FBI gives up investigation into mysterious DB Cooper skyjacking – IOTW Report

FBI gives up investigation into mysterious DB Cooper skyjacking

DW: Forty five years ago, a man known as DB Cooper jumped out of a hijacked airplane with a parachute and ransom money. The FBI is finally giving up trying to solve the mysterious case.

One of the United States’ most intriguing crime mysteries – the case of a hijacker who jumped out of a plane into the night with a parachute and ransom money — will likely remain unsolved after a 45-year investigation.

The FBI’s Seattle field office on Tuesday said it would no longer actively investigate the DB Cooper case after conducting “one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in our history.”

The FBI received hundreds of tips and leads, whittled down a list of hundreds of suspects but was never able to find the mysterious man who boldly jumped out of a plane with ransom money, triggering years of speculation about his identity and fate.  more

21 Comments on FBI gives up investigation into mysterious DB Cooper skyjacking

  1. It sure didn’t take long for the FBI to exonerate hillary of her high crimes and the FBI knew exactly where she was. She got a $Billion Dollars, put the nation at security risk and didn’t have to jump from a plane. Who says crime doesn’t pay?

  2. Plot twist: There was no D.B. Cooper. The stewardess engineered the whole thing. Added Cooper’s name to the passenger list, faked the note, threw one of the parachutes and $6000 cash out of the back of the plane during the second part of the flight, and got away with the rest of the money.

    😉

  3. He reportedly exited out the rear ‘air stairs’ of the old style 727. Not a desirable or designed parachute option. (Airliner doors cannot be opened, by design), in flight. Forget the fiction you see in films like ‘Air Force One’).
    The aft air stairs would have set him up to be sucked directly out into the high speed wake and the central jet exhaust. And at high speed. I’ve talked about this over the years with airline pilot and aviation mechanic buddies who knew the old 727s well.
    Consensus seems to be that he likely was killed, or seriously injured, on exiting the aircraft. Almost impossible for him to be conscious and unharmed and in condition to hike out with $200k in $20’s when he landed.
    Interesting, if all the serial #s were traceable and none of that money ever turned up.
    He’d be 90 or so now.
    Guy had nerve.

  4. Watch the DB Cooper episode of the tv show “Leverage”. It portrays an entertaining theory even if it is all fiction.

    Oh, and Hey Ya’ll! Yep I’m still alive… just old and bored with the interwebs!

  5. The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper wasn’t a bad flick Based on the Book “Free Fall “….especially since I saw it for a Buck at Nellis AFB Theater Hard to find now..HULU has it. Robert Duvall and Treat Williams.

  6. I first heard about DB Cooper on the way home from Portland, Or. to Spokane the night it happened (the night before Thanksgiving 1971) while listening to Paul Harvey on the radio. Someday maybe they’ll find his bones high up in a tree as well as his parachute, there is no way he would’ve survived exiting out of a 727 like that.

  7. @Shaunqueefus: They probably only actively checked for the stolen money serial numbers for 2-3 years at most, because there’s a lot of time and trouble involved. Money scanning devices were pretty much non-existent at the time, so it all would have had to have been done by hand. If “Cooper” waited for 5-6 years before spending any, and then spent it slowly and carefully, it would have probably gone undetected.

    Here’s an interesting story:

    http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/jul/13/db-cooper-documentary/

    🙂

  8. Quite so, Vietvet. They found it in a river, or stream bed, if I remember correctly. Not all of the money, of course, but enough for the investigators to put forth the hypothesis that Cooper had a bad day and is probably still stuck in a tree.

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