D.B. Cooper (1971): The night jump

Passengers were released at Seattle after the ransom and parachutes came aboard. Captain William Scott, First Officer William Rataczak, flight engineer Harold E. Anderson and flight attendant Tina Mucklow remained. Cooper ordered a course toward Mexico City, a refueling stop at Reno, flaps and landing gear down, and a low, slow flight. Somewhere after takeoff from Seattle, over southwestern Washington in darkness and rain, he lowered the aft airstairs and left the aircraft. When the 727 landed at Reno at 23:45 PST the stairs were still down and Cooper was gone.

The FBI opened case NORJAK — Northwest hijacking. Serial numbers of the $20 bills were recorded. In February 1980 a boy, Brian Ingram, found three deteriorating packets of those bills, about $5,800 face value, on a Columbia River sandbar later called Tena Bar, near Vancouver, Washington. No confirmed remains, parachute or unused ransom cache has been found. The Bureau suspended active investigation on 12 July 2016, leaving the file unsolved.

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.