D.B. Cooper (1971): Seattle ransom and release

D.B. Cooper is the name the press invented. The ticket said Dan Cooper. The public record is a short flight, a recorded ransom, a river find and a file the FBI chose to close without a defendant. Cooper was described as a quiet man in a dark suit, white shirt, black tie and loafers, perhaps in his mid-forties, who ordered bourbon and smoked. He sat in the last row on the starboard side. After the note, he bargained through Mucklow. Northwest’s president, Donald Nyrop, authorised payment. Seattle police and FBI agents delivered a bag of $20 bills from several banks and four parachutes, two of them sport canopies from a local skydiving school.

After the passenger release, Cooper sent the remaining crew forward and used the aft stairs — a feature of the 727 that could be opened in flight. Crew instruments later showed a change consistent with a person leaving the aircraft. The jump zone was reconstructed from flight-path data as a corridor over Ariel, Washington, and the Lewis River country, later expanded as wind and timing models changed.

A Portland reporter mixed the ticket name with a local man named D.B. Cooper; wire services kept the error. The FBI composites — especially the 1972 and 1973 sketches — became the American face of an unidentified hijacker. Agents interviewed thousands of people. Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., who hijacked a different airliner in 1972, was a much-cited lookalike; the Bureau did not treat him as Cooper.