This week we’re going over the famous case of D.B. Cooper. I love this one, this is going to be a good one. The dude with the glasses, I love all the video reenactments of it too, he always gets the glasses. Surprisingly, when I was doing research for this, a lot of people don’t know about this. It’s probably just maybe people of our generation, and now the young bucks are like, who is D.B. Cooper? Even my wife didn’t know about it, I was so disappointed.

This is a case that the FBI referred to as one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history. The day is Wednesday, November 24th, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving. A man by the name of Dan Cooper bought a $20 one-way ticket, and he paid cash. Good old days of flying, seriously. He got on a flight for Northwest Orient Airlines.

He was flying from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. It’s the shortest flight on the planet, a 17-minute flight. The man had a plan. Dan Cooper was described as being in his mid-40s, wearing a black business suit, a black rain overcoat, a white shirt, and a black tie. He’s like Neo. I picture him as a hipster, the tie is flat, a black skinny tie, got like a cool look. The guy had a dark briefcase and a paper bag.

Before the plane took off, because this is back in the day you could still order drinks, this guy ordered a bourbon and a soda. He was sitting in seat 18C. What a legend, a bourbon and a soda before this. After the plane had taken off, a little after 3:00 p.m., Cooper handed the stewardess a note. At first she put it in her pocket without looking at it, but then Cooper said, “Miss, you better look at that note, I have a bomb.”

So he told her that the bomb was in the briefcase, and he asked her to sit next to him. Nobody else on the plane is like, this is totally normal. I would assume that she did a double take. Back in the day the stewardesses were hot, they got hit on a lot for sure. So this is the mad-man era, he’s got a bourbon, he’s trying to Thanksgiving. He opens the briefcase and shows her the dynamite sticks. It’s got a bunch of wire, it’s kind of ghetto, it’s like a Molotov, 1971. It’s not like a C4 or a nuclear weapon. And this is before any security in the airport, obviously.

After that, Cooper asked the stewardess to write down what he was saying and to take it to the captain. So he said, “I want $200,000.” That’s such a small amount, but I bet with 1971 inflation it’s probably about a million. Keep in mind he also was planning to jump, so you’ve got to carry it, you’re not going to ask for ten million, it’s heavy. Isn’t there an Austin Powers joke about that, where it’s “I want a million dollars” and it’s super unimpressive?

So he says, “I want $200,000 by 5:00 p.m. in cash, put it in a knapsack.” What the heck is a knapsack? It’s a sack that you nap. He says, “I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes,” so he’s got four, just to be super prepared. He’s probably asking for that so they can’t mess with the chutes. With four of them, they can’t fool with them, exactly. What if he’s going to take some hostages? What’s the difference between a front pack and a back pack? Well, one goes off the front, hence the name.

He also said, “When we land I want a fuel truck ready to refuel,” and he says no funny stuff or I’ll do the job. No funny business. So it sounds like he is going to land, get his money, and take off. There were 36 people on the plane, by the way. Here’s one strange detail: Cooper asked for the $200,000 in only $20 bills. Maybe the feds don’t have the 20s on lockdown yet at this time.

So the flight landed in Seattle, and then Cooper exchanged the 36 passengers. The note goes up to the pilots, here’s what I want when we land. So when they land, the 36 passengers get off the plane, and then the money and the parachutes come on. He let them off first, which is another weird thing, this guy. He still has a couple of hostages because the pilots didn’t get off. He kept the crew, a couple of crew members too.

So the plane takes off, they’re headed for Mexico City. Then he asked for the plane to stay below 10,000 feet. He wants to jump. I looked it up, the average skydiving is 15,000, this guy planned it. The scariest thing about skydiving is not jumping out, it’s just being in the plane, because I’m strapped to a very large man and he’s like, “Hopefully I packed the chute right.” His buddy is also doing it and I’m like, yeah, I paid you for this.

So during the second half of the flight, Cooper put on a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses with dark rims. A little after 8:00 p.m., when the plane was somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada, Cooper jumped out of the rear doors of the Boeing 727 with two of the parachutes and the money, never to be seen again. Seattle to Reno, that’s a big area to cover. We don’t know exactly where he jumped, we just know it was about that time, about that area.

One thing worth noting is that Cooper took off his black JCPenney clip-on tie before jumping. It was a clip-on. The FBI recovered that, and that’s how they were able to get some DNA off of it. All they found was a tie, that’s it, and the extra two parachutes. He took the front and the back one, and then just left the other one. Maybe it was a ploy, he wanted to confuse them.

So he took a front parachute, a back parachute, and then $200,000 in cash, probably in a duffel bag. He was going heavy. I wonder if that was one bag or two big bags. In 20s, 10 grand in hundreds is about an inch, so 20s you multiply that by five, so about five inches for 10 grand. So 200 grand, you could do it, one bag, easy.

Once they got the DNA sample from the tie, the story jumps into the investigation that was launched to identify this guy calling himself Dan Cooper. The case was called Norjak, and it stands for Northwest hijacking. Basically this goes on for decades, they still haven’t figured it out. The plane was searched intensely for evidence, desperate to find Cooper’s identity.

There was extra interest in these $20 bills because the FBI had released the serial numbers of the bills. They logged all of them. That way, if he goes to a bank to deposit it, they can read the numbers. Can you imagine the guy who had to log them? The worst job in the world, in the 70s getting paid a dollar an hour. There were no scanners back then, he literally wrote it down with a pencil, the eraser is destroyed, it’s a nightmare.

Fast forward to 1980, nine years after the Cooper escape, there’s a young boy that found a rotted package filled with the $20 bills that match the ransom money serial numbers. Why would he turn that in? But they were fried, and he only found $5,800, so it’s not like the whole thing, probably one little stack fell out. He found them on some beach called Tena Bar while making a campfire with his dad.

This is what the little boy said: “I was 8 years old, I was on vacation with my parents on February 10th, 1980. I found $5,800 of the ransom money along the banks of the Columbia River, near Vancouver, Washington.” So maybe it hit the river and went down the river, that’s one theory. He counted that money, 5,800, he counted all of those.

The little boy says they were even going to throw it into the fire for some reason, then his uncle said no. If any of you ever tell me to throw money in the fire, we’re ending the podcast, we’re done. The discovery would ultimately lead to nothing, as the FBI searched everywhere in all these different beaches around the surrounding area and didn’t find anything else. So maybe it was planted. It’s interesting that it was $5,800 in a little pack, if all the money was in a bag, why is this just that much?

So throughout the years, people have been sending letters to the FBI, and some people were confessing, “Yeah, it was me, I am D.B. Cooper.” People just say that. Why would somebody do that? They want to be famous. You’re on your deathbed and you’re going to just make some stuff up, “I killed Tupac.” It’s a weird urge. Obviously not all of them are real, they were all looked into, and none of them turned out to be him.

In fact, in November 1972, just about a year later, two guys, one named Donald Sylvester and the other named Murphy, were taken into federal custody on charges of extortion for impersonating Cooper and selling his tell-all story to the tabloids. That’s so dumb, you go to prison for lying about a story about a dude. That’s the worst way to go to prison.

There were about 800 suspects that were considered over the first five years of the investigation. 800 people they looked into. I would hate to be one of the detectives on this. Also it was only 200 grand. They’re looking like fools because the FBI has to stay on it. Out of the 800 suspects, all but 24 were eliminated from consideration.

One pretty cool fact is that the initials D.B. actually don’t have any relevance to the case. It was one of the reporters that got it wrong, he just posted that out there and it became, it just stuck. It just shows how the media can change history. Welcome to the telephone game. But for sure his description and his sketch, that’s been confirmed, several people on the plane confirmed it. Actually on his ticket it was Dan Cooper, so that’s where the data comes from, that’s the real name.

The charge against Cooper was originally air piracy, what a cool charge, but that only has a 5-year statute of limitations, so he could come back. So they changed it to he violated this thing called the Hobbs Act. They just made up some charge to get him with this other thing. If we default on a credit card, it’s a six-year statute of limitations. I can’t wait to be an air pirate.

Before we jump into the conspiracy theories and suspects, I wanted to point out that the pilot told the officials that he himself chose the route when the plane took off, not Cooper. Cooper did request Mexico City, but the pilot is the one that was taking the actual route. One of the conspiracies is that there was some accomplice with him, maybe the pilot was in on it. But the pilot was cleared, so there was no accomplice there.

So the first suspect I wanted to get into, his name was Richard Floyd McCoy. He sounds like a Western villain. Dick McCoy was one of the favorite suspects of the FBI. Five months after Cooper’s escape, the FBI arrested McCoy for hijacking an airplane. When examined, McCoy’s heist definitely was similar to the Cooper heist. Like Cooper, McCoy hijacked the plane and parachuted off of it. McCoy jumped out of the back rear staircase, just like Cooper.

He was using the same tactics. Like Cooper, McCoy requested four parachutes, which is another thing that’s similar. He was calm through the whole thing, and he passed notes to the flight attendants claiming he had a bomb. So it’s pretty much everything, he’s like a copycat, he might have copied it. McCoy was eventually found out to be home with his family during the Cooper event. Sounds like he watched it on TV and was like, that’s a great idea, he got away with it, I could get away with it. It’s called an alibi.

The second guy, his name was Dwayne Weber. He claimed to be D.B. Cooper on his deathbed, here’s one of those guys. He tells his wife Jo. She claims that in the last hour of his death, Dwayne pulled her close and said, “I have a secret to tell you. I’m Dan Cooper.” I still can’t grasp why somebody would do that if it was not true, because it’s like you have nothing to gain if it’s a lie. But it’s one thing to say something, an opinion about somebody, it’s another thing to say you hijacked a plane and stole the money.

So the wife basically started getting in her head and started reminiscing, going over all these apparently clues, putting these things together. She’s like, well maybe it is him, because apparently he would have nightmares where he would sleep-talk about leaving fingerprints on a plane. No one plays the long game like that, he’s not mapping this out in his sleep. Apparently he also had a knee injury, which he claimed he got jumping out of a plane.

Then apparently his handwriting was reportedly found in a library book about D.B. Cooper. That’s how they got him, the library card. This guy also supposedly took the wife to the spot where the money was found, before it was found, that’s what she says. But apparently the FBI looked into it all and basically dismissed it. One day, when we have twelve billion listeners, I want to get somebody from the FBI on here to find out how many people falsely confess.

Let’s get into number three, the final suspect, his name was Kenneth Christiansen. The theory began when Lyle Christiansen, the brother of Kenneth, saw an episode of Unsolved Mysteries and became convinced that his brother was D.B. Cooper. Lyle made a deathbed confession that his brother Kenneth was the guy, D.B. Cooper. This is what he said: “There’s something you should know, but I cannot tell you.” That’s all he said.

That was his confession. There’s no facts, there’s no leads. And this is one of the top three guys, so that tells you how little they had. This guy apparently jumped out of nowhere and disappeared. So let’s move on to the last theory. This comes from Special Agent Larry Carr, an FBI agent. He thinks that D.B. Cooper did not survive the fall. A lot of people think that, but here’s why it’s super probable.

He says we originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper. There is a theory out there that this guy was a military parachuter, a Navy SEAL, like Jason Bourne. If you’re in the FBI, you have to narrow it down by category, it’s a process of elimination to go from ten million people. If you are an ex-military guy, you’re going to act different than civilian Joe, and this guy’s going to be off the grid. But after all the investigation, they concluded that it’s simply not true, in other words, they don’t know.

A couple of reasons why he thinks this: Cooper jumped carrying two parachutes, but only one of them was a functioning parachute. The other one was a training parachute, apparently it was sewn shut, so he couldn’t have used it. So he had to use the other one, but the other one was a military chute, the kind you can’t steer, it just breaks your fall, you’re going wherever you’re going. It’s that old paratrooper style.

Agent Carr was saying that no experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch black, in the rain, with 200 mph winds in his face. This guy was wearing nothing special, a black suit, not like he was ready to live out in the woods. You’ve got to remember where this guy jumped from, that big area, it’s basically a big wooded area, there’s nothing there, it’s the Pacific Northwest. No visibility, all mountains, those trees will impale you, those trees are no joke. There was cloud cover and he’s jumping in the dark, can’t steer, can’t see.

So the theory just says the guy fell somewhere, died, and they couldn’t find him, and that’s that. But here’s the weird part: they never found the bills, they never found the parachute, they obviously never found him. He could be dead somewhere, but still, it’s been 50 years, you’ve got to find something. They were up there with the choppers looking, and they never found the parachute, any sort of fragment or garment or anything.

So the FBI searched for D.B. Cooper for decades, one of the longest, most exhaustive investigations in history. As of 2011 the FBI case file covered more than a thousand suspects. So they basically just closed the deal, now it’s done, they give up. It went on for 45 years, and they finally gave up and closed it in 2016. I bet the government spent a million dollars on this investigation, for a $200,000 heist.

D.B. Cooper might be listening to this. If he was 40 in ’71, that means he’d be 91 years old now. Odds are he’s not around. So Jorge, what do you think happened? I think he got away with it. You’ve got to think, this is 1971, there’s not a lot of technology like we have now, no facial recognition. They were under a false name, and he originally said take me to Mexico City, so maybe in his mind he’s like, I’m going to go retire in Mexico. 200 grand in Mexico in the 70s, he’s a bajillionaire.

What’s crazy is he walked through security with a suitcase full of dynamite. There was no security, you just walk up to the gate. Remember when you used to go meet your family at the gate? That’s going to be in the history books, 200 years from now they’ll say they used to meet their family at the gate, can you believe it. I think that guy got impaled by a pine tree and died, and then nature got him. If he didn’t die on impact, he’s in the middle of nowhere, money doesn’t make fires and get you food.

Okay, let’s say since they haven’t found any of the evidence, maybe he didn’t land in a tree, got down and said, “Yeah, I did it,” and then died in some ravine, and some of the money is out there with him, probably disintegrated. Then the 5,800 they found just fell off, flew out naturally from the knapsack. So then if he did survive, he didn’t even have any money. Maybe he passes through the river and some cash falls out, it floats downstream and goes up and they find it there, but then he dies of nature. He could have broken his leg, got stuck, and eventually infection kills you.

I think we underestimate how much space there is. Like in the Amazon there was a giant massive civilization, and they’ve only found one of the things, but there’s a thing called LIDAR, they shoot a radar signal down into the forest base, and there are hundreds of structures. There were millions of people there. You walk through the jungle, you can’t find it. But this is one of the biggest cases ever, they were really trying to find this guy, making the FBI look like idiots. They at least knew kind of where to look, a basic grid. So nothing in 45 years, but who’s looking through the forest now? No one cares that much anymore.

Hear me out: he’s a smart guy, he clearly planned this out. What if before he jumps, he just throws a little brick out, like a deflector, to throw them off? That’s why it’s 5,800, he’s like, I could part with 5,800, and throws it off and then dips out. It’s not a bad idea, that’s very smart, he planned the whole thing out. But I kind of feel like he died, I’m on the same page, I feel like he hit one side of the mountain. The whole thing that messes it up for me is that the kid found the money ten years later. There’s got to be more story there that we don’t even know.

When they write down all the serial numbers, are those tracked? Like once it gets deposited into the bank, then it gets flagged. But back in those days they would only actually check a large deposit, they wouldn’t check if you deposit one $20 bill, they’re not checking it against the FBI. Now it’s digital, you can scan the picture and it’ll automatically cross-reference it, but back then they had to physically read and match the numbers. You’d only do it in a suspicious circumstance, a guy trying to deposit $100,000, maybe we should look at the bills.

If he was smart, he would have done small $900 deposits over time, and they’d be none the wiser. So let’s say he makes it to Mexico with 194,200, he goes to a hotel to celebrate, they’re not checking him. I watched a documentary on this recently on Netflix, it was this guy who was convinced it was a certain guy, and he basically stalked him for a year. He thinks it’s in present time, the last 10 years. He’s so convinced, it’s him, and they do hidden cameras and go up to the guy, “It’s you, isn’t it,” poking the guy over and over, and he’s like, please leave me alone.

I dig that he’s so confident, but at the same time I don’t really see much evidence. That poor guy. I spent like six hours watching this, and I was like, what am I watching, this is a waste of my life. It was mainly about him parked in front of his boat. We should do some stupid stuff and get on Netflix, it’s that easy.

In summary, I’m torn a little bit on this one. I think he 100% died. I think he could have made it, he could have, but he didn’t, he died. D.B. Cooper, man, if you’re out there, you’re 91, 92. Twenty bucks, said there’s a bomb, in the middle of the forest, found a suit, and dipped out. What a great story. He didn’t hurt anybody. He’s not a dick, he’s actually a pretty solid dude, I’d love to have a beer with him. If you’re still alive, Mr. Cooper, we’d love to have you.