Legend of DB Cooper: The man who hijacked a plane, secured $200k, and vanished into thin air

The name DB Cooper may sound familiar if you are a telephile who watched "Prison Break" (2008). In this series, Michael Scofield's entire breakout plan hinges on the hidden money of Charles Westmoreland, a fictitious alias for the infamous DB Cooper.

While Westmoreland's story is fictional, the real DB Cooper's saga is anything but.

The infamous skyjacking

Some Fifty-three years ago in the USA, a criminal stole a plane, received a $200K ransom, and jumped out of the plane with a parachute. 

Neither he nor all the money was ever found.

On a chilly afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man who called himself Dan Cooper walked up to the ticket counter at Portland Airport. He paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle, boarding a Northwest Orient Airlines flight on a Boeing 727. 

Cooper didn't stand out from the crowd; he looked like any other traveller. Around 40 years old, roughly 5 feet 11 inches tall, and weighing about 176 pounds, he had brown eyes and dark skin. 

Dressed in a nondescript manner, he wore a black coat over a dark suit, paired with a white shirt and a black tie secured with a clasp and adorned with a mother-of-pearl pin. Moccasins covered his feet, and he carried a small briefcase. 

This is how those who saw him would later recall his appearance.

 

The flight to Seattle wasn't crowded that day; aside from Cooper, there were only 36 passengers aboard. 

Cooper found a seat at the rear of the plane, close to where the flight attendants sat. 

After the plane was airborne, he lit up a cigarette—a common sight back then—and ordered a bourbon and soda. Then, he quietly handed a note to a flight attendant. 

Mistaking it for a typical attempt at flirtation, she pocketed the note without a glance, assuming it was just a date invitation with a phone number. 

Cooper, however, gently insisted she read it, revealing a chilling message: he claimed to have a bomb.

After that, he asked the frightened flight attendant to sit next to him and opened the briefcase. Inside, several cylinders were visible, from which wires wrapped in insulating tape went, and a large battery. 

Cooper's demands were clear: $200,000 in unmarked $20 bills and four parachutes—two main and two reserve, specifically requesting sports parachutes over military ones. 

He declared that the plane would only land in Seattle once his conditions were met, threatening to detonate the bomb if his demands were not satisfied.

 

The flight attendant relayed Cooper's message to the pilots, who then reached out to air traffic control. This quickly brought the police and FBI into the loop. 

Normally, the flight from Portland to Seattle would take about 30 minutes. 

However, as authorities worked to gather the ransom and parachutes, the plane spent over two hours circling above the airport. 

To keep the passengers calm, they were told the delay was due to technical issues. 

Cooper himself behaved calmly and politely communicated with the flight attendants. He put on big sunglasses, ordered a bourbon and paid for his drink with a generous tip.

He even suggested that the pilots should get some food after landing, hinting at the dramatic events he had in store with a remark about a "show" being planned.

The ransom and escape

As soon as the plane touched down, Cooper had specific instructions: to refuel the aircraft and dim the cabin lights, so that the snipers outside couldn't see inside. 

Once he received the ransom money and parachutes, he released all the passengers and two of the flight attendants. 

He, however, kept one flight attendant, the two pilots, and the flight engineer on board. 

 

Cooper then laid out new demands: the plane should have headed southeast towards Mexico City, flying as slowly as possible at about 115 miles per hour, and not higher than 10,000 feet. He also insisted on having the landing gear down and the wing flaps set to a 15-degree angle. 

The pilots quickly pointed out that with these specifications, they wouldn't have enough fuel to reach Mexico. Cooper agreed to a refuelling stop in Reno, Nevada. It was more than two hours to fly to Mexico.

At 7:40pm local time, the plane lifted off from Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper instructed the crew to remain in the cockpit, sealing themselves off from the rest of the plane. The last glimpse one of the attendants had of him was him attaching something to his belt. 

By 8:00pm, the crew noticed a change in air pressure, accompanied by a warning light indicating the rear door and airstair were open—a feature unique to the Boeing 727 for passenger boarding and disembarking. 

When the flight engineer checked in over the intercom to see if Cooper needed any assistance, he was met with a firm denial. 

Not long after, as the plane flew into a heavy thunderstorm with almost no visibility, the tail section unexpectedly lifted. This forced the pilots to quickly act to stabilise the aircraft.

No more instructions came from Cooper. So, by 10:15pm, the plane had to make its landing in Reno, still with the rear stairs deployed because they couldn't be retracted from the cockpit. 

As soon as it landed, the aircraft was quickly surrounded by police and FBI agents, all waiting for any sign from Cooper. But there was silence.

Eventually, the captain walked into the cabin, only to find it empty. 

 

A thorough search by the police confirmed that Cooper had vanished, taking a parachute, the ransom money, and the briefcase that he claimed contained a bomb. 

From that moment, what happened to Cooper became one of the greatest unsolved mysteries.

FBI’s never-ending hunt for DB Cooper

For at least ten years, the FBI gathered evidence. Agents scoured the plane. 

Right after the plane landed, they found more than 60 fingerprints that didn't match any of the passengers or crew. Cooper had taken back the note he handed the flight attendant. 

The glasses he used to drink bourbon and his cigarette butts disappeared from the case files.

Cooper left a second set of parachutes in the cabin. He cut straps from one, possibly to tie the money bag to himself.

 

The most significant physical evidence was a tie with a clasp and a mother-of-pearl pin found on a chair near Cooper's seat. 

DNA on the tie didn't match any suspects. The FBI thought the tie might not have been Cooper's.

In the 2010s, new research found titanium particles on the tie. This suggested Cooper might have been an engineer or manager at a chemical or metalworking plant. 

Cerium and strontium sulfide were also found, hinting Cooper could have worked at Boeing.

A search team explored Cooper’s possible landing area near the Columbia and Lewis rivers, about 50 kilometres from Portland. The exact landing spot was hard to determine. 

 

The hijacker chose Thanksgiving weekend, so many FBI agents were off duty. Cooper had a two-hour head start by the time the plane reached Reno.

Law enforcement sent the serial numbers of Cooper's bills to casinos, banks, and other places with lots of money, but none surfaced. In November 1978, a hunter found a poster near a forest road with instructions for lowering the aft stairs in Boeing 727 planes. This plane flew over the area Cooper could have landed.

In 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram found three packets of $20 bills on the Columbia River's shore. The serial numbers matched Cooper’s bills. 

The poor condition suggested they had been in the sand and water since the jump. The FBI scoured the riverbank but found nothing else.

In 1986, part of the money was divided between the Ingram family and the insurer Northwest Orient Airlines. The FBI kept 14 bills as evidence. 

In 2008, Brian Ingram sold fifteen bills at auction for about $37,000. There were 290 bills in three packages; the remaining 9,710 have not been found.

In an interview with The US Sun, retired FBI Agent Larry Carr revealed that the Bureau’s investigation into DB Cooper still remains open, despite its official closure in 2016. 

Carr said that he believes "it's very much a conceivable possibility" that the FBI will pursue new leads in the still-unsolved case, particularly focusing on the newly sparked interest in potential DNA evidence from a necktie left at the crime scene.

Eric Ulis, an investigator dedicated to this case, has been working on uncovering clues from the tie. 

 

Ulis, along with scientist Tom Kaye, used advanced DNA collection techniques on the tie, which has yielded over 100,000 particles, including stainless steel and titanium fragments. 

These materials have been traced back to Crucible Steel, a Pennsylvania-based company that supplied metals to Boeing during the 1960s. 

This connection points to Vince Peterson, a titanium research engineer from Pittsburgh, as a compelling person of interest. Peterson had knowledge of the materials and aircraft involved in the hijacking, making him a significant lead​.

Moreover, the investigation has sparked renewed efforts to analyse potential DNA evidence from the tie using metagenomic DNA analysis. 

This advanced technique could help isolate individual DNA profiles from the various particles collected, potentially identifying Cooper's DNA among them, said the former FBI official.

Could Cooper survive such a jump?

Initially, investigators believed Cooper had military training, perhaps as a paratrooper or pilot, suggesting he must have had skydiving experience. 

He jumped right into the storm front, making it difficult for the pilots of military planes trailing the hijacked Boeing 727 from Seattle to notice. 

Witnesses claimed Cooper was familiar with the area, pointing out landmarks even in the dark.

Veterans from World War II and the Vietnam War confirmed that a successful parachute jump in such conditions was possible with enough preparation and practice.

However, as the FBI dug deeper, doubts arose about Cooper’s survival. 

 

He jumped into zero visibility with high winds, rain, and sub-zero temperatures, wearing only a light suit and moccasins. He didn’t request a helmet and faced the risk of landing in cold water or on a snowy mountain top.

Of the two main parachutes, Cooper chose the oldest. 

In their haste, police had seized one training parachute model that was sewn shut and could not open. Cooper took it as a spare. Such parachutes have special markings, which a professional parachutist would recognise.

For nearly a decade, the FBI, along with police and military forces, scoured the area where Cooper might have landed.

They even used submarines to search the bottoms of nearby rivers and lakes. While they found several human remains, none matched Cooper. 

No parachute, suitcase with a bomb, or any other trace of the hijacker was ever found.

Who is Dan Cooper?

This question has puzzled Americans for the past 50 years, and there's still no answer. From the start, it was clear that "Dan Cooper" wasn't the real name of the hijacker. 

After failing to find leads, the FBI detained and questioned a petty criminal named DB Cooper nearby, but he wasn’t involved. 

 

However, a local journalist mistakenly reported that the hijacker DB Cooper had been arrested. Despite police and FBI denials, the name stuck in history.

Three weeks after the hijacking, the Los Angeles Times received a letter from someone claiming to be Dan Cooper. 

He wrote that he had a year to live and hijacked the plane for money to ensure his last days were comfortable. More letters followed, with varying styles and messages, but none provided useful leads.

Over the years, about 1,200 suspects were investigated. 

More than a hundred people turned themselves in, claiming to be Dan Cooper, and several confessed to the hijacking on their deathbeds. Many thought the criminal's description matched someone they knew. 

 

There was even a theory that Dan Cooper was a disguised female pilot. However, none of these leads panned out.

The FBI's top suspect was Vietnam War veteran Richard McCoy, who hijacked a Boeing 727 in April 1972 in a similar manner. 

He demanded $500,000, jumped out with the money, but was arrested two days later. 

However, he was younger, not as polite as Cooper, and had an alibi for the original hijacking date. 

 

McCoy was sentenced to 45 years in prison, escaped two years later, and died in a police shootout.

After 45 years, the list of suspects narrowed to ten people, with 60 volumes of investigation materials compiled. 

No one was ever charged, and Cooper’s identity remains a mystery. 

In July 2016, the FBI shifted resources from the Cooper case to other high-profile crimes but remains open to new evidence.

Cooper’s legacy

The criminal immediately gained many fans and imitators. In 1972 alone, there were 15 attempts to hijack planes using the same method. 

Consequently, airport security measures were significantly tightened the following year. Luggage inspections and searches of suspicious passengers became mandatory. 

Windows were installed in pilot cabin doors to allow the crew to observe the cabin. Security rules were further tightened after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.

The Boeing 727 and other aircraft were equipped with a special device to prevent the aft hatch from opening during flight. This device was named "Cooper’s Blade" after the hijacker.

Due to its widespread popularity and many unsolved mysteries, the story of Dan Cooper has been depicted in cinema, literature, and music. Besides documentaries and investigative books, there are numerous references in works of art.

In 1981, the adventure film "The Pursuit of DB Cooper" was released in the USA, based on the novel "Free Fall" by JD Reed. DB Cooper also inspired the character FBI agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper in the television series "Twin Peaks." 

 

A more recent reference appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series "Loki" in 2021, where it’s revealed in the first episode "A Glorious Purpose" that Cooper was Loki himself. 

In the TV series Prison Break (2008), Charles Westmoreland is revealed to be the real DB Cooper. Westmoreland, portrayed as a long-serving inmate at Fox River, hints at his hidden past and substantial hidden money. His true identity and the buried money become pivotal in Michael Scofield's escape plan.