The DB Cooper Case: The Only Successful Skyjacking in U S History

this video is sponsored by nordpast create and secure your passwords easily and securely with the cyber security experts from nordvpn we'll talk more about them in a bit it's a case that is enthralled and frustrated for decades of crime so brazen so daring it has entered u.s folklore and remains to this day the only successful skyjacking in the nation's history the db cooper case has absolutely everything you need in a rip-roaring crime yarn which culminated in the hijacker parachuting out of a passenger airliner while in mid-flight along with his 200 000 ransom around 1.2 million dollars today and never being seen or heard from again some say he was killed on the way down others claimed to know his identity but the db cooper case remains unsolved nearly 50 years after it took place [Music] it was november 24th 1971 the day before thanksgiving a man in his mid-40s wearing a smart business suit crisp white shirt a black tie and carrying a black briefcase made his way through portland international airport to the desk of northwest orient airlines where he purchased a one-way ticket on an afternoon flight to seattle he paid with cash and he gave the name dan cooper but did nothing at all to arouse the suspicion of airline staff flight 305 was only a third full witnesses later recalled as passengers began boarding the aircraft one by one they took their seats and settled in for the short 30-minute flight to seattle dan cooper installed himself in seat 18c located in the back of the aircraft and ordered a bourbon and soda the flight took off on time at 12 50 pm and began climbing into the sky close to dan cooper in one of the aircraft's jumpsuit sat flight attendant florence schaffner shortly after takeoff cooper handed her a note but assuming it was just another phone number from an overzealous or lonely passenger she tossed it into her open bag cooper watched her do this then leaned across and whispered miss you better have a look at that note i have a bomb shaftner reached into a bag and unfolded the piece of paper the message stated that the man was carrying a bomb in his suitcase and wanted 200 000 in negotiable currency along with a refueling truck waiting on the ground in seattle and four parachutes two primary and two reserves cooper asked schaefner to move and sit in the vacant seat next to him which she did before asking to see the bomb cooper inched open the case to reveal eight red cylinders along with wiring coated with red insulation and a large cylindrical battery coupe nodded in the direction of the cabin meaning she should pass on the information to the pilots the captain that day was william a scott who had served in the united states army air forces during world war ii so no doubt knew a thing or two about dicey situations he immediately relayed the demands to the seattle tacoma airport air traffic control who in turn contacted the local authorities the fbi and the owners of northwest orient airlines the speed at which everything happened was actually quite remarkable the passengers on the aircraft were told that because of a mechanical delay their arrival into seattle would be delayed northwest orion's president nair up agreed to pay the ransom immediately and while the money and parachutes were being organized the aircraft circled the airport for two hours both shaftner and another flight attendant tina marklow remember d.b cooper as calm polite and well spoken a world away from the maniac hijackers that were often depicted in the news and movies he was as they recalled thoughtful and nice throughout the flight and even paid for his drink stab after ordering a second bourbon and soda he seemed rather nice other than he wanted certain things to be done while things may have been calm in the air on the ground events were gathering pace the money was soon arranged and waiting at seattle airport consisting of ten thousand twenty dollar bills importantly most came from the 1963 a or 1969 series and all had been photographed using microfilm by the fbi cooper had specifically asked for non-military parachutes which initially took some time to source but four were eventually found courtesy of a local skydiving school at 5 24 pm cooper was informed that all of his demands had been met and he immediately instructed the pilot to land flight 305 after touching down at 5 39 pm cooper ordered the aircraft a taxi to a distant but brightly lit part of the airport and all the windows shades be lowered fearing snipers may be lying in weight alley northwest orient seattle operations manager approached the aircraft in street clothes to make it clear he was not a member of the police and handed the money and parachutes to marklow via the rear stairs once cooper had the ransom he ordered the passengers off the plane and for the aircraft to be refueled it's probably worth adding that as the passengers began disembarking most still had no idea they had been on a hijacked flight during this period he gave instructions to the crew who would be staying with the aircraft he planned to fly south to mexico city but it also came with several odd requests the landing gear would remain down at all times the wing flaps should be lowered to 15 degrees and the cabin would remain unpressurized at all times co-pilot william j radzak informed cooper that under these conditions the aircraft would need a secondary fueling stop before reaching mexico city and they agreed that reno and nevada would be that stop at 7 40 pm flight 305 once again took off but now with only five people on board cooper himself captain scott flight attendant muklow co-pilot ratzak and flight engineer harold anderson shortly after takeoff cooper ordered muklow to move down into the cockpit and remain inside with the door locked she did so but still caught sight of cooper tying something around his waist what came next is unclear but when the aircraft landed in reno at 10 15 pm cooper was no longer on board with the four in the cockpit they had no way of knowing exactly when cooper had ejected but at 8 pm a warning light had told them that the aft stairs had been deployed and to date 13 the tail section of the plane was shaken by an unknown event it's here that db cooper is thought to have parachuted out of flight 305 and into a fierce rainstorm that had enveloped the area [Music] what came next became one of the longest running fbi investigations in u.s history amounting to a largely fruitless 45 years of ifs butts and maybes in 2016 the case was officially closed with the fbi admitting that it needed to focus its attention on more pressing matters by that point an astonishing 60 volumes of case files along with a 28-part packet full of evidence had been compiled but this was very much a case of quantity over quality this has gone down in u.s history as one of the most studied crimes ever with everyone from the fbi local law enforcement journalists authors private investigators and filmmakers running the rule of this intriguing case but despite all of it the mystery continues shortly after flight 305 landed in reno and it was determined that db cooper was no longer on the plane the fbi began mapping out the potential drop zone which was easier said than done after the plane had taken off from seattle it had been shadowed by two fighter jets but neither pilot recalled seeing anything eject from the back of the flight when the crew on board were interviewed they were able to give a rough position of where the plane was when they felt a shake coming from the tail section but even then pinpointing where a parachutist would land was incredibly difficult investigators needed to take into account wind speed at the time the speed of the aircraft and how long dan cooper fell before pulling his parachute if he managed to do so at all the fbi carried out a recreation using a 91 kilogram 200 pound sledge which they pushed out of the back of a boeing 727 traveling on the same route with the same configurations they found that it created the same shake in the tail section which led them to work under the assumption that 8 13 pm had indeed been the moment that dan cooper jumped from the aircraft the initial search grid focused on an area close to mounts and helens near the small community of ariel and washington state clark and cowlitz counties became the focal point and an extensive ground search soon got underway now let me just say if you were going to choose an area to disappear in the united states it might as well be here the land is rugged mountainous and can be foreboding but it's also the perfect place to vanish not only did the authorities not find dan cooper but they failed to find any evidence whatsoever that had ever been in the area over the next six months several large-scale coordinated searches involving soldiers air force personnel national guardsmen civilian volunteers as well as the fbi and local authorities combed the area boats in a submarine scoured nearby lake merwin and aircraft tracked back and forth along the flight path in the hope of spotting something but nothing was found not a single shred of evidence it was as if dan cooper had simply disappeared now so far in the story well it's not looking too good for the law enforcement investigation and if you have higher standards of security than northwest airlines did in 1971 then it might be time to pay a visit to today's sponsor north pass nordpass is a next generation password manager where cyber security meets modern convenience how many times have you struggled to remember those passwords that you only use once or twice a year suddenly you're trying to reset a password you can't remember the name of your first grade teacher before you know it half of your afternoon is gone in a flash nordpass is the perfect solution to your password management problems it stores all of your passwords in one super secure place letting you auto fill any login information with just a single click but 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identical cooper was described as mid-40s 1.78 meters tall 82 kilograms with close set piercing brown eyes and swarthy skin sketches done by the fbi were quickly circulated and appeared on tv and newspapers across the country as far as physical evidence goes it was fairly thin 66 unidentified fingerprints had been found on the aircraft which hardly narrowed things down the fbi also recovered cooper's black clip-on tie his tie clip two of the four parachutes and eight filter-tipped rally cigarette butts left behind by cooper inexplicably the cigarette butts managed to disappear shortly after the investigation began officially it was down to human error but it's a hell of a human error the fbi sent out the serial numbers of the ransom bills to banks casinos and other places that one might try to launder a large quantity of money in the area but not a single bill ever turned up well never in a bank or casino that is [Music] as 1971 became 1972 and then the 70s became the 80s the investigation progressed at a painfully slow pace with few promising leads one of the earliest was a set of instructions for lowering the aft stairs of a boeing 727 which was found 21 kilometers east of castle rock washington in 1978 which had presumably come from flight 305 but on the 10th of february 1980 the most significant find of the entire investigation occurred not by the fbi or the legions of private investigators now dedicating their time to the search but by an inquisitive eight-year-old child young brian ingram was on holiday with his family on the columbia river roughly 32 kilometers southwest of ariel and was raking the riverbank intending to build a campfire when he spotted something poking through the sand digging down he pulled out three plastic bags we can only imagine the shock on the young boy's face when he saw what was inside brian ingram had found three packets containing some of the ransom money given to dan cooper two came complete with 100 bills in each while the third only had 90. the bills were in various states of disintegration but were still rolled in the same way they had been during the hijacking but actually the fine did next to nothing to help the investigation in 1986 it was agreed that the bills would be shared between ingram and the insurance company that had dealt with the accidents with the fbi retaining 14 examples in 2008 ingram sold 15 of the bills for 37 000 as the case moved into the 21st century the fbi announced that they had managed to recover a scrap of dna from the tie but alas according to the bureau no firm conclusions could be drawn from it they also revealed that of the two primary parachutes cooper had chosen the older one rather than the superior alternative but they also found that one of the reserve parachutes had been a dud to be used in classroom training and it was this reserve that cooper took with him despite it clearly saying on the parachute that it couldn't be used the theory that cooper successfully parachuted out of flight 305 has fluctuated over time in the early stages of the investigation it was believed he may have been ex-military or at some kind of parachute training but as time went on this theory began to look increasingly flimsy not only had he chosen the parachutes badly but it also failed to request a helmet this would have been a difficult jump in ideal conditions but the weather that night verged on the extreme even with the flaps down the aircraft was most likely traveling at around 276 kilometers an hour that's 172 miles per hour at an altitude of roughly 3000 meters or 10 000 feet jumping out in those conditions without a helmet wearing smart clothes and a light coat into temperatures in the region of -9 celsius 15 fahrenheit isn't impossible to survive but it also isn't exactly likely many remain adamant that dan cooper died sometime on the way down but to compound the mystery a series of letters was sent shortly after the hijacking to various newspapers signed db cooper the fbi assumed that some if not all of the letters had been hoaxes but it certainly added some extra spice to the investigation the first read attention thanks for the hospitality was in a rut the second the composite drawing on page three as suspected by the fbi does not represent the truth i enjoyed the grey cup game i'm leaving vancouver thanks for the hospitality the tone continued for another four letters though the final two were only made public after a request by investigators in 2016 and more on those letters shortly [Music] the question of who dan cooper is or was is one that led the fbi to examine close to a thousand suspects over the 45-year investigation the overwhelming majority were quickly discounted but here are a few which held the attention for longer and well we'll leave it up to you to decide the first name to come up has stuck when the authorities found that a man with the name d.b cooper had a minor police record they thought it might have been a little too easy and it was danby cooper was quickly scratched from the investigation but several reporters jumped the gun and reported the name d.b cooper as a potential suspect which has managed to stay in the public consciousness ever since on the 7th of april 1972 richard floyd mccoy jr boarded flight 855 from denver to san francisco shortly after takeoff he brandished a ransom demand for 500 thousand dollars at 3.1 million dollars today along with a threat to blow up the plane with the bomb that he was carrying which turned out to be a paperweight after the branson was paid in san francisco he ordered the aircraft back into the air and bailed out over utah two days later he was apprehended and sentenced to 45 years in prison two years after he escaped and was killed in a shootout with fbi agents the similarities between the two cases were stark and immediately led some to ask if this had been dan cooper his picture certainly looked similar and mccoy's family claimed that the necktie found on board flight 305 looked like one that mccoy owned however the fbi concluded that he had been in las vegas on the day of the first hijacking and his own hijacking may simply have been a copycat crime shortly before he died in 2014 walter araka reportedly confessed to being dan cooper to his friend carl lauren who revealed the revelations in 2018 along with a four-part documentary larin had three hours worth of testimony from raka who had gone into meticulous detail about the case through his testimony lauren was able to pinpoint a landing zone close to cleo loom in washington wrecker also paid particular attention to a man who had helped him that night that he supposedly hijacked flight 305 who he described as a cowboy driving a dump truck now rewind to the night of the hijacking jeff osseodex a clear lum resident was driving his dump truck through the driving rain when he spotted a man trudging along the side of the road soon after he stopped in a diner and shortly after the man who he described as looking like a drowned rat walked through the door he reportedly asked ossia dax where exactly he was and whether he would be able to give directions to a friend if he called on the diner's payphone osceodax agreed spoke with the man's friend and directed him to the diner shortly after he left and thought little of the interaction decades later after hearing wrecker's revelations lauren somehow managed to find the cowboy from cleo lun even after all of this time osceodax's memory was clear of that night and took only a quick look at the photo of wrecker before saying with clear certainty that's him this is one suspect that refuses to go quietly raxtra a retired pilot and ex-convict came to the attention of investigators in 1978. he had spent time fighting in vietnam and had ample parachute experience it also emerged that he had served within classified units with plenty of practice with coded messaging his appearance seemed to match that of cooper but after both flight attendees studied his image they both concluded it couldn't have been him and his name was effectively scratched from the list in 1978. however things took another turn in 2016 when private investigators successfully obtained the fifth and sixth letters reportedly written by cooper the pith started with sirs i knew from the start that i wouldn't be caught i didn't rob northwest orient because i thought it would be romantic heroic or any of the other euphemisms that seem to attach to situations of high risks i'm no modern day robin hood unfortunately i do have only 14 months to live and here's where things get interesting the investigators believe that the fifth and sixth letters are written in code and have the numbers 717171684 embedded in them which they deciphered as i'm lieutenant robert w rackstraw they claim that the last letter includes the coded statement i'm lieutenant w rex draw db cooper is not my real name i want out of the system and soar away by hijacking one jet plane and to really blow up the whole investigation the private investigators made some extraordinary claims that the fbi had known all along who dan cooper was but chose to cover it all up because and i quote from an article that appeared in rolling stone he was involved in numerous classified units during the war and may have worked for the cia robert rextra died in 2019 aged 76 rejecting these claims until the very end this is a tale that has obsessed the minds of many for decades now is it the enthralling mystery of it all the sheer gazump of attempting something like that or the fact that those who interacted with cooper all remark just how pleasant he seemed criminals tend to get a bad rap almost always rightly so but dan cooper is a figure that has bewitched many the audacity to jump out of a moving plane at night and in freezing rain while clinging to two hundred thousand dollars is a story that many remain enamored with and it's one of those strange crimes that you almost want to root for the criminal in but without a clear end in sight and a jumbled mess of conflicting evidence this is a mystery that is set to continue for some time so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did smash that like button below don't forget to check out our fantastic sponsor nordpass also if you enjoyed today's story i have a channel all about crime it's actually a podcast and a youtube channel it's a show and it's called the casual criminalist you can find it on youtube or wherever you get your podcasts and thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 278,766

Rating: 4.9490175 out of 5

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Id: OMt9bHLnMSw

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021