DB Cooper

[CountDeMoney]

Well? Did he survive the jump?  I don't believe he did.

On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he'd just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.

Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?

It's a mystery, frankly. We've run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.

Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely. And we have reignited the case—thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing.

A few things to keep in mind, according to Special Agent Carr:

    * Cooper was no expert skydiver. "We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," says Special Agent Carr. "We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve chute was only for training and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked."
    * The hijacker had no help on the ground, either. To have utilized an accomplice, Cooper would've needed to coordinate closely with the flight crew so he could jump at just the right moment and hit the right drop zone. But Cooper simply said, "Fly to Mexico," and he had no idea where he was when he jumped. There was also no visibility of the ground due to cloud cover at 5,000 feet.
    * We have a solid physical description of Cooper. "The two flight attendants who spent the most time with him on the plane were interviewed separately the same night in separate cities and gave nearly identical descriptions," says Carr. "They both said he was about 5'10" to 6', 170 to 180 pounds, in his mid-40s, with brown eyes. People on the ground who came into contact with him also gave very similar descriptions." 

And what of some of the names pegged as Cooper? None have panned out. Duane Weber, who claimed to be Cooper on his deathbed, was ruled out by DNA testing (we lifted a DNA sample from Cooper's tie in 2001). Kenneth Christiansen, named in a recent magazine article, didn't match the physical description and was a skilled paratrooper. Richard McCoy, who died in 1974, also didn't match the description and was at home the day after the hijacking having Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utah, an unlikely scenario unless he had help.

As many agents before him, Carr thinks it highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump. "Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open."

[Razgovory]

Jumping out of an airplane with a the parachute sewn close does make it harder to survive.

[CountDeMoney]

Don't forget, a boy found some of the $20 bills positively identified from Cooper's haul on the bank of the Columbia River in 1980.
Quite frankly, where he jumped is such a remote wilderness, his body would most likely never be found even if he had jumped yesterday.

[Razgovory]

Don't forget, a boy found some of the $20 bills positively identified from Cooper's haul on the bank of the Columbia River in 1980.
Quite frankly, where he jumped is such a remote wilderness, his body would most likely never be found even if he had jumped yesterday.

Yeah, it took a year to find that Fosset guy and he had a whole airplane with him.  And he it was in the desert.

[dps]

Don't forget, a boy found some of the $20 bills positively identified from Cooper's haul on the bank of the Columbia River in 1980.

That's the only real evidence either way that I'm aware of.  The conditions that he jumped in, and him not being an experienced skydiver, means that he'd have to have been lucky to survive, but aren't evidence that he didn't.  The money found on the riverbank means that either

A) he didn't make it out alive,

B) he made it, but lost all or some of his ill-gotten gains on the way, or

C) he made it, and deliberately "lost" some of the money to make it look like he didn't survive.

I would consider A the most likely of those.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

He's actually Roman Polanski.

[Jaron]

If that was true there'd have been a trail of 20 dollar bills back to his cabin to lure the stray teenager camper to Camp Polanski.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

If that was true there'd have been a trail of 20 dollar bills back to his cabin to lure the stray teenager camper to Camp Polanski.

how do you know there wasn't? maybe if they find the cabin, they'll find the loot and the skeletons of his sex slaves that he forgot to feed before skipping the country. Also I tthink it's pretty obvious Polanski was also the Lindbergh baby.

[Agelastus]

Fuck's sake, can we not have Polanski polluting every thread!

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Fuck's sake, can we not have Polanski polluting every thread!

only if you get rid of yr dorky avatar.

[Razgovory]

Story has come up again.  FBI says they have a new lead.

[Ideologue]

D.B. Cooper was Adam West.  We've known this for twelve years.

[Caliga]

I read an article about the new lead, but I don't buy it.  I agree with Money that Cooper didn't survive the jump, and his skeleton is probably in the middle of some vast wilderness, where animals have long since scattered the bones by now.

[Eddie Teach]

only if you get rid of yr dorky avatar.

Seconded.

[Warspite]

He said "Fly to Mexico", but jumped out over the Pacific northwest?