dan cooper

Chris Knight's avatar

Two weeks after the fortieth anniversary of his dastardly deed, it looks like the mystery of Dan Cooper might have been cracked at last.

And if true, it means that Cooper did survive his crazy stunt after all!

In the image above, you see one Lynn Doyle Cooper on the left and on the right, one of the sketches of Dan Cooper (or “D.B. Cooper” as he was erroneously referred to be by early press reports) made from descriptions given by passengers and crew of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305: the flight that Cooper hijacked on Thanksgiving 1971.

Marla Cooper, niece of Lynn Doyle Cooper, has come forward to tell the FBI that her uncle arrived at her home on the day after the skyjacking. He was severely injured and claimed that he had been in a car crash.

But what’s more, the FBI is apparently close to matching ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Forty years ago tonight, a man calling himself Dan Cooper arrived at Portland International Airport and purchased a ticket for Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305: a short flight to Seattle.

Shortly after taking off, “Cooper” passed a note to the stewardess: “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.”

So began the tale of what has become one of the most brazen and legendary (some have even said heroic) crimes in American history…

Cooper (often referred to as “D.B. Cooper”) showed what he purported to be a bomb (some red cylinders in his briefcase that later turned out to be harmless), demanded $200,000 in unmarked bills, and four parachutes: two loaded in the front of the plane and two in the back. After the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma the demands were met and ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Sixty-six years after he disappeared into the prisons of the Soviet Union, new information has been discovered about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who became one of the most revered heroes of World War II. At the height of the Holocaust, Wallenberg was able to rescue and shelter tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews who would have otherwise been dispatched to the concentration camps. When the Soviets liberated Budapest early in 1945, Wallenberg was taken into custody by the Russians on suspicion of being a spy for the United States. His fate remains unknown to this day. The Soviets reported two years later that Wallenberg had died in his cell… but there are reports that he was seen alive as late as 1987.

Now two researchers who have studied the case for decades have announced that they have discovered old Soviet files pertaining ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Remember that parachute that was found in the state of Washington last week, that many were speculating might have belonged to notorious skyjacker Dan Cooper (more often known as D.B. Cooper, but I’ve always called him by the name he used for his ticket)? The discovery aroused a lot of memories about the guy and spawned even more theories about what might have happened to him. Now the FBI is saying that the parachute is NOT Cooper’s. It’s not the right material or design, and the feds are now saying that it was from a military plane crash in 1945 and that the 1946 date stamped on the ‘chute is the “repacking date”.

So the question is raised anew: What did happen to the parachute that Cooper used in his 1971 caper?

I will admit: I’m kinda glad that last week’s find is not Cooper’s, because it just ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

It was Thanksgiving eve
Back in 1971
He had on a pair of sunglasses
There wasn’t any sun
He used the name Dan Cooper
When he paid for the flight
That was going to Seattle
On that cold and nasty night

— “The Ballad of D.B. Cooper”
by Chuck Brodsky

More than 36 years after Dan Cooper bailed out of the back of a 727 into stormy night and American folklore, a parachute has been found in Washington state that the FBI is speculating could have been used by the legendary skyjacker.

It was on the night before Thanksgiving in 1971 that a man calling himself “Dan Cooper” (more often erroneously called “D.B. Cooper”) boarded a Northwest Orient flight in Portland, Oregon bound for Seattle. Shortly after takeoff Cooper told a stewardess that he had a bomb, and gave instructions to have $200,000 in unmarked bills and four parachutes ready ...

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