Really - a man named Dan Cooper, aka D.B. Cooper, pulled off one of the most amazing heists of the twentieth century.
On November 24, 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper bought a plane ticket from Portland to Seattle. He boarded Northwest Orient Airlines flight #305 and settled into seat 18C. This flight usually took about 30 minutes, and there was nothing to indicate that the trip would be anything out of the ordinary. At first, "Dan Cooper" seemed like an ordinary passenger. His black tie and white shirt indicated that he was a business traveler, an impression reinforced by his briefcase. Like many airline passengers of the time, Cooper lit a cigarette and ordered a drink - a bourbon and soda - which he calmly drank as the plane took off.
Cooper stopped a flight attendant named Florence Schaffner. He handed her a piece of paper. Schaffner was used to businessmen flirting with her, so she assumed the note was just a phone number and slipped it into her pocket. Cooper leaned forward - Miss,he said. "You'd better take a look at that note. I have a bomb."
Schaffner unfolded the note. The chilling statement was written in felt-tip pen, all in capital letters: "I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you to sit next to me." Shafner sank into the chair next to Cooper and asked to see the bomb. Cooper calmly opened the briefcase. Inside, the flight attendant saw a whole tangle of wires, a battery, and red colored sticks that looked like dynamite.
-I want $200,000 by 5 p.m.," Cooper said calmly. - Cash. Put it in the backpack. I want two rear parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want the gas tanker ready to fill up. No tricks, or I'll do what I have to do."
While the plane circled in the air for about two hours, officials on Earth tried to meet D.B. Cooper's demands. The plane landed in Seattle at 17:39. About that time, airline officials approached Cooper with money and parachutes.
The first two parachutes were provided by McHord Air Force Base. Upon receiving them, Cooper demanded two more. Perhaps the first parachutes would not have suited his plan - they were military-grade, and would open after a 60-meter drop.
But the second set of parachutes were sport parachutes, brought from a nearby parachute field. They allowed the jumper to fly in free flight for at least a kilometer before the parachute opened.
By this point, the hijacker had released 36 passengers as well as two crew members, including Florence Schaffner. D.B. Cooper then told the pilot that he wanted to fly to Mexico City. But the plane did not have enough fuel for the 3,500 km flight to its destination, so Cooper arranged with the pilot to make a refueling stop in Reno on the way.
As the plane took off around 7:40 p.m., several Air Force planes surreptitiously followed. Cooper sent the crew to the cockpit as the airplane became very cold. The four crew members on board later said the temperature dropped below freezing.
Then at 8:00 p.m., a warning light in the cockpit illuminated, notifying them that the rear gangway had been lowered. About 15 minutes later, the crew members noticed a sudden upward movement from the rear of the airplane. They sat huddled together, freezing, for nearly two hours.
After landing in Reno around 10:15 p.m., the plane was immediately surrounded by local police and the FBI. They entered the plane and searched it from nose to tail. But there was no sign of D.B. Cooper or the stolen money. Authorities were certain that the hijacker could not have exited the plane on the ground undetected. Cooper left behind two parachutes, his black clip-on tie and a riddle.
Cooper vanished into thin air.
The other known suspect was Robert Rackstraw. A former Special Forces paratrooper, Rackstraw undoubtedly had the skills to survive jumping from an airplane in the dark. The FBI officially declared him a suspect in 1979, but some are skeptical of his innocence to this day.
In 2001, the FBI obtained a DNA sample from Cooper's tie and used it to eliminate another suspect, Duane Weber, who on his deathbed claimed to be D.B. Cooper. Many years later, another man named Kenneth Christiansen was named in a magazine article as a potential Cooper. But he did not fit the description of the appearance, although he was an experienced paratrooper.
In 2016, the FBI announced it would stop actively investigating the case.
it's quite possible that D.B. Cooper simply didn't survive his jump - and took all the secrets with him to his grave. The world may never know for sure, especially since the investigation is no longer underway.
Even if the case is ever solved, perhaps the end result will be far more unpredictable than one might expect.
Seattle investigator Larry Carr later said - we thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, maybe even a paratrooper," Carr said in 2007. - A few years later, we concluded that wasn't true. No experienced skydiver would jump in the pitch black of night, in the rain, with 200-mile-an-hour winds in his face, wearing moccasins and a raincoat. It was too risky."
