In the early afternoon of November 24, 1971, a pale, slightly-built man calling himself Dan Cooper stepped up to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter at the Portland International Airport and asked for a one way ticket to Sea-Tac. He quietly boarded the flight and took a seat near the back. As the plane took off, he passed a note to the stewardess, which said, "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked." He then opened a briefcase to reveal a mechanism of wires and cylinders, and quietly demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. And he said he would not allow the plane to land before everything was ready.
Hijackings had happened throughout the world, but were extremely rare in the U.S. From 1961 to the day Cooper boarded his Seattle flight, there had been only four hijackings. In three cases the planes had been flown to Cuba, and in the fourth, the hijacker had been overpowered by the pilots. In spite of the former hijackings, and even a movie about a bomb aboard a commercial flight which had been popular in 1970, there was still no airport security; any person could walk directly to the gates with several carry on bags. The insides of commercial aircraft had no reinforced doors and bags were not scanned or searched before going on the plane.
Following Cooper’s instructions, the plane circled Western Washington for two hours. All the while, Cooper remained calm and polite to those around him. Because Cooper talked only to the stewardesses, the remaining passengers had no idea what happening on the plane, and were told that it was experiencing minor mechanical problems. At 4:39 p.m., the FBI had been informed of the situation, Northwest’s president had agreed to pay the ransom, and everything was ready. The fight landed on the edge of the Sea-Tac runway. It was refueled and the money and parachutes were handed over. Among them was a dummy one which would never open. Cooper allowed the passengers to leave the aircraft, but ordered the crew to take off again. It was now almost 8 PM. five military planes and a helicopter followed just behind.
Cooper was angry that the money had come in duffel bag, and not a backpack as instructed. To fix the problem he opened one of the working parachutes and took out the canvas to stuff the money inside. He now had only two working chutes. Minutes later, Cooper told the pilots to head to Mexico City. He ordered that they stay at 10 thousand feet and maintain a speed of no more than 200 miles an hour. Then he headed to the back of the plane. He asked for the cabin stairwell to be lowered. A stewardess showed him the lever to pull, but said she would need a rope to open it. Cooper said he would do it himself. At 7:42 p.m., a gust of wind came through the plane as the back stairwell had been deployed. Cooper had tied the money to his chest and strapped on two parachutes. Outside, the weather was terrible, the wind had picked up and storm front had moved in bringing heavy hail and freezing rain. The ground between the Washington and Oregon border which the plane was now over, was 150 acres of dense forest on the roughest terrain in the area. Cooper waited a moment then jumped.
The plane landed in Reno. Sheriff’s deputies boarding it found the unused parachutes. Amazing one still on board was an easy open model. Instead, Cooper had chosen one that was much more complicated to handle and picked the fake parachute as his pickup. A tie clip used by the hijacker was also found, and the FBI began its search. The day after the hijacking, a newspaper article was published mistakenly calling the man “D.B.” Cooper instead of Dan Cooper, and the initials were forever linked with the case. Numerous suspects were interviewed and the area Cooper was thought to have jumped searched, but as the weeks dragged by nothing was found. In the wake of the hijacking several copycat crimes took place. Finally airports began adding security gates and searching bags and sky marshals were also put on several more planes. Back stairwells like the one Cooper had used were ordered permanently sealed shut.
In 1980, a small amount of the money matching the currency used for the ransom was found by children along the Columbia River, but no more was ever discovered.
Over the years, several people were suspected of being the man known as D.B. Cooper. Among them was Kenneth Christiansen, a former paratrooper and Northwest flight attendant who was apparently angry with airline, and was suddenly able to buy a house after the hijacking. However, he didn’t match Cooper’s appearance. Another was Richard McCoy Jr., a Vietnam veteran who pulled off a similar hijacking over Utah jumping from the plane. Because he had left fingerprints at the scene, McCoy was quickly arrested and the money seized; he escaped from prison in and was killed in a shootout in 1974. Some believed he had been in the Portland area on the day of the hijacking, but evidence proved he was actually in Las Vegas. Other candidates for Cooper occasionally appear in the news; as recently as 2010, a woman claimed that her late uncle was Cooper and provided the FBI with a leather strap that she thought still had his fingerprints. None could be recovered from it, and his DNA did not match that found at the scene.
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