DB Cooper disappears and amateurs are still on the case"The Case of the Vanished Skyjacker: Looking Back at D.B. Cooper's Great Airline Escape
Well now, you folks probably remember that peculiar skyjacking case from back in 1971, when some daredevil calling himself Dan Cooper, later immortalized as D.B. Cooper by the press, hijacked a Northwest Orient plane out of the Portland airport with nothing but a briefcase he claimed was a bomb. Ol’ D.B. extorted $200,000 out of the airline and four parachutes before he let all them passengers off when they refueled in Seattle.
Then, somewhere over those rainy, pine-covered mountains of Washington state, Cooper lowered the aft stairs and parachuted out with all that ransom money into oblivion. The FBI hunted high and low for Cooper or his remains after that brazen hijacking and airborne getaway, but shoot, the mystery man done disappeared without a trace.
Now decades later, FBI forensics experts and amateur aviation sleuths are still chasing their tails trying to figure out the identity of that rakish skyjacker. They got half-chewed sandwiches, old parachute straps, and hand-written notes about aerodynamics and flight vectors. Heck, they even brought one of them Service Bulletins on the Boeing 727 from some library just to recreate Cooper's daring nighttime descent.
But Ol’ D.B. has evaded 'em at every turn. Could be he didn't even make it out of that plane alive, getting hisself stuck in the gears of the aft stairs or getting his chute tangled up as he jumped. Or maybe he touched down in some lonely stretch of pine forest and made his way to parts unknown with all that ill-gotten loot.
I suppose we all got us a little bit of D.B. Cooper in our hearts, wondering what it might be like to pull off the perfect getaway and vanish into the pages of American legend. But I expect the FBI would still take it kindly if someone could offer the solid truth of it. Till then, Ol’ D.B.'s plane disappearin' act remains the stuff of rambling country tales told when the campfire burns low."