D.B Cooper (Part 1 of 3)
I’m sure that all of you are familiar with the “Dan” D.B Cooper story, myth or legend, and in this
“Exercise’ I will go over the details of what is known, what is assumed and what is false.
Let’s begin with basic facts.
On November 24th 1971 Northwest Orient Arlines flight #305 scheduled to fly between Portland OR, and Seattle WA was hijacked.
The flight landed in Seattle as planned and the passengers were released, in exchange for a $200,000 ransom and four parachutes. Upon receiving the money and the parachutes the hijacker instructed the crew to fly the Boeing 727 to Mexico City with a refueling stop in Reno, NV.
Approximately 35 minutes after take off from Seattle the hijacker deployed the 727’s rear door and ramp and parachuted over a heavily wooded area of Southwest Washington. The Hijacker was never found or identified.
In April of 1980 about $5800 of the $200,000 was recovered, to date the only money that has ever turned up anywhere from hijacking.
The hijacker bought his ticket under the name “Dan Cooper” and paid in cash at the airport approximately 2 hours before the flights scheduled departure, he was carrying only a leather briefcase when he boarded the flight.
The FBI considers the hijacking as unsolved and is still accepting any leads or tips on the case despite the task forced assigned to the hijacking was dissolved in 1999, and the investigation suspended in 2016
I have a 3 part series planned on this. I will be examining the Copper case and listing some of the more prominent suspects, why they are suspects , and I will also be doing the same with the “Zodiac Killer” case and listing all the prominent suspects in the second part of this series, in the third part, I will identify one man, and provide compelling information and circumstantial evidence as to why I believe that he is both the Zodiac killer and D.B Cooper.
The Hijacking
On the afternoon of November 24th 1971 Northwest Orient flight 305 was preparing for takeoff, a quick 40 minute flight from Portland to Seattle in a Boeing 727-100 series (Tail number N467US), the flight was less than 1/3 full carrying 38 passengers in a plane with a seating capacity of 148. The passenger with row 18 to himself was Dan Cooper according to his ticket. He smoked Raleigh cigarets and drank two 7&7’s waiting for the plane to push back from the gate. He was described by the other passengers and two flights attendants as a white man in his 40’s of average height (5’10”-6’2”) dark brown or black hair combed back, some passengers report he wore glasses, others said they didn’t see glasses.
About 5 minutes in to the flight at 3:05 PM PST, Cooper handed flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note, she was seated in the jump seat directly behind his seat in row 18, believing the note to be his phone number or an indecent proposition, she folded the note and placed it in her vest pocket without looking at it. Cooper turned around and told her “Miss you need to look at that note, I have a bomb”. Schaffner looked at the note, and written in block letters was “I have a bomb in my briefcase, and I want you to sit next to me”
As the flight continued Cooper used the flight attendants and pilots to relay his demands. $200,000 in cash, and 4 parachutes. Donald Nyrop, the president and CEO of Northwest Orient Airlines authorized the $200,000 payment, the plane circled Puget Sound for 2 1/2 hours while the money was assembled from local banks in the Seattle area, the serial numbers of the bills were photographed by the FBI prior to the plane landing.
The plane landed at 5:46 PM PST At the SEA-TAC airport in Seattle, 30 minutes later, the money and parachutes were delivered to Cooper with the money in a black knapsack as he requested, and as he promised he released all 38 passengers at 6:10 PM. At 7:40 PM the flight took off, with only Cooper, Flight attendant Lisa Mucklow, Captain William Scott, First Officer Bill Rataczak, and Flight engineer Hal Anderson aboard. Two Washington State Air National Guard F-106 fighters and a Lockheed Trainer T33 followed at a distance of about 12 miles to remain out of view. 20 Minutes after takeoff at 8:00 PM Cooper ordered Mucklow to lower the rear stair ramp. Mucklow returned to the cockpit. D.B Cooper leapt in in to American folklore .
The Suspects (Copied from Wikipedia For summation)
Theadore “Ted” Braden Jr (1928-2007)
Braden was Special Forces and a master skydiver, and convicted bank robber .
Theodore Burdette Braden, Jr. (1928–2007) was a Special Forces commando during the Vietnam War, a master skydiver, and a convicted felon. He was believed by many within the Special Forces community, both at the time of the hijacking and in subsequent years, to have been Cooper. Born in Ohio, Braden first joined the military at the age of 16 in 1944, serving with the 101st Airborne during World War II. He eventually became one of the military's leading parachutists, often representing the Army in international skydiving tournaments, and his military records list him as having made 911 jumps. During the 1960s, Braden was a team leader within the MACVSOG, a classified commando unit of Green Berets which conducted unconventional warfare operations during the Vietnam War. He also served as a military skydiving instructor, teaching HALO jumping techniques to members of Project Delta. Braden spent 23 months in Vietnam, conducting classified operations within both North and South Vietnam, as well as Laos and Cambodia. In December 1966, Braden deserted his unit in Vietnam and made his way to the Congo to serve as a mercenary, but would only serve there a short time before being arrested by CIA agents and taken back to the States for a courts-martial. Despite having committed a capital offense by deserting in wartime, Braden was given an honorable discharge and barred from re-enlisting in the military in exchange for his continued secrecy about the MACVSOG program.
Braden was profiled in the October 1967 issue of Ramparts Magazine, wherein he was described by fellow Special Forces veteran and journalist Don Duncan as being someone with a "secret death wish" who "continually places himself in unnecessary danger but always seems to get away with it", specifically referring to Braden's disregard for military skydiving safety regulations. Duncan also claimed that during Braden's time in Vietnam, he was "continuously involved in shady deals to make money." Following his military discharge in 1967, the details of Braden's life are largely unknown, but at the time of the hijacking he was a truck driver for Consolidated Freightways, which was headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland and not far from the suspected dropzone of Ariel, Washington. It is also known that at some point in the early 1970s he was investigated by the FBI for stealing $250,000 during a trucking scam he had allegedly devised, but he would never be formally charged for this supposed crime. In 1980, Braden was indicted by a Federal grand jury for driving an 18-wheeler full of stolen goods from Arizona to Massachusetts, but it is unknown whether there was a conviction in that case. Two years later Braden would be arrested in Pennsylvania for driving a stolen vehicle with fictitious plates and for having no drivers license. Braden eventually ended up being sent to Federal prison at some point during the late 1980s, serving time in Pennsylvania, but the precise crime is unknown.
Despite his ability as a soldier, he was not well liked personally and was described by a family member as "the perfect combination of high intelligence and criminality". From his time working covert operations in Vietnam, he likely would have possessed the then-classified knowledge about the ability and proper specifications for jumping from a 727, perhaps having done it himself on MACVSOG missions. Physically, Braden's military records list him at 5 ft 8 in (173 cm), which is shorter than the height description of at least 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) given by the two flight attendants, but this military measurement would have been taken in his stocking feet and he may have appeared somewhat taller in shoes. However, he possessed a dark complexion from years of outdoor military service, had short dark hair, a medium athletic build, and was 43 years of age at the time of the hijacking, which are features all in line with the descriptions of Cooper.
Kenneth Peter Christiansen
In 2003, Minnesota resident Lyle Christiansen watched a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking and became convinced that his late brother Kenneth (1926–1994) was Cooper.[101] After repeated futile attempts to convince first the FBI and then the author and film director Nora Ephron (who he hoped would make a movie about the case), he contacted a private investigator in New York City. In 2010, the detective, Skipp Porteous, published a book postulating that Christiansen was the hijacker. The following year, an episode of the History series Brad Meltzer's Decoded also summarized the circumstantial evidence linking Christiansen to the Cooper case.
Christiansen enlisted in the Army in 1944 and was trained as a paratrooper. World War II had ended by the time he was deployed in 1945, but he made occasional training jumps while stationed in Japan with occupation forces in the late 1940s. After leaving the Army, he joined Northwest Orient in 1954 as a mechanic in the South Pacific and subsequently became a flight attendant, and then a purser, based in Seattle.[101] Christiansen was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking, but he was shorter (5 ft 8 in or 173 cm), thinner (150 pounds or 68 kg), and lighter in complexion than eyewitness descriptions of Cooper. Christiansen smoked (as did the hijacker) and displayed a fondness for bourbon (the drink Cooper had requested). Schaffner told a reporter that photos of Christiansen fit her memory of the hijacker's appearance more closely than those of other suspects she had been shown, but could not conclusively identify him.
Despite the publicity generated by Porteous's book and the 2011 television documentary, the FBI stands by its position that Christiansen cannot be considered a prime suspect.] It cites the poor match to eyewitness physical descriptions, a level of skydiving expertise above that predicted by their suspect profile, and a complete absence of direct incriminating evidence.
Jack Coffelt
Bryant "Jack" Coffelt (1917–1975) was a con man, ex-convict, and purported government informant who claimed to have been the chauffeur and confidant of Abraham Lincoln's last undisputed descendant, great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith. In 1972, he began claiming he was Cooper and attempted through an intermediary, a former cellmate named James Brown, to sell his story to a Hollywood production company. He said he landed near Mount Hood, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Ariel, injuring himself and losing the ransom money in the process. Photos of Coffelt bear a resemblance to the composite drawings, although he was in his mid-fifties in 1971. He was reportedly in Portland on the day of the hijacking and sustained leg injuries around that time which were consistent with a skydiving mishap.
Coffelt's account was reviewed by the FBI, which concluded that it differed in several details from information that had not been made public and was therefore a fabrication. Brown, undeterred, continued peddling the story long after Coffelt died in 1975. Multiple media venues, including the CBS news program 60 Minutes, considered and rejected it.
Richard McCoy Jr.
Richard McCoy Jr.
Richard McCoy (1942–1974) was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert and later with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot.[272] After his military service, he became a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and an avid recreational skydiver, with aspirations of becoming a Utah State Trooper.[273][274]
On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called "copycat" hijackings (see below).[275] He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and, brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000.[266] After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading.[276]
He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession and, after trial and conviction, received a 45-year sentence. Two years later, he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents.
In their 1991 book, D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame asserted that they had identified McCoy as Cooper They cited obvious similarities in the two hijackings, claims by McCoy's family that the tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip left on the plane belonged to McCoy, and McCoy's own refusal to admit or deny that he was Cooper.] A proponent of their claim was the FBI agent who killed McCoy. "When I shot Richard McCoy," he said, "I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time."
Although there is no reasonable doubt that McCoy committed the Denver hijacking, the FBI does not consider him a suspect in the Cooper case because of mismatches in age and description, a level of skydiving skill well above that thought to be possessed by the hijacker,[140] and credible evidence that McCoy was in Las Vegas on the day of the Portland hijacking,[111] and at home in Utah the day after, having Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
Epilogue:
I find it disturbing that assumptions made at the beginning of a criminal investigation as large as this was, and would become would still be part of the investigation, decades after those assumptions had been proven wrong. Assumptions such as the hijacker would have been a novice at skydiving or the hijacking was committed as a crime of financial desperation.