Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. We're moving along on our true crime
Speaker 1: playlist with an episode we recorded live in Seattle in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, on the unsolved mystery of dB Cooper. Someone
Speaker 1: using that alias hijacked a plane flying from Portland to
Speaker 1: Seattle in nineteen seventy one and jumped out mid air,
Speaker 1: making off with two hundred thousand dollars. People still float
Speaker 1: suspects today, and they usually say the case is solved,
Speaker 1: but the FBI stopped investigating back in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: they consider it unsolved. This one is pretty fun, so
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it, and if you like this
Speaker 1: live show, come see us when we hit the road
Speaker 1: again in twenty twenty six Welcome to Stuff you should
Speaker 1: know from HowStuffWorks dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we
Speaker 1: are here live at the beautiful Neptune Thiet and beautiful
Speaker 1: Seattle and beautiful Washington. Thank you, guys, phenomenal.
Speaker 2: I'm already a sweaty mess, so that must mean we're
Speaker 2: on stage.
Speaker 3: We are off to a great start.
Speaker 4: That must mean I'm awake.
Speaker 3: Or sleeping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I sweat my sleep too big time. It's gross.
Speaker 3: I'm always wiping his brow.
Speaker 2: What movie we're going to watch tonight in the hotel?
Speaker 3: Is a spy out yet on?
Speaker 4: And we can leave the seat up on the toilet?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't do that.
Speaker 2: I don't either because I pee sitting down because I'm
Speaker 2: forty five years old. Do you really well, yeah, I
Speaker 2: might as well get into it.
Speaker 4: What you do too?
Speaker 2: Why we never talked about this. I started being sitting
Speaker 2: down during the middle of the night, Get up because
Speaker 2: if it just makes sense, because you don't want to
Speaker 2: wake up too much and you don't want to like
Speaker 2: make a mess. And then I think I just hit
Speaker 2: a certain age where I was like, it's just nicer
Speaker 2: to sit down. I don't need to prove anything to anyone.
Speaker 3: Huh, you landed your lady, You're all set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I stand when I pee off my deck at night,
Speaker 2: I don't do that.
Speaker 3: I live in a condo complex.
Speaker 4: They would if I would be it's not good, man.
Speaker 1: I feel like an enormous weight's just been lifted off of.
Speaker 2: I can't believe that you're not even forty years old
Speaker 2: yet and you pee sitting down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start the podcast.
Speaker 2: Are there other guys out there that pee sitting down?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: We're starting a movement, baby, that's right.
Speaker 2: Your ladies will appreciate it. Oddly, I pooped standing up.
Speaker 2: This is so off the rails already.
Speaker 1: Like in conversation. Let's be sitting there talking to me.
Speaker 1: You're like you're pooping right now, aren't you. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's more efficient this way, I get more done.
Speaker 4: We should probably start over.
Speaker 3: We should.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get off stage and come back out. I
Speaker 1: can't believe what we've been talking about here this evening already. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's all just take it down a notch. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're poking casting. We're about to start podcasting. I
Speaker 1: think I already started the podcast, oh god, which means
Speaker 1: that's gonna be on like the thing.
Speaker 4: We That's why I said we should start over.
Speaker 3: Okay, it stays here everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all our secret. I think five hundred people.
Speaker 1: Okay, hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We are live here at
Speaker 1: the Beautiful Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker 4: Man Times two that's an in joke. People will be
Speaker 4: like even better than what.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's more crossover between our fans
Speaker 1: and Howard Stern than our fans and Mariners fans.
Speaker 2: I think, boy, there's a Venn diagram out there that's
Speaker 2: confusing me already.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Chuck, yes, this is a little bit of history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're going to go back in the way back machine.
Speaker 1: That's right, Dud's If you listen to the PR Live podcast,
Speaker 1: you know that, like the wayback machine is imaginary. So
Speaker 1: settled down.
Speaker 4: They heard that live.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was a good one too.
Speaker 2: There are PR professionals here because they emailed me today.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, I can tell that's the call of
Speaker 1: the PR professional call. So we're going back to a cold, stormy, rainy,
Speaker 1: pretty nasty Thanksgiving in nineteen seventy one, and the story
Speaker 1: begins at PDX Portland Airport and a man walked into PDX,
Speaker 1: took a picture of his shoe on the carpet, and
Speaker 1: then walked along to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket desk.
Speaker 1: That's right, And he walked up and he said, Hi,
Speaker 1: I am really interested in finding more about flight three
Speaker 1: oh five, the flight to Seattle. Would that happen to
Speaker 1: be a Boeing seven to twenty seven Dash one hundred
Speaker 1: airplane that you guys are going to fly on that route?
Speaker 1: And the ticket agentment yes, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it is, and the man said that it's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Here's my twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one ticket please, for a one way ticket between
Speaker 1: Portland and Seattle, a board flight three oh five. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And she was like, that's a weird question, but I
Speaker 2: guess he's very specific about what kind of plane he
Speaker 2: likes to fly on.
Speaker 1: Plus, it's nineteen seventy and I'm in no position to
Speaker 1: publicly question a man, so I'll just go along with this.
Speaker 4: It's very true.
Speaker 2: And it was twenty dollars for that flight. This is
Speaker 2: a very seventies podcast. So they handed him as a
Speaker 2: little ticket voucher and said just filled this out, sir, uh,
Speaker 2: don't need to see ID because it's nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Just tell us who you are or whoever you want
Speaker 2: us to think you are. And he wrote down in
Speaker 2: big block letters in a red ink pin, Dan Cooper.
Speaker 3: You know where we're going with this, son.
Speaker 1: So the Boeing seven twenty seven Dash one hundred is
Speaker 1: every single person in this room knows is a smallish plane.
Speaker 1: It's not the biggest plane in the Boeing fleet. It's
Speaker 1: not the smallest either, but it's the only one that
Speaker 1: had an af staircase. Right, And this particular flight flying
Speaker 1: aboard this Boeing seven twenty seven DASH one hundred flight
Speaker 1: three zero five had a crew of five aboard. There
Speaker 1: was Captain William Scott, not Sean William Scott, we figured
Speaker 1: out later on, not Stiffler.
Speaker 3: That would have made zero sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hetty had a former life in the seventies as
Speaker 1: an airline pilot co pilot Robert Radazak. There's a ce
Speaker 1: in there for those of you who like that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And there were three flight attendants. There's a
Speaker 1: head flight attendant who was named Alice Hancock, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and then two I guess regular flight attendants, Tina mucclough,
Speaker 1: who's a hero of ours, and Florence Schaffner.
Speaker 2: I think they called him stewardess's back then to be fair, right,
Speaker 2: But we're forward thinking guys, so we're we're gonna go
Speaker 2: ahead and say flight attendant.
Speaker 3: We don't use the S word.
Speaker 4: You just make well, never mind.
Speaker 1: Never mind, We've done quite enough extraneous stuff for her,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: So Dan Cooper gets on the plane. There's thirty seven
Speaker 2: other passengers because again it was a seventies they didn't
Speaker 2: overbook flights back then, and say I'm sorry you bought
Speaker 2: a ticket, but you really can't fly on this flight.
Speaker 2: Thirty seven passengers, pretty empty, and Dan Cooper seat sits
Speaker 2: in seat eighteen C. They pour him up a bourbon
Speaker 2: in seven up and he lights up a cigarette.
Speaker 3: A Raley brand cigarette.
Speaker 2: Because it's nineteen seventy one, you got smoke on planes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And he looked to be about in his mid forties.
Speaker 2: He was, you know, kind of looked like the men
Speaker 2: of the time, which is to say you either looked
Speaker 2: by nineteen seventy one. He either looked a little more
Speaker 2: like Don Draper, kind of holding on to that fifties look,
Speaker 2: or you look like Charles Manson.
Speaker 4: He looked a little more like Don Draper. Yeah. Had
Speaker 4: the suit had the skinny tie.
Speaker 1: And we should talk a little bit about the suit.
Speaker 1: The suit was a russet colored suit, which was like
Speaker 1: that weird burgundy brown color. It's potato colored it right,
Speaker 1: and it just so happened that he was wearing the
Speaker 1: suit during the one six month period in history where
Speaker 1: you could wear that color suit out in public. So
Speaker 1: he was okay. And then his skinny tie was a
Speaker 1: clip on from J. C. Penny. That's right.
Speaker 2: He had a imitation Mother of Pearl type in. He
Speaker 2: had an overcoat, he had a hat, he had a
Speaker 2: bag kind of like a briefcase, and he had these
Speaker 2: black corn rim sunglasses, dark kind of olive skin.
Speaker 4: Would you say?
Speaker 1: They call him swarthy, which I think is like stewardess
Speaker 1: that's been phased out, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I thought swarthy. I thought that was like a sea captain.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there were swarthy sea captains.
Speaker 2: Because, yeah, because they're out in the sun, so they
Speaker 2: ended up getting olive skinned.
Speaker 1: That's rugged. Okay, you're thinking of the Gordon's fishermen.
Speaker 4: Oh right, Oh he was swarthy.
Speaker 2: Sure, he's swarthy as h So he had he had
Speaker 2: this kind of dark wavy hair, and other than that,
Speaker 2: he was just sort of an unremarkable dude.
Speaker 4: He wanted to blend in right.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, okay, so this guy's sitting in eighteen c
Speaker 1: unremarkable aside from wearing the sunglasses, he's smoking with his
Speaker 1: left hand, says, nothing to do with anything, but we
Speaker 1: just kind of wanted to show off how much research
Speaker 1: we've done on this. And when Florence Schaffner, the flight
Speaker 1: attendant working his area, comes over and gives him his
Speaker 1: bourbon and I think seven up right, yeah, he hands
Speaker 1: her a note. And to Florence Shaffner, she was twenty three,
Speaker 1: she was very pretty. She was at the time a stewardess,
Speaker 1: and this happened to her all the time, like businessmen
Speaker 1: drinking sevens and sevens like past her notes and hit
Speaker 1: on her all the time. So when this guy in
Speaker 1: eighteen C Dan Cooper handed her a note, she took
Speaker 1: the note and just put it in her flight apron
Speaker 1: without looking at it, and turned and walked away with
Speaker 1: all the other notes right over right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from all the men who wanted to rescue her
Speaker 2: from her life.
Speaker 1: Come away with me, it sworethy. And so Dan Cooper
Speaker 1: sees this and he goes, miss, you may want to
Speaker 1: have a look at that note.
Speaker 3: I have a bomb.
Speaker 4: I think you know where we're going with this, dB Cooper.
Speaker 1: You know, when we were coming here today, we were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're really rolling the dice. It's entirely possible that everyone
Speaker 1: here had the dB Cooper case drilled into them from
Speaker 1: like third grade on.
Speaker 4: That's not the case, is no, you didn't study it
Speaker 4: in class.
Speaker 3: It's just a high relief.
Speaker 1: I told that to you, MEI, and Yumy was like,
Speaker 1: that's so dumb. She's like, do you know everything about
Speaker 1: the burning of Atlanta? And I said no, and she's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't, And they don't know everything about dB Cooper
Speaker 1: and I went back to sleep.
Speaker 2: So this was not the first commercial airplane hijacking. It
Speaker 2: actually the first one was in nineteen forty eight, and
Speaker 2: remarkably between nineteen sixty eight, just three years earlier, in
Speaker 2: the time dB Cooper hijacked this plane, there were one
Speaker 2: hundred commercial hijackings in three years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is not new.
Speaker 2: It was not new, but I remember, like if anyone
Speaker 2: here grew up in like the seventies and stuff, it
Speaker 2: was a thing like planes got hijacked all the time
Speaker 2: because you could bring guns and bombs on planes and
Speaker 2: you didn't need.
Speaker 4: ID and no one cared, right, and they were like, hmm,
Speaker 4: this is weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty much where the FBI was at the time,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen seventy one, they were just starting to
Speaker 1: like get hip to the idea of hijackings being a problem,
Speaker 1: and so their first idea was, well, we'll put an
Speaker 1: air marshal on every flight. And then they looked at
Speaker 1: the schedule of flights in the United States and they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, this may have been a bad idea, but.
Speaker 4: They tried a good idea.
Speaker 1: It was a fine idea if everyone, if like a
Speaker 1: third of the population of the United States were air marshals,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was a good idea.
Speaker 2: It's a good idea if you want one of every
Speaker 2: like three hundred flights with an air markets right.
Speaker 1: Right, and the other two hundred ninety nine open for hijacking. Right.
Speaker 1: So this was they figured out after a few years,
Speaker 1: like why the logistics of American air tragicy.
Speaker 2: Edgar Hoover's idea, by the way, right, he was still
Speaker 2: in charge of the FBI in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he'd been there for about fifty years, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So his idea was air marshalls didn't work, but they
Speaker 1: were still trying it. There was no air marshal on
Speaker 1: flight three zero five, the dB Cooper hijacking flight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like Portland to Seattle. Maybe we should put
Speaker 2: like three air marshals on that one.
Speaker 1: I tried to light and I mean it made sense
Speaker 1: that there would not be an air marshal on that
Speaker 1: flight because most hijackings were crazed loan gunmen with a
Speaker 1: handgun who wanted to be taken to Cuba for political reasons. Basically,
Speaker 1: no one flying from PDX to c Tech wanted to
Speaker 1: be taken to Cuba, so there was no reason for
Speaker 1: an air marshal to beyond the flight. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty good bet to not have an air marshal on.
Speaker 1: They just didn't expect TB. Cooper because he was a
Speaker 1: pretty novel person. The idea of a single guy taking
Speaker 1: control of a flight for money with a bomb that
Speaker 1: was new and like our whole conception of mad bomber
Speaker 1: hijacking a flight comes from dB Cooper and Sonny Bono's
Speaker 1: character an Airplane two.
Speaker 2: This is actually I did a little more research between
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight and seventy nine. It's literally referred to
Speaker 2: as the Golden Age of skyjacking. I was talking to
Speaker 2: Josh's like I didn't know that you could have. I
Speaker 2: thought a golden age was about something good. I didn't
Speaker 2: know you could have the golden age of dysentery, right,
Speaker 2: the good old days.
Speaker 1: It was good for the hijackers because they could get
Speaker 1: away with it no problem.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's who wrote that, the Golden age of skyjacking man.
Speaker 2: All right, So Floren Schaeffner, I'm sorry. Shaffer reads the
Speaker 2: note and she says, you know what, give me our
Speaker 2: Cooper says, you know what, give me that note back,
Speaker 2: which is a very key thing because that means they
Speaker 2: won't have a sample of his handwriting. So he asked
Speaker 2: for the note back, and from that point on he
Speaker 2: did not converse.
Speaker 4: Like everything else.
Speaker 2: He had them right down to take to the captain
Speaker 2: so they would have no more like physical evidence of
Speaker 2: his handwriting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only handwriting sample he had was that ticket
Speaker 1: duplicate and it was in block letters, which yeah, Cooper.
Speaker 2: So she sits down and she says, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to know.
Speaker 4: That this is legit, this is for real?
Speaker 2: Can I can I like get a look at that
Speaker 2: bomb that you're talking about?
Speaker 4: Makes sense? And he shows her right, Yeah, he gives
Speaker 4: her a little peak.
Speaker 1: He opened her his bag just enough and she went
Speaker 1: to put her fingers in and he snapped the hut.
Speaker 2: Just like pretty woman. Yeah, yeah, and uh, but she
Speaker 2: sees what you know. She sees red sticks of dynamite
Speaker 2: and a battery and and I guess presumably like an
Speaker 2: alarm clock with two bells on it.
Speaker 1: Right, it's got like a skull and crossbones. It's like
Speaker 1: he says, you die or something.
Speaker 2: Electrical tape is all around it because he watched a
Speaker 2: lot of cartoons and he knows how to make a bomb.
Speaker 1: Well she I mean she bought it. Clearly, she saw
Speaker 1: the bomb and she took down a note. He said,
Speaker 1: take this down. I have a ransom demand. He said,
Speaker 1: I want two hundred thousand dollars by five pm in cash.
Speaker 1: Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes
Speaker 1: and two front parachutes when we land. I want a
Speaker 1: fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or all
Speaker 1: do the job, which is h That was tough talking
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: Again, he wants a lot of cartoons. And that's what
Speaker 2: you say when you mean business. That roughly is about
Speaker 2: one point two million dollars today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's a little low.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna go through a skyjacking.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of work for a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have said, like, if you're gonna ask
Speaker 2: for two hundred grand, ask for three hundred or four hundred,
Speaker 2: that's just me sure, I'm no skyjacker. So this is
Speaker 2: turns out to be the only threat that Dan Cooper
Speaker 2: makes during the entire ordeal.
Speaker 4: He he is this very first note that he gave up.
Speaker 2: So from that point, like I said, he dictated everything else,
Speaker 2: so they could just pass notes back and forth. And
Speaker 2: aside from a couple of conversations with the pilots on
Speaker 2: the cockpit phone from the rear of the plane to
Speaker 2: the cockpit, they didn't have any interaction the pilots whatsoever
Speaker 2: with Danku.
Speaker 1: Right, So they were like almost no help whatsoever during
Speaker 1: the investigation. Right. And then the fact that he asked
Speaker 1: for two parachutes was a stroke of brilliant because it
Speaker 1: did show his hand to the FBI that he was
Speaker 1: going to jump out of the plane with the ransom money.
Speaker 1: But it also said FBI, I'm probably going to make
Speaker 1: a hostage jump with me, so don't tamper with any
Speaker 1: of these parachutes, which if the FBI had would have
Speaker 1: been murder. But we're talking about Jaegar Hoover's FBI, so
Speaker 1: they may have tried just that. So it's pretty smart
Speaker 1: that he asked for two pairs because they didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was going to do.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: So Schaffner takes that ransom note, gives it to Alice Cancock.
Speaker 2: She takes it over to the pilot and the co pilot,
Speaker 2: and well what did they do? Josh, you do a
Speaker 2: great pilot. They called Seatech Airport instead.
Speaker 1: Uh, seatach We just want to advise you on a
Speaker 1: bit of a fiddlestick. So we got going on here
Speaker 1: son and Bono was taking control of the plane. He
Speaker 1: wants two hundred thousand dollars in negotiable American currency by
Speaker 1: five pm.
Speaker 2: Negotiable American currency. Yeah, it's a very weird thing to
Speaker 2: ask for it.
Speaker 1: It was, And so sea Tech was like, we should
Speaker 1: probably call the cops, and the cops said we should
Speaker 1: probably call the FBI.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this was the Seattle Police Department in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, we we don't
Speaker 2: deal with things like this.
Speaker 1: They're like, wait, wait, this guy doesn't want to go
Speaker 1: to Cuba. We don't understand it.
Speaker 2: Like we're literally waiting for John Rambo to wander through town,
Speaker 2: right so we can harass.
Speaker 1: Him just ten more years.
Speaker 4: Wait, that was Oregon, though, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Pretty close? That joke will kill night tomorrow night?
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, Rambo joke, yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember it. So all of a sudden, like there's all
Speaker 1: this crazy energy going on down on the ground, right,
Speaker 1: So the FBI comes in and they're they're trying to
Speaker 1: get the money together. They're like, you, we have an hour.
Speaker 1: You got to give us more time. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't have more time. They're like, okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: we'll get all this stuff together. You guys are gonna
Speaker 1: have to stay up there until we get everything ready
Speaker 1: for you. So the plane is circling SeaTac and they
Speaker 1: told the passengers that the plane was experiencing mechanical problems,
Speaker 1: which I would have had a problem hearing, you know,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have like I think they could have thought
Speaker 1: that through a little more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's experiencing mechanical problems. So we're just gonna keep flying.
Speaker 1: We're gonna stay aloft, see what happens. Captain Scott is
Speaker 1: a gambling man.
Speaker 2: So everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes, so they didn't care.
Speaker 2: They were hooking up in the bathroom.
Speaker 4: This is ninety seventy one.
Speaker 3: It could have been Chuck.
Speaker 1: You would have been like I told you, we should
Speaker 1: have driven.
Speaker 3: It's nothing.
Speaker 4: Could have been to Portland.
Speaker 1: So they had to circle for an hour, and they
Speaker 1: ended up telling the passengers, oh, we just need to
Speaker 1: burn off some gas and everything will be fine, right,
Speaker 1: And the passengers apparently were totally unaware that they've been hijacked.
Speaker 1: That's how cool Cooper was, right, But one passenger later said,
Speaker 1: I had a pretty good feeling we'd been hijacked, and
Speaker 1: the press pool was like, shut up, go cut off
Speaker 1: the day he was that next person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was at that game. Yeah, I was
Speaker 4: at that game seven. It was all right, he's that dude,
Speaker 4: you know, Oh yeah, any remarkable event. Yeah, I was there.
Speaker 1: It was it was I knew it was a hijacking.
Speaker 1: You really had me stumped there for a second. I'm
Speaker 1: roll play game seven. So SeaTac is circling, right, They're circling,
Speaker 1: circling an hour killing time, but just burning off gas.
Speaker 1: And Florence Schaffner has gone away to take the note
Speaker 1: to Alice han Cockley takes notes to the cockpit. She's
Speaker 1: on the relay team basically now, and dB Cooper says, well,
Speaker 1: Dan Cooper says, hey, Tina Mucklow, why don't you sit
Speaker 1: beside me for a while. And she did, and she
Speaker 1: ended up kind of taking a bit of a seat
Speaker 1: in history, if you will feel allow us that terrible analogy.
Speaker 1: And she sat down and she got She spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time with Dan Cooper and they ended up chatting,
Speaker 1: and she said Dan Cooper kept a level head during
Speaker 1: a very tense situation, like the whole time. And they
Speaker 1: chatted about things like Tina Mucklow's home state, which was Minnesota.
Speaker 1: They talked about a nearby Air Force base and how
Speaker 1: long it took to drive to SeaTac It was like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or something. Thing. You guys can actually probably
Speaker 1: guess the air Force base. We don't know, uh that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then they also at one point he looked out
Speaker 1: the window and he said, it looks like we're over Tacoma.
Speaker 1: So all this would indicate a lot to the FBI
Speaker 1: later on right that this guy was maybe a local.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of curious. Could anyone here recognize Tacoma
Speaker 2: from an airplane?
Speaker 1: From an airplane or an airplane?
Speaker 2: Why do they have a huge like field cut out
Speaker 2: of grass? It says Tacoma corn.
Speaker 4: What are they saying?
Speaker 3: I think they're saying corn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the smell.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I knew that.
Speaker 4: I knew this would go over well here.
Speaker 2: By the way, we didn't mention they diverted all the
Speaker 2: other flights away from from SeaTac at the time because
Speaker 2: they wanted that to be the only plane in the area.
Speaker 2: And to me, the most remarkable part of this whole
Speaker 2: story is one of the other planes in the air,
Speaker 2: the dude, the pilot gets on and tells everyone else
Speaker 2: on that plane what's going on.
Speaker 1: Well, he like he patched into the calm link between
Speaker 1: flight three zero five and SeaTac for the listening enjoyment
Speaker 1: of the passengers on his flight. It's insane.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm sorry, we're delayed, but here's what's going
Speaker 2: on on another flight nearby.
Speaker 1: A right to sit back and listen to the dulcet
Speaker 1: tones of a skyjacking.
Speaker 4: Again. It was the seventies. Everyone was drinking. They're like,
Speaker 4: this is remarkable. Thank god, it's not us.
Speaker 3: Everything's better when you're drinking.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: So he recognizes Tacoma, which apparently everyone in this room
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, we were impressed by that. But it's nothing.
Speaker 4: Occasionally went spells like coma. So all of these are
Speaker 4: sort of clues.
Speaker 2: Though, if he recognized Tacoma a new by the air
Speaker 2: Force base, that clearly maybe the guy's kind of from
Speaker 2: the area might be a clue. Later on, So Mucklaw
Speaker 2: at this point asked Dan Cooper. She said, do you
Speaker 2: have a grudge against our airlines, sir? And he said, no, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I don't have a grudge against your airline. I just
Speaker 2: have a grudge critic right. She was like yeah, like
Speaker 2: they did.
Speaker 1: So back on the ground, the FBI is like going crazy,
Speaker 1: The local cops are going crazy. Everybody's going crazy trying
Speaker 1: to get two hundred grand in cash together. Turns out
Speaker 1: that was the easiest part of this whole thing. So
Speaker 1: Northwest Orients president at the time, Donald nyrop.
Speaker 4: Any Nyrops in the house.
Speaker 3: No, he would have been in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: But I'm convinced that someone in here is going to
Speaker 2: be related to someone in this story.
Speaker 4: Oh I am too, Yeah, I'm just.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for somebody stay would be like that's a.
Speaker 2: Lie, or for someone to stand up and say I
Speaker 2: am dB Cooper. Oh yeah, that would be amazing. We'd
Speaker 2: have to come up with a different show tomorrow, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: or just bring him along.
Speaker 3: Sure, and here he is everybody.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Donald Nyrop, the president of Northwest Orient, He's like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: we'll totally pay that. We have a huge insurance policy
Speaker 1: on this kind of thing. Apparently Northwest had to pay
Speaker 1: like twenty grand and their insurance company paid out one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty gram. And they tapped c First Bank,
Speaker 1: which had a downtown branch. And in this downtown branch
Speaker 1: they had a really great idea. They had stacks of
Speaker 1: twenty dollars bills in varying amounts so that it looked
Speaker 1: like a nervous teller ran into the back and like
Speaker 1: put some twenties together in the event of a bank robbery, right,
Speaker 1: and then would come out and be like, here you go,
Speaker 1: a bank robbery. You're getting off scott free. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that every serial number on every one of
Speaker 1: those twenties had been recorded. So it worked for bank robberies,
Speaker 1: worked just as well for sky jackings as well, so
Speaker 1: they had the money, no problems. The parachutes were just
Speaker 1: very difficult.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was actually the harder part. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen seventy one, the big recreational skydiving craze
Speaker 2: had not yet taken hold. It happened here and there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but uh, the manager at Sea Tax said, I got
Speaker 2: a guy. Don't you worry. He's got an operation called
Speaker 2: Seattle sky Sports in itsaquah.
Speaker 1: Anybody from Mesqua shout out to Ishaquah.
Speaker 2: Why do you call it Seattle sky Sports? Did they
Speaker 2: mooch off of Seattle?
Speaker 1: Yeah, off of the teat of Seattle.
Speaker 2: He's like, I gotta guy. His name is Earl Kasi,
Speaker 2: and he agreed to help. Little side note Earl Kassi
Speaker 2: was actually murdered three years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently has to bring them down.
Speaker 4: We're all having too much fun. Uh. He got killed
Speaker 4: by a blow to the head in his garage.
Speaker 2: But apparently you know some cooperists that are still active
Speaker 2: today on the internet, You know these conspiracy dudes that.
Speaker 4: His everyone did it. I love that.
Speaker 2: Everybody see, you can all be conspiracy theorist hat, although
Speaker 2: women can't be because they're too smart. It's always guys,
Speaker 2: did you know so Earl Cossi was killed? But they
Speaker 2: think it has nothing to do with it, even though
Speaker 2: cooperists are like, are you sure they're trying to silence
Speaker 2: some man?
Speaker 4: Exactly? So very well timed.
Speaker 2: So Cassi called his his operation and to the to
Speaker 2: the dude working there and said, hey, can you get
Speaker 2: together these parachutes and need two fronts and two backs?
Speaker 2: The guy said sure, ruh, And in his haste he
Speaker 2: packs three regular shoots, well, not three regular, he packs
Speaker 2: one military shoot, two regular shoots and one thing that
Speaker 2: I still don't understand, called a dummy shoot right that
Speaker 2: doesn't open.
Speaker 1: No. So, like if you were working at Seattle Sky
Speaker 1: Sports in Issaqua, you get really, really sick of having
Speaker 1: to fold up the whole parachute every time somebody was training,
Speaker 1: throwing out the pilot shoot, which is just the little
Speaker 1: shoot that comes out first and pulls the bigger shoot out. Right,
Speaker 1: if all you're trying to do is throw that part out,
Speaker 1: you don't need the bigger shoot. So if you are
Speaker 1: an employee, at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaqua. You may
Speaker 1: have the idea that you should just sew the bigger
Speaker 1: part shut. There should be no parachute that has like
Speaker 1: the most important part sewn shut right.
Speaker 4: Every parachute should open right.
Speaker 1: But this is the thing, and they're called dummy shoots.
Speaker 1: The thing is everybody's like, oh, we got it covered,
Speaker 1: we'llt's put a big X on it, and everybody will
Speaker 1: know it's a dummy shoot. So one of these dummy
Speaker 1: shoots made it into the four shoots that were delivered
Speaker 1: to D. B. Cooper. So the money and the shoots
Speaker 1: go in the cop car and he does a donuts
Speaker 1: gidding out like in front of the plane and gets
Speaker 1: out and stands outside and waits for the plane to land.
Speaker 1: I should say, So when they get everything together, they
Speaker 1: let flight three oh five know that they come and
Speaker 1: get it basically, and they prepare to land, and dB
Speaker 1: Cooper does something very smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah he uh he said, you know what, I bet
Speaker 2: you there's gonna be snipers on the ground, because I've
Speaker 2: seen a movie or two. I've seen Black Sunday. Anyone.
Speaker 1: No, didn't they come out like five or six years
Speaker 1: later maybe uh huh.
Speaker 4: Actually, I have to look that up.
Speaker 3: I think that was seventy six.
Speaker 4: You know this, sure?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: He said, I have a dream about a movie one
Speaker 2: day that would be called Black Sunday. And there's gonna
Speaker 2: be snipers at that airport, So have everybody put the
Speaker 2: shades down on the windows. They're all drunk, they don't care,
Speaker 2: they won't ask any questions. And so they did so,
Speaker 2: which turned out to be a pretty good move because
Speaker 2: they were in fact snipers right exactly.
Speaker 1: So the plane lands and no one's allowed to get
Speaker 1: off yet, Cooper says, hey, Tina, do me a solid
Speaker 1: go out and get the money in the shoots and
Speaker 1: come back with them. Okay, then we can let the
Speaker 1: passengers off, and Mucklowell leaves the plane. And at this point,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the first reasons why Tina
Speaker 1: Mucklough is one of our heroes. Once she's off the plane,
Speaker 1: she could have been like, so long jumps see in hell,
Speaker 1: which may have been a little harsh. Has she said
Speaker 1: that with an earshot of somebody in this sausage situation?
Speaker 1: She could have thought it. Her actions could have said
Speaker 1: as much. She did. She got the shoots, she got
Speaker 1: the money, and she essentially traded herself for the hostages.
Speaker 3: And went back on the plane. And I mean like
Speaker 3: that's metal.
Speaker 1: Chuck would have said out loud, see you would hell yeah,
Speaker 1: flight three oh five.
Speaker 2: I would have walked straight to the baggage claim or
Speaker 2: the ground transportation and said take me to cousin Ikes
Speaker 2: and need some loose leaf tea. Good luck with the
Speaker 2: skuy jacking, right, yeah, But she came back, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: To come back. So she traded herself for these hostages.
Speaker 1: And the hostages were allowed to leave, and so too
Speaker 1: were Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner. The rest of the
Speaker 1: crew is basically like, there's no reason for you to
Speaker 1: stay here, so go. So it was down to Schaffner
Speaker 1: and Cooper and then in the cockpit Radazac and Scott
Speaker 1: right and Scott and Radazac repaid Tina muckloud by staying themselves.
Speaker 1: There was a rope ladder actually that they could have
Speaker 1: climbed out of. They had almost no interaction whatsoever with
Speaker 1: dB Cooper. They could have at their leisure, they could
Speaker 1: have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope
Speaker 1: ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while and
Speaker 1: then gone to the safety of like the FBI barricade,
Speaker 1: and they didn't. They stuck around and they like were like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna see this hijacking through.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In my like in my comedic mind's eye, I see
Speaker 2: them getting out on the rope swing or a rope ladder.
Speaker 3: That's different.
Speaker 4: Rope swing, that would be amazing.
Speaker 3: They may have like it's like a tire swing, and
Speaker 3: the run the plane.
Speaker 4: They get off on the rope ladder.
Speaker 2: Tina mucklaugh never comes back and dB Cooper's just sitting
Speaker 2: on the plane by himself.
Speaker 3: He's like, Oh, it happened again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is he typing? No, that's sorry. I didn't know
Speaker 4: they had a rope ladder. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Sure every airplane has a rope ladder in the cup
Speaker 1: wake up, fashioned out of like old cheets.
Speaker 2: So the FAA actually had a their chief psychiatrist on
Speaker 2: the ground and this dude does a quick analysis, you know,
Speaker 2: like let me do one of those movie readings of
Speaker 2: who this guy is and what's gonna happen. And he says,
Speaker 2: you know what's gonna happen is you're gonna give this
Speaker 2: guy the money and the parachutes. You're gonna go up
Speaker 2: there in the plane. He's gonna jump out and blow
Speaker 2: up the plane and just let everyone know that. Right,
Speaker 2: He's gonna tell the pilot and co pilot that this
Speaker 2: is what's coming.
Speaker 1: Right, He's gonna force Muckloud to jump with them and
Speaker 1: then blow up the plane afterward. Right, but yeah, make
Speaker 1: sure the make sure the cockpit knows. And then he
Speaker 1: added and he probably has some sort of fixation on
Speaker 1: longer than usual nipples, So make sure he's not exposed
Speaker 1: to those, because he has some sort of fetish based
Speaker 1: on his experience with his mother. Because it's in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one psychoanalysts for the FAA, Hey, if I had
Speaker 1: done that in a German accident, it would have sunk
Speaker 1: in even faster.
Speaker 3: Did you tell them that? Make sure you tell them that, guys?
Speaker 3: Is that all right?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go ahead and say now what I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say in like an hour backstage?
Speaker 4: All right, that was amazing what it?
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 1: I thought that's not what you're gonna say.
Speaker 4: Actually, I didn't see that one coming. You got me
Speaker 4: when you Yeah, I had no idea where you were going.
Speaker 2: Literally, you said longer than usual nipples, and I went
Speaker 2: in my head, I went, am, I is this.
Speaker 3: Happening like Josh Josh.
Speaker 4: Am I stole in Atlanta? Is the trip? Am? I sleep? Pure? Goal? Buddy?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 4: Where are we? I am so thrown?
Speaker 1: So we said Cooper was cool, right, Yeah, the cool
Speaker 1: head he was. He was so cool he ordered food
Speaker 1: for the crew during the refueling process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a nice guy. You want to know who
Speaker 4: else is cool? It's Tina Mucklaw.
Speaker 2: Because once they released the passengers and they got the
Speaker 2: money on board, she sat back down and he offered
Speaker 2: her a couple of the stacks of money, and she said, well,
Speaker 2: you go ahead and say it, no tipping aloud.
Speaker 4: Smooth again.
Speaker 2: Had it been me, well, first of all, I would
Speaker 2: have been uncle likes by then. But if I was
Speaker 2: dumb enough to get back on, I would be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: get pay it for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just two stacks of bills?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what gives jerk? I want half?
Speaker 2: She's amazing. So the plane's being refueled. He passed along
Speaker 2: a request, very specific request for what's to happen when
Speaker 2: they go to take off. He said, I want to
Speaker 2: take off with that aft staircase that I know is
Speaker 2: back there down in the jump off the plane position.
Speaker 2: And they said, you can't take off with the plane.
Speaker 2: You can't take off with the door down. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: can you check on that?
Speaker 4: Are you sure?
Speaker 2: And they said no, you can't do that. And he said,
Speaker 2: are you super sure? And they said no, you can't
Speaker 2: do that. He said all right, and they said, oh,
Speaker 2: but once you're up there, you can totally lower it
Speaker 2: and jump out.
Speaker 4: And he said, well, why didn't we just start there,
Speaker 4: because that's really the only thing that matters.
Speaker 1: Fine. Fine, And then the pilot's like, well, where do
Speaker 1: you want to go? And Dan Cooper says, Mexico City,
Speaker 1: let's say. And the pilot goes, well, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of far. We're gonna have to refuel is Reno, okay,
Speaker 1: And Dan Cooper goes, I don't know how I can
Speaker 1: get this across anymore. Clearly, I'm jumping out of the
Speaker 1: plane the next time we go up fy wherever you want?
Speaker 1: Just fine, south southward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they refuel the plane and the only time
Speaker 2: Dan Cooper gets a little a little ruffled is when
Speaker 2: it takes a little long for his liking, and he
Speaker 2: says it.
Speaker 4: It shouldn't take this long. Let's get the show on
Speaker 4: the road, right.
Speaker 1: He picked up for one of the few times he
Speaker 1: picked up the cockpit or the cabin and cockpit phone
Speaker 1: and said, let's get the show on the road. I
Speaker 1: would have screamed it and like hit the phone and
Speaker 1: then hit myself in the head with it and then
Speaker 1: just started crying and been like, it's never gonna work.
Speaker 3: This is never gonna work.
Speaker 2: I think as well established we'd be the worst guy
Speaker 2: and hostages.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just getting no. I don't want any part of it.
Speaker 2: He also gives them instructions on how to fly the plane,
Speaker 2: which is getting really specific. He said, don't go any
Speaker 2: higher than ten thousand feet, set your wing flaps at
Speaker 2: fifteen degrees, which apparently we learned is an angle that
Speaker 2: only the seven to seven to one hundred could position
Speaker 2: those wing flaps.
Speaker 1: Which everyone in this room knows because it's a Boeing.
Speaker 2: Sure, And he said, don't go any faster than one
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety miles per hour two hundred knots, So
Speaker 2: that means they're going to be flying slow and low,
Speaker 2: like you're cooking ribs or jumping off a plane. Because
Speaker 2: that means the cabin isn't pressurized, and that means when
Speaker 2: you open that door, you're not just gonna suck everything out.
Speaker 2: It's still skydiveable.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh it's the terminology.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: So Cooper had some problems, right, He had specifically asked
Speaker 1: for a knapsack, and the FEDS had given him the
Speaker 1: two hundred in a bank bag, which, as we all know,
Speaker 1: is a very unwieldy, clumsy bag. Right, it's like a
Speaker 1: canvas bag. There's nothing to it. What do you like
Speaker 1: tuck it under your arm? What are you supposed to
Speaker 1: do with that? Right? So he's like, well, you need
Speaker 1: to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one
Speaker 1: of these parachutes for it's rigging, And he chose the
Speaker 1: pink one, which the pink one was actually the best
Speaker 1: one of all.
Speaker 2: Of them, yeah, because it was the dummy shoot, the
Speaker 2: military shoot, and then shoot is that what.
Speaker 4: We're gonna call it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the medium shoot, and then the pink one, which was,
Speaker 2: like Josh said, is the best one. So he cuts
Speaker 2: the stuff loose, he makes a handle for it.
Speaker 4: Things are happening at this point. They moved to the
Speaker 4: rear of the plane.
Speaker 2: He and Tina mucklaw, and he says, you know, I
Speaker 2: think I need help lowering the staircase. So she goes
Speaker 2: back there with him. She's a little freaked out at
Speaker 2: this point. She was calm and cool, but like it's
Speaker 2: go time, and she thinks she's gonna get sucked out, rightfully, so,
Speaker 2: because she didn't understand the physics of you know, the
Speaker 2: plane being that low and that slow, or she did
Speaker 2: another road.
Speaker 3: The hell with physics. I am still freaked out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're about to lower a staircase of ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet.
Speaker 4: Why did I mention physics exactly?
Speaker 2: So she gets back there and he said, she said,
Speaker 2: can I at least have some of that rope so
Speaker 2: I can tie myself to the interior of this plane?
Speaker 1: Like that's how helpful she was. She's like, just let
Speaker 1: me lash myself to the plane.
Speaker 4: Let me all help meself. Right, Yeah, I just spit
Speaker 4: like all the way across it.
Speaker 3: I spit earlier.
Speaker 1: It's fine, Okay, good.
Speaker 4: We should learn to synk those up, right, like in Vegas.
Speaker 4: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, we're in syncs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my god.
Speaker 2: Except well, never mind, So she asked for some rope
Speaker 2: to lash herself in, and he goes, at this point,
Speaker 2: you know what, never mind.
Speaker 3: He literally like this is the quote.
Speaker 1: He goes, never mind, never mind.
Speaker 2: He said, you know what, you just go back up
Speaker 2: to the cockpit and you see that first class curtain.
Speaker 4: Just don't come any further back. I got it from there.
Speaker 2: He turns back around and looks and then he turns
Speaker 2: back around to where she was and he just sees
Speaker 2: like a pile of dust to where she was just standing.
Speaker 2: She was like in the cockpit all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: and so it's go time in the cockpit at seven
Speaker 2: forty two pm, the little light comes on that says
Speaker 2: a door ajar, I guess. And they said that the
Speaker 2: pilots were like Tina like wants to call back one
Speaker 2: more time.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, you can't call him, and they're like, no, really,
Speaker 1: we should call We can totally call him. Like the
Speaker 1: FAA shrink said like he might blow us up. He
Speaker 1: said some other weird stuff too, but he said, well,
Speaker 1: like he's gonna blow us up, we should really butter
Speaker 1: this guy out.
Speaker 2: And we could have left on that rope swing and
Speaker 2: we stayed because of you.
Speaker 4: Rope ladder.
Speaker 3: So they call, They do call the pilot.
Speaker 1: It's like ring ring ring, Oh, yes, ring ring, and
Speaker 1: you let it ring a couple of times, ring ring. Uh.
Speaker 4: Dan Cooper hijacker.
Speaker 1: Uh, mister Cooper, we want to make sure your FLA
Speaker 1: is as comfortable as possible. Is there anything we can
Speaker 1: do to help you back there to make your hijacking
Speaker 1: more successful?
Speaker 2: Sir, no, click, I know, it's kind of rude, he said, no,
Speaker 2: hung up. And then at eight twelve pm, the crew
Speaker 2: felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit, as
Speaker 2: if someone had jumped off the rear of it, and
Speaker 2: they said.
Speaker 1: DNA, go jacking.
Speaker 4: We're flying the plane. She's like, wait a minute, only
Speaker 4: one of you is flying, you know.
Speaker 1: It takes both of us, you don't know.
Speaker 4: And that's it.
Speaker 2: So from the moment that Tina Mucklaugh left shut that
Speaker 2: first class curtain, nobody to anyone's knowledge, ever saw Dan
Speaker 2: Cooper again.
Speaker 4: Yep, but that's not the end of the show.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. So there was a man hunt, all right.
Speaker 1: So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that
Speaker 1: he was going to jump off the back of the
Speaker 1: seven twenty seven, and the FBI was like, we need
Speaker 1: to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that
Speaker 1: are in the area. We're gonna scramble them to go
Speaker 1: follow this seven to twenty seven.
Speaker 2: What is the scrambling? I never get that.
Speaker 3: It's like like, go.
Speaker 4: I know, but they.
Speaker 2: It just sounds it sounds chaotic, like they're scrambling jets.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's the point, Like people
Speaker 1: are supposed to run around and bump into each other
Speaker 1: and fall out and then.
Speaker 3: Get up and get in their jets and fly off. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's scrambling.
Speaker 1: That's classics.
Speaker 4: I would have renamed it would be like, activate the jets.
Speaker 3: That's not bad, that's not bad at all.
Speaker 4: Scramble the jets.
Speaker 3: It sounds desperate.
Speaker 4: You're right, activate the jets.
Speaker 1: So either however, the jets were brought into this picture,
Speaker 1: there was a problem with them and that they were
Speaker 1: way too fast for the seven twenty seven, which is
Speaker 1: putting along and one hundred and ninety miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden there's a jet that goes yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the next one comes and they're like, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do, Well, We'll stick a helicopter on them.
Speaker 1: This is like Goldilocks. The helicopter was too slow. Seven
Speaker 1: twenty seven is just putts it along.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people are going and trying to catch up. Nothing happening.
Speaker 2: They should have scrambled a seven twenty seven and just
Speaker 2: followed right behind.
Speaker 3: It makes sense as matter.
Speaker 4: What the headlights on, right, So they're scrambling.
Speaker 1: The point is nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped,
Speaker 1: So they used that eight twelve pm oscillation to kind
Speaker 1: of figure out where they should start looking, and they
Speaker 1: zeroed in on a place called aerial Water, wishing to
Speaker 1: New Lewis River.
Speaker 3: Anybody from Ariel, good because we got jokes.
Speaker 2: Nobody from Ariel. Anyone ever heard of the Lewis River.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So they get on, they get this man
Speaker 2: hunt going. They're combing, they're they're scrambling and combing. Those
Speaker 2: are the two things you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the FBI it was a massive manhunt too. There's
Speaker 1: like a thousand troops and cops combing this area.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No one from Seattle PD. Of course, they were
Speaker 4: just sitting.
Speaker 2: Around stoned, hanging out in Nisqua waiting for Rambo. Here's
Speaker 2: another fun fact. There was a millionaire a local millionaire
Speaker 2: who we don't know.
Speaker 4: Do you know the name?
Speaker 3: No, I've looked.
Speaker 1: If anybody knows, yells, just stand up and say it
Speaker 1: with dignity.
Speaker 4: It was on it was on the news.
Speaker 2: So this local millionaire says, you know what, that's near
Speaker 2: Lake Merwin and I'm going to rent a submarine because
Speaker 2: I'm a millionaire, and that's you know, we're what I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't work. I'm a millionaire.
Speaker 2: He got a submarine and he trolled the depths of
Speaker 2: Lake Merwin. He said he rented a small submarine because
Speaker 2: he's not an extravagant local MIDI.
Speaker 1: Now the twenty five seems ostentatious. The hydraulics on it.
Speaker 1: Who needs that in a submarine?
Speaker 4: Does it have a metal detector? Which would not have
Speaker 4: helped because it was cash bills exactly.
Speaker 1: So you'd make a great local millionaire.
Speaker 4: I would if only.
Speaker 2: The other weird thing that happened was the the CIA
Speaker 2: got involved, which is a little bit strange, and they
Speaker 2: scrambled the SR seventy one blackbird, right.
Speaker 3: They scrambled it several times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was almost over easy.
Speaker 4: Terrible.
Speaker 1: You should be ashamed.
Speaker 2: It doesn't even make sense because once you scramble it. It
Speaker 2: can't be over easy. Terrible joke, Chuck, that's.
Speaker 3: What I say. It's all right, rebound, rebound, Is.
Speaker 4: This really happening? Did you talk about long nipples?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: The SR seventy one Blackbird was at the time super secret.
Speaker 2: We all know about it now, but at the time
Speaker 2: it was very secret, and it was kind of a
Speaker 2: big deal to get this thing up in the air.
Speaker 1: So especially multiple times, like one time, it's like, your
Speaker 1: dad is the head of CIA and you're the head
Speaker 1: of Seattle PD, so you can make it happen maybe once, right,
Speaker 1: multiple times. That's weird that the SR seventy one was scrambled.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The FBI is very studious and likes to do a
Speaker 1: lot of obvious stuff, So they interviewed everybody in the
Speaker 1: area with the last name of Cooper, which there's like
Speaker 1: a square one.
Speaker 3: This is like square negative five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, no, it's negative five. I looked it up.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you look up all the Coopers in the
Speaker 2: area and at this point they have a press conference.
Speaker 2: And if you've noticed, we've been calling this dude Dan
Speaker 2: Cooper the whole time, because up until this time he
Speaker 2: was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference
Speaker 2: and there's it's sort of I don't think we know
Speaker 2: who messed it up, right.
Speaker 1: Well, or okay, a cop, either a file clerk or
Speaker 1: a cop of talking in front of a reporter got
Speaker 1: either UPI or AP, depending on who you ask, And
Speaker 1: they were saying like, what Cooper could could have done
Speaker 1: something like this?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And somebody said, well, there's a Dan Cooper who's a
Speaker 1: cat burglar in the area. That's a terrible suggestion. Cat
Speaker 1: burglar does not go to hijacker, you know. And this
Speaker 1: reporter was like, what a scoop and hit the wire
Speaker 1: with cops looking for dB Cooper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he said dB Cooper.
Speaker 3: Did I say Dan Cooper?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 1: The little part of my brain was like, you just
Speaker 1: said Dan. Let's start over. So a cop was talking
Speaker 1: in front of an AP reporter and they said what
Speaker 1: Cooper do you know could have done this? And the
Speaker 1: cop said, well, there's this d dB Cooper.
Speaker 4: What did you just say. Did you just say a
Speaker 4: D Cooper?
Speaker 1: I said, there's a dB Cooper I got at that time,
Speaker 1: he's a cat burglar. And the reporter said, this is
Speaker 1: hitting the wire and he reported that the cops were
Speaker 1: looking for a dB Cooper and it just changed from
Speaker 1: that point on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he was never a dB Cooper. It
Speaker 2: was literally a mistake. So that's why we all know
Speaker 2: him as dB Cooper today. And the FBI actually a
Speaker 2: little smart, believe it or not, and they said, you
Speaker 2: know what, let's keep it that way. That way we'll
Speaker 2: know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper,
Speaker 2: will know it's a hot lead.
Speaker 4: So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And anytime a tip like that came in, like
Speaker 1: the office prankster would come in with the facts and
Speaker 1: be like hot lead, hot lead. It was like a
Speaker 1: joke around the Portland office. Everybody loved Richard.
Speaker 4: And this will.
Speaker 2: This will come up later too when it comes time
Speaker 2: to solve the crime.
Speaker 4: They Later on, the FBI.
Speaker 2: Learned that there was a comic book in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties about a Dan Cooper who was a Canadian jet
Speaker 2: pilot and it was a Belgian comic, which is a
Speaker 2: little weird, but it was you know, there was literally
Speaker 2: a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes and comic book.
Speaker 4: Form right exactly, could be a clue.
Speaker 1: Maybe and that's a niche comic, right, so I would
Speaker 1: say so printed in Belgium in the French about a
Speaker 1: Canadian fighter.
Speaker 4: Pilot in the frame.
Speaker 1: All they had to do is find, like the ten
Speaker 1: people who knew of that comedy. We're going to be like,
Speaker 1: what'd you do? We know it was one of you.
Speaker 1: And so the UBI had a pretty clear belief, very
Speaker 1: openly stated belief, that D. B. Cooper died in the jump.
Speaker 1: It was just the line that they took right off
Speaker 1: the bat. They're like, there's no way this guy survived.
Speaker 1: And the he wasn't the lead agent on the case,
Speaker 1: but he became the most famous agent, Ralph himmels.
Speaker 4: Bach Any Himmel's box in the house. No, you're a liar,
Speaker 4: You're a.
Speaker 1: Liar, so Himmel's Bach. Like I said, he wasn't a
Speaker 1: lead agent, but he was out of the Seattle office,
Speaker 1: and he became the most famous agent associated with it.
Speaker 1: And he actually gave the case its official name nor Jack,
Speaker 1: which is stupid.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Northwest Jack Skyjack.
Speaker 1: Right, but removed the sea. It's just called the D. B.
Speaker 1: Cooper Case, you know, or Hi Steven better. So he
Speaker 1: self published a book in nineteen eighty six about the case,
Speaker 1: and himmels Bach said he thinks that D. B. Cooper
Speaker 1: didn't even get a shoot open, that he plunged to
Speaker 1: his death and hit the forest floor with such impact
Speaker 1: that he basically was buried immediately with the parachutes still attached,
Speaker 1: and maybe even the money. And uh, that was Himmel's
Speaker 1: box take. It was excuse me, are you gonna get that?
Speaker 1: I realized it wasn't its twist off, And then I
Speaker 1: realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place.
Speaker 3: Nice, nice going.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just saw the sum of Chuck's college education.
Speaker 4: So Cooper had jumped from the plane. Did he live?
Speaker 4: Did he not? The odds are against him in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways. Outside.
Speaker 2: The temperature that night was twenty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hey we're in America, man, just say twenty degrees.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, twenty degrees.
Speaker 2: USA. At ten thousand feet it was negative seven degrees yeah,
Speaker 2: and he was going one hundred and ninety miles an hour.
Speaker 2: There was freezing rain. It was there was like a
Speaker 2: quarter crescent or not a quarter crescent, a crescent moon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are two different things. Crescent moon in the sky,
Speaker 2: but it was cloudy and rainy, so there's probably was
Speaker 2: zero light. It's freezing. He's ten thousand feet.
Speaker 3: He's not dressed for the occasion.
Speaker 4: Oh, he's wearing loafers. He's wearing an overcoat.
Speaker 2: He's got this he doesn't have this knapsack, so he's
Speaker 2: fashioning this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope.
Speaker 1: Plus plus the area's jumping out into and he's flying
Speaker 1: at ten thousand feet over the cascades. Some of the cascades,
Speaker 1: as you guys know, are higher than ten thousand feet,
Speaker 1: very dangerous jump. And there's a lot of pointy trees.
Speaker 1: I mean the POINTI ist am I right? See, I
Speaker 1: know the point is trees are round. Plus despite what
Speaker 1: the FAA guy said, the FAA psychiatrists, yeah, he did
Speaker 1: not leave the bomb to be detonated after he jumped off.
Speaker 3: He took it with him.
Speaker 1: Bank bag, bomb, overcoat, loafers, parachute was my dB Cooper pressure.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the FBI later on they interviewed Maclock,
Speaker 2: who was the one who saw Yeah, Schaffner saw the bomb.
Speaker 4: Like you just did.
Speaker 2: And she said, yeah, you have these red sticks taped together,
Speaker 2: and they went, huh, that wasn't dynamite. Dynamite isn't red.
Speaker 2: You've seen too many cartoons dynamite as tan. Road flares
Speaker 2: are red. So it was more than likely a fake
Speaker 2: bomb with an alarm clock and road flares.
Speaker 1: Plus dB Cooper did not help his cause by his
Speaker 1: choice of parachutes, right he So he chose a military
Speaker 1: shoot as his main shoot. It was not a great shoot.
Speaker 1: The ripcord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational shoots,
Speaker 1: and once it deployed you can't steer it very well.
Speaker 3: It was not the best choice.
Speaker 1: Even worse was his choice of the dummy shoot for
Speaker 1: his front reserve choot. He took the best shoot and
Speaker 1: gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag,
Speaker 1: let the second best shoot, and chose the two worst
Speaker 1: shoots to jump out with. Right.
Speaker 2: So, I didn't know you couldn't steer a military shoot,
Speaker 2: but it makes total sense.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, they're just like, go for it, pal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because if I was in the military, I would steer.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, well, how don't we go over here instead?
Speaker 2: I see a lot of guns down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take it.
Speaker 2: This way, so they just drop you apparently. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: I guess they know what they're doing. Though, So some
Speaker 2: other theories, because it's Washington, believe it or not, some
Speaker 2: people actually posited that he was eaten by sasquatch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with a straight face. I mean, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: how many of you in here were thinking the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some other people say, well, he was clearly burned up
Speaker 1: by the jet exhaust, because when you come down the
Speaker 1: stairs of a seven twenty seven, the rear jet engines
Speaker 1: right in front of you, and it would have been
Speaker 1: seven eight hundred degrees right there. But the FBI conducted
Speaker 1: a test right afterward where they took a seven twenty
Speaker 1: seven up and they took a two hundred pound sled.
Speaker 2: A two hundred pound prison victim.
Speaker 3: Right, he was condemned.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, it's fine, and they said, and
Speaker 1: threw it off. And they found that the two hundred
Speaker 1: pound sled that's the euphemism, I guess now, went straight down,
Speaker 1: so it didn't come in contact in any way with
Speaker 1: the jet exhaust. So it kind of did away with
Speaker 1: this idea that he burned up.
Speaker 2: Well, it was kind of good news bad news though,
Speaker 2: because what it did do at least was it mimic
Speaker 2: that same oscillation. Yeah, so they're like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 2: it was the exact same thing happened when you were
Speaker 2: in the air. So that eight twelve pm jump time,
Speaker 2: like it was probably right on the money.
Speaker 4: So we know probably where he might have landed.
Speaker 1: Right, So there's a lot of questions remaining, right, and
Speaker 1: there were some clues left behind. The thing that really
Speaker 1: kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they
Speaker 1: combed the area where they were looking for him, with
Speaker 1: like a thousand people just combing this area, the SR
Speaker 1: seventy one blackbirds circling around looking. They didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: He had left a couple of things on board the plane, right.
Speaker 1: He'd left his clip on tie, which was the second
Speaker 1: biggest secret that night.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what you do before you jump out. Sure,
Speaker 2: you know, you take it off. There was a clip
Speaker 2: on all along.
Speaker 4: You unbutton that button and you're like, I'm out.
Speaker 3: Of here, all right.
Speaker 1: He left eight cigarette butts of his Rawley brand cigarettes.
Speaker 1: He'd smoked eight over five hours, and all eight butts
Speaker 1: have since been lost. Right, They found a hair on
Speaker 1: the headrest. They the thing is the FBI traded in fingerprints.
Speaker 1: That was their big thing at the time, and Dan
Speaker 1: Cooper had been very smart to not leave a single
Speaker 1: print on any of the cigarette butts.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: True, but there was fingerprints on the in flight.
Speaker 4: I guess sky Mall.
Speaker 1: Magazine Rip sky Mall. What do you mean it's not around,
Speaker 1: It's gone. Yeah, sky Mall's gone. Did you guys not
Speaker 1: know this? No? Ways?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I said, alright.
Speaker 2: I know, but I just uh, I don't know where
Speaker 2: am I going to get my putting green that doubles
Speaker 2: as a cat feeder?
Speaker 1: My friend, you can just go to front Gate because
Speaker 1: fron K has everything everyone needs. What's that fron K
Speaker 1: They advertised in sky Mall, but they have stores too.
Speaker 4: I don't even know where I am right now.
Speaker 3: That's uncle likes.
Speaker 4: What year is it?
Speaker 2: No, So it would be seven years before any trace
Speaker 2: of the hijacking, any real clue turned up, and it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen seventy eight. There were some hunters and
Speaker 2: Oregon hunting animals. I guess, right, unless it was the
Speaker 2: most dangerous game.
Speaker 3: You don't know. It's Oregon.
Speaker 4: You never know.
Speaker 2: There are less civilized people than we have here. They
Speaker 2: found a plastic instruction placard showing how to lower the
Speaker 2: A F staircase in the woods.
Speaker 4: So this is like a really good clue.
Speaker 1: It was, but it didn't lead to anything new.
Speaker 2: Well, no, it was definitely from flight three oh five,
Speaker 2: which was I guess I'm saying it was cool.
Speaker 1: It was cool, like if you were the Hunter, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm keeping this sure, But it was on
Speaker 1: the flight path. So it didn't generate any new leads.
Speaker 1: But it generated a lot of renewed interest in the
Speaker 1: case because, believe it or not, the dB Cooper case
Speaker 1: had kind of fall into the wayside in the last
Speaker 1: like seven years. People just didn't think much about it anymore. Oh,
Speaker 1: they just skyjackings, right exactly. So it was like a
Speaker 1: diamond dozen. But all of a sudden, everybody's like, we
Speaker 1: got to make a movie. Who's the biggest movie star.
Speaker 1: We've got treat Williams, make him his dB Cooper, And
Speaker 1: that's what they did.
Speaker 4: Has anyone ever seen the pursuit of T B. Cooper?
Speaker 1: No, that's that's right, everybody. God bless you, Seattle smart
Speaker 1: Town chunk.
Speaker 2: I figured here, like somebody because it was a local thing.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty one, very very bad movie was made several
Speaker 2: starring Treat Williams and Robert duvall Right.
Speaker 3: Whose mom needed surgery at the time. To layoff.
Speaker 4: So here's what you well.
Speaker 2: First of all, if you want to know how big
Speaker 2: a piece of garbage this movie is, it had three directors,
Speaker 2: And if you know anything about film making, if you
Speaker 2: have more than one director, it's probably a really bad
Speaker 2: movie for one reason or another. If it has three,
Speaker 2: then it's guaranteed to be bad. But all you need
Speaker 2: to do is go home tonight when you get back
Speaker 2: to your to your house boat.
Speaker 3: In it's a quah.
Speaker 4: Does anyone here live in a house boat? Now? Okay?
Speaker 2: Because I was gonna ask if I could come stay
Speaker 2: over because those things are awesome.
Speaker 1: That was just Sleepless in Seattle. You've seen that too
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 4: Oh no, they exist.
Speaker 2: Because I tried to stay in an airbnb actually before
Speaker 2: I came here on a house boat. Yeah, I totally did,
Speaker 2: and I ended up in some stupid hotel downtown. Go
Speaker 2: home to your YouTube's type in Pursuit of dB Cooper
Speaker 2: and watch the first three minutes.
Speaker 4: Because this movie literally starts.
Speaker 2: With the point from where dB Cooper jumps out of
Speaker 2: the back of the plane. It starts from the point
Speaker 2: where we know nothing else that happened is literally fictional.
Speaker 1: From that point slogan on the movie posters fac smacks.
Speaker 4: So it starts with the pursuit of D. B.
Speaker 2: Cooper and has Robert duvall the names all come up
Speaker 2: and all that, and it's got a jewe heart plane.
Speaker 2: It's like Wong Bong Bong Bong Bong and Treat Williams.
Speaker 2: It's a terrible voice voiceover recording. You just hear yeah.
Speaker 2: And he jumps off the thing because that's what you do.
Speaker 2: And he jump off a plane and your skyjacking. He
Speaker 2: parachutes down in the night and the night and he
Speaker 2: catches through some trees and lands and then just this
Speaker 2: really little sad yahoo.
Speaker 3: Everything was sad about that.
Speaker 2: And Treat Williams gets on the on the ground and
Speaker 2: he and he takes out a cigar and he takes
Speaker 2: out a lighter because that's what you do too when
Speaker 2: you successfully landed after skyjacking.
Speaker 4: He doesn't light the lighter though.
Speaker 2: He rips open the money bags had a one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars bill and he lights that and then he uses
Speaker 2: that to light a cigar, and that is how that
Speaker 2: movie opens, and it goes downhill from there.
Speaker 4: And Robert deval Is he's just you can tell.
Speaker 1: When he starts every scene going yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2: It's so bad, But I do encourage you. It was
Speaker 2: when I was a kid and it came out. It
Speaker 2: was like, we got HBO on my street and it
Speaker 2: was a really big deal when we got cable and HBO.
Speaker 2: So I would literally watch any movie that came out.
Speaker 2: It was like Kroll, that's on, I'll watch Kroll was okay,
Speaker 2: Four Games, great movie. Sure, pursuit of dB Cooper, why not?
Speaker 1: I was not exposed to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think my mother shielded me from that movie. Good
Speaker 1: for you, mom. But watch the first two minutes on
Speaker 1: j So we're still talking about the Placard, weren't we?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, all right, we'll go to nineteen eighty was
Speaker 2: the first real good clue turns up in nineteen eighty Right,
Speaker 2: this is a big clueue.
Speaker 1: So there's a young lad named Brian Ingram, he was
Speaker 1: eight I think at the time. Yeah, and his family
Speaker 1: was camping on Tina Bar. Are you guys familiar with
Speaker 1: Tina bar. Do you guys know what that is?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 1: Columbia River? Yeah, so are we correct and understanding that
Speaker 1: you would just call it an island not a bar?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: All right? So Tina Island everywhere else. The Ingram family
Speaker 1: was camping and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit
Speaker 1: for his family. Oh, father's going to love this fire pit.
Speaker 1: He'll be proud of me. Yet, Oh, father, won't you
Speaker 1: love me? And as he's as, he's like, he's going
Speaker 1: like this to the sand, poor little eight year old.
Speaker 1: He turns up a stack of bills, several stacks of bills,
Speaker 1: actually three, and these stacks of twenty dollars bills total
Speaker 1: fifty eight and eighty dollars, and he's like father.
Speaker 3: And father.
Speaker 1: Father takes those and starts looking at him, and he's like,
Speaker 1: we should probably call the police. So they go and
Speaker 1: call the police.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, they call the Seattle Police, which evidently all they
Speaker 2: do is forward calls to the FBI.
Speaker 1: At this point they're like, Seattle PD, please hold. So
Speaker 1: the FBI is like, read a serial number, and he
Speaker 1: reads one and they're like read us. Another reads another,
Speaker 1: and they're like that's dB Cooper money and Ingram's father's like,
Speaker 1: what did you say?
Speaker 3: And they're like nothing.
Speaker 1: So the FBI gets their hands on it, and actually
Speaker 1: we should say it turns out they let little Brian
Speaker 1: Ingram take some of the money. Three thousand dollars of
Speaker 1: this money.
Speaker 2: Actually yea later on they returned a little not bad, right, right?
Speaker 2: And you want to know what's even better? In two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, little Brian Ingram sold that money on
Speaker 2: eBay for thirty seven grand.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, take that, father. So the thing is, this
Speaker 1: money showed up in a place where it should not
Speaker 1: have been. It showed up twenty miles south of Aeriel, Washington,
Speaker 1: in another river. So they were looking here in the
Speaker 1: Lewis River, right, everybody knows Lewis River, Aeriel, Washington. Here,
Speaker 1: Tina Barr's down here just a little south of Vancouver.
Speaker 1: Is my geography, my air geography right of Vancouver, Washington.
Speaker 1: Everybody Vancouver, Washington. That is it? Like this, that's even
Speaker 1: more amazing. This is what I suspect. And I looked
Speaker 1: it up on Google Maps and they're like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean, Tina bar Josh So I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that
Speaker 1: it somehow ended up above it. And an FBI hydrologist
Speaker 1: looked at this money.
Speaker 4: Said, FBI has a hydrologist, right.
Speaker 1: I'm retainer him knows Bach got ahold of him. And
Speaker 1: the guy was like, so this stuff's only been exposed
Speaker 1: to the elements for a year, even though it was
Speaker 1: found what nine years after the robbery? Right? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it got here one of two ways, the guy said,
Speaker 1: So the Columbia River flooded in nineteen seventy four, Yes,
Speaker 1: and it was also dredged in like nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: So one of those two probably got this yere, but
Speaker 1: no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 4: So it did, Yeah, there you go, I got it.
Speaker 2: It would be another twenty eight years before any more
Speaker 2: clues turned up, so that's a very long wait. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, just eight short years ago, some
Speaker 2: kids were playing on there was it their own land
Speaker 2: in Amboy, h little south of Ariel.
Speaker 4: Anyone from Amboy.
Speaker 1: No, I suspected, not are we in Washington? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but nobody's from Amboy.
Speaker 2: We got more response in Birmingham, No about Amboy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, They're like, we like the sound of that.
Speaker 2: So these kids were playing in the woods on their
Speaker 2: property and they said, oh, look at there, there's a parachute.
Speaker 2: And they start pulling out this parachute for like an hour.
Speaker 4: It's like a magic trick. And they finally get to
Speaker 4: the end of.
Speaker 2: The parachute and they run and show Paw and they say, Paw,
Speaker 2: I found a parachute in the woods.
Speaker 4: What should we do? Right?
Speaker 1: And Paw recognize that this is the most exciting thing
Speaker 1: that ever.
Speaker 3: Happened in Amboy, Washington.
Speaker 1: Called the cops, who called the Seattle police, who called
Speaker 1: the FBI, and the FBI did something smart. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, who would know if this was dbe Cooper's parachute?
Speaker 1: Good old Earl Costy's right, he's not dead yet, not
Speaker 1: dead yet, oh too soon.
Speaker 4: That's a good he's not dead yet.
Speaker 2: That's a celebratory None of us are dead yet, right.
Speaker 1: That's a good, good way of looking at it, Chuck,
Speaker 1: good save way to find the silver lining.
Speaker 3: So Earl Cossi looked at this thing and he was.
Speaker 2: Like, no, yeah, he said, I'm sorry. He said, uh, Cooper,
Speaker 2: shoot was nylon. That's clearly silk.
Speaker 1: A good try, Yeah, he said, this is I know
Speaker 1: who shoot this is actually Yeah, it turns out that
Speaker 1: back in nineteen forty five, a jet pilot named Floyd
Speaker 1: Walling bailed out of his coarse air jet that was
Speaker 1: going down and parachuted out in the woods around Amboy Washington, right,
Speaker 1: which isn't too far from aerial And it wasn't Cooper's shoot.
Speaker 1: You guys all remember when they found that parachute right
Speaker 1: like two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal and it wasn't his shoot,
Speaker 1: but it did suggest that possibly he could have made
Speaker 1: it because Floyd Walling had and he walked out of
Speaker 1: the woods in terrible weather, just like dB Cooper would
Speaker 1: have had to. So it kind of shined the light
Speaker 1: on the whole thing again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of kicks some interest up.
Speaker 2: So over the years, there have been many, many, many,
Speaker 2: many suspects, like we're talking over a thousand. The FBI
Speaker 2: won't even say how many suspects they've had. Or weirdly,
Speaker 2: people confessing to be dB Cooper. It's one of those
Speaker 2: strange things that people do where they claim to be
Speaker 2: something that will send you to prison.
Speaker 1: Well a lot of them are already in prison, but
Speaker 1: they're in worse prison and hoping to go to a
Speaker 1: good prison.
Speaker 4: No, it's true.
Speaker 2: Apparently state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes
Speaker 2: because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison.
Speaker 3: I was thinking cinnamon bust, were you really?
Speaker 2: Yep, that's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well no.
Speaker 2: We've mentioned that in the prison. That's like a commodity
Speaker 2: in prison, right, cinnamon buns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like currency.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, cinnamon buns and cigarettes.
Speaker 3: We know.
Speaker 4: So there's a very famous sketch.
Speaker 2: If you go home, before you get on YouTube and
Speaker 2: look at the first three minutes of that terrible movie,
Speaker 2: which you definitely need to do, just Google, get on
Speaker 2: the Googles and type in dB Cooper sketch. There's a
Speaker 2: very singular famous sketch of dB Cooper.
Speaker 3: It looks like Kevin Spacey.
Speaker 1: It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or Don Draper again.
Speaker 3: As Kevin Spacey.
Speaker 4: I think it would be Kevin Spacey as Don Draper. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: So if you go home and look at that, it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, got this kind of shortiar guy looks like
Speaker 2: he's sort.
Speaker 4: Of from the fifties or sixties.
Speaker 2: It's got the hair, he's got the sunglasses on, and
Speaker 2: the tie, the skinny tie, and that this is the
Speaker 2: only sketch that they have of dB Cooper that they
Speaker 2: got from the flight attendant, specifically Tina Mucklaw, because she
Speaker 2: spent like five hours right next to the dude. She
Speaker 2: incidentally was really messed up after this, understandably, and she
Speaker 2: went to be a nun in Oregon in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: which is a little weird. I didn't know they had
Speaker 2: convents in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Sure, comments everywhere, convents everywhere.
Speaker 4: There's a convent right over in the alley.
Speaker 1: Here's a comment behind us right now. But even worse
Speaker 1: than that, the mother superior, in an article I read
Speaker 1: at the convent, said she never really fit in here. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to. If you're a mother superior, that's
Speaker 1: a mother inferior. If you ask me, you know, good one.
Speaker 4: So sorry, you go ahead, all right.
Speaker 2: If you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed,
Speaker 2: you're going to turn up some clues.
Speaker 4: And that's what the FBI does.
Speaker 2: It kind of examine what happened he chose a military shoot,
Speaker 2: which could mean one of two things. Either he was
Speaker 2: former military, which could narrow it down, or it could
Speaker 2: mean he has no idea what he's doing when it
Speaker 2: comes to jumping out of a plane.
Speaker 1: Right, And the choice of that dummy choot would definitely
Speaker 1: suggest that, because even recreational skydivers say, like, even if
Speaker 1: you're just a military parachutist, you're going to see a
Speaker 1: huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from
Speaker 1: that parachute.
Speaker 4: You know, I thought it stood for extreme.
Speaker 3: Right, mountain dew extreme.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people say, I think he
Speaker 1: probably is ex military, had some like parachuting experience, probably
Speaker 1: a paratrooper or something like that. Yeah, A lot of
Speaker 1: people point to the idea that he knew a lot
Speaker 1: about the plane. He knew about the wing flap degree
Speaker 1: that it could go to, he knew about altitude. A
Speaker 1: lot of the witnesses later on said that he clearly
Speaker 1: was very much aware of what was going on in
Speaker 1: the cabin.
Speaker 3: He just knew the plane very much.
Speaker 1: So a lot of other people say this guy was
Speaker 1: probably an airline employee, maybe even a pilot actually, based
Speaker 1: on the altitude and stuff that he gave him to fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the weird things that he knew
Speaker 2: was that the seven twenty seven one hundred had an
Speaker 2: af staircase that you could lower and jump out of.
Speaker 2: Because this wasn't common knowledge at the time, Apparently a small.
Speaker 4: Group of people knew this.
Speaker 2: You were either in an employee of Boeing or you
Speaker 2: may have been in the CIA, because in the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: we actually used the seven twenty seven over Cambodia, which
Speaker 2: is where we were not supposed to be, and they
Speaker 2: lowered that aft staircase of the seven twenty seven to
Speaker 2: drop supplies.
Speaker 1: It's a go you can't steer but go well.
Speaker 2: And then there's the whole thing with the SR seventy
Speaker 2: one Blackbird. So a lot of cooperists still say that
Speaker 2: he might have been secretly a member of the CIA,
Speaker 2: right because he knew about the aft staircase, He knew
Speaker 2: about the or the blackbird was scrambled, so they had
Speaker 2: like some skin in the game, right.
Speaker 1: So a lot of suspects have come and gone and
Speaker 1: come back and stayed over the years. The FBI says
Speaker 1: about it, well, they won't say, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people say about a thousand, like Chuck said. But one
Speaker 1: of the first ones to emerge was a dude named
Speaker 1: Richard McCoy. And in February of nineteen seventy two, I think,
Speaker 1: four months after the dB Cooper heist, Richard McCoy hijacked
Speaker 1: a seven to twenty seven to one hundred flight and
Speaker 1: he asked for five hundred thousand dollars in cash, and
Speaker 1: he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah. Right, yep,
Speaker 1: So a lot of people say it's pretty similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that was Dbe Cooper.
Speaker 4: Well in five.
Speaker 2: Hundred grand, that to me that makes sense, Like two
Speaker 2: hundred grand worked out fine, right, I should have asked
Speaker 2: for more to begin with.
Speaker 1: Right, So let me try it again, Try it again.
Speaker 2: It turns out that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: so that sort of fits with the whole profile. He
Speaker 2: looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper and.
Speaker 3: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was twenty nine years old, so he was
Speaker 2: much younger than but he didn't look twenty nine.
Speaker 4: I'll say that he looked much older than that.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 2: He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson. I'll
Speaker 2: say that absolutely. So this guy gets caught actually after
Speaker 2: pulling off this, he initially and he goes to prison
Speaker 2: and he makes a fake gun out of dental plaster
Speaker 2: from the dentist in the prison, and he takes the
Speaker 2: truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate
Speaker 2: of the prison and escapes and is later killed in
Speaker 2: a shootout by cops.
Speaker 1: Which is to say Richard McCoy knew how to live.
Speaker 4: He did.
Speaker 2: And die, and his family would later go on to say, actually,
Speaker 2: he was at home in Thanksgiving nineteen seventy one, so
Speaker 2: it probably wasn't him, right, good suspect.
Speaker 1: Though, Suspect number two is named Dwayne Weber.
Speaker 4: This is your guy.
Speaker 1: No, this isn't No, this isn't my guy.
Speaker 3: I like this guy.
Speaker 1: He's fine, but I don't like him, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, So, Dwayne Webber was a career criminal,
Speaker 1: and the definition of a career criminal is one where
Speaker 1: you and your alias have both done time in prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he and his alias had done it combined sixteen years. Right.
Speaker 1: So he was on his deathbed and his wife Joe
Speaker 1: came around and said, how you doing. It's like while
Speaker 1: I'm still dying. I have a confession for you. I'd
Speaker 1: like you to hear. I am Dan Cooper and Joe's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is, and Duayne blows up.
Speaker 1: They have a fight on his deathbed, never speak of
Speaker 1: it again, and he dies nine days later. So Joe
Speaker 1: starts poking around after that. She's like, who is this
Speaker 1: Dan Cooper? Which is a legitimate question after your experience
Speaker 1: like that that she went through.
Speaker 4: I would say so.
Speaker 2: And she finds out via Internet this is nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five that Dan Cooper was Dbe Cooper, and she said,
Speaker 2: you know what, I think that he was still the truth.
Speaker 2: I think he was dB Cooper because you know what,
Speaker 2: I remember in nineteen seventy nine, we were on a vacation.
Speaker 4: We were on a car trip.
Speaker 2: We were kind of right around the area where the
Speaker 2: hijacking or I'm sorry, where the landing supposedly took place,
Speaker 2: and my husband stopped the car and just pointed and said,
Speaker 2: you know what, that's where dB Cooper walked out of.
Speaker 1: The woods, which is a weird thing to say on vacation.
Speaker 4: Very weird thing to say.
Speaker 2: It's even weirder that she didn't say, what the hell
Speaker 2: are you talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed, there's.
Speaker 4: Another story later on they were on another vacation.
Speaker 3: No, this is the same vacation.
Speaker 4: Oh it was the same one. Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: We'll just call this the communication vacation the non communication vacation,
Speaker 2: because they clearly didn't talk to one another because he
Speaker 2: stopped over the Columbia River on a bridge, literally stops
Speaker 2: on a bridge, gets out of the car, goes to
Speaker 2: the back, opens the trunk, and it's just gone for
Speaker 2: like ten minutes, gets back in the car and they
Speaker 2: just drive on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and she doesn't say anything. I know you me M.
Speaker 3: Would have been like, why did you take your foot off?
Speaker 2: The guests, yeah, you know what there would have been
Speaker 2: Emily would have had three hundred questions on why we
Speaker 2: stops on a bridge and I opened the truck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not Joe, not Joe. Yeah. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people still like Dwayne Webber, but he's actually the FBI said, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the guy. We ruled him out with DNA. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: the next guy is my guy, Kenny Christiansen Chuckers.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: He was a pretty well liked suspect for a while.
Speaker 2: He keeping with the series of family members outing their
Speaker 2: family as D. B.
Speaker 4: Cooper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which actually supports the family motto that I was
Speaker 1: brought up with. Never trust family.
Speaker 2: It's a proud Clark tradition. So his brother lyle. Actually,
Speaker 2: this gets a little weird. He outed him as a
Speaker 2: suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter Nora Efron
Speaker 2: Sleepless in Seattle, Right, Yeah, didn't you see that coming.
Speaker 2: He tried to get Nora Efron to write a movie
Speaker 2: about TB. Cooper via his brother being the main suspect.
Speaker 2: And he, weirdly, I guess he didn't have an agent.
Speaker 2: He hired a private investigator to get him in touch
Speaker 2: with Nora Evron. Right, very strange. But he championed his
Speaker 2: own brother as the main suspect.
Speaker 3: Or out at him, that's another way to put it,
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: Sure, And a guy named Jeoffrey Gray wrote a really
Speaker 1: great article in the New York Magazine if you guys
Speaker 1: are interested about this particular guy. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of similarities between D. B. Cooper and Kenny Christiansen. For one,
Speaker 1: he looks a lot like him right off the bat.
Speaker 1: He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, former paratrooper. Yeah, he was quiet. He
Speaker 1: smoked cigarettes, he drank bourbon, lived in the area where
Speaker 1: the hijacking took place, which is to say around here,
Speaker 1: and in I think twenty eleven, Jeoffrey Gray, the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote that New York Magazine article, got in touch
Speaker 1: with Florence Shaffner and said, what about this guy? And
Speaker 1: Florence Shafner said, I think you may be onto something here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like Dwayne Weber, Kenny Christiansen, on his deathbed,
Speaker 2: tried to make a confession to his brother Lyle. He said,
Speaker 2: I have something really important to tell you, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure if I can, if I can say this,
Speaker 2: and Lyle said, no, no, no, I don't want to
Speaker 2: hear it.
Speaker 1: Did you guys know that you can not hear a
Speaker 1: deathbed confession?
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, but I want nothing more than
Speaker 2: to hear a deathbed confession.
Speaker 4: I would be dying. I would be like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: a dish, Yes, what do you have to say? But
Speaker 4: he was like, no, no, no, no, I want to hear
Speaker 4: what you gotta say. Just go ahead and die.
Speaker 1: And then he laid on top of him yeah till
Speaker 1: he stopped scoring.
Speaker 4: Here the this pillow will make you comfortable.
Speaker 3: You sleep now, brother, what is.
Speaker 4: Going on with these people? Did you just do the
Speaker 4: Buffalo bill voice? No, okay, that was coincidental. Who else
Speaker 4: do we have? Ld? Cooper? Yeah, a little on the
Speaker 4: nose with the name.
Speaker 3: He lived in the area too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was also outed by a family member,
Speaker 2: keeping with the Clark family tradition. Right this time it
Speaker 2: was his niece. And she said, you know what I remember.
Speaker 2: This is in twenty eleven. This is not too long ago.
Speaker 2: She said, you know what, I remember back in Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, just like it was yesterday, and Uncle L. D.
Speaker 2: Showed up bruised and bleeding.
Speaker 4: For dinner.
Speaker 2: But he was euphoric, which was weird. And I'm just
Speaker 2: now mentioning this.
Speaker 1: All right. And she said, by the way, she had
Speaker 1: a book coming out simultaneously.
Speaker 3: She's everybody where.
Speaker 1: Did she say that she overheard because this is where
Speaker 1: she loses chucking me.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, she said, he went to talk to he
Speaker 2: was my uncle and went to talk to my dad,
Speaker 2: and they were overheard them in the hallway say we
Speaker 2: did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked the plane.
Speaker 2: The book by Simon and Schuster on sale now.
Speaker 3: At your local airport.
Speaker 2: But there were a few things. It wasn't totally out
Speaker 2: of the blue. He was an engineer at Boeing.
Speaker 3: No, his brother was.
Speaker 2: Oh, his brother was, Yeah, but they were in on
Speaker 2: it together. Sure, right, because we hijacked the plane. Right,
Speaker 2: he's a silent partner. And weirdly, he remember those Dan
Speaker 2: Cooper comment books. He was one of the ten people
Speaker 2: on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper.
Speaker 4: That's a little weird, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is is he didn't have any experienced skydiving,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people say, Oh, it's just too
Speaker 1: insane to think that somebody who never skydived before did
Speaker 1: their first sky dive during a heist out of A
Speaker 1: seven twenty seven. But the people who knew LD Cooper say, no,
Speaker 1: he was just crazy enough to do something like that.
Speaker 1: And you can make a case that that actually explains
Speaker 1: the choice of the dummy shoot.
Speaker 2: Tell you the truth, that's right, and the military shoot
Speaker 2: even Yeah, all right, So the legacy of dB Cooper
Speaker 2: to this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline
Speaker 2: hijacking in the.
Speaker 1: History of the world in America. In America? Really are
Speaker 1: there other ones? Oh yeah, I'm only standing behind America.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I gotcha. Yeah right.
Speaker 2: Every year, if you go to the Aerial Store in
Speaker 2: Tavern in Ariel, Washington, you can go to the dB
Speaker 2: Cooper Days Festival.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Have you guys? Has anyone ever been to that?
Speaker 2: We should all go. Let's go right now, we're going
Speaker 2: to meet up this Thanksgiving. You can win a dB
Speaker 2: Cooper Lookalike contest.
Speaker 1: If you look like Kevin Spacey yes.
Speaker 2: Or Charles Manson er Don Draper, which none of us do. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about you and me.
Speaker 1: I look like Justin Bieber.
Speaker 2: I look like I ate Justin Bieber. I had to
Speaker 2: spit out my tooth. That's how I lost it.
Speaker 4: I broke it on Justin Bieber's bones.
Speaker 3: They're pliable though.
Speaker 2: You can go to that and when the contest. There
Speaker 2: have been songs over the years. There was that terrible movie.
Speaker 2: There have been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations.
Speaker 3: Unsolved mysteries, am I right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Everybody see that one.
Speaker 4: You can watch that on the YouTube too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there are many many Cooperist websites, most notably one
Speaker 2: called drop zone dot com.
Speaker 1: And drop Zone actually used to be a recreational skydiving
Speaker 1: site until it got mostly taken over by dB Cooper ficionados.
Speaker 4: They hijacked the website.
Speaker 1: He did as a matter of fact, and this site
Speaker 1: is like so hot for Cooper sluice that a guy
Speaker 1: named Secret started posting on it and he seemed to
Speaker 1: have a lot of information about the DBI Cooper case
Speaker 1: that people didn't know about. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: these Cooper Sluice were so good they unmasked the Secret
Speaker 1: guy as the new agent in charge of the dB
Speaker 1: Cooper case, Larry Carr, who's posting secretly as Secret on
Speaker 1: the drop zone boards.
Speaker 3: That's how good these people are.
Speaker 4: He's like, no, I'm not, yes you are. No, I'm
Speaker 4: not yes you are. You are.
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, i am.
Speaker 2: You can go on YouTube, boy, you got a lot
Speaker 2: of YouTube and the night people. You can go on
Speaker 2: YouTube as well and look up Larry Carr. And for
Speaker 2: many many years they kept all this evidence sort of
Speaker 2: under wraps, and you can look up videos. Now Larry
Speaker 2: Carr said, you know what we should do the modern
Speaker 2: ages here we have the youtubes and we can let
Speaker 2: everyone see this evidence, even though I think it's kind
Speaker 2: of funny that the FBI's official things like, no, he
Speaker 2: totally died, right, No one told Larry car that. No,
Speaker 2: you know, because he's let's make a YouTube video. Let's
Speaker 2: show everyone the skinny tie.
Speaker 3: All the kids are into it now.
Speaker 4: He shows the clip on tie.
Speaker 2: You can see all the you can see the money,
Speaker 2: the clip on tie, all this evidence, hoping for a.
Speaker 1: Lead, and he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from
Speaker 1: the tie. They found three people's profiles. They also found
Speaker 1: and we don't even know but pure titanium and impatience Pallen.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that will eventually crack the case. But it made
Speaker 1: everybody just be like, what we thought we had a
Speaker 1: handle on this. Impatience Pallen, where did that come from?
Speaker 4: So bring us home, my friend.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: The Cooper heist it changed America forever, right, dbe Cooper's
Speaker 1: the reason we all started walking through metal detector shortly afterward,
Speaker 1: He's the reason.
Speaker 3: Seriously, He's the.
Speaker 1: Reason that the airlines were given the right to search
Speaker 1: your bags before you get on one of their planes,
Speaker 1: and they apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking. I
Speaker 1: don't know when they took it off. Was it like
Speaker 1: sea ships being hijacked? And then have no idea? I
Speaker 1: don't either.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 1: I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing was
Speaker 1: if you look at a Boeing seven twenty seven, they
Speaker 1: still make them airplane. If you look at that aft
Speaker 1: staircase in the back, there's a white paddle that holds
Speaker 1: the stairs closed. Pretty smart. You can't open the aft
Speaker 1: staircase mid flight because you have to go outside and
Speaker 1: pull the paddle down and then the aft staircase will open.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty smart, easy solution to a pretty
Speaker 1: complex case. And they call that little white paddle a
Speaker 1: Cooper vein.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that is the story of dB Cooper,
Speaker 2: and that is our show.
Speaker 1: Good Night Seattle, good night everyone.
Speaker 3: Thank you m
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com.