He Hijacked the Plane, Collected a Huge Ransom, and Jumped Out and Disappeared Forever

He Hijacked the Plane,

Collected a Huge Ransom, and 

Jumped Out and Disappeared 

Forever

53 years ago in the United States, 

there was a criminal named Dan 

Cooper, who hijacked a commercial 

plane flying from Portland, Oregon 

to Seattle, Washington in 1971 and 

He jumped  with a 

parachute with the ransom money 

and disappeared forever.

It was November 24, 1971, when a 

man carrying a black suitcase was 

heading to the Northwest Orient 

Airlines office at Portland 

International Airport. There, he 

bought a one-way ticket for Flight 

305, which was a 30-minute flight. At 

Tacoma International Airport in 

Seattle, this man registered his 

name as Dan Cooper.

According to eyewitnesses, the 

white Dan Cooper was wearing a 

black suit and black tie, a black 

raincoat, and brown shoes during 

the flight. He had dark hair, brown 

eyes, and was in his forties. He was 

carrying a briefcase and a brown 

paper bag. He sat in seat 18-E in the 

last row of the Boeing 727 flight and 

asked the flight attendant for a 

drink.

I have a bomb

Dan Cooper wrote a note to the 

flight attendant during a 

flightbetween Portland and Seattle, 

telling him that there was a bomb in 

his briefcase and that if his 

demands were not met, he would 

blow up the plane. At the Seattle 

airport, he was given $200,000 and 

four parachutes as demanded, and 

he allowed all passengers to 

disembark, but forced two pilots, a 

flight engineer, and a flight 

attendant to stay on the plane.

After that, the plane was refueled 

and taken to New Mexico on his 

instructions, landed at the Nevada 

airport for fuel again, and then half 

an hour later, when the plane took 

off, he jumped into Washington by 

parachute through the back door at 

night.

Who was Dan Cooper?

He had his name written as Dan 

Cooper, but later during the 

reporting, a reporter mistakenly 

wrote it as DB Cooper, and this is 

how it became famous. He was 

about 6 feet tall and his name Dan 

Cooper was later found to be fake. 

However, when he opened the 

briefcase, people saw that it 

contained several wires, red sticks 

and a battery.

After his jump, a wide-scale search 

began, the FBI made desperate 

efforts, but he could neither be 

identified nor found any trace of 

him, that is, it can be said that he 

fell from the sky but did not get 

stuck anywhere, but rather sank 

into the ground. This is why this 

case is the biggest unsolved mystery 

in American history.

FBI

Initially, the agency believed that 

Cooper knew both the planes and 

the area, and speculated that he 

may have served as a paratrooper 

in the military, but it was later 

determined that he was not an 

experienced skydiver because the 

jump was too dangerous, and Dean 

Cooper failed to notice that his 

reserve parachute was sealed as 

was used in training.

A tie belonging to Cooper was found 

on the plane, from which his DNA 

was taken, which was used to track 

him down but did not yield a 

positive result. Several people were 

arrested but later released.

What happened to Dean Cooper?

In the end, many people believed 

that Dean Cooper did not survive, 

and there were several reasons for 

this belief. He jumped from the 

plane in winds of over 200 mph, and 

the parachute he used was 

unfortunately not steerable, and it 

was highly likely that he had landed 

in a rugged and heavily wooded 

area.

But after years of unsuccessful 

searches, investigators finally had a 

breakthrough in 1980 when a boy 

found a rotting package containing 

$5,800. The package was buried in 

the mud on the banks of the 

Columbia River. It was all in $20 

bills, and the serial numbers on the 

money matched the numbers on the 

ransom note.

But after much searching, nothing 

more was discovered, and the 

agency finally officially closed its 

investigation in 2016, saying its 

resources could be better used on 

other cases. Interestingly, DB 

Cooper became a folk hero and 

songs were written about him, 

books were written, and films were 

made.