What Really Happened to D.B. Cooper?

What really happened to D.B. Cooper, the man who hijacked a Boeing 727 the night before Thanksgiving 1971, took $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills and jumped out of the back of the plane into the dark? This D.B. Cooper documentary tells the whole story from the FBI's own record: the note, the four parachutes, the jump, the clues he left in seat 18-E, the money a boy found on a Columbia River beach in 1980, and why the famous suspects don't fit. The FBI's agents never agreed on whether he survived. Here is what each side had, and what the evidence really says. This historical true crime documentary covers Northwest Orient Flight 305, flight attendants Florence Schaffner and Tina Mucklow, Captain William Scott and First Officer Bill Rataczak, Seattle-Tacoma airport, the ransom serial numbers, the F-106 chase planes, the drop zone near Ariel and Lake Merwin, the 1972 search with soldiers from Fort Lewis, the SR-71 flights, the copycat hijackers and Richard McCoy, the Cooper vane, the stairs placard near Castle Rock, Brian Ingram and the Tena Bar money, the 2020 diatom study, agent Ralph Himmelsbach and the Washougal River, the composite sketches, the titanium on the tie, suspects Duane Weber and Kenneth Christiansen, Larry Carr's case for his death, Earl Cossey and the dummy parachute, the myths, and why the FBI closed the active case in 2016. CHAPTERS 0:00 D.B. Cooper: the night of the jump 1:30 The ticket: "Dan Cooper" boards Flight 305 2:37 The note 3:37 The demands: $200,000 and four parachutes 4:55 Circling 6:05 Seattle 8:11 The jump 10:06 What he left behind 12:03 The search 13:41 The copycats 14:46 The money 16:20 The riverbank: the money found in 1980 18:28 The wrong river 19:37 The man in 18-E 21:50 The suspects 24:10 The jump, again: did he survive? 26:00 The myths 27:09 The open file 27:51 Seat 18-E Nobody was hurt on Flight 305. The crew are named; living people appear only by name and from the public record. This documentary is built on the Wikipedia articles on the case and the FBI's own files (the Norjak case file in the FBI Vault), Ralph Himmelsbach's Norjak (1986), Geoffrey Gray's Skyjack (2011) and the newspapers they cite. Every Crime Ledger episode is the whole story of one infamous case, with myths told as myths and no gore. SOURCES Wikipedia: "D. B. Cooper", "Richard McCoy Jr.", "Cooper vane", "Boeing 727", and the FBI case file (the FBI Vault's Norjak files), books (Himmelsbach; Gray; Olson; Edwards) and newspapers they cite. PICTURES (all public domain; from Wikimedia Commons, the FBI and the National Archives) FBI: the composite sketches of the hijacker (1971; 1973, by Roy Rose), the wanted bulletin, the hijacker's ticket, the ransom bills found at Tena Bar (1980), Richard McCoy Jr., FBI headquarters A Northwest Orient Boeing 727 like Flight 305, Fort Lauderdale, 1970; a Cooper vane under a Boeing 727 (Tank67) U.S. Air Force: two F-106s, 1963; T-33 trainers, 1988 (MSgt Jose Lopez Jr.); an SR-71 Blackbird, 1981 (SSgt Bill Thompson) J. Edgar Hoover, 1961 (Marion S. Trikosko, Library of Congress) DOCUMERICA (National Archives): Seattle and Lake Washington, 1973 (Doug Wilson); downtown Portland, the Columbia River Gorge and Cathlamet, 1973 (David Falconer); the Hoh Rain Forest, 1972 (Gene Daniels); Reno, 1973 (Jonas Dovydenas); a jet in Florida, 1972 (Fred Ward) Old-growth Douglas fir, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, 1949 (U.S. Forest Service) Mount St. Helens from Spirit Lake, 1923 (Asahel Curtis); Mount St. Helens, 18 May 1980 (Donald A. Swanson, USGS) Maps: Natural Earth (public domain); the route and the drop zones are approximate MUSIC "Aftermath" and "Stay the Course" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Crime Ledger: the whole story of history's most infamous crimes. Subscribe:    / @crimeledgerhistory   #DBCooper #TrueCrime #HistoricalTrueCrime #UnsolvedMysteries #CrimeDocumentary #FBI #CrimeLedger