The Truth About DB Cooper

**Discussion begins at 3:45**

On November 24, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving, an unidentified man carrying a black attache case approached the Nothwest Orient Airlines desk at the Portland airport and paid cash for a one way ticket to Seattle.  The ticket was sold to “Dan Cooper” and non-descript white male in his mid 40s with brown hair, brown eyes, dressed in a business suit and black raincoat.  He boarded the Boeing 727, sat in the last row, and ordered a bourbon and 7-UP.  He then passed a note to the flight attendant indicating that he had an explosive device and demanding $200,000 ransom, (the equivalent of $1.5 million today) as well as two from and two back parachutes.  When the plane landed in Seattle, he collected the money and parachutes, allowed the 36 passengers to deplane, and instructed the crew to refuel and proceed to Mexico City via Reno, NV.  About 30 mins after takeoff from Seattle, at approximately 8:13 p.m., evidence suggests that DB Cooper jumped from the aft stairwell, near the suburbs north of Portland.  This remains the only unsolved act of air piracy in US history.  Who was DB Cooper, and did he survive the dangerous jump?

Transcript

Hey.

What's up?

We're coming to you live.

Yeah, we are.

From out of town in an Airbnb.

Out of towners.

Happy Onyx Storm week if you celebrate.

Yes.

Yeah, Onyx.

The weekend, if you will.

Yeah.

It came out on Tuesday, when our last podcast came out.

Yeah, and we came out to have a reading weekend, but before the rest of the girls get here.

We're recording.

We are gonna record.

Here we are.

So is it time for our drink track?

Drink track.

Okay, well, our drink track is themed after the character of today's episode, but on his infamous travels in a plane, he requested from the flight attendant a 7-UP and bourbon.

Ooh.

He's pretty good.

It's sweet.

7-UP is interesting to me.

I like 7-UP, but I'm a sprite girly, to be clear.

I like a sprite from, but only from McDonald's.

I used to get, that was my drink soda of choice as a child.

And then now, as somebody who's very granola, that checks out.

I feel like all the granola kids drink, right.

And then all the kids whose parents didn't monitor their soda intake, Coca-Cola and Roopier.

Mountain Dew.

Oh, I was not a Mountain Dew person.

Mountain Dew was not a thing.

Mountain Dew is like, people would still drink Mountain Dew.

I think I've had a Mountain Dew in my entire life.

I do not do Mountain Dew.

We used to stop for sun-drapped slushies or tear-wine slushies on the way home from baseball practice.

Tell me from the south, not tell me from the south.

Yeah, no, I did not.

I also don't like Baja Blast.

I don't know about Baja Blast.

Anyways, that's our drink check.

I think 7-UP makes me think of what your parents gave you when you were sick growing up.

That was yellow Gatorade for me.

Lukewarm ginger ale.

You're supposed to drink it lukewarm.

You had to microwave it.

But that is true.

You're supposed to drink flat lukewarm ginger ale when you're sick.

It's not the bubbles because the bubbles make your belly worse.

Warm yellow Gatorade.

I'm a disbeliever in that theory.

I could dry heave thinking about yellow Gatorade right now.

My alcohol swab trick comes directly from Megan and it works.

The studies show it is just as effective as Zofran, which is the most commonly used antidiamedic.

But then you get to smell the alcohol, relieve your nausea, and not have any cardiac risk.

Yeah.

Bingo.

So that's why I have a waterfall wipes during my period.

Whenever I go into a patient's room and they're immediately nauseous, I just pull out-

Shove it under their nose.

I shove it under their nose and they're typically fine.

Except one time I had a patient get a nosebleed from it.

I don't know if it was unrelated or not.

It's probably the oxygen that was not bubbled.

I'm with you on that.

So should we get into it?

All right.

All right.

Let's get into it now.

All right, mates.

This is not a European storyline.

This is strictly American.

This is a story about a man known as DB Cooper or Dan Cooper.

He's an unidentified man who is famous for hijacking his Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 in the 1970s.

He is infamous because we don't know what happened to him after he jumped out of the plane.

Is he still alive?

Where is his money?

How did he accomplish this?

Okay.

I think that he lived to tell the tale.

Okay.

Except he never told the tale.

No, he kept it to himself.

And he kept it to himself.

And then his kids found him out.

And that's what happened.

That's what I think, too.

I mean, I like to think he survived.

I also, though, I'm not so sure he's even real.

Whoa.

Whoa.

I think he's real.

There's a lot of first-person witnesses.

Hold on.

Did he enter Time Portal?

Shut up.

That is a theory I saw.

I saw there was a theory.

There's a lot of theory.

We could get all back to Loki.

Yep.

I believe it.

It always goes back to Marvel.

Okay.

Can I just say the reason why I'm talking about DB Cooper?

Number one, I had no idea how many details were involved in the story.

It kept going on and on and on and on and on.

So I'm thankful for Megan for participating with me on this one because there was a lot to read.

Okay.

The only reason why I'm talking about this is because I started watching a new TV series and the main character is ferociously attractive.

The show is called Prison Break, and DB Cooper is a character in Prison Break.

He is going by a different name and he's arrested in the prison with the main character, Michael, and it's all about Michael trying to get to DB Cooper's money.

Well, not all about that, but the money plays a part.

That's when I learned that DB Cooper is a real-life conspiracy, and that's why I wanted to present on it.

But yeah, there's so many details to it, so we're going to go into it.

So it all occurred on a flight from Portland to Seattle.

It was the Nothwest Orient Airlines Flight 305.

It was a Boeing 727 aircraft with Boeing.

And it occurred Thanksgiving weekend, so it was November 1971, okay?

So basic timeline, the majority of the information we have comes from FBI interviews with the flight attendants on the flight.

The DB Cooper was a mistaken print.

Right, so he walked in before the flight, bought a ticket in cash, $20 cash.

Wait, 20 bucks?

Yeah, $20 cash.

Wow, could you imagine?

Well, because it was a 30-minute flight.

It was like up or down.

35 minutes.

Yeah.

It's the 1970s.

And he bought the ticket under the name Dan Cooper.

And when this all happened, after this happened, a reporter was reporting on it and they misidentified him as DB Cooper.

So that's why DB Cooper came from, yeah, but Dan Cooper.

The official alias we have based on the ticket is Dan Cooper.

So it's 1970s, so you didn't have to provide any proof of identity.

You just walk up and be like, my name is Dan Cooper.

Can I get a ticket to Portland, Seattle?

So main plot points, buys ticket and cash, gets ticket, gets onto plane.

Okay, so there's no trail?

No, no cash.

Oh, does this way sound real?

He's on the plane.

So again, it's about a 30-minute flight.

So they get to flying altitude.

But at some point, he pulls a flight attendant aside, and I'm going to get into the names because the flight attendants are very important.

They're the people that we have the most info from.

Okay.

Pulls a flight attendant aside, says he has a bomb, demands $200,000, which is 1.5 million today, and four parachutes.

Specifically, $200,000, four parachutes, and he wants the money in a canvas bag.

He also, his second request was when they land in Seattle, he wanted all the passengers de-boarded, the plane to be refueled, refueled, the crew to stay, and to continue to fly to Mexico City.

At some point between Seattle and Mexico City is when he jumps out of the plane.

He wanted them to go to Mexico, but they were like, we're never going to make it to Mexico.

Where they fly over matters, and I'm going to go over that.

Yeah, so they were actually flying.

Well, but it's important because his, the reason I bring this up is because his plan was to go to Mexico.

Yeah, and run away.

And they said, we can't go to Mexico.

We don't have fuel for that.

So he's like, okay, well, why don't we go?

At the very last minute, they said, we can go to Reno, land and refuel, and then go to Mexico.

And he said, okay, let's do that.

And that's important because it takes him on a different route, flight path.

Yeah.

And that was a spur of the moment.

Where they fly over matters based on what people think of the aftermath.

Right, and if you're thinking that there was someone who picked him up or something, it makes it harder to believe, knowing that this was a spur of the moment route, it wasn't where he wanted to be.

Portions of the money was found later in the 1980s along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington.

And this was the only unsolved air piracy in the history of commercial aviation, which I found really interesting.

Yeah, it is really interesting.

And a part of the result of DB Cooper's story is that airport security changed, and they started adding metal detectors and baggage inspection, including more thorough searching on passengers who paid in cash.

Guys, we're currently being served fresh cookies from Mermaid Girl.

Oh, heck yeah.

Thanks, Mermaid Girl.

Mmm.

Snack check.

A lot of the conspiracy competes against what the FBI think, resulting from their investigation.

And they're basically like, there's no way he did it, he died.

And they think that because they felt he didn't have true understanding of the weather, didn't have proper skydiving equipment, didn't understand the terrain, and we're gonna get over, go over where they fly.

And overall, he just lacked general knowledge regarding his landing area.

And then the money disappeared and was never used.

So therefore, they're like, oh, it was never used and he died.

But I would, you're gonna give us more details, but I would actually disagree with them.

Yeah, I do, too.

He's unknown.

How do they know what he doesn't know?

Yeah, that's what I mean.

I don't know anything about him.

I think when we hear some of these conversations, it sounds like he did know what he was doing.

Oh, yeah, I'm gonna, yeah.

Based on what you hear from the flight attendants, he sounded so knowledgeable.

Yeah, he could be prior military.

And again, he's unknown.

A lot of the suspects are prior military, like, parachuters.

Yeah, airborne.

How did he do it?

What was the timeline of the hijacking?

November 24th, 1971.

A man with a black.

Attaché.

Attaché.

I don't know what an attaché is.

Which I really like, because in Jean Benet.

Yeah.

I just said briefcase.

I don't know what an attaché is.

It's like a briefcase.

But people come call it an attaché.

And yeah, exactly, Kait nailed it.

I just liked it because that takes us back to the John Benet.

Approach the Nothwest Orient Airlines counter, which is that still an airline?

No, that name is not PC.

Orient.

I assume Orient means like going west.

Chinese.

Asian.

It's not Asian.

Rugs are Oriental.

People are not.

Yeah.

So in the 80s, it dropped the word Orient from its name.

It was Northwest Airlines.

And then in 2010, they merged with Delta.

Thank you very much.

He bought a one-way ticket for a 30-minute flight, and he listed his name as Dan Cooper.

The counter employee described him as male, white, mid-40s, dark hair with dark eyes, black-brown hair, wearing a black suit and a raincoat with brown shoes.

Otherwise unremarkable.

Unremarkable.

Well, the suit to me, I'm like, what are you doing?

Also, people traveled fancy when they flew back then, right?

I mean, I can always use to travel.

Yeah.

I say, when we travel like a little gremlin homeless.

I feel like that is also like Gen Z doesn't care what they look like.

They're all in sweat suits.

Growing up even, yeah, like in the 90s, because Captain Fred worked for the airlines, we always had to go standby.

And so literally we're like our best dresses.

Like my brother was always in like slacks at a dress shirt and I had like a dress on.

And I feel like that's what everyone was doing.

That's so cute.

But I feel like that was the vibe then.

People were not rolling up in their sweats.

Right.

My dad always traveled in a suit.

Yeah.

He sat in seat 18E, which is relevant because it is the back of the plane, right next to the flight attendants.

Oh.

Hit the crew to himself.

So who was on the plane?

Who was the crew?

Okay, because each crew member has different perspectives and different views.

The pilot, Captain William A.

Scott.

Oh.

The first officer, William AK.

Bill Ratasek, maybe.

I'm reading my own writing.

Flight engineer, Harold E.

Anderson, which question?

Megan, what is a flight engineer and does every plane have one?

Some military planes still have them.

I think it's something that there used to be more of.

Yeah, a flight engineer is like an expert on the systems.

As far as I know, most airliners do not have the flight engineer anymore.

There are military planes that do.

Would he have been in the cockpit?

Yeah.

Okay.

That was Harold E.

Anderson, flight engineer.

Then the flight attendants, the two lovely ladies, Alice Hancock and Tina Mucklow.

Hancock.

Also Florence Schaffner.

Then 36 passengers including Coop.

Coop.

Coop-de-loop.

Coop flew the Coop.

So timeline.

Left on schedule at 1450.

That's military time, 2:50 PM.

Cooper gave a note to Schaffner, the flight attendant, as she was sitting right behind him.

He must have chosen his seat for a reason slash he knew the plane set up.

Like he knew where the seat was going to be.

He knew this aircraft, and I'm trying to get into that.

Yeah.

It is also interesting because he boarded last.

Oh, I didn't get that.

It's like he seemed like he knew what he wanted to do.

But everything seems organized.

The back row, I mean, no one's like going to the back row.

It sounds like it was a pretty empty flight.

At first, she did not read the note, thinking it was his phone number, and then he tapped her on her shoulder and said, Ms, you better look at that note.

I have a bomb.

I don't know if we know he had a Southern accent, but yeah.

And then he pursued to say, Ms, I have a bomb in my briefcase, and I want you to sit by me.

Then he showed her what was in his bag, which allegedly is a bomb, but I don't know what bombs look like.

But this is what she described saying.

Two rows of four red cylinders, which she assumed to have been dynamite, wiring, and a cylinder battery.

That could have easily just been a bunch of hoopla.

I think he didn't have a bomb, but tried to make it look like he had.

I think that if someone would have shown you that, you'd have been like, what the fuck up?

I was like, are those Legos?

Wait a second, did you?

You made that?

Did you YouTube this?

Yeah.

I mean, I've seen that video.

I mean, honestly, that's probably what I would do.

If I was going to hijack a-

And watch a YouTube video?

No.

I don't want to actually die.

I don't want to actually put people at risk.

Also, you would just pretend like you're a bomb.

When I think-

I don't even know what a bomb would look like.

I just be like, here's a plastic grenade.

I'm sure this 20-year-old flight attendant didn't either.

And also, when I think an explosive like this, I think there should be a little clock with like tick tock.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like, all the smart-

Yeah, like what's setting it off?

There's nothing-

Like 24.

Yeah, she did have a description of what set it off.

But if he had a clicker.

Clicker, because apparently he did keep it in his left hand the whole time, and she had to light his cigarettes for him.

Yeah.

He was not releasing the detonator.

Yeah.

So I think if you have a detonator, you don't need a time.

That's true, that's true.

Megan would know, cause she went to see her school.

You're right, I trust me.

There was no explosive raining in Sears Valley.

He then, Cooper then proceeds to write his demands on a piece of paper and directs her to bring it to the cockpit, so she becomes his little messenger.

The note reads, Cooper requests $200,000 in the knapsack by 5 p.m.

He wants two front parachutes, two back parachutes.

He wants money in negotiable American currency.

That was his request.

This is what the FBI thinks from his requests.

They felt that by requesting for multiple parachutes, it implied he was going to take a hostage.

He never does.

No, but I think that's why it's brilliant.

Because if he was like, I want one parachute, they could just sabotage the parachute, right?

Yeah, but no.

But if I want two, then they're like, wait, he's going to take a hostage.

Then they're like, we can't really.

I also don't know the difference between front parachute and back parachute.

Wait.

I would never jump out of an airplane.

No one is surprised and would not jump out of an airplane.

I think I would, but I'd be really afraid about breaking my legs.

Just your legs.

Just my legs.

Because I trust the coming down process.

It's the when you lean, you have to run, you know what I mean?

And also, hold on, you have to do it attached to somebody.

Have you seen what that looks like?

Yeah, you look-

Embarrassing.

I'm not doing that.

I'll tell you that.

I mean, I'd only get parachute airborne trained.

So that every time I fly, I would just carry a parachute with me.

So if we're going down, I'm like, Peace out, suckers.

Bye.

He then increased his demands to include fuel trucks upon arrival to Seattle.

Passengers should remain seated until the money was aboard the plane.

And Captain Scott, the pilot, notified the airlines, Seattle police, and the FBI.

The president of the airlines, which again, reminder, was the Nothwest Orient Airlines.

He authorized the payment, okay?

The money came from the airlines.

That was what they're instructed.

Give him the money.

Yeah, I do think it's interesting that-

Follow the money.

That the money came from the airline.

I thought so too.

To me, every time I think ransom, I think it comes from the government, but I guess I have no concept of government money.

Yeah, I have no idea.

Like the FBI gets ransom, right?

The flight circled Puget Sound, which is the marine waterways near Seattle for two hours.

Now, do we think Cooper was aware that they were delaying it?

Here's what I think.

I think he-

No, I think he told it.

Because I think at one point he told them, he was like, I don't understand what the holdup is.

They told him they were going to McCord to get-

Parachutes.

Parachutes.

I think he knew.

He knew they were trying to get his things, but it sounds like the pastors didn't know and they were just like, why are we circling?

They had no idea.

Other events during the flight, a lot of what I have comes from what Muclow, one of the flight attendants reports upon.

These are the reasons why I think he knew more than the FBI gave him credit for.

For example, she reported that Cooper seemed very familiar with the terrain and kept commenting on the things he recognized that they were flying over, like he recognized Tacoma and things like that.

She said he did not appear nervous ever, he seemed rather nice.

When she inquired why he picked this flight, he said it fit his needs.

To me, that sounds like a man who plants.

Oh, for sure.

He asked him where he was from and then he starts getting upset.

When she pushed too much, he would get angry.

It's not because I have a grudge against the airlines, it's because I just have a grudge, that he tells her.

Correct.

What did he have a grudge about?

I think when we talk about some of our thoughts, that's important to know.

Yeah, who do you have a grudge against?

Yeah, what were you upset about?

So then there was one passenger who is relevant based on what Muclo reports on, but the FBI didn't pursue more interviewing with this person, which I think is crazy, okay?

He was a passenger on the flight that kept using the restroom.

The only reason why he stands out is because he was wearing a cowboy hat, and he kept using the restroom, so he kept having to walk past Cooper and Muclo, the flight attendant, and he reported seeing what Cooper looked like, because we don't have too much info.

The reason why he's relevant is because he was making Cooper nervous because he kept getting up using the restroom.

Cooper gets angry and turns to Muclo and says, I don't want any more of that, inquiring if this passenger was an air marshal.

I was about to say air marshal.

He kept thinking this passenger was an air marshal, and he told Muclo, I don't want any more of that.

But this passenger was never officially interviewed by the FBI, so we don't have any.

But don't the marshals work close to the FBI?

Yeah, I didn't honestly.

Oh, I didn't think about that.

I thought air marshals was a post-911 thing.

Yeah, marshal, and you're not supposed to know who's the marshal on the flight.

Correct.

Harry likes to guess who the air marshals are.

Is there always one?

Sometimes there's like six and sometimes there's none.

They know each other?

I don't know if they know each other.

I mean, I think the front end knows who the air marshals are.

But like, say they're in a first class, they're not drinking or something.

That's always like, is it?

Not that everyone has to drink.

Right.

What's that about?

Right.

So I'm like, how many times did this guy have to go to the bathroom?

Why do we have GI distress?

Well, if the 30-minute flight turned two hours, I'd be pooping my pants too.

In two hours?

No, but like, no, I'd be nervous.

What was supposed to be a 30-minute flight is now two hours.

You would probably ask a flight attendant, what's going on?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It just seems like-

I would just assume I got the time.

It just seems a lot because I know.

I got on a plane from Texas to California.

I thought it was only going to take an hour and a half.

Oh, no, no, no.

America is big.

Me and Steph were like, it takes five hours.

Wait a second.

Did you not account for-

I don't know, but we were like, yeah, it's only an hour and a half flight, and then looking at the map, and I'm like, we're not close, Steph.

Okay, so they land in Seattle around 5:30 PM.

The money is brought in.

So let me describe what the money bag was.

19 pounds, 8.5 kilos, 10,000 unmarked $20 bills.

Most of the dollar bills, not all, had serial numbers beginning with the letter L.

It means it came from the Federal Reserve of San Francisco.

What I did find interesting, what I learned is that apparently, many banks, I don't know if they still do this, but have like pre-packaged money sort of in their safe, and it's like for-

Fake money, or-

No, it's real money, but they've already like recorded the numbers.

Serial numbers?

Correct.

So then when there's some sort of rants, again, this was in the 70s-

So they can keep track of the money.

So that's how they have to like sit there and count out $200,000 and like write all the numbers down.

It was like, oh, we've got this pack that's ready to go, and we have all the information on it.

My thing is like only most of his dollar bills had those numbers, so it's like, how do they know he didn't spend all the money?

I want to talk about the parachutes too.

They were attained by the Seattle police.

Two came from a local skydiving school, and two came from a local stunt pilot.

Instructions were offered to Cooper, but he said he didn't need them.

He was confident enough that he knew how to use a parachute.

And then both, well, after he received the money, both flight attendants reported that he tried to tip them.

I didn't see that.

I liked it.

So like, what a nice guy.

And they said, oh, it's against company policy.

Yeah, they turned him down.

I loved that.

I was like, okay, he sounds like a lovely man.

Yeah, I think even afterwards, they interviewed the flight attendant who spent all the time with him in the back.

And she said, he was like, she's like, a couple of times.

He was never angry.

Like, a couple of times, he got upset, but not at her.

She said, in general, a couple of times, he got frustrated, but for the most part, he was very polite.

So yeah, I think they landed in Seattle.

Cooper demanded a representative of the airline to approach with the parachutes and the money, but then to hand it to the flight attendant.

He was very specific on where the plane was going to be parked.

He was very specific that they could only enter and exit from one entrance, and he requested a representative from the airlines to bring the parachute and money to the plane and hand it to the flight attendant.

The representative ended up being a law enforcement who changed it to civilian clothes so as to not trigger Cooper into reacting.

He received the money.

The flight was refueled, and he then tried to tip the girls, but like we said, they denied, which again, made me laugh.

I don't know, the people got off the plane.

He was not threatening the passengers.

He didn't want anything to do with the passengers.

Like, so again, good guy.

I think it's funny that some of the quotes the flight attendants say, or claim he said was things like, I won't bite you, or like he said the flight attendants could leave and do whatever girls would like.

Like, he was kind of flirty.

I'm like, I'm not gonna lie, guys.

You're a little crush.

I would jump with him.

Except, hold on, let me show you what he looked like.

Well, what they think he looked like.

But he looks pretty non-descript.

Right, that's what I mean.

Like, he's very like, no, I'm pretty sure he was wearing sunglasses the whole time, and so they didn't know what his eyes looked like.

Why, that second picture is a guess.

Okay, that makes more sense.

You are right, I stand corrected.

He was landed, and that's when he said, I want to go to Mexico, and they said, we don't have that.

He was getting suspicious because they claimed he kept saying things like, this shouldn't take so long, let's get the show on the road.

Yeah, I think he started at a little bit...

Ancy.

He gets antsy, and that's when they tell him, look, at minimum airspeed, we cannot possibly make it to Mexico City without refueling.

And so then they tell him that they have to stop in Reno, Tahoe International Airport to have a second refuel before continuing to Mexico.

Well, and then I think, so he also has this demand where he says, and this I think goes back into how you and I agree that he was smarter than the FBI has given him credit for.

Yes.

Because he says, he gives him these very specific directives.

He says, I want, again, he requests initially a southeast course toward Mexico City.

Yes.

Now we know he couldn't go there.

At the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft.

So that would be 100 knots or 115 miles per hour.

Right.

And he said, do not go above 10,000 feet altitude.

And he wanted them to take off and leave the landing gear down and keep.

So the reason he wanted them to fly with the stairs down.

And the whole reason he picked the 727 is because it could do it.

The 727 has stairs in the aft part of the plane.

Yeah.

Which is where he was sitting.

Yeah.

And he wanted to.

So he knew the plane.

It sounds like the pilots were like, well, when he made this request, it was very clear to us.

And his plan was to jump, right?

We knew exactly what he's planning to do.

Well, and he was like, well, if you refuse to take off with it open, the stairs open, I'll just do it mid-flight.

Yeah.

And he says, well, he adapted his plan.

Said the wing flaps need to be lowered 15 degrees.

The cabin has to remain unpressurized.

So this sounds like someone who maybe knows what they're doing.

Yeah.

And then I heard he wanted the flight attendant to lower the stairs in flight, but they were like, that's too dangerous for her.

And so he said, okay.

He was afraid she was going to get sucked out.

And he said, okay, fine.

I'll do it.

I'll do it.

Go to the front of the plate.

I do want to point out one of the other things that have lasted since Cooper is a device added to the plane that's called a Cooper Vane.

Do you know what that is?

Tell me about it.

A Cooper Vane, also sometimes called the Dan Cooper Switch or the DB Cooper device is a mechanical wedge that prevents the air stairs from being lowered in flight.

Isn't that interesting?

That is interesting.

She said, please take that bomb with you.

Oh, yeah.

He did and he took everything with these notes.

To me, it means it's not a bomb.

I don't think it's a bomb.

He collected the notes back.

Yeah.

I think he wanted his hand writing.

So he made them give him back the notes.

He seemed to have this whole plan.

People claim that the parachutes, so one of the parachutes is like a training parachute on accident.

They're like, that's one of the ones he took.

So people say, obviously, he didn't know what he was doing, except they're like, the one he did pick, the one he picked that he actually wore was a military parachute.

Yeah.

So he probably was comfortable with that, because we assume he might have been military.

Because you talked about the bag they delivered.

He didn't like the bag they delivered the money in, so he then took out.

The parachutes were in a canvas bag.

So he removed a parachute and put the money into that bag.

And that put the money in the bag and you send it in.

So they think that he might have used the training parachute to put the money in.

Right.

So it's not like he put it on and jumped with this non-parachute.

No, it was beauty, yeah.

That's what the FBI kind of implies as far as why he might have died.

Yeah.

And again, how?

Sounds like he lived to me.

Guys.

So they take off to go to Reno.

Yep, they're mid-flight.

So he sent the flight attendant to the front because she was freaking out, right?

And she went all over the stairs.

So he's pretty much in the back by himself now.

By order to close the curtain to between coach and first class and not return so that she couldn't see what he does in the back of the plane.

Exactly.

Because again, now the plane's empty.

There's no passengers.

It's just the cockpit and the flight attendants.

So he sends her up front, tells her to close the curtain so she can't see.

Nobody knows what's going on in the back of the plane, but he does promise to take the bomb, quote, quote, bomb.

I don't know, was it a bomb?

With him.

He ties the money bag, which is now in the parachute bag, around his waist.

I think the last thing she saw was him tying it around his waist.

Yeah.

Mucklo was the last person to see Cooper.

Around 8 p.m., the cockpit warning light went off, informing them that the air staircase had been deployed.

So he did it himself.

So he knew how to do it.

They ask him if he needs any assistance, but Cooper's last message was a one-word reply.

No, isn't that crazy?

It is crazy.

And at approximately 8:13 p.m., the aircraft's tail section suddenly pitched upwards, forcing the pilots to readjust the plane's flight, meaning he was out the door.

And one of the pilots said, Right to Zach.

That this sudden upward pitch occurred near the suburbs north of Portland.

Yep.

And which is a very rough terrain area.

Well, and he says in this document or an HBO that he said, mark your screens, because I think your friend just took leave of us.

You went down over Portland?

Yeah.

But like in the woods.

In the woods.

Wait, wait, wait.

Didn't he come from Portland?

No, he came from Seattle.

Seattle to Portland.

Oh.

Yeah.

Wait, what about Reno?

He went way from Portland to Reno.

He went to Portland to Seattle.

So he went north and then he has to come south.

Oh, yeah.

But you said he jumped out over Portland?

Yeah.

But it's north of the suburbs of Portland.

He jumped out over a heavily wooded area, which is why these people shouldn't find the FBI is like, he couldn't even let Reno to snout out.

Oh my God.

They were heading to Reno.

Now they're leaving Seattle, they're heading to Reno.

So there was this whole debate about where he's going to go, but he was only on the plane for like 30 minutes.

Not even, yeah.

Why would he jump off where he started?

Nobody knows where he's from.

Yeah, well, allegedly, maybe.

Maybe he had someone picking him up there.

Oh, he just said, I was looking at myself.

So, that's why I'm assuming that that's why they were, okay.

But then they all confused.

But it also sounds like-

We're waiting between the lines.

But it also sounds like when he took off from, like these pilots have said, when they took off from Seattle and he had all these requests, like Lilo landing gear down.

He knew what to direct them.

And he had the parachutes.

Right.

We kind of knew his plan was always to jump, which is why when they called him back, like, do you need help back there?

And he was like, no, he doesn't need any help.

He knew what he was doing.

So, he told him he wanted to go to Mexico, but it seems like they kind of knew he wasn't really going to go to Mexico, that his plan was probably to jump out of this plane.

Yeah.

So, things they found after he yeeted.

His clip-on tie, and two of the four parachutes.

And seven cigarette butts.

Because the flight attendant was lighting the f-

Yeah, yeah.

She was like, I can't smoke in the middle of the time.

And, I mean, what do you think is like the only DNA left behind?

Could be from these seven cigarettes.

And it seems like the best bet for some DNA, huh?

Yeah.

Right.

Gone.

Missing.

Disappeared.

Yeah.

Like years later.

Yeah.

They collected them, they collected them, they saved them, and then someone went back like, hey, we've got, you know, new science.

Let's go recheck it.

Now, no one can find them.

What?

Yeah.

It hits the news and it starts being reported.

And this is where we get the infamous DB Cooper, because a reporter misnamed him.

And the first instinct the police have is to actually look up Daniel Cooper or Dan Cooper, because they all felt he might actually be using his real name.

And so there is now the Portland Cooper, which was just another man named Daniel Cooper, who had a minor police record.

And so they was like, that's not him.

Did we also talk really about how terrible the weather was?

Yeah.

And there are so many variables.

So like near impossible to figure out where he would have landed based on the speed, the environment conditions.

Like you said, it was very windy, the altitude.

And to figure out where he would have fallen with a free fall.

Yeah, he couldn't have steerable parachute.

So it was a moonless night, so difficult to see, limited visibility, limited ground lighting.

So it was difficult to see, difficult for the people tracking the flight to see.

So nobody actually saw him big land anywhere.

Did I tell you a little bit about the evidence?

Yes, please.

So as you mentioned, there was a clip on Ty found in 18E.

Yep.

We think it was his.

We don't know that for sure, but that's a thought.

No DNA matches on that.

Yep.

There was a hair sample from the back rest, from the head rest.

You know what?

Disappeared.

Oh, God.

Wait, hold on.

In the 1970s, did they have DNA testing?

No, so they saved all this, and then they tried to go back in the 90s, and it's all disappeared.

Eight, I said seven, eight cigarettes in the armrest ashtray of 18E.

No fingerprints, they did dust for fingerprints, but again, she lit the cigarettes for him.

But in the 90s, they went back, and it's been lost.

Crazy.

So they found particles on Cooper's tie that included titanium, and this, allegedly, if we believe it to be Cooper's tie.

It had ingredients for a bomb?

Aluminum, titanium, or they thought, could he work in a factory somewhere?

Could he work for Boeing?

Because the Boeing headquarters is in Seattle.

Right.

I didn't even think of that.

And he seemed very knowledgeable about the plane.

Right?

Like, again, like you were saying, when the pads break, we can't take off with the steps down.

And he's like, yes, you can.

Yes, you can.

He's like, I know you can.

But then he compromised with them.

It's like he seemed pretty knowledgeable.

Yeah.

And then on February 10th, 1980, this eight-year-old, Brian Ingram, was vacationing with his family.

He was building a campfire, and he uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, totaling about $5,800.

The bills had disintegrated, but they were still bundled in rubber bands, and people were like, these rubber bands shouldn't have held up this long.

But the technicians confirmed that it was indeed from the ransom money.

Not all the money at this part.

Yeah, but it was like the numbers matched.

And they were able to figure out that this money was intentionally buried.

Which is the same plot that's in the show that I watched.

Yeah, but it's not like...

You couldn't argue that this money fell out when he jumped, and it was just lost.

No, it's purposeful.

It was purposely buried, and where it was, it was like from where the landing zone was, it was up a river against a current.

So it's not like it could have fallen into a river and washed down, but they did all these studies, like this was buried.

They did a lot of practice flights to reenact, to really narrow down where he would have landed.

And then now that time has passed, they've used computers to figure it out, and it's estimated that he landed somewhere between the aerial dam to the north of Battle Ground, Washington.

So they believe he must have jumped over the town, Lough Center, Washington.

But again, very rough terrain, very woodsy.

What if it was snowing?

Not survivable.

He would like...

And then landed something cushioning.

Do you have the 2019 report of the burglary?

Do you have that detail?

So I guess in 2019, a report detailing a burglary, three hours after Cooper's jump occurred.

But I don't know why it took us until 2019 to get this detail.

But apparently, somebody came into a community store and demanded survival items, beef jerky, gloves.

Do you want me to give you a couple of the main suspects?

And then I'm going to tell you my theory, and you tell us what you think?

Sure.

We have a couple big people.

Dwayne Weber...

Dwayne.

Dwayne Weber is a cute...

Well, so his wife came forward and said, I think it could be him.

He died of renal failure after taking himself off dialysis.

So he was in hospice.

She's helping him get dressed for hospice.

And he's having a hard time because he has a knee injury, which is just like in your show, right?

Yeah, he does have a knee injury.

He imps in the show.

Yeah.

And she's like, whatever happened to your knee, also why she's asking him this long into their marriage is odd, but he goes, oh, that's from jumping out of an airplane.

Then when he's in hospice, he says he has a secret to tell her, I'm Dan Cooper.

Those were his last words.

So she initially didn't really know what he meant, but she says he died.

She goes to her local library.

She researches Cooper, and she figures out what he is.

She actually finds this book about DB Cooper, and there's notations in the margins, and she's like, that's my husband's handwriting.

Oh, my gosh.

So like the hijacker, Weber drank bourbon and chain smoked.

And then she talked about how they had visited that area where that money was found by the eight-year-old boy.

So she says after this hijacking, he purchased two new cars, but he'd only made like $1,000 that year that he purchased these two new cars all cash.

So where'd that money come from?

And so she thinks that they went back on this trip.

So she's pretty sure he buried the money, took his wife back on this trip.

She was in the hotel.

He went out, dug up the money, came back, was really dirty.

And then she thinks that when he dug up this money, like $5,000 but was damaged, so he went back and he threw it in the river.

But this is just like Jambanay, all these people who admit to it.

Right.

DNA doesn't match.

Fingerprints don't match.

There's a little LGBTQ.

Oh, here we go.

Barbara Dayton was a pilot and a librarian, was born Robert Dayton, served in the US.

Merchant Marines and then the Army, and worked with explosives for construction work and aspired to a professional airline career, but was unable to obtain a commercial pilot's license.

So when he said he doesn't need the instruction, I have a grudge, but not a grudge with the airline.

Maybe his grudge was that he couldn't get his pilot's license.

Robert Dayton ended up having gender reassignment surgery in 1969 and became Barbara.

And she is believed to be the first person who ever had this type of surgery in Washington.

And she claimed that she'd staged a hijack and she talked to her friends.

And she says it, so she'd already transitioned, but then two years later, this hijacking occurs and that she just disguised herself as a man.

And that that's how she got away with it, because people were looking for a man and she's a woman.

And that her motive was to get back at the airline and the FAA.

But then she recanted and she died and we have no proof it was her, nope.

Lynn Cooper, his niece pointed to him because she said the family was all together for Thanksgiving in Oregon and her uncles were heard planning something very mischievous involving these expensive walkie talkies.

And the next day the hijacking occurred, the uncles came home that evening and Lynn had blood on his white shirt.

And he was obsessed with the Canadian comic book hero, Dan Cooper, who jumps out of planes.

So is that where he got the name?

His DNA did not match.

But where are you getting this DNA?

It's all like from the tie?

We don't even know what his tie is.

And there's so many, those are some of the big ones.

There's a lot of people who were like paratroopers.

There was this guy, Richard McCoy, who was arrested a couple months later for doing a similar hijacking.

He did not deny being Cooper, but he was only 29 and the flight attendants didn't recognize him.

And so if you believe this theory, then it's like he did it, but he lost the money, so he went back to do it again.

And this is, I think I sent you the Instagram on this, that his children came forward after their mother's death.

They always suspected him, but they thought their mom had helped him.

We didn't want to speak up, but now that she's dead, they found the parachute allegedly in their garage, and so it's all being investigated.

He was actually incarcerated for, again, a 1972 hijacking, but he escaped prison.

He was shot in a shootout.

He was turned in by one of his military buddies.

But this particular, the DB Cooper one, he was actually in Las Vegas the day of the hijacking, and in Utah, I think, same with his family, so he couldn't have done it.

And then there's this guy, I think the other big one we hear about, Walter Reca, was a military man, ex-convict, who was suspected of being DB Cooper.

He had a criminal background and had served time in prisons.

He was living in Michigan, but he confessed to his buddy, who has him on recordings talking about it.

They allege that he jumped over Central Washington.

So this is like 150 miles off of the search area, which could explain why they weren't able to find him when they searched.

They claim that the buried money was money that he gave the getaway driver, but then the getaway driver was afraid to be linked to the crime, so he buried it.

And there's another eyewitness from this roadside cafe.

This is kind of like your story about the guy in 2019.

But he came in, and first thing he said is, hey kid, where am I?

Like you'd know where he landed.

And they told him.

And he says, if I make a phone call, can you give a friend directions on how to pick me up?

Walter told his friend that he removed the bundled up parachute after he landed and covered it up with branches.

There are no accounts of anyone finding a parachute in that area, which might have been newsworthy at the time given the intense coverage of the hijacking.

He limped for about a half an hour in the direction of the closest lights he saw.

And then that's when he came across this cafe.

And that's when he met a musician in a cowboy outfit.

But it sounds like on these tapes, his friend might have been prompting him a lot and giving him a lot of information.

He did most of the talking.

And he doesn't really match...

Again, he's a little bit young, doesn't really match the suspect.

But it is interesting that if we were to believe he died, they didn't even find a parachute.

And the FBI is pretty adamant that he died.

I just feel like there's just too much questionable.

Probably just easy for them to say he died.

It's so easy for them.

But also the fact that the money looked purposely buried, the money that was found in the 80s looked purposefully buried.

And then they kept going on and on about how nobody with parachuting experience would have jumped at that point in the flight or that area on the flight.

There's a gentleman named Larry Carr who investigated the DB Cooper storyline.

And he speculates that Cooper was a paratrooper.

And that's how he would have gotten this knowledge.

And that Carr claims this would have been a livable jump.

This was doable for anybody who had jumped more than a handful of times, could have done this.

The FBI is making it seem like it's like an impossible jump, but really it's not.

Well, look, I'm with you.

I agree.

A couple of thoughts that I did have that I wrote down was like, back to your point about the money and like it getting spent or not the money never getting spent and maybe he died.

Right.

After the hijacking, the FBI asked the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in DC to look for the bills, and it sounds like and they have like banks looking, but it sounds like, I mean, the banks are not still looking for this money, right?

No.

So if you just waited a couple of months, then they would have not been looking anymore.

The issue with that, there was I guess that as money gets like-

Also, how do they look for money?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Especially in the 70s, when you didn't have all these computers yet, you're saying every time somebody's bringing money to your bank or whatever, you're like looking at the numbers.

There's no way.

You're not going to keep doing that.

You might do that at first.

I think he waited it out.

Yeah.

Or if he spent it in another country.

That was what I was going to say too.

Yeah.

I think he definitely lived.

We don't know where he went from there.

What is weird is that I guess as money gets damaged, all the currency gets sent back to DC, and so at this point, that money should be circulating back.

Again, I don't know if he spent the money in Mexico, if it would ever make its way back.

I'm not sure.

If you're a listener, feel free to let us know.

But no, my theory about did he even exist?

There's kind of two theories.

There's one theory that maybe he caught off in Seattle with all of these.

Some people were like, he slept in his own bed last night.

But people really think.

But there are photos, videos of the 32 passengers getting off.

None of them looked like him.

No.

I don't know why the front end would lie about that.

So I don't know.

That's one theory.

There's a theory that he didn't jump because no one saw him jump.

Like you said, these, that he's sleeping on the plane.

Did he hide somewhere in the plane?

Although they're pretty adamant that they came in with, that they said, yeah, he was 5'10, 170 pounds, and there was really nowhere for him to hide on this plane, and that there were dogs and agents swarming it as soon as it got in the ground.

We know the plane went back to Seattle the next day because it still had all the luggage on board from the customers.

So, I mean, it sounds like there was a pretty intense search at first, and then it, so maybe less likely that he was hiding.

And then the last theory is that he doesn't exist.

He doesn't exist because maybe this was a conspiracy planned by the front end.

Because for them to take the money, oh, no, I don't even think so.

All we have is a handwritten ticket, okay?

Who's to say that one of these crew members couldn't make up a ticket?

Oh, I like this.

And then all of the interactions were really just with the flight attendant.

Yeah.

Right?

And then he is, Mucklo is our main, I mean, there's a couple of flight attendants.

Yeah, he's our main character.

The one who sat, she's the one who relayed all the information, was walking back and forth, all of that.

And so maybe it was all of them, they were all in on this.

I will say, we said there were six crew members.

Yeah.

So $1.5 million now divided by six, is that really worth all of this?

Right.

I don't know.

But I guess the only thing is that there was this college student who claimed to have seen them interacting, and he provided like...

The cowboy hat guy.

I don't know if it's the same guy.

There was a college student who was just catching a ride, I guess, who claimed to have seen DB Cooper.

Like, he just saw the guy in the back row.

I like the conspiracy that he was a military, had some form of military background.

A lot of people think he worked as like a cargo loader for the Air Force.

So that's why he would have such knowledge on the plane.

I wouldn't believe he was a real guy and he lived.

I don't know about the...

Because the Air Force...

I don't know.

I just feel like the Air Force wasn't flying 727s.

I think a military background explains how he maybe knew about later shoots and jumped the plane.

But he specifically knew that 727 could fly if he was real.

Maybe for Boeing, which was in Seattle, and he did have evidence.

Final thoughts?

I don't know.

I think he was real and he lived.

We want to believe he lived.

That's what I want.

I do.

I want to believe he lived so bad.

If you follow the plot from the start...

But I do like the idea that maybe he didn't exist.

That's a good...

He's already pretty now.

Yeah.

I like the idea...

Well, if you follow the plot of Prison Break, the show I watched, he lived, took on his real identity, and then proceeded to get arrested and lived the rest of his life in jail for something...

Unrelated.

Unrelated.

Yeah.

It's kind of like JonBenet.

There's all these people who are taking responsibility.

Nobody's DNA or fingerprints match.

Is it even good DNA or fingerprints?

We don't know, but there's multiple suspects who were like, yeah, it was me.

So whatever gets solved.

He's a character featured in lots of different shows.

Prison Break, Justified, The Blacklist.

Floki?

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