A bomb, a parachute, $200,000 in cash, and one mysterious man with an absolutely wild plan. D.B. Cooper jumped into the night, never to be seen again... but could he really have survived?
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00:00A bomb, a parachute, $200,000 in cash, and one mysterious man with an absolutely wild
00:06plan.
00:07D.B.
00:08Cooper jumped into the night, never to be seen again.
00:10But could he really have survived?
00:12Okay, let's get the big question out of the way first.
00:14Why has there been zero progress identifying D.B.
00:17Cooper?
00:18Cooper's real last name probably wasn't, well, Cooper, and his first initials weren't
00:22D.B.
00:23In fact, the FBI archives say that the D.B.
00:25moniker wasn't used by the suspect.
00:27It was a mistake on the part of the media that never went away.
00:30Cooper's actual plane ticket read Dan Cooper, and that's it.
00:33In the five-plus decades since Cooper launched himself from Flight 305 with $200,000 in cash
00:38— around $1.5 million today — the FBI has investigated over 1,000 suspects.
00:43But one specifically stood out, and allegations of their crime only surfaced very recently.
00:48In 2024, siblings Shantae and Rick McCoy III came forward and said that Cooper was their
00:53dad, Richard McCoy Jr.
00:55They've apparently got a ragged shred of a parachute to prove it.
00:59More on this in a sec, so stick around.
01:01In the meantime, Cooper's own generic appearance has proven the perfect cover.
01:04He was described as white male, 6'1", 170 to 175 pounds, age mid-40s, olive complexion,
01:12brown eyes, black hair, conventional cut parted on left.
01:15This plus the suit and sunglasses means the description fits a whole lot of people.
01:20We know that D.B.
01:21Cooper pulled off the most notorious heist of the 20th century, but this inspires another
01:26question.
01:27How did he think he could get away with such a bonkers plan?
01:29It's not like he planned a bank heist with a mask and a getaway car.
01:33And the plane didn't even have the money on it.
01:35It landed in Seattle, where he was given the money, after which he ordered the pilots to
01:38fly toward Mexico City.
01:40And then he thought, well, if I want to get away as quickly and as far as possible, I'll
01:44just use a parachute.
01:46When you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the whole thing is pretty
01:49bananas.
01:50FBI agent Larry Carr, who was put in charge of the Cooper case in 2007, might have found
01:55an answer to this line of questioning thanks to some talented internet sleuths.
01:58They uncovered an actual Dan Cooper, the name that D.B.
02:01Cooper gave when he got his plane tickets.
02:03Not on the streets of any city, but in the pages of a comic book.
02:07There was a French-Canadian comic called Dan Cooper that featured a Royal Canadian Air
02:11Force pilot of the same name doing things like parachuting from the sky.
02:15The cover of Issue No. 7, dating around the time of the hijacking, even shows the fictional
02:19Cooper parachuting from a plane.
02:21Carr thinks that this might be where Cooper got his idea from.
02:24You know what I love more than comic books?
02:26The possibility that the alias Dan Cooper actually comes from one.
02:30Lots of people have asked our next question.
02:32Was D.B.
02:33Cooper's bomb even real?
02:35Folks would do well to remember that at the time of Cooper's crime, airports were way
02:38more relaxed than they are now.
02:40We're talking no metal detectors, no x-ray machines, no attendants poking around in bags
02:45while wearing plastic gloves, no nothing.
02:47You can blame Cooper for many airport security procedures after he waltzed onto Flight 305
02:52with a potential bomb.
02:54Potential being the key word here.
02:56In the same way that there were no security measures in place to discover if Cooper was
02:59actually carrying a bomb, there was no way for those on board Flight 305 to determine
03:03if the bomb was real.
03:05When Cooper opened his attaché case to show the flight attendant what was inside, she
03:08saw a case containing wires and red sticks.
03:12Cooper said it was a bomb, and so she believed it.
03:14She had no choice.
03:16But is it unreasonable to assume that the bomb might have just been a bunch of junk
03:19in a bag?
03:20It's like the pointed finger gun and hoodie pocket trick.
03:23Sure, it could be a fake-out, but is it worth the risk?
03:27If you're wondering what became of the alleged bomb, well, Cooper took it with him.
03:30He assured a flight attendant that he'd either defuse it or take it with him.
03:34So if it was real, it's sitting in a forest somewhere.
03:37In 1980, a youngster found a crucial piece of evidence related to the D.B.
03:41Cooper case — a bag that held one of the four parachutes that Cooper demanded, in addition
03:45to $200,000.
03:47As the FBI explains, it contained $5,800 in $20 bills that matched the serial numbers
03:51of the notes given to Cooper.
03:54This might seem like some kind of breakthrough at first, but what does it actually confirm?
03:58Of course the bag would have landed on the ground, along with Cooper and his other bags.
04:01Here's the problem with that.
04:02The spot where the money was found, called Tina Bar, is just a bank on the Columbia River.
04:07The spot doesn't match up with the flight path, so how did the money get there?
04:11One theory is that a 1974 dredging operation dumped it there.
04:14Another theory is that the flight path is off a bit.
04:17And of course, there's the theory that the money washed down the river and just ended
04:20up there.
04:21The other question is, where did Cooper go from there?
04:24Plenty of folks, FBI investigator Larry Carr included, think that Cooper didn't escape
04:28after parachuting, but died.
04:30The FBI calls Cooper's nighttime skydive a dangerous proposition for a seasoned pro,
04:35and we have no idea if Cooper was anything approaching pro.
04:38Carr thinks he worked as a plane cargo loader at one point, and that's it.
04:42Cooper's clothing and shoes certainly weren't suited to parachuting to safety even if he
04:46jumped in the daytime, let alone in the pitch-black sky of a frigid late-November Washington night
04:51right into a dense, vast track of forested terrain.
04:54The bag discovered in 1980 might be all that we'll ever find of Cooper.
04:58Mind-blowing stuff, huh?
05:06Speaking of finding stuff, so about that parachute we mentioned earlier?
05:10There's a number of issues to the 2024 discovery of a parachute that allegedly belonged to
05:14Cooper suspect Richard McCoy.
05:16The most obvious is, how did the parachute make it from Washington state to North Carolina?
05:21The next most obvious is, why save it?
05:23Well, it turns out that not all parachutes are created equal.
05:27According to the YouTube page D.B.
05:28Cooper Sleuth, the Cooper parachute and the recently discovered one were two different
05:33parachutes.
05:34Just another thing in this case that doesn't make sense.
05:36It might seem obvious what D.B.
05:38Cooper wanted when he rolled up to the Northwest Orient Airlines at Portland International
05:42Airport back in 1971.
05:43He wanted money, plain and simple.
05:46He probably envisioned being loaded with cash and reclining on a sunny beach somewhere,
05:50sucking down cocktails, end of story.
05:52But that very simple conclusion draws us into a bunch of mismatched reasoning and further
05:57questions.
05:58Folks might be inclined to think, oh, how brilliant of D.B.
06:00Cooper because every step of his plan worked, from the bomb threat to the hostage exchange
06:04to receiving the money and parachutes, etc.
06:07And he got away.
06:08But that's a stretch.
06:10First, he handed the skyjacking note before the plane even took off.
06:13The entire thing could have gone sideways before they were even done taxiing.
06:17Then he strapped 19 pounds of cash to himself to jump into a pitch-black, rainy sky over
06:21a bunch of trees.
06:23So obviously, he likely died for his efforts, because it doesn't seem like he planned his
06:27nighttime forest landing and post-landing too well.
06:30The only cash related to this was discovered buried on a beach we already mentioned, so
06:35clearly he never spent the rest.
06:37Ultimately, Cooper might be less of a criminal mastermind and more of an inspired idiot.
06:41If so, he pulled off his heist because of some combination of audacity, guts, and luck.
06:46This sort of thinking brings us around to the central, unanswered D.B.
06:49Cooper mystery.
06:50What's his story?
06:51What led him to do what he did?
06:53Was it really about money?
06:54Amateur Cooper sleuth Eric Euless said this exact thing to Oregon Public Broadcasting
06:58in 2021, and Euless is the one who co-founded CooperCon, which, yep, is a real thing.
07:05An annual convention for Cooper enthusiasts of all stripes, Euless echoed something lots
07:09of sleuths have surely thought — I want to know who the real guy is, the real story.
07:14For now, such questions remain unanswered.