Speaker 1: You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season seven, episode twenty two. Jumping into Legend. Before Northwest
Speaker 1: Orient Airlines Flight three oh five had even made it
Speaker 1: safely to the ground, the FBI launched what would become
Speaker 1: one of its longest, most rigorous, and most frustrating investigations
Speaker 1: of all time. When the plane landed in Reno and
Speaker 1: agents began sweeping the scene of so called Dan Cooper's crime,
Speaker 1: they were initially optimistic. Despite the effort to cover his tracks,
Speaker 1: the man had left behind plenty of evidence to get
Speaker 1: started with, including ding a clip on tie, an ash
Speaker 1: tray full of cigarette butts, and more than sixty sets
Speaker 1: of fingerprints, not to mention all the eye witnesses. And
Speaker 1: although they didn't know exactly where the so called Cooper
Speaker 1: had parachuted out of the plane, they could make an
Speaker 1: educated guess. Assuming he jumped shortly after sending Tina into
Speaker 1: the cockpit, they estimated that he would have landed somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Cascade Mountains in either southern Washington or northern Oregon.
Speaker 1: That said, it was impossible to know the jets' air
Speaker 1: speed at the moment the man jumped, what direction the
Speaker 1: wind was blowing, or how long he'd spent in freefall
Speaker 1: before activating his parachute as soon as the sun rose
Speaker 1: on that Thanksgiving Day in nineteen seventy one, police and
Speaker 1: federal agents began scouring the forests in the area on
Speaker 1: foot and by helicopter. The search went on for days,
Speaker 1: slow down by dense fog, and ultimately turned up nothing
Speaker 1: at all. The so called Cooper, his parachute, and his
Speaker 1: bag of money had all vanished without a trace, about
Speaker 1: three thousand miles east of Reno in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: The Bureau began creating a profile of the hijacker. The
Speaker 1: science of criminal profiling was still in its nascent stages
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit wouldn't
Speaker 1: be formally established until the following year, but it was
Speaker 1: ideal for a situation like this. Profiling means extrapolating an
Speaker 1: unknown criminal's personality traits by analyzing the crimes they've committed.
Speaker 1: The more information an investigator has about their methods and behavior,
Speaker 1: the more useful of profile is likely to be. And
Speaker 1: thanks to the number of people Cooper interacted with during
Speaker 1: his heist, the Feds had plenty to go on. They
Speaker 1: interviewed the whole flight crew and multiple passengers. Unsurprisingly, it
Speaker 1: was Tina Mucklow and Florence Shaffner, the two flight attendants
Speaker 1: who'd spent the most time with the hijacker, who had
Speaker 1: the best insights. From those interviews, they established the following
Speaker 1: The man was probably local to the Washington area because
Speaker 1: he'd recognized the city of Tacoma from the air. He
Speaker 1: possibly had a background in the Air Force because he'd
Speaker 1: said something about the drive time between the airport and
Speaker 1: a local Air Force base, and he was likely in
Speaker 1: dire financial straits. Why else commit such an audacious, high
Speaker 1: risk crime for money, they thought Based on his mannerisms, vocabulary,
Speaker 1: and behavior. They also figured he was probably of above
Speaker 1: average intelligence, and all of the eyewitnesses gave similar physical descriptions.
Speaker 1: The apparent Cooper was a man in his mid forties,
Speaker 1: around five foot ten, with a high hairline of black
Speaker 1: hair and an olive complexion. Armed with this detailed profile,
Speaker 1: investigators began questioning potential suspects. The authorities referred to the
Speaker 1: hijacker as Dan Cooper because that was the name he'd
Speaker 1: given when he purchased his plane ticket. Soon after the event,
Speaker 1: Portland police found a local man with the name D. B.
Speaker 1: Cooper who had a minor criminal record. This man was
Speaker 1: eliminated as a suspect almost immediately, but in a roundabout way,
Speaker 1: his police interview became an important part of the saga.
Speaker 1: A local reporter, rushing to meet his deadline for the
Speaker 1: evening paper, accidentally reported the sou SPEC's name as the
Speaker 1: one used by the hijacker, and so it was from
Speaker 1: that point on that our enigmatic sunglass wearing hijacker came
Speaker 1: to be known as the mythic dB Cooper. As the
Speaker 1: days passed and the story gathered more and more coverage,
Speaker 1: the dB Cooper mythology only grew. Normally, hijackers were not
Speaker 1: considered heroes, but there was something different about this one.
Speaker 1: People were fascinated by him. This seemingly ordinary man in
Speaker 1: a pressed suit, who hijacked a plane without resorting to
Speaker 1: any physical violence, successfully extorted two hundred thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: the Feds and then vanished, like James Bond, into the
Speaker 1: night with his fortune. However, investigators were not optimistic about
Speaker 1: his fate. In fact, it was acknowledged from the very
Speaker 1: start that they might well be looking for a dead man. Logically,
Speaker 1: it was unlikely that Cooper could have survived his jump.
Speaker 1: For a start, it's likely that he had no skydiving experience.
Speaker 1: Aside from requesting that they weren't military great, he gave
Speaker 1: no other instructions as to what kind of parachutes he
Speaker 1: wanted exactly. The set he received were rudimentary, with no
Speaker 1: ability to maneuver them, meaning he had no control over
Speaker 1: where he ended up. He'd also jumped into a densely
Speaker 1: wooded area in complete darkness in two hundred mile per
Speaker 1: hour wind on a foggy night when visibility couldn't have
Speaker 1: been worse, and he'd done it all wildly underdressed in
Speaker 1: only a suit, a thin trench coat, and a pair
Speaker 1: of loafers. The man also hadn't given the crew through
Speaker 1: any specific flight path to follow, beyond telling them to
Speaker 1: aim for Mexico City and fly low. If he'd had
Speaker 1: a detailed plan in mind for his landing or an
Speaker 1: accomplice waiting for him on the ground, it's likely he
Speaker 1: would have been far more specific. In fact, many FBI
Speaker 1: agents believed that the man probably never even got his
Speaker 1: parachute open because the cold would have been paralyzing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the search continued, expanding into the Columbia River between Washington
Speaker 1: and Oregon, but no body was found, and eventually they
Speaker 1: stopped looking for one. In the first five years after
Speaker 1: the hijacking, the FBI considered more than eight hundred suspects
Speaker 1: in its effort to identify D. B. Cooper. Many of
Speaker 1: them were ruled out quickly for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: Some had reliable alibis, others didn't match the physical description
Speaker 1: provided by eyewitnesses, and some were eliminated through the use
Speaker 1: of early DNA analysis extrapolated from Cooper's clipon tie. One
Speaker 1: of the most compelling suspects, however, emerged only five months
Speaker 1: after the hijacking in the spring of nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: On April seventh, nineteen seventy two, in Denver, Colorado, a
Speaker 1: man going by the name James Johnson with the slim
Speaker 1: face and high hairline similar to the so called dB
Speaker 1: Cooper bordered the United Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Twenty
Speaker 1: minutes after the plane took off, a flight attendant noticed
Speaker 1: that the man was holding what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: hand grenade. When confronted, Johnson pulled out a pistol and
Speaker 1: gave a note to the flight attendant demanding five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in cash and four parachutes in return, for
Speaker 1: which he would let the planes eighty four other passengers go.
Speaker 1: The plane was diverted to San Francisco, where Johnson received
Speaker 1: his ransom and duly released the passengers. Just like the
Speaker 1: Cooper hijacking, Johnson insisted the flight crews stay on board
Speaker 1: and take him back into the air. It was a
Speaker 1: near identical crime, except that Johnson had more than doubled
Speaker 1: Cooper's pay day, and once the plane took off again,
Speaker 1: another key difference emerged. Johnson gave the pilots a very
Speaker 1: specific flight path to follow, telling them to climb to
Speaker 1: an altitude of sixteen thousand feet and then follow a
Speaker 1: path which would take them over a specific region of Utah.
Speaker 1: He then sent all flight crew into the cockpit, took
Speaker 1: his ransom, and parachuted out at the back of the
Speaker 1: plane using a set of aft stairs that opened up
Speaker 1: from under the aircraft. Unlike Cooper, Johnson had clearly planned
Speaker 1: his getaway. Ironically, this actually made the authority's job a
Speaker 1: lot easier. On top of the fingerprints and handwriting sample
Speaker 1: he'd left behind, they knew he likely had ties to
Speaker 1: the area. Two days after the hijacking, Johnson was arrested
Speaker 1: at his home in the city of Provo in Utah,
Speaker 1: mere miles from where he'd landed. Only the man wasn't
Speaker 1: called James Johnson, but Richard Floyd McCoy, a thirty year
Speaker 1: old Vietnam veteran originally from North Carolina. When police busted
Speaker 1: his home, they found the half a million dollars of
Speaker 1: ransom money still in his possession. It was an open
Speaker 1: and shutcase, and McCoy was soon found guilty and sentenced
Speaker 1: to forty five years behind bars. But some people, including
Speaker 1: members of law enforcement, were convinced that McCoy was not
Speaker 1: a mere copycat criminal. They believed that he was D. B. Cooper.
Speaker 1: The theory went like this, After carrying out the original hijacking,
Speaker 1: McCoy had become cocky, His notoriety had gone to his
Speaker 1: head and greed took over. He started wishing he'd ask
Speaker 1: for a bigger ransom. After all, they'd handed over the
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars with no hesitation, and so buoyed
Speaker 1: by his success the first time, around, he went back
Speaker 1: for another piece of the pie. Despite the neatness of
Speaker 1: McCoy as a fit for dB Cooper, the more the
Speaker 1: FBI looked into the possibility, the less credible became. For
Speaker 1: one thing, despite the high hairline, McCoy didn't match the
Speaker 1: physical description of Cooper in any other way. For another,
Speaker 1: he had a solid alibi for the night of the
Speaker 1: Cooper hijacking. He'd been in Las Vegas on that day
Speaker 1: and at home with his family enjoying Thanksgiving dinner the
Speaker 1: day after. After serving two years of his sentence in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, Richard McCoy escaped from prison alongside several
Speaker 1: fellow inmates and went on the run. Three months later,
Speaker 1: he was tracked down and subsequently killed in a shootout
Speaker 1: with law enforcement. When Nicholas O'Hara, the FBI agent who
Speaker 1: fired the fatal shot, spoke to the media soon after,
Speaker 1: he insisted that, contrary to what most of his colleagues believed,
Speaker 1: when he shot Richard McCoy, he also shot D. B. Cooper.
Speaker 1: McCoy remains a popular suspect among the fiicionados of the
Speaker 1: Cooper case, but he's far from the only one in
Speaker 1: the autumn of nineteen seventy one, residents of a leafy
Speaker 1: New Jersey suburb began to notice something strange in their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Walking past a large Victorian mansion on a road called
Speaker 1: Hillside Avenue, they saw that all of the lights had
Speaker 1: been left on, and they stayed that way for weeks,
Speaker 1: day and night, until finally, one by one, they began
Speaker 1: to flicker out. At first, neighbors assumed that the List
Speaker 1: family was away on vacation. John List, the father, had
Speaker 1: told his children school that they'd be taking a trip
Speaker 1: to visit their grandmother in North Carolina. He'd stopped the mail, milk,
Speaker 1: and newspaper deliveries. The only thing he'd forgotten to do,
Speaker 1: it seemed, was turn out the lights. But something still
Speaker 1: didn't feel right. In early December, when darkness had finally
Speaker 1: fallen inside the List house, somebody contacted the police. As
Speaker 1: Officer George se Lesnik walked up the driveway, he heard
Speaker 1: the faint sound of organ music emanating from inside the
Speaker 1: supposedly empty house. Unease coiled in his stomach. George entered
Speaker 1: the home through an open side window, then turned on
Speaker 1: his torch and began to look around, picking up the
Speaker 1: eerie strains of the organ music. Tiptoeing quietly through the house,
Speaker 1: he followed it to its source in the living room.
Speaker 1: It was coming from an automatic record player that had
Speaker 1: been left on, playing the same solemn dirge on an
Speaker 1: endless loop through loudspeakers. As he moved from the living
Speaker 1: room into a vast ballroom, the bright beam of light
Speaker 1: from George's torch illuminated a grisly scene. Four bodies, one woman,
Speaker 1: one teenage girl, and two teenage boys, placed carefully on
Speaker 1: top of sleeping bags, were lined up beside the wall.
Speaker 1: They were later identified as forty five year old Helen List,
Speaker 1: sixteen year old Patricia List, fifteen year old John List Junior,
Speaker 1: and thirteen year old Frederick List. Later in the search,
Speaker 1: George and his fellow officers discovered a fifth victim, eighty
Speaker 1: four year old Alma List, mother of John, whose body
Speaker 1: had been left in a third floor attic. All five
Speaker 1: had been shot dead. John List, the father, was the
Speaker 1: only family member who fate was unclear, but not for long.
Speaker 1: On the desk in Liszt's study, the police found a
Speaker 1: five page letter addressed to his long time pastor. It
Speaker 1: was a detailed and chillingly calm confession, in which List
Speaker 1: described how he'd planned out the slaughter of his entire family.
Speaker 1: He wrote about his financial woes and justified the murders
Speaker 1: by claiming that he'd been trying to save his family's souls.
Speaker 1: It may seem cowardly to have shot them from behind,
Speaker 1: he wrote, but I didn't want any of them to know,
Speaker 1: even at the last second, that I had to do
Speaker 1: this to them. He ended the letter with an unrepentant
Speaker 1: sign off, p s. Mother is in the hallway in
Speaker 1: the attic, third floor. She was too heavy to move.
Speaker 1: There was no sign of List himself anywhere, and detectives
Speaker 1: soon realized with horror that he had almost a full
Speaker 1: month's head start. By now he could be anywhere. It
Speaker 1: was on November ninth, nineteen seventy one, after months of
Speaker 1: meticulous planning, John Liszt walked into the kitchen of his
Speaker 1: New Jersey mansion and fatally shot his wife in the
Speaker 1: back of the head. He then went up to the
Speaker 1: converted attic where his mother lived and shot her in
Speaker 1: the face, just above the left eye. Then he waited
Speaker 1: for two of his children to return home from school
Speaker 1: and shot them each in turn, before lining up their
Speaker 1: bodies in the ballroom next to their mother. Incredibly, John
Speaker 1: Liszt then made himself some lunch, then traveled to watch
Speaker 1: John Junior play a game of soccer before taking him
Speaker 1: back home and shooting him too. It was two weeks
Speaker 1: after the List murders on the other side of the
Speaker 1: country that a desperate man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked
Speaker 1: a plane for ransom money before disappearing into the night.
Speaker 1: Once the horrific details of the List family murders came out,
Speaker 1: it didn't take long for the FBI's D B. Cooper
Speaker 1: Task Force to identify a possible link. Liszt had been
Speaker 1: in deep financial difficulty. He'd long had trouble holding down
Speaker 1: a job and was struggling to pay the mortgage on
Speaker 1: the family's sprawling mansion. In his confession letter, he claimed
Speaker 1: he was close to bankruptcy and crippled by shame, had
Speaker 1: killed his family to supposedly save them from having to
Speaker 1: live in ruin. The FBI didn't know much about Cooper,
Speaker 1: but they did think he was motivated by money and
Speaker 1: evidently seemed hell bent on disappearing. Unlike Richard mc coy,
Speaker 1: List was a close match to the physical description and
Speaker 1: police sketch of Cooper. He'd gone missing two weeks before
Speaker 1: the hijacking, meaning he had no alibi, and after what
Speaker 1: he'd done to his family, he also fit the bill
Speaker 1: in terms of having nothing to lose. But despite a
Speaker 1: nationwide man hunt during which his face was plastered all
Speaker 1: over front pages and television news coverage, List was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. As the years passed, his trail went cold,
Speaker 1: along with that of D. B. Cooper. In the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty nine, almost twenty years later, the story
Speaker 1: of the List family murders was broadcast on the TV
Speaker 1: show America's Most Wanted. The episode included an age progressed
Speaker 1: approximation of what List would probably look like in the
Speaker 1: present day. A woman in Richmond, Virginia, called in with
Speaker 1: a tip the suspect bore a striking resemblance to her neighbor,
Speaker 1: who went by the name Robert Clark. The authorities soon
Speaker 1: confirmed that it was indeed John Liszt. He'd been living
Speaker 1: as Robert Clarke in Virginia for close to two decades,
Speaker 1: enjoying a quiet, suburban existence with a new wife who
Speaker 1: knew nothing about his past. He was promptly arrested, extradited
Speaker 1: back to New Jersey, and charged with the murders of
Speaker 1: his wife, mother, and three children. Although he clung to
Speaker 1: his charade for a while, Liszt eventually admitted his true
Speaker 1: identity and confessed to his crimes, but when the FBI
Speaker 1: questioned him about the d B. Cooper hijacking, he insisted
Speaker 1: that it wasn't him. Liszt was found guilty and all
Speaker 1: five counts of murder and sentenced to five consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 1: He died behind bars in two thousand and eight at
Speaker 1: the age of eighty two. The speculation that List was
Speaker 1: Cooper has never entirely faded, but no clear evidence ever
Speaker 1: turned up to implicate him in the hijacking, and the
Speaker 1: FBI no longer considers him a suspect. Richard mc coy
Speaker 1: and John List are just two of the hundreds of
Speaker 1: suspects who have been investigated in relation to the D B.
Speaker 1: Cooper mystery over the years, but despite all of the
Speaker 1: resources and manpower that went into the search, no truly
Speaker 1: compelling lead suspect ever emerged, and no arrest was ever made.
Speaker 1: Whoever Cooper was, he changed the face of air travel forever.
Speaker 1: His high profile hijacking, along with the spate of copycat
Speaker 1: crimes it inspired, forced the airline industry to overhaul its
Speaker 1: security protocols. The idea of screening passengers for weapons had
Speaker 1: been floated in Congress a few years earlier, but was
Speaker 1: shot down for fear that such measures would scare people
Speaker 1: away from flying. But as hijackings became more and more common,
Speaker 1: opinions started to shift. The so called Cooper was the
Speaker 1: final straw. Beginning in January nineteen seventy three, metal detectors
Speaker 1: and X ray machines became standard at all US airports,
Speaker 1: and although ID checks for domestic flights wouldn't be introduced
Speaker 1: for another couple of decades, new security protocols were introduced
Speaker 1: for passengers who paid cash for their flight ticket on
Speaker 1: the day of departure, just as the apparent Cooper did.
Speaker 1: Airlines so began fitting their planes with a new device
Speaker 1: which prevented the stairs from being deployed during flight in
Speaker 1: order to deter copycat hijackers. In a sign of just
Speaker 1: what an indelible mark Cooper had left on the industry,
Speaker 1: this device was known as the Cooper vane. These measures
Speaker 1: had the desired effect, and the so called Golden age
Speaker 1: of hijacking ground to a halt immediately, and so too
Speaker 1: did the hunt for Cooper himself. For close to a decade,
Speaker 1: the FBI investigated one dead end lead after another, making
Speaker 1: no real progress. But then in nineteen eighty there was
Speaker 1: a break in the case. In the summer of that year,
Speaker 1: eight year old Brian Ingram was exploring the shores of
Speaker 1: Oregon's Columbia River during a family holiday, looking for a
Speaker 1: good spot to build a campfire. As he ran his
Speaker 1: hand along the ground, he felt something solid, partially buried
Speaker 1: in the sand. Looking closer, he spotted some kind of package,
Speaker 1: rotten and fraying, and inside it were three large bundles
Speaker 1: of twenty dollar bills. Bryan and his father handed the
Speaker 1: money to the authorities. They quickly confirmed the serial numbers
Speaker 1: on the bank notes to be a match for those
Speaker 1: given to D. B. Cooper. It was a brief moment
Speaker 1: of hope in a case that most had given up
Speaker 1: as a lost cause. Sadly, however, the package contained only
Speaker 1: a small portion of the ransom money, a little under
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars. Despite an extensive search of the area,
Speaker 1: nothing else was found, there was still no sign of
Speaker 1: the mythical Cooper himself, and the presence of the money
Speaker 1: offered no further clues about where he ended up. D. B.
Speaker 1: Cooper remains a compelling enigma. His real name, his history,
Speaker 1: his motivations, and his fate are all complete unknowns, and
Speaker 1: yet over the years he became an unlikely folk hero
Speaker 1: in the US, inspiring movies, books, and even songs. He
Speaker 1: somehow represented both an every man and a larger than
Speaker 1: life outlaw, and people found the combination irresistible. They rooted
Speaker 1: for Cooper, hoping out loud that he'd get away with
Speaker 1: every nickel. One person who was not rooting for Cooper, however,
Speaker 1: was Tina Mucklow, the flight attendant who'd been at his
Speaker 1: side throughout most of the hijacking. She, more than anybody else,
Speaker 1: had a front row seat to the kind of man
Speaker 1: that he was, and in her view, he was a
Speaker 1: low life. Tina was just twenty two at the time,
Speaker 1: and she was determined not to let her experience on
Speaker 1: board that flight define her. After taking a few weeks
Speaker 1: off to spend time with her family, she returned to
Speaker 1: work as a flight attendant, a job she continued until
Speaker 1: she was thirty. She then entered a monastery, spending several
Speaker 1: years as a nun before going on to work in
Speaker 1: social services. For years, she avoided the spotlight, dodging endless
Speaker 1: phone calls from reporters and amateur sleuths trying to solve
Speaker 1: the Cooper case. She wanted no part of it, but
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two she finally relented and agreed to
Speaker 1: feature in a documentary about the hijacking titled NOD If
Speaker 1: You Understand. Speaking with the UK's Independent newspaper, she reflected
Speaker 1: on her experience. It has been a sad jo, she said,
Speaker 1: to think that somebody who was a criminal and put
Speaker 1: the lives of the crew and the passengers at risk,
Speaker 1: plus any number of people on the ground, would be
Speaker 1: looked at as a hero. In twenty sixteen, the FBI
Speaker 1: officially announced that it had closed its investigation into the crime.
Speaker 1: The so called d B. Cooper remains the only unidentified
Speaker 1: perpetrator of a commercial airline hijacking in US history. This
Speaker 1: episode was written by Emma Dibton and produced by Richard
Speaker 1: McLain Smith. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created
Speaker 1: by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, were also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained.
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Speaker 1: the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can
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