Meet the Most Wanted Man in History

hey 42 here when it comes to cracking unsolved mysteries or hunting down fugitives from justice you'd have to go a long way to beat the fbi agent clara stalling for instance dealt admirably with hannibal lecter and mulder and scully solved all manner of annoying supernatural and extraterrestrial problems but it's unlikely even these fictional heavyweights would have been able to solve the strange case of db cooper a mystery that's bamboozled the feds for over four decades and to this day still seems about as solvable as a sudoku puzzle printed on a rubik's cube designed by mensa on the day before thanksgiving in 1971 whilst most decent u.s citizens were getting ready to force sage and onion up the nearest turkey's anus a gentleman by the name of dan cooper approached the flight desk for northwest orient airlines bought a one-way ticket from portland to seattle paid cash and boarded the boeing 727 heading towards his scheduled destination due to the holidays the flight was only a third fault so cooper took a seat at the rear of the plane ordered a bourbon and soda and made himself comfortable if db cooper's still alive today then i'm pretty sure he subscribes to bespoke post bespoke post is a fantastic monthly subscription box that's tailored to you bespoke posts find out exactly what you like whether that's bar ware apparel outdoor gear and every month you get a box full of that stuff that you love so they've sent over a box and i'm really excited to see what's inside let's have a look in box number one so what's this oh that's really cool it's sent over instructions on how to start a fire which i'll be honest i'll probably need and then a starter stone first up we have this really nice knife made in sweden i do like swedish knives i know that's a strange thing to say but they make they make good knives that's that's really nice a trifold candle shovel to shovel i mean supposed to digging a ship in basically and it falls up that's nice this is really nice stuff it's really nice that's lovely i'm gonna get a lot of use out of this this is fantastic for me because next time i go camping i can bring something more practical than just a bottle of whiskey love this let's see what we've got in the second box here oh nice what's this oh look at that that is beautiful remember these boxes are 45 each there's easily over 70 worth of value here this feels top quality really does i'm really looking forward to using this and right now you can get 20 off your first box if you head to bspk.meforwardslash42 and use code 4020 at checkout use the link in the description don't miss it guys by this point flight attendant florence schaffner hadn't noticed anything unusual about cooper after all this was the 1970s so she had a great deal of experience ignoring nondescript whiskey-soaked businessmen especially if they were making unwelcome advances towards her which is exactly what seemed to be happening just after takeoff when cooper handed her a note assuming it was his phone number florence dropped it into her purse unread no doubt giving cooper one of those in your dreams kind of looks but before she had a chance to turn away cooper leaned forward and calmly explained that she'd probably best take a look at the note because it contains some handy information about the bomb he'd bought on board cooper then asked florence to take a seat next to him and she quickly complied but only on the proviso she could see the bomb first which must have been standard procedure when faced with a hijacker either that or she planned on asking him to stir it safely in the overhead compartment cooper opened his briefcase revealing eight red cylinders and a mess of wires connected to a large battery florence didn't know too much about bombs but she didn't have to this thing looked like something wiley coyote might carry around in a warner brothers cartoon you could probably order them from acme cooper's demands were simple he wanted two hundred thousand dollars in negotiable american currency four parachutes and a truck ready to refuel a plane when it arrived in seattle florence now thoroughly convinced she wouldn't be getting an early finish for thanksgiving headed to the cockpit to completely ruin pilot william scott's day we don't have a record of her exact words but i assume it was something like this hey will we've got a hijacker massive bomb in his briefcase could i get you a coffee scott immediately contacted ground control at seattle tacoma airport who in turn contacted the authorities and the plane was forced to stay in the air for an extra two hours to give the police and fbi time to secure the ransom and find the parachutes like a true professional however scots kept the other passengers at ease claiming the delay was due to a minor technical difficulty and if a bomb carrying weirdo was a minor technical difficulty you can only imagine what scott must have considered a major one extraterrestrial attack godzilla in the flight path the entire plane suddenly disintegrating anyway when cooper's demands had finally been met the plane finally landed at seattle tacoma airport and the rear door was open so florence's colleague tina muklow could take delivery of the four parachutes along with a knapsack stuffed full of cash cooper then told florence senior flight attendant alice hancock and all the other passengers to exit the plane leaving only himself tina muklow flight engineer harold anderson pilot william scott and co-pilot william rataksak on board apparently you were only allowed to become a pilot if your name was william in those days whilst they were refueling cooper made some very specific and slightly odd demands of the flight crew he informed them they'd not only be heading towards mexico city at the lowest possible speed but also that he wanted the cabin to remain unpressurized the wing flaps to be lowered 15 degrees and the landing gear to remain deployed after several objections based around safety or the distinct lack of it the plane was back in the air again by 7 40 pm headed for mexico city the pilots had mentioned they'd need to stop in reno nevada for more fuel before reaching mexico but cooper seemed pretty easygoing about this slight change in plans weird eh it was almost as if he wasn't planning to get that far as soon as they were airborne cooper told the remaining crew to head for the cockpit and close the door and that's exactly what they did until around 8pm when a warning light suddenly came on indicating the rear door had been opened sure enough not long after this at around 8 13 pm the tail of the plane suddenly darted upwards suggesting something or someone had just left the cabin and with that the man known as d.b cooper passed into legend when they landed in reno at around 10 15 p.m the police and fbi conducted an armed search of the cabin only to find it had been left like an aviation themed game of pluto rather than a candlestick a rope or a piece of lead piping however they found a black clip-on tie a mother-of-pearl tie clip eight cigarette butts two of the four parachutes and around 66 fingerprints which ultimately proved no matches unlike the suspect for a grizzly country house murder however cooper had all the hallmarks of a gentleman thief the crew had nothing but good things to say about him after the ordeal and florence described him as calm polite and well spoken in fact if it hadn't been for the whole bomb in a briefcase thing maybe things really could have worked out between them he certainly wasn't your average hijacker florence and tina gave practically identical descriptions of cooper mid 40s around 5 foot 10 piercing brown eyes and slightly dark skin as did everyone else who interacted with him so the fbi had always been very confident in their accuracy of their composite sketches the crew also mentioned he had a nondescript accent which could suggest he was american but then he also used the phrase negotiable american currency which isn't the kind of thing u.s citizen would typically say so which other nationalities sound slightly american could cooper have been canadian unfortunately nobody got to know him well enough to find out if he was pathologically friendly and had a punch on for ice hockey but there was one other clue pointing towards him being canadian the fbi would later suggest his alias had come from belgium comic book hero dan cooper a canadian air force pilot who had many brave and exciting adventures often including parachuting the comic was never on sale in the us but it was available in canada by the way you've probably noticed that although the hijacking is often referred to as the mystery of db cooper at no point did the mysterious dan cooper actually use that middle initial the fbi did interview someone by that name in the early days of the case but a journalist rushing to meet a deadline simply confused the suspect's name with the hijackers alias and the db part stuck whatever his real name might have been one question above all others desperately needed answering how the hell were we going to find him pinpointing where cooper may have landed was going to be about as easy as finding a piece of straw in a whole stack full of needles the fbi were confident about the time cooper had jumped after staging a recreation where a 200-pound sled was pushed through the rear door of the plane they measured the same upwards tail motion experienced during the flight but what happened after he left the plane was a bit more tricky to nail down five fighter jets had been secretly deployed to follow cooper's flight but none of them saw him jump which is understandable given visibility was poor cooper was dressed in black and by that point it was completely dark there were also a lot of other variables to consider the precise speed of the plane the environmental conditions the amount of time spent in free fall before pulling the rip cord if any of these estimates were even slightly off it would drastically change the fbi search area after much number crunching a search began in clark and cowlitz counties specifically the areas immediately north and south of the lewis river in southwest washington and over the next few months the fbi conducted aerial searches went through mountains with a fine-toothed comb knocked on the door of every farmhouse in the area and even called in a submarine to search the 200 foot depths of nearby lake merwin just in case cooper's corpse happened to be hiding at the bottom that might sound optimistic but there had always been an element of doubt as to whether cooper survived the jump not to mention whether he'd been able to navigate the mountainous terrain in winter with a briefcase full of cash instead of a survival kit on the other hand the fbi couldn't find anyone who'd gone missing that weekend suggesting cooper either had no friends or relatives or had survived and simply gone back to his normal life also in 1978 a deer hunter near castle rock washington which was on cooper's flight path found discarded instructions on how to lower the rear stairs of a boeing 727 the very same type of aircraft cooper had hijacked coincidence maybe but unless deer ever start hijacking planes it's probably worth considering as legitimate evidence despite not seeming to have the necessary equipment for conditions on the ground it's probably safe to assume cooper had something planned for the time after his jump because it was clear from the get-go this whole operation had been carried out with meticulous attention to detail for starters it was certainly no coincidence cooper chose to hijack a 727-100 he knew the plane was able to fly at low altitude without stalling and that the wing flap should be lowered to 15 degrees for such a maneuver something that was completely unique to that specific aircraft not only that he knew the rear staircase could be lowered during the flight via a switch at the rear of the cabin which was something never even disclosed to the flight crew he also seemed to be very specific about his parachutes demanding civilian models rather than military ones and the fact he asked for four suggested he was playing mind games with the fbi you see if they thought he might be taking hostages with him on the jump they were a lot less likely to send him faulty equipment or at least you'd hope so whilst figuring out exactly where db cooper came down was an almost insurmountable challenge the fbi did have one other way to track cooper the money they'd recorded the serial number of each and every bill and sent lists to casinos race tracks and any other place they could think of where cooper might go to blow a large watch of cash northwest orient offered a reward for anyone who could recover the money as did some local newspapers but nothing ever showed up until 1980 that is when eight-year-old brian ingram uncovered three packets of ransom cash on the banks of the columbia river nine miles south of vancouver washington the fbi confirmed they were the genuine article which must have been quite exciting for young brian although not half as exciting as finding out he could keep half the loot in 2008 he sold 15 of those 20 bills for 37 000 i suppose that's inflation for you so who the hell was dan cooper do we have any idea well by the five year anniversary of the hijacking the fbi had considered more than 800 suspects but there are a few fan favorites still being investigated by amateur cooper detectives even today [Music] one name that keeps cropping up again and again is robert rackstraw who was the topic of the 2016 tv series db cooper case closed the fbi questioned him in the 70s and soon ruled him out but a cold case team led by former fbi agents are very keen on this theory indeed providing a great deal of evidence in their book the last master outlaw hmm sounds like victimization to me the fbi did originally rule him out after all and it isn't like he was a bad guy or anything i mean sure he was dismissed from the army for lying about his rank and yes there was that time he was arrested for stealing dynamite oh and he was charged with the murder of his own stepfather and i'm pretty sure he faked his own death by crushing the stolen plane but apart from all that he wasn't that bad of course he did also phone several news stations from prison claiming to be db cooper but that's just a minor detail another popular suspect is richard floyd mccoy a mormon sunday school teacher and former green beret he was tracked down by the fbi for a cooper copycat hijacking only five months after cooper struck he parachuted out over utah with five hundred thousand dollars and ransom money but he was arrested two days later and given 45 years in prison he did manage to escape two years later by crashing the lorry through the prison gate but freedom didn't last long he was killed in a gunfight with the fbi three months later mccoy certainly wasn't the first or last criminal to be inspired by cooper as if the fbi didn't already have enough on their plate there were no fewer than 15 cooper copycats during 1972 alone all of them either using bombs or guns demanding large sums of money and escaping via parachute the major difference between them and db however was that they were all found arrested or sometimes just plain old killed garrett brock trapnil for instance demanded over three hundred thousand dollars in cash the release of political activist angela davis and an audience with president richard nixon but in the end he had to settle for getting shot by the fbi and sent to prison hijacking seems to have been a bit of a hobby for trapnel and his mates though as six years into his stint behind bars one of his friends took control of a helicopter through the time-honored method of pointing a gun at the pilot and forcing him to land in the yard of the prison where trapnum was being held the boulders you like rescue was never completed though as the helicopter's pilot who happened to be a vietnam vet managed to get hold of the gun and shoot the hijacker dead two years later there would be rescuer's daughter got in on the hijacking act too strapping fake dynamite to her body and taking control of a small commercial flight once again demanding the release of trapnil that guy sure had some loyal friends anyway on this occasion fbi agents were able to talk the girl down she was only 17 at the time and trapnel remained behind bars until his death thanks to this space of hijackings 1972 was a year the airline industry was quite happy to put behind it and in 1973 the first universal luggage searches were brought in which had a dramatic effect on would-be dbs only two hijackings were attempted that year and both the culprits were psychiatric patients strangely enough one of the 1973 hijackers wanted to meet richard nixon too well he wanted to crash the plane into the white house and kill him but i suppose that's kind of the same thing popular guy was nixon this trend of cooper fanboy seems to have died out after that until 1980 when glenn tripp hijacked a plane demanding six hundred thousand dollars two parachutes and the assassination of his boss all whilst completely failing to notice the flight attendant had spiked his drink with valium ten hours later a distinctly more chilled out trip had abandoned his original demands and requested free cheeseburgers instead tripp was nothing if not persistence though and three years later while still on parole he hijacked the exact same flight presumably this time he was careful not to partake in any free in-flight beverages but as it happened he had bigger things to worry about than valium after demanding to be taken to afghanistan tripp was shot and killed by the fbi when the plane finally touched down in portland db cooper worship has evolved over the years and he's even been turned into a bit of a folk hero there are shops and hospitality venues all over the pacific northwest you hold regular cooper themed promotions and sell souvenirs to taurus not to mention his appearance in lots of film and on tv a notable recent documentary hbo's the mystery of db cooper adds a few new suspects to the old favorites including one woman who suspected her late husband and a couple who were convinced cooper was their transgender friend barbara mind you that would at least explain the bee in his name whoever he was and wherever he went i think it's fair to say dan cooper got away with it and the fbi clearly agrees because in july 2016 they finally decided they'd had enough they effectively did their best eric cartman impression and said screw you guys we're going here and suspended their investigation into the cooper case and so it looks like db cooper has taken his place alongside jack the ripper the zodiac killer and the joker in the pantheon of criminals whose true identity will never be revealed over 45 years the fbi compiled a 60-volume case file and a 28-part packet of evidence on cooper's hijacking but it seems to have done no bloody good whatsoever by the way all that information is available to the general public so next time you're at fbi headquarters in washington dc why not show up wearing a db cooper t-shirt and mock them for their failure oh and then run fast they're usually packing heat thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 689,265

Rating: 4.9199853 out of 5

Keywords: cooper, db, mystery, history

Id: ICy5El3Trm8

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021