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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetof

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: to bring the Choko reateboarding and I'm fair Dowdy And

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Speaker 1: it has been a great couple of months for history news, hasn't. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's been this new theory about Butch Cassidy's demise. Blackbeard's

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Speaker 1: ship was positively identified, which was really cool, and there

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Speaker 1: was a new lead in the subject we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about today, the dB Cooper mystery. And if you've

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Speaker 1: never heard of DV Cooper, we're referring to the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one hijacking of the Northwest Orient Airlines flight, which

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Speaker 1: is to this day, as of this podcast, still unsolved.

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Speaker 1: The man who did it was never caught or positively identified,

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Speaker 1: and we're not even sure if he lived past the

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Speaker 1: day that the crime was committed. A mystery indeed, but

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Speaker 1: over the years this has become one of America's favorite mysteries.

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Speaker 1: People love to just obsess over the clue than the suspects,

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Speaker 1: and there are even informal groups of amateur investigators who

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Speaker 1: have essentially devoted their lives to trying to solve this case. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a recent CNN story about that. But if you're

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Speaker 1: a long time listener of this podcast, you're probably thinking

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Speaker 1: when you saw the title dB Cooper, hey, that looks

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Speaker 1: pretty familiar. And it's true. Candice and Josh touched on

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Speaker 1: this topic back in the Factor Fiction days. The format

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Speaker 1: of the show then wasn't much shorter, so it only

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Speaker 1: got three minutes and forty nine seconds, And we've gotten

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Speaker 1: requests over the years to address some of these topics

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Speaker 1: in our longer format, and dB Cooper was just one

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Speaker 1: that we thought definitely deserved more attention. People want more

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Speaker 1: from dB Cooper, they want answers. So here we want

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Speaker 1: to take a closer look at the case and some

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Speaker 1: of the theories surrounding it and the leads that have

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Speaker 1: come up over the years, including a very recent lead.

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Speaker 1: You've probably seen dB Cooper's name in the news in

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Speaker 1: the past weeks even, but we're gonna start by talking

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Speaker 1: about what actually happened the day of the hijacking, sort

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Speaker 1: to go blow by blow with it. So just to

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Speaker 1: set it all up, on November nineteen seventy one, which

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Speaker 1: was the day before Thanksgiving, a man who gave the

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Speaker 1: name Dan Cooper, showed up at the airport in Portland,

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Speaker 1: Oregon and paid cash for a one way ticket on

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Speaker 1: the Northwest Orient Airlines flight three oh five to Seattle.

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Speaker 1: So those are the That's how it started, and nothing

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Speaker 1: about Cooper's appearance that day really raised any red flags

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Speaker 1: for everyone. He just looked like this, a regular guy.

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Speaker 1: He was wearing a dark business suit and a narrow

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Speaker 1: dark tie with a pearl tie tack. He also had

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Speaker 1: a homburg hat on and carried a dark raincoat and

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Speaker 1: a briefcase. According to witnesses, he was about six ft

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Speaker 1: tall and one seventy five pounds, and he was probably

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Speaker 1: in his mid forties. He had short brown hair, a

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Speaker 1: receding hairline, brown eyes, and he was clean shaven, very

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Speaker 1: average sounding. Yeah, absolutely, and he was assigned to aisle

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Speaker 1: seat eighteen C on the light The plane itself was

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Speaker 1: a Boeing seven seven, so not like a super tiny

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Speaker 1: prop plane or something like that. Even though it was

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Speaker 1: a very short, around thirty minute flight to Seattle. The

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Speaker 1: plane could actually seat around ninety four passengers, but there

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Speaker 1: were only thirty six on board, which comes into play later.

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Speaker 1: It does so while Cooper was waiting for the plane,

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Speaker 1: he lit up a cigarette, ordered a bourbon and soda,

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Speaker 1: and just hung out in the afternoon waiting for the

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Speaker 1: flight to take off. Then shortly after the plane was airborne,

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Speaker 1: he handed the flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, a note. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Shaefer was twenty three and pretty, and according to

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Speaker 1: an article by Jeffrey Gray and New York Magazine, she

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Speaker 1: was used to passengers hitting on her, and so that's

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Speaker 1: basically what she thought was happening when she got the note,

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Speaker 1: she said, she tried to kind of shrug it off, like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just another note from a guy. I'm gonna put

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Speaker 1: it away. But Cooper said to her, miss you better

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Speaker 1: take a look at that note. The note was written

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Speaker 1: in felt pen in all caps, and it said quote,

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Speaker 1: I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you

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Speaker 1: to sit beside me. So she did as she was told,

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Speaker 1: and Cooper gave her a glimpse inside his briefcase. And

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Speaker 1: when he opened it up, she saw this massive wires,

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Speaker 1: a battery, six red sticks, so it looked like it

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Speaker 1: could be about It looked like it could be a bomb.

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Speaker 1: And he made her write down some instructions what he wanted,

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Speaker 1: which included two hundred thousand dollars and used twenties two

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Speaker 1: parachutes and two backup shoots, so two front and two

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Speaker 1: back shoots, and he wanted a fuel truck ready to

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Speaker 1: refuel when the plane landed. He told her no funny stuff,

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Speaker 1: or I'll do the job. So the crew in the

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Speaker 1: airline did what he wanted. They had to circle the

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Speaker 1: airport for a little bit while the people on the

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Speaker 1: ground put the demands together. And after the plan landed

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Speaker 1: and parked on this remote part of the airfield, Cooper

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Speaker 1: let all of thirty six passengers plus Schaffner get off

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Speaker 1: the plane, and that left three flight officers and another

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Speaker 1: flight attendant on the plane with him, and he requested

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Speaker 1: that meals be brought to them and asked for his

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Speaker 1: note back. It seemed like he had all of this

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Speaker 1: really carefully prepared. Then they took off from the Seattle

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Speaker 1: Tacoma Airport at about seven forty six PM, which was

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Speaker 1: two hours approximately after they landed, and at first Cooper

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Speaker 1: told the pilot that he wanted to go to Mexico,

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Speaker 1: but he had really specific instructions for him to He

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Speaker 1: told the pilot to keep the plane below ten thousand

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Speaker 1: feet and he claimed that he had a risk altimeter

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Speaker 1: to actually check up on that too, and ordered him

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Speaker 1: to fly no faster than one fifty miles per hour

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Speaker 1: with the flaps set at fifteen degrees. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: the pilot told him at that point that they couldn't

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Speaker 1: make it to Mexico City under those conditions without refueling

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Speaker 1: and Reno, so Cooper agreed to that. After they were airborne, though,

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Speaker 1: Cooper ordered the flight attendant to go into the cockpit,

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Speaker 1: so he was alone in the cabin. Then around eight pm,

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Speaker 1: a light on the instrument panel indicated that the door

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Speaker 1: to the ft stairs had been opened, and about twenty

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Speaker 1: minutes later the crew noticed a slight change in the

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Speaker 1: plane's altitude. The nose dipped first and then the tail,

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Speaker 1: which is apparently what happens when the aft stairs are lowered.

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Speaker 1: So when the plane landed and Reno Cooper was gone.

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Speaker 1: So now let's look at the time frame a little judging.

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Speaker 1: By the time they noticed that the aft stairs had

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Speaker 1: been opened and lowered, they estimated that he had come

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Speaker 1: down near the Lewis River, which is north of Portland,

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Speaker 1: and authorities combed that area really thoroughly, bit by bit

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Speaker 1: over the next few weeks looking for anything, you know,

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Speaker 1: a scrap of parachute money, just something that could be

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Speaker 1: connected to him, but absolutely nothing came up, and the FBI,

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Speaker 1: of course, immediately opened an investigation on this whole thing

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Speaker 1: and called it nor Jack for the Northwest Hijacking, a

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Speaker 1: pretty dramatic sounding name. But by the five year anniversary

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Speaker 1: of the crime, they had considered more than eight hundred

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Speaker 1: suspects and eliminated all but two dozen, so it seemed

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Speaker 1: like maybe they were getting somewhere. And the thing is, though,

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Speaker 1: suspects and leeds continued to come up even to day,

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Speaker 1: so surely that number has only grown since them. So

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Speaker 1: what types of suspects are they looking for? Though, let's

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Speaker 1: break that down a little bit. Well, there's the physical

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Speaker 1: description we mentioned earlier, and witnesses seemed to agree on

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Speaker 1: that there were at least two flight attendants who gave

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Speaker 1: pretty much the same exact description, and a composite drawing

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Speaker 1: was made from that and that's been published everywhere by now.

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Speaker 1: So getting hairline man wearing glasses in one picture, no

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Speaker 1: glasses in the other, and the name also a sort

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Speaker 1: of an interesting point here. It's very likely that Dan Cooper,

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Speaker 1: of course, wasn't the hijacker's real name, but the FBI

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Speaker 1: has investigated some people with the last name Cooper over

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Speaker 1: the years, and that's how the dB thing came into

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Speaker 1: the picture. They questioned a man with those initials early on,

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Speaker 1: but it turned out that he had nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with it. The press ran with it, though, and it

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Speaker 1: kind of caught on. And I guess dB Cooper just

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Speaker 1: sounds way sexier and cooler than Dan Cooper. It's more distinctive,

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Speaker 1: for sure. So investigators have also tried to gather clues

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Speaker 1: from the hijackers, behave to try to figure out what

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Speaker 1: his occupation might have been, what his background might have been.

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Speaker 1: And at first, because of his detailed instructions to the

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Speaker 1: crew about how to fly the plane, you know that

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Speaker 1: the degrees of the flaps and the altitude and all

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Speaker 1: of that in his very specific parachute request, and and

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Speaker 1: just the fact that he knew how to open the

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Speaker 1: aft door, many assumed that Cooper had some sort of

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Speaker 1: familiarity with aviation, maybe he had been in the Air Force,

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Speaker 1: or maybe he was an experienced skydiver, But that that

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Speaker 1: kind of idea about him changed pretty dramatically over the years,

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Speaker 1: it has now they really don't think that he was

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Speaker 1: such an experienced skydiver. After all, according to the FBI's

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Speaker 1: website quote, no experienced parachutist would have jumped in the

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Speaker 1: pitch black night, in the rain with a two d

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Speaker 1: mile an hour wind in his face, wearing loafers in

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Speaker 1: a trench coat. It was simply too risky. Also, that

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Speaker 1: reserve parachute that Cooper chose to take along with him,

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Speaker 1: I think, if you'll remember, we mentioned that he took

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Speaker 1: he had for four, so he took two of those,

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Speaker 1: and one of them was actually a training shoot that

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Speaker 1: had been sown he took with them. Yeah, so a

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Speaker 1: skilled skydiver or so authorities think, probably would have noticed

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Speaker 1: that that was the case, although you never know in

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Speaker 1: the heat of the moment. So those are just some

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Speaker 1: of the details that the FBI has used to try

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Speaker 1: to put together a profile on who this hijacker really was.

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Speaker 1: And we've got to look at hard clues though not

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Speaker 1: just this background information profile business. So the only physical

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Speaker 1: evidence that was left behind on the plane or eight

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Speaker 1: Raleigh cigarette butts, a black J. C. Penny tie and

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Speaker 1: a tie tack, and there were also sixty six unaccounted

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Speaker 1: fingerprints on flight three or five that they could compare

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Speaker 1: to suspects prints and it you know, they were prints

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Speaker 1: that didn't match any of the known passengers, any of

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Speaker 1: the known crew, and were therefore assumed to be those

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Speaker 1: of DP Cooper. Later, though, they got something a little

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Speaker 1: bit better. They were able to actually lift DNA from

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Speaker 1: the tie in two thousand one, which helped them to

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Speaker 1: rule out a couple of suspects. In February nine eight,

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Speaker 1: a boy playing on the bank of the Columbia River

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Speaker 1: also found five thousand, eight hundred dollars of the payoff money.

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Speaker 1: The FBI had actually written down the serial numbers, but

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Speaker 1: even though the authorities secured the area again and kind

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Speaker 1: of scoured it, they haven't found anymore. During the search.

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Speaker 1: They did find a human skull, though, but this turned

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Speaker 1: out to be a woman's and possibly Native American, so

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Speaker 1: it wasn't related to the case. There was one other

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Speaker 1: false alarm, kind of like that skull. A parachute matching

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Speaker 1: the shoots given to Cooper was found in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and eight by some children who were playing in southwestern Washington.

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Speaker 1: They dug it up, but the shoot that they found

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Speaker 1: was silk and Cooper's were nylon, so it was ruled

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Speaker 1: out as possible evidence. There is an interesting clue, though,

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Speaker 1: regarding Cooper's name that the FBI has shown an interest

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Speaker 1: in in recent years, with some of these more dramatic

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Speaker 1: clues or possible leads drying up. There's a French comic book,

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Speaker 1: Theories about a Royal Cane, an Air Force test pilot

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Speaker 1: named Dan Cooper, and Dan Cooper has adventures, sometimes in

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Speaker 1: outer space, but also sometimes during real events of that era.

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Speaker 1: And in one episode, which was published near the date

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Speaker 1: of the hijacking, the cover illustration shows our hero Dan

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Speaker 1: Cooper parachuting. And I love this clue because to me,

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Speaker 1: it's just like something out of the show Heroes. You know.

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Speaker 1: The comic book is illustrated and it predicts the future

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Speaker 1: and then something happens. Um but that was possibly something

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Speaker 1: that influenced the hijacker to pick that change that name.

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Speaker 1: So though the FBI has looked into several leads for

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Speaker 1: this case over the years, including people who have actually

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Speaker 1: confessed to this crime, a few really stand out from

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Speaker 1: the rest. One involved a man named Richard F. McCoy,

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Speaker 1: and as we get into McCoy's story. We should say

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Speaker 1: that there were lots of copycat attempts after DV. Cooper

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Speaker 1: hijacked Flight three oh five, and McCoy's was just one

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Speaker 1: of them. He hijacked a United flight over Utah in

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Speaker 1: April nineteen two and got five hundred thousand dollars, but

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Speaker 1: he made a mistake. He told a buddy about his

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Speaker 1: plan and that friend turned him in. Everyone was really

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Speaker 1: shocked about it. To this guy. He was a Sunday

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Speaker 1: school teacher, a student at b i U, and also

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Speaker 1: an ex Green Beret helicopter pilot, which is why some

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Speaker 1: people thought that there was a strong Cooper connection there.

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Speaker 1: But McCoy was later ruled out because he didn't match

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Speaker 1: the physical description of Cooper and he had an alibi

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Speaker 1: for the crime that happened on that the day before

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Speaker 1: Thanksgiving up that year. Yeah, but McCoy was convicted for

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Speaker 1: the United hijacking and he was sent to jail for

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Speaker 1: forty five years. He escaped in nineteen seventy four and

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Speaker 1: he was killed in a shootout with the FBI. So

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Speaker 1: just a side note on that lead there. But then

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Speaker 1: he was also a guy named Dwayne Weber and on

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Speaker 1: his deathbed, he whispered to his wife of seventeen years,

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Speaker 1: I'm Dan Cooper. It sounds like a strange thing to say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And she didn't know what he was talking about because

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Speaker 1: of the whole Dan Cooper d V. Cooper confusion. But

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Speaker 1: once she figured out that Dan Cooper was in fact

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Speaker 1: dB Cooper, it sent her down this crazy road of

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Speaker 1: remembering clues that connected her husband to the crime. And

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Speaker 1: I would say remembering with air quotes, because it seemed

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Speaker 1: almost like she was sort of putting pieces together after

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Speaker 1: the story fit, making the story fit. And he's also

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Speaker 1: spent time in the Army and he matched the physical description,

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Speaker 1: so it wasn't just her. The FBI got interested in

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Speaker 1: this too, and the d n A that they got

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Speaker 1: off that tie in two thousand one, though, actually ruled

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Speaker 1: Weber out as a suspect, so we have a few more. Though.

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Speaker 1: There was another suspect named Kenneth Christiansen that New York

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Speaker 1: Magazine did an article on back in two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 1: but the FBI felt that he didn't match Cooper's physical

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Speaker 1: description enough, and they also thought that the fact that

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Speaker 1: Christiansen was a skilled paratrooper made it unlikely he would

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Speaker 1: have jumped out under those conditions, and I was pretty

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Speaker 1: fascinated that that was that had become one of the

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Speaker 1: qualifications they were looking for, going from uh deep Cooper

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Speaker 1: probably knew what he was doing to any skilled parachutists

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Speaker 1: would never have done this or or might not have

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Speaker 1: done it. And then, of course that brings us to

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Speaker 1: the most recent lead that just made the headlines. In August,

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Speaker 1: A woman named Marla Cooper came forward and said that

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Speaker 1: based on some childhood memories when she was eight years old,

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Speaker 1: she believes that her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper was actually

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Speaker 1: the hijacker. She remembers seeing her uncle show up that

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Speaker 1: night that night before Thanksgiving of at a family member's

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Speaker 1: home with serious injuries. Again here, though DNA testing failed

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Speaker 1: to connect the new suspect to dB Cooper's tie. In

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Speaker 1: that case, the tests are still inconclusive, though they're still

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Speaker 1: looking for better prints from Lynn Doyle Cooper to test.

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Speaker 1: I think he was eschanged from his family, so they're

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Speaker 1: having to dig that kind of stuff up. But for

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Speaker 1: now this lead has gone cold, so so maybe more

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Speaker 1: to come from that. Maybe not well, and we could

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Speaker 1: really keep on going with these leads and these theories

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Speaker 1: and investigations that are going on even now forty years

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Speaker 1: later to try to get to the bottom of this

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Speaker 1: mysterious case. They're sorry if we've skipped over your favorite

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Speaker 1: dB Cooper theory. You can always write in and let

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Speaker 1: us know at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: But people's attitude is really interesting. And you actually blogged

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Speaker 1: about this, didn't you. Yeah? I did. I kind of

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Speaker 1: couldn't get it out of my head when I was

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Speaker 1: reading the news about Linde Oyle Cooper and Marla Cooper

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Speaker 1: coming forward and the new lead, and then even after

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Speaker 1: it went cold, I was just fascinated by how most people,

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Speaker 1: it seems that they don't want this case to be solved.

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Speaker 1: You've seen a lot of articles probably about that. I mean,

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Speaker 1: people aren't really upset that the mystery still continues for

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Speaker 1: some reason, but they also don't want Cooper to be

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Speaker 1: caught in a sense, even if he's not alive. And

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Speaker 1: some articles even suggest he's become a Robin Hood style

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Speaker 1: folk hero and we have people rooting for him. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I never thought about it that way. I always

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Speaker 1: kind of thought that the reason that people were so

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Speaker 1: drawn to the story is just because it's a mystery.

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Speaker 1: You know, you want to find out the answer, you

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Speaker 1: want to catch the guy. But I never thought that

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Speaker 1: people would actually sympathize with Cooper. I could, I guess

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Speaker 1: I can see the argument. You know, he went up

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Speaker 1: against the big corporation in a way and got away,

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Speaker 1: and that might be easy to do. I mean, he

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Speaker 1: didn't kill anyone, and most people who interacted with him

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Speaker 1: on that day remember him as polite. He's been called

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Speaker 1: the gentleman hijacker. He even insisted on paying for his

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Speaker 1: bourbon that day. He paid the flight attendant twenty bucks

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Speaker 1: and you know, told her to keep the change. And

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Speaker 1: of course it's just a great story. I mean I

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Speaker 1: was telling Sarah, I was getting like a research high

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Speaker 1: from from working on this because there's so much more.

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Speaker 1: There's always more, like Sarah, So there's always more theories,

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Speaker 1: there's always more to find out about this case. See

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Speaker 1: why people would get obsessed with it. But I mean

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Speaker 1: that Robin hood angle a fide. He's still a criminal,

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Speaker 1: and what he did was really scary and and probably

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Speaker 1: did a lot to influence the way we traveled today,

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Speaker 1: the way air travel and airport security is or I

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Speaker 1: mean at least that started to change around that period. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's true, and it's also interesting to read this interview

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Speaker 1: with Schaefner in New York Magazine and hear her talk

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Speaker 1: about how decades later she was still afraid that Cooper

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Speaker 1: might come after her because she was a witness to

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Speaker 1: this crime. So even though he didn't kill anyone, he

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Speaker 1: did do some damage certainly, And I mean what he

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Speaker 1: did would have been really terrifying for the people involved.

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Speaker 1: Something to consider for sure, and something to consider whenever

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Speaker 1: we talk about kind of glamorized criminals like the bush

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Speaker 1: Rangers and all of those fellows. Yeah, we do that

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Speaker 1: quite a bit in covering history, I think, and you

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Speaker 1: know it's not intentional, but people just really get into

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Speaker 1: the stories because they're such fascinating characters of the events

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Speaker 1: surrounding them are so interesting. But you know, we never

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Speaker 1: lose sight of the fact that they never what's really

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Speaker 1: at stake. So the dB Cooper mystery continues. As Sarah said,

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Speaker 1: please write in with your favorite dB Cooper theories if

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Speaker 1: we missed them, or your favorite leads if we didn't

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Speaker 1: cover them. We're sorry we don't have time to cover

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Speaker 1: everything here, but we would love to hear about them.

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Speaker 1: You can look us up on Facebook or we're on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at Myston History. And if you want to learn

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Speaker 1: a little bit more about some of the dB Cooper

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Speaker 1: theories through the ages, we do have an article called

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Speaker 1: is dB Cooper Still Alive? And you can find it

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Speaker 1: by looking on our homepage at www. For more on

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Speaker 1: those thousands of other topics, because it how stuff works.

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Speaker 1: Dot com m