked. Yes, and the skyjacker
came on the airline with an attache case. And I found this very
same attache case in Kenny's final effects. BUDDY LEVY: This
is your brother's? That's my brother
Kenneth's attache case. This could be the
briefcase of DB Cooper. LYLE CHRISTIANSEN: It could be. Wow. The descriptions of DB Cooper
when he boarded the flight were all the same. He was wearing a black suit with
a tie and carrying a briefcase. He was described as
tall and dark-haired. BUDDY LEVY: This is a composite
sketch from the eyewitnesses-- LYLE CHRISTIANSEN: Yes.
- --on the airplane. And this is--
- And this is your brother. LYLE CHRISTIANSEN:
That's my brother. All right, look at this.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Oh, wow. BUDDY LEVY: Oh, man.
SCOTT ROLLE: That's bizarre. Look at that. LYLE CHRISTIANSEN: I found
this picture in his photo book. I must have looked at
the photo book many times and never caught it. Then, one day, I
said, wait a man. Carrying a bag. Looks like a bag of money,
and he's got the attache case. BUDDY LEVY: Based
on what I read, that's exactly what DB Cooper
had with him on the airplane. BRAD MELTZER: The evidence needs
to be looked at more closely, and Lyle has actually agreed
to lend the briefcase to us for our investigation. SCOTT ROLLE: All right, let's
see what we got in this thing. BUDDY LEVY: Passport
photo, the overlay. SCOTT ROLLE: Oh, yeah. Still fascinated by that. BUDDY LEVY: Ah, look at that. So this is basically
the FBI wanted poster. No particular accent. Possibly from the Midwest. This man is
described as follows. It's a bulletin from the FBI. Mid-40's, 5' 10" to 6' tall. BRAD MELTZER: Kenny
Christiansen stood 5' 8" tall and was almost
completely bald, so the physical
description doesn't match. But we all know that eyewitness
accounts are fairly unreliable. They're dubious, at best. And the other thing we know-- Lyle said that Kenny used
to wear a toupee prayer to the skyjacking, but
he never wore it again after the skyjacking. Great circumstantial
evidence, for sure, but we need something
that is far more concrete. BUDDY LEVY: This is a mortgage. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
A mortgage, yeah. June 26, 1972. BUDDY LEVY: '72. So about six months, seven
months after the hijackings, buying a house.
- That's what's going on here. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
We could just be looking at a very eccentric-- BUDDY LEVY: This
is amazing, though. --person who made
some money on land. Yes, we could.
We absolutely could. Who happens to have a
Northwest Airlines briefcase. SCOTT ROLLE: Who happened to
be a parachutist, who happened to know the terrain that he
was jumping out of the plane. And an actor. I look at all this stuff,
and I think, we got a jumper. Here's the thing I still can't
shake-- if all this is true, what was his motive? Why would someone
with a good job be angry enough to
steal from his employer? Here's one darn tasty reason-- according to
Kenny's own letters, he was never able to earn a
stable living at Northwest because of constant protracted
labor disputes in his job. There were eight strikes at
Northwest Airlines between 1954 and 1971, and those
strikes severely cut into Kenny's earning power. He was constantly having to
take odd jobs like working in a hotel or digging
ditches for friends just to make ends meet. That is not a euphemism. He was actually digging ditches. In the meantime, the $8 million
jets that Kenny worked on sat unused on the ground. And make no mistake,
he resented it. If we believe that Kenny
was DB Cooper, then by 1971, he had simply had enough. And he decided to strike
out at the airline and make them pay for
making him struggle. And that is evidence
that can't be ignored. What do we got here? BUDDY LEVY: Whoa. SCOTT ROLLE: Bank
account statements. 1094. SCOTT ROLLE: Look at how much
money he's got in the bank-- $186,000. BUDDY LEVY: 200-- $186,000. Almost 200. BUDDY LEVY: At the
end of the day, what we have here is a ton
of circumstantial evidence. None of Kenny's
papers or effects point directly to
him being DB Cooper. But when you stack them all
together, you have to wonder, could it all be coincidence? CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: But if we're
looking at this and thinking, OK, this is so obvious. This guy is DB Cooper. Why isn't the FBI
thinking the same thing? SCOTT ROLLE: That's exactly
what I was thinking. In fact, I think we
need to talk to the FBI. But would the FBI talk to us? The FBI declined to appear on
camera, despite our requests. They told us that the DB
Cooper case was never solved, and as a result, it's still
an open investigation. We did, however, get
something even better. We managed to track down
the original lead FBI agent in the case, and he's
agreed to meet with Buddy, Mac, and Scott. So far, we know that Kenny
Christiansen had the access and the motive, and that
shortly after the skyjacking, he came into a pile of money. I can feel it, we're
getting closer. [music playing] BRAD MELTZER: The
case of DB Cooper has captured our imagination
for four decades. But after investigating
thousands of leads, the case remains
unsolved and open. Many now believe it was an
inside job that was pulled off by an airline employee
who had motive, access, and suddenly started throwing
money around after the crime. His name is Kenny Christiansen,
and Buddy, Mac, and Scott are headed to talk to Ralph
Himmelsbach, a retired FBI agent who was actually in charge
of the Cooper investigation from 1971 to 1980. SCOTT ROLLE: So,
Ralph, we understand that you were the lead FBI agent
investigating the DB Cooper case. That's right. BUDDY LEVY: What was it
like on the ground when you guys started working? It was storming with a
cloudburst and gusty winds changing direction and so forth. BUDDY LEVY: So you guys were
running around on the tarmac yelling at each other. And getting-- and we're
getting soaked wet all the time you're outside. So just excellent
jumping weather. RALPH HIMMELSBACH: Not
very good for jumping. SCOTT ROLLE: Probably a
pretty miserable night to fly anything. Yes, it was. There's an airliner here of
the same kind, a Boeing 727. We can go aboard, if you'd like. BRAD MELTZER: The Boeing 727 was
the most widely used aircraft for domestic air travel at
the time of the skyjacking. They stopped being
mass produced in 1984, but with more than
1,800 made, they're now the staple of every
air museum in the country. BUDDY LEVY: Does this bring
back memories of that day? RALPH HIMMELSBACH:
It does, indeed. I've thought about
it a hundred times, and it's still a mystery. SCOTT ROLLE: What seat
was DB Cooper in, Ralph? 18C, this one right here. The boarding had taken place,
and the doors were secured. This particular stewardess
that was closest by approached the hijacker,
and he handed her a note. He said to her, you
better read this, Miss. I have a bomb. He told her to take that
note up to the cockpit, and his instruction to
them was to stay in the air until they got to Seattle while
the money and the parachutes were obtained. If they did anything wrong,
he would set off the bomb. Jeez. You have to remember that
airline security in the 1970s was nothing like it is today. No one even checked your ID
before you boarded a plane. You could smoke on the plane. It was like Studio 54 up there. But after the DB Cooper
skyjacking, everything changed. Boeing installed something
called the Cooper vane on the rear doors
of all 727s that made it impossible to
lower the aft stairs from inside the airplane. The FAA also started
putting metal detectors in American airports in
order to screen passengers and their carry-ons before they
were able to board their plane, so next time you're
waiting for an hour, now you know who to blame it on. RALPH HIMMELSBACH:
When the FBI approached the head of the airline and
asked him how they wanted to handle it, they said right
away they didn't want anything to happen, any property
damage or any people injured, and they'd
pay the money. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Was Kenny
Christiansen ever a suspect in this case? He never came to
my attention at all. SCOTT ROLLE: Think Dan Cooper
had any military experience? I kind of doubt it. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Do you
think that jump was survivable and he survived it? I can't say that it wasn't
survivable, but it's unlikely. That airliner was going
170 knots at 10,000 feet. Outside air temperature is
seven degrees below zero. Chill factor of about
69 degrees below zero. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Oh, brutal. Why do you think his
body has never been found if he died in the jump? RALPH HIMMELSBACH:
The best explanation I can give you of that is
just go look at those woods. DB Cooper was a smart guy. He made very specific
demands of the flight crew. First, Cooper asked the pilot
to stay below 10,000 feet, because any higher, they'd have
to pressurize the cabin, making it harder for DB to open
the stairs and escape. Next, he wanted the flaps-- you
know, those things on the wings that go up and down at
takeoff and landing? He wanted those set
at 15 degrees exactly. At that angle, the 727
couldn't fly any faster than 200 miles per hour, making
it safer for DB to jump out. However you slice it, this
guy knew what he was doing. He knew about planes, and
he knew how they worked. And he certainly use that
knowledge to his advantage. RALPH HIMMELSBACH: If
you come down here, I'll show you the door and
where he was last seen. BUDDY LEVY: Oh.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Huge door. SCOTT ROLLE: Can you imagine
the air come fly look through? BUDDY LEVY: If you're
right about here, you're going to start seeing-- and then you'd have to go like-- whoa. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: When you
did that, it even bounced. SCOTT ROLLE: He's below zero. Oh, my god, I can't even--
I can't even fathom. This is like standing at
the top of the high dive. SCOTT ROLLE: This
thing's bouncing around. BUDDY LEVY: It's
amazing to think of that guy on these steps
at 200 miles per hour. That guy's going to be
up here, and there's not going to be quite as
much vacuum pressure. And also, the door wouldn't
have been this far down. It kept coming back
up, apparently. And then, with his weight,
it would have been tighter, like that, you know? I think this guy had
been out of a plane before. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Maybe
military experience, but I don't know if he had
experience with this plane, opening this door. BUDDY LEVY: Whoever it was, by
sitting in that seat where he sat, by having all of the
directions for where to put the flaps and the speed,
the guy knew what the hell he was doing. BRAD MELTZER: The question of
whether DB Cooper could survive this jump is essential. In April of 1972, a guy
named Richard McCoy skyjacked a United Airlines flight
and demanded as a ransom half a million dollars. Like DB Cooper, McCoy
chose a 727 as his target. McCoy jumped at 16,000 feet
while the plane was hurtling along at 200 miles an
hour, and he survived. The similarities were
such that, for a while, the authorities thought
that McCoy was DB Cooper. But upon further
investigation, they decided that McCoy didn't match
the physical description of DB Cooper. And it was later revealed
that McCoy was at home with his family in Utah having
Thanksgiving dinner when the DB Cooper event took place. I think if Richard McCoy could
make the same jump from 6,000 feet higher, I have to
believe that Cooper could have survived, too. But obviously, we've got
conflicting opinions here. SCOTT ROLLE: The FBI thinks
that Cooper did not survive, and Robert Blevins
thinks that he did. So where do we go from here? Well, and the FBI further
doesn't think that it was a Northwest employee,
thinks that he would have been recognized if he was. BUDDY LEVY: I actually have a
lead on this paratrooper I want to talk to about what actually
happened inside that airplane and if DB Cooper could
have survived the jump. - OK.
- That sounds like a good idea. You know, we should talk
to a Northwest historian, if we can find one. Or just someone who used
to work for Northwest, just can tell us how big a company
it was, whether someone would be recognized by its employees. Sounds like a good idea. LARRY YOUNT: I started
jumping in 1987, when I joined the Army. Over my 22-year
career on jump status, I've accumulated over 200 jumps. And I've accumulated
4,000 civilian skydives. BUDDY LEVY: 4,000 jumps? In your experience, have you
ever jumped out of an airplane at 200 miles an hour? - Not at 200 miles an hour.
- OK. Well, what's a normal speed? In civilian operations,
we're jumping out of airplanes somewhere
around 90 miles per hour. Military operations,
we're jumping anywhere from 120 to 150 miles per hour. BUDDY LEVY: When he leapt, he
had a bag of money weighing 22 pounds tied with cording
from another chute to his waist. Does that seem like
common practice? For military jumping, we jump
with equipment all the time. I've even jumped with up to 150
pounds of equipment, counting the machine gun, all the
ammunition and everything. Wow. That's like jumping
with another human. - Essentially, yes.
- Depending on his size. LARRY YOUNT: Yeah. 22 pound, it's almost
inconsequential. If I told you that you
could get in a 727 right now and go up in the
air at 200 miles an hour and at 10,000 feet and jump
out of the aft stairwell, would you do it? I'd have a shot at it, yeah. (LAUGHS) You would? LARRY YOUNT: Yeah. There are actually 727s in
private fleets that are used for commercial skydiving. People pay extra money to go
do the jump DB Cooper did. Really? [music playing] SCOTT ROLLE: We've been looking
over some real interesting materials from a Northwest
employee named Kenny Christiansen. He had worked for
Northwest Airlines, and it looks like it started
in the '50s on "Sheneya" Island in Alaska.
BRUCE KITT: Shemya, yes. SCOTT ROLLE: Shemya Island. In Alaska. Shemya was a major refueling
station for not just Northwest, but for many commercial airlines
that were doing the North American, Asian routes. They call it the Black Pearl
of the Northern Pacific. So what would Kenny
Christiansen have done? He was a non-skilled, so he
would have been a Jack of all trades, an extra pair of hands. SCOTT ROLLE: Bruce, we were
looking over some letters that Kenny had written
back to his family. And he definitely seemed to be
upset with Northwest Airlines about pay, about strikes. There were a lot
of strikes back then. It was sometimes referred
to as Cobra Airlines-- they strike at anything. There were roughly eight
strikes between 1954 and 1978. Some of them were very short. Some of them were
very protracted. So was the employment,
then, fairly unstable? Choppy. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So
what are truly the chances, if it is Kenny Christiansen,
of getting on a plane and not being recognized by
two of your fellow flight attendants? Well, if he flew strictly
international routes-- Uh-huh. BRUCE KITT: There wasn't much
intermingling, necessarily. But yeah, there could have
been some degree of anonymity. So not only did he have this
inside knowledge as a purser, but Kenny almost
certainly would not have been recognized by any
crew flying within the United States. But if Kenny was DB
Cooper, he was still playing a dangerous game. And right now, it looks like
he might have won that game. The case of DB Cooper has
fascinated America for decades. He was mentioned in TV
shows like "Twin Peaks." The movie "In Pursuit"
fictionalized his story, and Kid Rock even mentioned
DB in one of his songs. He's definitely turned
into a folk hero. But 40 years after he
jumped out of that plane, nobody knows who he really is. Buddy, Mac, and Scott
are chasing down leads that now point to former
Northwest Airlines employee Kenny Christiansen as
the most likely culprit. The guy I talked
to, Larry Yount, he's a former paratrooper. He's a skydiving instructor. And I said, if you were
going to jump out of a 727, how would you do it? And he said, the way this
guy, DB Cooper, did it. Absolutely dangerous, but
absolutely survivable. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: I buy that
someone could have survived the jump. But Lyle says that
Kenny continued to work for Northwest Airlines
for 20 years after the heist. That's a lot harder
for me to believe. He hangs out, basically, at the
scene of the crime for years afterwards. That makes it hard for
me to believe it's Kenny Christiansen. In addition to that, we also
have his brother telling us that he drank bourbon. Guy ordered a
bourbon on the plane. The demeanor of the
hijacker was strikingly similar to his brother. BUDDY LEVY: There was a
strong physical resemblance. SCOTT ROLLE: Darker skin. He had a receding hairline. BUDDY LEVY: The other thing is
he didn't have very much money prior to the hijacking. SCOTT ROLLE: That's huge. And he began to spend
a great deal of money in the months following
the hijacking. So far, more pros than cons. SCOTT ROLLE: I think we should
follow this money trail. I mean, we do know that
he paid cash for a house. He'd been giving money away. This is a picture of the
house that he paid cash for. BUDDY LEVY: If
anything was left here, how would we go about finding
hidden money in that house? SCOTT ROLLE: That's
a good question. It's buried in the walls? You use infrared to find, like,
leaks around doors and windows, so maybe that would help. You could tell
temperature differences. BRAD MELTZER: There seems to
be a lot of evidence piling up against Kenny Christiansen, but
the next logical place to look has got to be the house he
bought in Washington state after the skyjacking. The residence has been
converted to a print shop, but the structure
remains the same. [music playing] SCOTT ROLLE: It looks
like there's probably a lot more stuff here now
than there was back then. BUDDY LEVY: This looks it. We want to see
where Kenny lived, so we're headed to his
old house in Bonney Lake. SCOTT ROLLE: It looks like
you've got a business going here now, but it was
a house until when? Well, the business was
probably 10, 12 years ago, when it was sold to somebody else. And it's been a commercial
location ever since. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: The story
is, obviously, DB Cooper left the plane with
a lot of $20 bills. Have you found any? I haven't, but people have
found money on the property. When the owner I bought it from
bulldozed all the trees around here, unknowingly unearthed some
kind of a clear plastic bag, they said, that was ripped
open from being dragged through the stumps, probably. And the kids were playing
in the stumps playing fort, and they found a bag,
and it had money in it. BRAD MELTZER: DB Cooper
made his ransom request. He asked for $200,000
in unmarked $20 bills. The ransom was divided into
100 bundles, worth $2,000 each. All together, it
weighed about 21 pounds. But before the FBI had
the ransom delivered, they ran the bills,
all 10,000 of them, through a machine called
a Recordak that created a microfilm photograph
of each bill and a record of all
the serial numbers. In December 1971, just a few
weeks after the skyjacking, the FBI published the serial
numbers of the DB Cooper ransom money-- 34 pages of serial numbers. But nothing ever turned
up until February 1980, when an eight-year-old boy,
the luckiest kid in the world, found a bundle of decomposing
$20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River near
Vancouver, Washington, some 40 miles from the
alleged DB Cooper drop zone. The $5,800 matched the
FBI's serial numbers. As far as we know, this
is the one and only time that any of the DB Cooper
money has been found. In 2008, the eight-year-old,
now a grown man in his 30's, put some of the DB Cooper
money up for auction in a Dallas auction house. And here's the kicker-- the bidding for the most
complete bill started at $750. But here's where it ended up-- $6,572.50. And that is how you put a price
on a piece of American history. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Are there
any areas you haven't searched that he could use this? We're bringing in an infrared
specialist to scan the house, and the first place
we're going to check is the back of the shop, where
Kenny's bedroom used to be. SCOTT ROLLE: So, Kevin, what
exactly is this thing doing? KEVIN: Thermal
imaging of the walls and the ceilings and the
temperature differences. So anything that's
more insulation, as you can see in that
one corner, it's redder. There's more insulation. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: So if
there's an empty pocket in the wall or something
different, like money, than insulation, you'll see it? Right.
I'd like to shoot the ceiling. I don't know if I can or not. I kind of have to get
down here and see. BUDDY LEVY: Go for it. You know, you can see
that was real hot there. That's where the conduit is.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Right. And then back over in
this neck of the woods. KEVIN: And then there's
this spot right up here. See the blue change right there? BUDDY LEVY: Oh, yeah. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
Is it less insulating? So could that be
an empty pocket? KEVIN: It could be
an empty pocket. It could be something
up there that's pushing down on the insulation. It's not as thick. There's something different
in this little area right here than there is there
or over here or over there. BRAD MELTZER: And you thought
we were crazy for devoting a whole episode to DB Cooper. Let me tell you how
this played out. When we were filming,
I was on the phone, and the show's
director tells me, we probably won't find anything. And I think to myself, we
probably won't find anything. And then he calls
back and says, Brad, I think we've found something. We're in Washington
state investigating Kenny Christiansen, a former
Northwest Airlines employee, who may have actually pulled
off the infamous DB Cooper skyjacking in November 1971. So go with me on this. If Kenny was DB Cooper, he had
to be really careful about when and how he spent
his ransom money. So it makes perfect sense to me
that he might have stashed some of the money in his house or
in the woods behind the house. He wasn't going to
deposit it all in a bank without attracting
unwanted attention. So the question is,
where did he put it? CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
So this is the spot. SCOTT ROLLE: That's
where I'm going? That's the spot we saw
on the infrared thing. SCOTT ROLLE: Yeah, it was. BUDDY LEVY: Remember,
if you find money, there's no holding out on us. SCOTT ROLLE: I'm
not telling anybody if I find money in here. All right, there's
a lot of insulation. And in the area where we
saw the infrared, definitely there's some stuff pushed aside. Let me to get closer. Hang on. (LAUGHS) Good for him. How's it going? SCOTT ROLLE: It's good. Right where we saw
the infrared, it looks like something was there. I'm going to try to move some
of it around a little more. I don't see any money, but let
me try to get in here further. Whoa. Hey, guys?
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Yeah? BUDDY LEVY: Yeah? SCOTT ROLLE: This
is interesting. I want to get in
there and see it. SCOTT ROLLE: It's
hard to describe, but it's like you can
lift up the flooring. Yeah. Oh, my god. Wow. Holy cow. There is a-- I just lifted up a
piece of the floor, and there is a little space down
here where something absolutely could have been. It's almost like it's
a little hiding space. And it's actually right
above the bedroom. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
That's right. Where Kenny
Christiansen slept. - Yeah, this is the bedroom.
- Oh, my god. SCOTT ROLLE: Yes. Even though there's
nothing here now, it would have been an excellent
hiding place for money. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Wow. BUDDY LEVY: Kenny, you sneak. People make alterations to their
homes for all sorts of reasons. It seems strange that Kenny
would have built this unless he was trying to hide something. That's a hiding spot. We found a hiding spot. And unless you have secret
trapdoors above your bedroom, there certainly doesn't
seem to be anything accidental about this. So far, we've
determined that Kenny had both the motive and the
means to commit the crime. And in checking out the
house he used to live in, we found a suspicious
hiding place-- a hinged cubbyhole in the
ceiling above his bedroom. There's also a local
legend about money being found in a plastic bag
in the woods behind this house, too. It is all coming together. But I still feel like we're
missing out on something. So I asked Buddy, Mac, and Scott
to take another look at Kenny's personal letters to see if
anything jumps out at them. SCOTT ROLLE: All right,
let's see what we've got. BUDDY LEVY: Anything
that we haven't seen? CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: It was
Bernie's girlfriend Margie that called crew scheduling. BUDDY LEVY: Anything about
his, I don't know, condition. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: I'm living
in a house on Bernie's land, and I've been helping him and
Margie dig a septic tank hole. BUDDY LEVY: Wait a second. Bernie's land and Margie. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Bernie is
doing only so much as there is money. I pay him $50 a month rent. There's a lot about Bernie. Christmas, Bernie's sister
and her four children are staying here. It looks like-- it's
like they're a family, the three of them are a family. Everyone knows a guy
named Bernie, right? But this guy Bernie was
all over the letters that Kenny wrote home. So I think it's
pretty safe to assume he played an important
part in Kenny's life. The question is, did Bernie also
play a part in Kenny's crime? Could Bernie have been Kenny's
accomplice in the skyjacking? If anyone was going to know
the answer to that question, it was Robert Blevins. I reached out to
Robert again and asked him to meet with Buddy, Mac,
and Scott for a second time, but this time, they wanted
to learn as much as we could about the mysterious Bernie. SCOTT ROLLE: We're looking for
some clarification about some of the things we talked
to you about before. You said that there might have
been an accomplice involved in this? We believe Bernie Geestman
could be the accomplice. SCOTT ROLLE: So how would the
accomplice have done this? What exactly do you
think-- methods did he use? ROBERT BLEVINS: He
probably drove Cooper down to the Portland
International Airport, dropped him off to catch
the flight to Seattle, and then drove
back up by himself to Paradise Point State Park. It's right next to the
freeway in Battle Ground, less than two miles from where
they found the money in 1980. And just waited for Kenny. And Kenny jumped out, hiked
back out to the freeway, and they met up. It's only about a maybe 12,
13 mile walk, at the most, back to the freeway. And it's not a big wilderness,
like everybody thinks, down there.
CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Right. Bernie's name has come
up in some of the documents that we've looked at. He and Kenny were
very good friends. They first met working for
Northwest Airlines on Shemya Island. It's a remote spot at the
end of the Aleutian chain. He said he and Kenny
weren't very good friends. But these are some pictures from
the Geestmans' wedding in 1968. Kenny's with them
in those pictures. BUDDY LEVY: These
guys were already friends in Shemya Island? ROBERT BLEVINS: Oh, yes. This is where they got to
know a lot about airplanes? ROBERT BLEVINS: This
is Kenny Christiansen. This is Bernie Geestman here. This looks like it was taken on
Shemya Island when they worked there for the airline. This is a picture of Kenny
Christensen walking in through his apartment. It's taken right
around Christmas '71, about three weeks
after the hijacking. He's dressed in the same coat
as the hijacker was reported wearing. He looks like the hijacker. He's carrying a briefcase
like the hijacker carried and a paper bag carried
by the hijacker. Yeah. I mean-- Holding a sack full of money. To me-- Looks like it. --this is the most bizarre
thing of all the evidence that I've seen. That picture was hidden
behind another picture in one of Kenny's photo albums. Bernie Geestman almost
certainly took that photo. BRAD MELTZER: Blevins is sure
that Kenny Christiansen was DB Cooper. And he's equally convinced
that Bernie Geestman was his accomplice. But for now, that's
just one man's opinion. So how do we get an answer? I want Buddy, Mac, and Scott
to meet Bernie face-to-face and decide on their
own if they believe he was Kenny's accomplice. Buddy, Mac, and Scott are about
to meet with Bernie Geestman, a retired engineer who's
suspected of having been Kenny Christensen's accomplice
in the DB Cooper skyjacking. Bernie and Kenny worked
together on Shemya Island. Kenny worked on Bernie's land,
and he even rented a room from him when money got tight. Kenny attended Bernie's wedding. These guys play cards together. And the bottom line-- Bernie and Kenny were close
friends for almost 40 years. Now, Bernie has a reputation
for being tight-lipped. He's avoided talking about Kenny
Christiansen for a long time now. But now he's agreed
to speak with us. If there's even a chance that
Bernie was the accomplice, then the opportunity to meet him
may be the turning point in this case. Meeting Bernie Geestman takes
us a bit deeper and, hopefully, one step closer to the truth. BUDDY LEVY: How are we
going to handle Bernie? CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Defensively.
- Well, here's the thing. First of all, Bernie has
nothing to worry about as far as the statute
of limitations goes. The statute of limitations
in the federal system has already run, so-- Does he know that? If you're going to
ask him questions about his involvement,
you have to lead with, here's what I know
as an attorney. You're off the hook.
You're OK now. If they haven't
indicted Bernie by now, they can't, so he
is completely safe. He has agreed to talk. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: Right. So he might have something
he wants to get off his chest. In this room could be the
accomplice to the greatest aviation mystery in
American history. We've got to find
out if it's true. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: If he
feels-- if he feels attacked, he's not going to
tell us anything. [knocking] We're trying to find out as
much as we can about Kenny Christiansen, and we
understand that you were a good friend of his. Yes, ma'am. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY: What
can you tell us about him? I was on the flight line
refueling aircraft in Shemya, and I drove the truck. And Kenny and I would
keep the oil cans filled for the aircraft. Kenny left prior to me. And pretty soon, we heard
that he was a purser, flying to Tokyo. Would you characterize Kenny
Christiansen as a very, very good friend of yours? Well, we were-- you
know, I wouldn't-- well, he's a friend of
mine, working together. From what we saw, you were
dear friends prior to this. He had worked on your property. He was at your wedding. He was a good friend
you'd worked with. I saw him. SCOTT ROLLE: And at
one point, you guys were good enough friends for
Kenny to rent a room from you. He paid, like, 50 bucks a
week or a month or something. I never rented Kenny my room. Strange, because Kenny
wrote letters to his family indicating that he was renting
from you and paid $50 a month. He paid it to my wife,
Margaret Ann Miller, at the time. And she was supposed to be
taking care of the house while I was at sea. You must know that
the reason we are really interested in Kenny Christiansen
is that we're wondering if he is DB Cooper. You're asking me my opinion? Yes. Yeah. Yes. He looks exactly like the
picture the FBI put out. So you were suspicious
right away, Bernie? BUDDY LEVY: That looked
like Kenny to you? Yes. I saw Kenny dying in his house. Would you say, to your friend,
now, Kenny, were you DB Cooper? - I would.
- Yeah, I would, too. I really would. Help him get it off his
chest on his last moments. I will tell you, as an attorney,
you cannot be prosecuted for this case. The statute of
limitations is run. No one's interested in
prosecuting you at all. But they are interested
in this story. So this is just an
opportunity for you to let us know what you know. And I got a feeling you know
more than you're telling us. BERNIE GEESTMAN: I'm,
you know, just like you. I want to know, also. You purchased an
Airstream trailer around the time of the
hijacking, disappeared with it for several days
around Thanksgiving. No explanation of
where the trailer went. It suddenly disappeared. You had knowledge of how
these airplanes worked. You happened to live in the
area of the landing zone. It all looks pretty compelling
and convincing to us. SCOTT ROLLE: Robert
Blevins accuses you of being the accomplice. He's lying. SCOTT ROLLE: Why, though? I mean, it seems to
make sense to us. I'm not-- I didn't do it. I never-- I never, never was
an accomplice to Kenny Peter Christiansen or anybody else. [music playing] Oh, my god. Oh, my god. I actually believe him. Good. I'm glad you say that,
because I believed him, but I wasn't sure if I was
just, like, getting caught up. No, I'm convinced he
was telling the truth. I really am. He didn't do any of those
little fidgety, you know, eye, feet things that people
do when they're lying. There are some
inconsistencies in his story, and he says he wasn't
really his friend anymore, and he's
at his deathbed. But in the main, that guy
was telling the truth. I was paying very close
attention to his eyes. That guy was not the accomplice. This is the hardest part
of playing Charlie's Angels. I'm not in the room. I still have a
hard time deciding what I think about Bernie. There's a part of me that feels
like he's hiding something, but Buddy, Mac, and Scott
seem convinced he's not. These are my partners. I have to trust
their instinct here. BUDDY LEVY: Well, was Kenny
Christiansen DB Cooper? If I had to bet my own
money on it, I'd say yes. If I was on a jury and
was asked to convict him, I'm not sure I would feel
certain enough to convict him. SCOTT ROLLE: I'm not
sure that I would convict beyond a reasonable
doubt in this case, but I'd take it to court. BUDDY LEVY: Given everything
I've heard, everything I've read, Kenny Christiansen
fits the profile, and he's the best that
history has at the moment. SCOTT ROLLE: I was looking
at it like there's a puzzle, and you start to
put pieces into it. And at the end, pieces of
the puzzle are missing, but you can still
tell what it is. BUDDY LEVY: And you've got-- And it was all kind of
pointing in his direction. You add all of this stuff up-- his training, the
money trail, what he looks like, a picture of
him dressed as DB Cooper. Money found behind the
house he paid cash for. CHRISTINE MCKINLEY:
That was a big one. A hiding place in the house. I mean, da, da da, da, da, da. I mean, if there's a better
suspect, I'd love to see him. I'd be very interested to
see what anybody could come up with pointing away
from Kenny Christiansen because I didn't see it
in the last three days. I think it was him. Mac? Well, he can't go to jail now. He's dead. I do think it was him. Wow, the skeptic
has come around. I really do. This is probably
wrong, but to Kenny. [glasses clinking] BRAD MELTZER: Whoever helped him
pull it off, looking at this, I do think Kenny
Christiansen was DB Cooper. He had both the
motive and the means to pull off the skyjacking, and
everyone in this guy's circle seems to think he could
have done it, too. Based on the evidence
that we uncovered, we know why Kenny did
it, how he did it, even how he spent
his ransom money. It all makes sense to me. And though most people consider
the DB Cooper skyjacking to have been a victimless
crime, it wasn't. Ask the FBI and
Northwest Airlines. Some say no one was hurt by
what he did, that he's some kind of modern-day Robin Hood. That's why DB Cooper
has become a folk hero. There were songs written
about this guy, movies made about him. There's even a bar that
celebrates the anniversary of the heist with a DB
Cooper lookalike contest. Let's be clear-- that
may make you a celebrity, but that doesn't
make you a hero. In all likelihood, Kenny
Christiansen, a humble airline employee, committed
the perfect crime. He got what he wanted, and most
important, he got away with it.
