He Jumped From a Plane With $200,000 and Vanished: The D.B. Cooper Mystery

On the night before Thanksgiving 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient jet, collected $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and jumped from the back of the plane into the dark. The FBI had photographed every one of those 10,000 bills. In more than fifty years, only 290 have ever been found. This is the story of D.B. Cooper told through the money: the ransom, the serial numbers, the boy who found $5,800 on a riverbank, and the $194,200 nobody has ever spent. CHAPTERS 0:00 Eight thirteen p.m. 1:04 Thanksgiving Eve, 1971 2:27 The note and the demands 4:29 Ten thousand twenty-dollar bills 7:02 The jump 9:10 The boy on the beach 12:44 What Cooper changed 14:09 Why was the money never spent? SOURCES FBI, A Byte Out of History: D.B. Cooper: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/sto... FBI Vault, D.B. Cooper files: https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper%20 National Archives at Seattle, Case File CR-0451: https://www.archives.gov/seattle/d-b-cooper FBI, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/r... Wikipedia, D. B. Cooper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper Wikipedia, Cooper vane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_vane Also: AP/FOX 5 (2016), WJAR (2025), Biography.com (2025), KCUR/NPR (2016). This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. Narration is AI-generated. MUSIC Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Interloper", "Covert Affair", "Night Vigil", "Crypto", "The Descent", "Lightless Dawn", "Unanswered Questions" VISUALS Stock video: Mixkit (mixkit.co), Mixkit Free License. Public-domain archive film (archive.org): Airports Mean Business (FAA, 1972), Plane Talk (1965, Prelinger Archives), Free Fall Safety Procedures (U.S. Army, 1966). Public-domain photos: FBI (wanted poster, sketches, ticket, Tena Bar bills, Richard McCoy), Flight 305 crew (1971), Library of Congress (Warren K. Leffler, 1969), EPA DOCUMERICA / U.S. National Archives (Portland, Seattle, Columbia River, 1973), Tank67 (Cooper vane). Photos via Wikimedia Commons: N467US by Clint Groves, GFDL 1.2 (gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html) Western 737 at Portland 1973 by Ken Fielding, CC BY-SA 3.0 Boeing 727 production, Boeing, CC BY 2.0 Boeing 727-51 N838N by RuthAS, CC BY 3.0 Boeing 727 cockpit by James Petts, CC BY-SA 2.0 B727 flight engineer's station by SWF Photography, CC BY-SA 2.0 Northwest 727 airstair by Robert Rynerson, CC BY 2.0 Seattle-First National Bank, Seattle Municipal Archives, CC BY 4.0 Archive film and stock video show the era; they are not footage of the hijacking itself. 💬 Where do you think the other $194,200 went? Drop your theory in the comments. We read every one. 👍 If you enjoyed this story, hit Like and share it with someone who loves a good mystery. 🔔 Subscribe to Paper & Gold for a new money mystery every week:    / @paperandgolddocs   #DBCooper #MoneyHistory #PaperAndGold