Where is D.B. Cooper? Who is D.B. Cooper really? Is he still alive? Did he spend the stolen $200,000? Did his parachute fail to open? No one knows the answers, except D.B. Cooper.
On Nov. 24, 1971, an airline passenger later identified as D.B. Cooper called the stewardess to his seat in the back of the plane. He was alone. He gave her a note that said he was carrying a bomb. He would blow up the bomb if she didn’t follow all of his instructions. He opened the bag on his lap and showed her its contents. It looked like six sticks of dynamite connected with wires to an alarm clock. The stewardess gasped.
She went to the cockpit and told the pilot of the 727 what D.B. had told her. The pilot followed D.B.’s instructions. The plane landed at Tacoma Airport in Washington and refueled at the end of the runway, far away from other planes and vehicles. D.B. ordered all passengers off. He asked for four parachutes and $200,000 in cash. The FBI got the parachutes and the money. The money was marked. All of it was delivered to Cooper.
D.B. Cooper checked out the parachutes and the cash. He strapped on a back chute and then a front chute. He filled a third parachute bag with the money. He tied that bag securely to his front chute. The stewardess watched his every move. She was impressed with how “professional” he was.
When he finished, D.B. told the pilot to take off. D.B. said to fly south toward Mexico at 10,000 feet. Once the 727 was airborne, D.B. told the stewardess to go sit up front with the pilot. Sometime later, D.B. opened the rear door of the passenger plane and jumped out. It was dark, and it was cold.
Pilots in the two fighter jets that were following the 727 saw nothing. Nor did their radar detect a descending parachute. D.B. disappeared into the night, and almost 40 years later, D.B. is still a man who simply vanished into thin air.
In 1980, a kid found $6,000 of the marked bills on the bank of the Columbia River, near Portland, Oregon. Had D.B. landed in the river and drowned? Had his body and most of his money eventually drifted into the Pacific? Or, had D.B. left the money there as a ruse, to make the FBI think that he had died? The FBI is angry that D.B. Cooper got away. “If we find that dirtbag, he’s going to prison for 30 years,” said one agent recently.