The Man Who Parachuted Into Oblivion
Strange but True Saturday | The Seven Deadly Ditties
On November 24, 1971, a neatly dressed gentleman boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland to Seattle, ordered a bourbon and soda, and proceeded to commit one of the most audacious crimes in American aviation history.
His ticket said Dan Cooper.
The world would come to know him as D.B. Cooper, thanks to a reporting error that stuck.
Cooper handed a flight attendant a note indicating he had a bomb. He demanded $200,000, four parachutes, and a little cooperation from the airline.
Apparently, the complimentary peanuts weren't cutting it.
The plane landed in Seattle, where Cooper exchanged the passengers for his ransom and parachutes. Then he instructed the crew to take off again, headed toward Mexico.
Somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, in darkness and miserable weather, Cooper lowered the rear stairs of the Boeing 727 and jumped.
With the money.
Without a reservation.
And, as far as anyone can conclusively establish, without ever being seen again.
The FBI launched an enormous investigation. Suspects came and went. Theories multiplied. In 1980, a young boy discovered $5,800 in deteriorating ransom bills along the Columbia River.
But Cooper himself? Nothing definitive.
Did he survive the jump? Did he perish in the wilderness? Did he spend the rest of his life quietly enjoying the world's most expensive one-way airline ticket?
Nobody knows.
In 2016, the FBI redirected resources away from actively investigating the case, leaving one of America's great criminal mysteries unresolved.
And there's something oddly appropriate about that.
In an age when practically everyone carries a device that tracks their location, photographs their lunch, and reminds them to buy toilet paper, a man in a business suit managed to disappear into the night carrying a fortune.
No social media. No GPS. No five-star review of the airline.
Just a bourbon, a briefcase, and a spectacularly questionable exit strategy.
Some people disappear without a trace. Cooper made an entrance first.
Strange but True Saturday explores the real mysteries that prove truth occasionally has a better imagination than fiction.
Source: FBI — D.B. Cooper Hijacking
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