DB Cooper: The Man, The Myth, The Unresolved Hijacking

Kyle Risi: 0:01

So this is also again where he's smart, right? Because he demands two parachutes, so four total, two primary, two reserve. Because if he only asks for one, there's a risk that they might try and give him a dud. Yeah, so asking for two indicates them that maybe he's gonna take a hostage with him? Yeah, okay, and they don't want to risk potentially harming an innocent civilian. So they can't just give him a dud This is his way of guaranteeing that one of them's gonna work. Well, no, this is what his way of guarantee. Adam! They're not gonna send two parachutes and go, This one's for you, and this one's for your hostage. He's gonna be like, Uh, no, I'll take the one for the hostage, thank you very much. Why is there a hole in my one? No, they just give him two functioning parachutes. And this is where he's smart again, right?

Adam Cox: 0:43

Yeah, way smarter than me, clearly.

Kyle Risi: 0:45

Which one's mine?! Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where each week we explore a brand new story from the dark corners of true crime, mind blowing historical events, and legendary people. We give you just enough information to captivate your audience at any social gathering.

Adam Cox: 1:31

Like that boring bit at your sister's wedding when she's walking down the aisle

Kyle Risi: 1:36

Or when the best man speech starts dwindling and people start thinking this is it this is how I'm gonna die You know So myriad of different places where you can bring up our stories. Yeah, absolutely. I'm your host Kyle Risi

Adam Cox: 1:48

And I'm your co host, Adam Cox. So what are you adding to the compendium library today?

Kyle Risi: 1:53

So today's compendium explores an assembly of ways that a daring escapade You don't get to use that word very often, do we? An escapade? No, not really. how a daring escapade can skyrocket a criminal to legendary folk hero status.

Adam Cox: 2:09

Interesting. Sorry, criminal. I'm trying to think of one that's a legendary folk status. You got me intrigued.

Kyle Risi: 2:16

think of all the different criminals that have been catapulted into legendary status. You've got to think about the Great Escape, the guys from the Great Train Robbery, for example. Yeah. That's just two examples that I can think of off the top of my head without even having to research. Fine. Okay. So in today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about the one and only successful hijacking of a plane in US history, where a hijacker not only successfully managed to get his ransom. But also escaped by diving out of an aeroplane at 10, 000 feet and to this day he has never been caught. I am of course talking about a man who 5 decades later still keeps popping up in popular culture and goes by the infamous name DB Cooper DB Cooper.

Adam Cox: 2:59

So I have heard of him, but I didn't realize he never got caught.

Kyle Risi: 3:02

What do you know of him?

Adam Cox: 3:04

do you know what the bits that I recall are, I think it's been like spoofed and TV shows or, and things like that. So I think it was in an episode of Loki where they. I don't know, somehow teleported to being on this plane and yeah, that's what they were referencing, um, Cooper, but I don't really know the backstory of it, to be honest.

Kyle Risi: 3:22

Well, you're 100 percent accurate. This guy just keeps popping up in all sorts of television shows, movies, novels, books, everything, because he's captured the imagination of like an entire generation of Americans. What is so fascinating and intriguing about this case and what makes it worthy of having its own episode of the compendium is that to this day, it remains the only unsolved, unpunished US plane hijacking in history, and even though DB Cooper hijacks a plane with a bunch of passengers on board, this case stands apart because when the story broke, people living through the 1970s were all rooting for him. Like, they didn't want him to be caught. They were cheering him on.

Adam Cox: 4:02

So, kind of like an underdog, really, then?

Kyle Risi: 4:04

Absolutely. It was like This concept of sticking it up to the man, and at that time, like, when you consider the backdrop that this story falls within, the American economy was turning to shit. This is 1971. This is where inflation was just going through the roof. And people were like really disillusioned by this. So people were like, yeah, this man is saying F you to the US government in a way, Yeah, I guess

Adam Cox: 4:24

people just love an underdog that steals from the government or whatever, and gets away with it. I feel like the great train robbery where people were rooting because even though they'd stolen money on, the majesty's train, or the royal mail service, there's still this element of people going, oh, well done. for getting away with it.

Kyle Risi: 4:43

Yeah, it's a timeless Robin Hood story, right? Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Adam Cox: 4:48

Where if the poor is him, is he classing himself as the poor? I

Kyle Risi: 4:51

guess so. So, before we do that, should we, dive into all the latest things for this week? Let's do it. So Adam, do you remember in the 1990s when there was a big massive fad of everyone getting Chinese kind of symbol tattoos tattooed on them? Yes. And then years later, it turns out that, they didn't say what you think it said. Like people get like, love, live, Eat, whatever it was. Love, live, laugh. Yeah, that's it. Eat. Eat. Actually, this is quite fitting, because then it turns out that all these Chinese and Japanese natives are coming across going, yeah, that doesn't mean what you think it means. And it turns out that it meant like chicken soup or like lizard breath or something like that. But the tables have turned. Because in China, it's all the rage to wear English t shirts with English slogans and verses on them and wording and stuff like that. And all of them are just horrendous.

Adam Cox: 5:51

So they've just gone up to like Google Translate and got the wrong translation?

Kyle Risi: 5:53

Not even that. Oh really? Not even that. So have a look at this. Okay.

Adam Cox: 5:59

Um, I don't know if her mum would approve of this, but yeah, be a slut, do whatever you want. Maybe she is a slut and she is doing whatever she wants. Maybe she knows exactly what it means. She knows, she knows.

Kyle Risi: 6:12

She looks it. What's the next one? What is it?

Adam Cox: 6:17

So this girl, she's wearing like this big white puffer jacket, you know, kind of like a bit gangster y. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: 6:22

Like the North Face jackets that everyone

Adam Cox: 6:24

wears here in the UK. Yeah. It's white and then in black text it says, I pull them out of my, in really large text, ass. What does that even I wonder what they meant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: 6:38

Well, so one of the guys that was commentating on this said that, like, it's difficult to go up to a Chinese person and tell them what that means because it's not a slogan that's ever used in any context. So the closest thing that they could say, they would just be baffled by that. Like, they don't pull things out their arse. It's not a thing in their culture. What's the next one? It just says vagina. Hang on, so this looks like, is it Visa? That's a Visa logo. Visa logo. And instead of saying Visa, it says Vagina. Yeah, look at his face, he's just an old dad. It's an old

Adam Cox: 7:08

man wearing a t shirt saying vagina. That's not okay. Okay, is there any more? Or is there one more? I think there's one more. Uh, okay, so this looks like it was during the pandemic maybe, uh, and there's a woman wearing a white t shirt and in Coca Cola font, it says cock. Oh, hang on, there's a bit more. Enjoy my cock. Is the something nothing? Is the rural? Is the what? What

Kyle Risi: 7:37

does it say? I don't

Adam Cox: 7:38

know. I don't know. Is the fuel nothing? It doesn't even

Kyle Risi: 7:42

make sense. It doesn't make sense. But, um, yeah, she's proud. So what have you got for us this week?

Adam Cox: 7:48

So, my latest thing this week is, a couple in Pembrokeshire in the UK, have had to give up one of their garden ornaments after almost four

Kyle Risi: 7:58

decades. Really? Yeah. that's a sacrifice. Yeah. Can you guess

Adam Cox: 8:02

what that garden ornament

Kyle Risi: 8:04

was? It's gotta be a gnome.

Adam Cox: 8:05

yeah, Yeah, I can see why you would think that, but it's actually a bomb.

Kyle Risi: 8:11

Well, people keep reporting it as a bomb, calling the bomb squad.

Adam Cox: 8:14

Well, yeah, a bomb squad did turn up and take it away. So a couple had been living in this house since the 80s, and when they moved in, there was a bomb, like a small, a year, I think it's over 100 years old, this bomb. Oh, an actual bomb? An actual bomb. Okay. and so they thought it wasn't, it was part of the property, they kept it in their garden, they painted it the same colour as their windowsills, kids would play with it. As you do, as you would, the wife would do some gardening and she'd tap it with her trowel every now and again. And so for luck, for luck or something. And so they, they've had it this long and they assumed that it wasn't, armed or anything like that. It was disabled. Oh, it turns out it was. this is the thing. So they've had it this long and then this, bomb squad basically gets in touch and says, we're gonna have to take that away. And so who would do that? I'm guessing maybe noon. It doesn't say who. But maybe new neighbours reported it, and I was like, what's that in your back

Kyle Risi: 9:08

garden? Yeah, hang on, but my question is, do they know for a fact that it wasn't a Descente bomb?

Adam Cox: 9:14

he assumed it was, and they take it away and they say it had a light charge and was unlikely to go off. But, it doesn't give me any confidence that it was fully safe or anything like that. And

Kyle Risi: 9:26

also, what's a light charge?

Adam Cox: 9:27

I don't know. I think it means it's got like a minimal amount of, I guess, explosive material in it. Right. So perhaps it wouldn't do any serious harm. But The couple were so adamant about it being taken away because they were like, no, you can't evacuate the street, we're not moving, we'd rather die here,

Kyle Risi: 9:43

basically. Oh god, and they

Adam Cox: 9:44

almost did. Almost did, but just the thought of these like 70 year olds are so stubborn and they were like, we don't want to lose our

Kyle Risi: 9:50

garden ornament. Yeah, people get really attached to stuff they've got, They said,

Adam Cox: 9:54

they said it was like losing an old friend and to commemorate it, they've planted some new, plants in its place and they're looking for a special shrub, which they can then market in the spring as a sort of remembrance.

Kyle Risi: 10:06

Oh, that's nice. In my head though, I imagine like a cartoon bomb, with a big old round. Is there a picture

Adam Cox: 10:12

of it? There's a picture of it and it's a substantial bomb.

Kyle Risi: 10:15

Shit, Adam. That's a fucking bomb. I know.

Adam Cox: 10:19

And they were just so blaséabout

Kyle Risi: 10:21

it. God damn right they took that

Adam Cox: 10:23

thing away. I know. The thing was like, kids would like, uh, I don't know, get hoops and throw over it and stuff like this. God damn it! But the thought is like, who called up the bomb squad to take it away? Because all I can imagine is a new neighbour coming in and alerting them, and then all of a sudden they've just got made, like, enemies with the new neighbours because they've just taken away their bomb.

Kyle Risi: 10:44

Yeah, I mean I think that's a wise move. In my head I just imagine like a cartoon bomb, with like a, like a, a weird fuse coming out of it. Clearly a joke.

Adam Cox: 10:54

that's a

Kyle Risi: 10:55

proper bomb that is. Yeah, that's the one that you drop out of an aeroplane. Yeah. Torpedo. Goddammit. So I guess that's all the latest things for this week, right? so Adam, this is the story of d. B. Cooper. The year is 1971 and the US economy was struggling with high inflation and unemployment, leading to just a general census of disillusionment amongst ordinary Americans. In fact, in the face of all of this, a man named D. B. Cooper came to represent this notion of sticking it up to the man. It's a story that resonates with most Americans. who were all frustrated with the current economy and literally overnight, DB Cooper had become a national folk hero after successfully hijacking an airplane. What is nuts? Is that the reason why DB Cooper was able to hijack a plane in the US was because catching a plane during this period was literally like just catching a bus. You literally just turn up to the airport, you pay your 20 bucks at the counter, no ideas required, just a name, and BAM. You're off on your holidays. Can you imagine? What a simpler world. The stress that we have to face when we're going to the airport is just mental.

Adam Cox: 12:03

Yeah, because with airport security you don't really relax until you're through that and you've taken out all your luggage. For the millionth time. For the millionth time, with your liquids and everything else, you're taking your belt off, you're taking your shoes off, your jacket, and then you have to go through that security, and then you've got to Be

Kyle Risi: 12:19

humiliated and touched up, rubbed up. Depends who's rubbing you up though, but you have to be rubbed up.

Adam Cox: 12:24

And then like, you cross your fingers because you're like, oh hopefully nothing gets picked up and there's not a random search in your bag, and you think, oh god, what have I got in there? Is there some, someone like Put some drugs in my suitcase without me knowing.

Kyle Risi: 12:37

One time I got pulled up because I had a loop around the back of my iPad which on the scanner looked like a razor blade. Oh yes, yeah, yeah. And I was like out of action for like 40 minutes. Yeah. Just while I waited for someone to have a look at my bag. I hate it,

Adam Cox: 12:51

that's the worst part. But then once you're through, straight to the airport lounge.

Kyle Risi: 12:55

But also this entire process was completely devoid of any security. So coupled with the economic frustrations, plane hijackings were a really good way of protesting against the hardship and so the late 1960s and early 70s were considered the golden age of skyjacking. And by its peak, there was a hijacking every five days between 1968 and 1972. Every five days? Yeah. That is ridiculous. It is, it's mental. So is this

Adam Cox: 13:21

across the world as well?

Kyle Risi: 13:23

Nope, just in America.

Adam Cox: 13:24

Just in America? Yep. Oh, you can understand why they brought in some of the things that they did.

Kyle Risi: 13:29

one of the things that they tried was just putting a sky marshal on every single flight. But it was too expensive when you consider the number of flights. Like hundreds? Thousands, tens of thousands of flights were taken off across America every single day. So having a Sky Marshal on every single flight was no, there was no point. And also, if a plane's been hijacked and you're a Sky Marshal, at the end of the day, you're just another passenger on board. Like, what are you going to do? You're going to shoot them? You're having to think about all the other lives that are potentially on that airplane as well. So

Adam Cox: 13:56

it was mental. And so these hijacks, because I don't really know anything about this. Were there many that were like really serious?

Kyle Risi: 14:03

Largely most of the hijackings basically were unsuccessful, and the US government completely refused to negotiate with hijackers altogether, leading many of these hijackers into standoffs with police. Many of them get arrested because nobody really had a plan beyond landing the plane. So most of them just got arrested or they got shot basically. Okay. So some did try to escape to Cuba since this was the only country that wouldn't hand them over to the U. S. government. And the U. S. did try to tackle the rise, like I said, of the hijackers by placing air marshals on every flight. But this didn't work, because A, it was really expensive, and also B, consider the sheer number of flights that are taken off across America every day. So, air marshals was just a pointless task, really. But as far as the flight crew were concerned they really liked the excitement of it all, because they got to sometimes spend like a couple days in Mexico they'll get really drunk, then there'll be a flight home, and there'll be partying, but they just got us like, it was like a little break for them.

Adam Cox: 14:59

A little, I can't imagine, only because I think of hijacks since 9 11, but a time where people would be like, oh great, hijacking. That's an extra couple of days wherever I'm gonna be staying. Yeah, that's what they thought. That's crazy to think that.

Kyle Risi: 15:13

Different time, man. Different time. So as I said, up to this point, all hijackings were generally unsuccessful. That was until 1971, when along came D. B. Cooper. So, it's the night before Thanksgiving, which is always normally the fourth Thursday of November and in 1971 this had fallen on the 24th of November. Mm So everyone is trying to head home for the holidays to be with their family. So the airport is really busy with people and this man goes up to the counter at Portland Airport and he buys a one way ticket to Seattle on board Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 and he puts his name down as Dan Cooper and this flight was scheduled to take just 30 minutes. So since most people traveling between Portland and Seattle would just drive this distance, you can imagine that the flight was not going to be really busy. In fact, it was less than half full with just 42 passengers onboard, including the crew. So to give you a sense, this plane was a 7 2 7 with a max capacity of 189 people. So witnesses that remembered described D. B. Cooper as wearing a dark suit with a black tie and a white shirt. And he also wore a raincoat with dark glasses and he had like black or brown loafers on, but most importantly, he was carrying a briefcase. And the thing to also point out here, like when you look at kind of his E Fit sketch you get very much, a madman kind of vibe about him. Okay. Like imagine that. Slick back hair, really jelled up, quintessentially Don Draper. Don Draper,

Adam Cox: 16:39

yeah that's what I'm seeing, yeah.

Kyle Risi: 16:40

Okay. So when he boards a plane he takes a seat towards the back of the aircraft and he orders a bourbon and soda and he starts smoking a bunch of cigarettes and after about 3pm the flight takes off when soon after he hands the flight attendant called Florence Schaefer a note. Initially she doesn't read it at all, she's just thinking that he is some creepy businessman who has handed her her number. Yeah. And remember this was a time when flight attendants had to all be attractive young and single and it wasn't uncommon for that to be blatantly written inside their contracts. Single? Yeah. They had to be single? Well I mean there was a practical reason for that as well because obviously if you were single and you were a woman you tended to be more flexible. Because this was back in the time when it was the 1960s and if you were married you were required to be at home and stuff. You didn't generally have that freedom. So it was understood that if you became a flight attendant and then you got married, you would probably be giving up your job anyway, so they just put that into the contract when it was completely legal to do that at the time.

Adam Cox: 17:38

Uh, okay. I was thinking that there was something more underhand going on there, but that makes more sense.

Kyle Risi: 17:42

But hey also marketing for a lot of these airlines at the time highlighted like, Hey, do you know what? We've got sexy attendants, so come fly with us. Sexy single attendants? Sexy single, attractive attendants, come and fly with us. So like, receiving a note from a male passenger was almost expected. Like, if you hadn't been hit on within three minutes of takeoff, you were probably most likely sure that you were on a flight. Filled with gay businessmen heading off to a handkerchief signaling conference in San Francisco somewhere. Like, ah, that makes sense.

Adam Cox: 18:12

They're like, oh, I'm not getting any attention this flight.

Kyle Risi: 18:14

Or maybe they're like, whew, no attention. Might be a welcome break, you know. So Florence doesn't even look at the note, but a short while later, the man tells her that she should read it because he's got a bomb. And that he wants her to come and sit with him. So Florence reads a note, she tries not to freak out, and then immediately she informs the other crew. One of them, Tina Mucklow, reads a note and she agrees that she will be the one to go and sit On the road behind DB Cooper. And DB Cooper is smart because when Tina comes back to sit next to him, he makes her give her the note back. So there's no way there's going to be any fingerprints or kind of handwriting samples available at all. So he's smart. Okay, right. This is the first example of where he's really smart. So when she sits down, he opens the briefcase and inside she sees a bomb. And she describes the bomb as having like cylindrical objects with wires and red colored sticks of dynamite attached to it. And it had a series of wires and batteries, that kind of all interlinked together, which to her, she describes, yeah, that was. That was a functioning explosive. Yeah, I guess

Adam Cox: 19:17

I was just gonna ask do we know if it was a natural explosive? No, we don't actually. Oh interesting. So it could have been like a decoy But you're not gonna like query that if it looks like a bomb You're not gonna touch it.

Kyle Risi: 19:27

Looks like a bomb, smells like a bomb. Probably is a bomb. Probably a bomb. And also, you don't want to take the risk, right? It's like a man flashing you and you laughing at his dick. I don't know. You don't want to do that because he could be dangerous, right? He's, like, if she laughed at the bottom, he'd be like, oh yeah, and then you'd just explode everything. You don't want to take that risk.

Adam Cox: 19:45

True, yeah, I guess you're not gonna look at it and like start fiddling with the wires again. Look at this. This is flimsy. This isn't real. What is this? Made in China. No, let's get rid of

Kyle Risi: 19:53

this. So D. B. Cooper closes the briefcase and he tells her what he wants. He wants 200, 000 in 20 bills delivered in a backpack. This is at the time equivalent to like 1. 4 million today. He also asked for four parachutes, two primary parachutes and two reserve parachutes. Basically the primary parachutes that he asked for, they go on your back and then the reserve parachutes, they're attached to your front and they're used kind of in the event that the primary kind of parachute doesn't deploy or launch, right? He then demands that a fuel truck be waiting at Seattle airport to refuel the plane. For another takeoff after they get there.

Adam Cox: 20:32

Okay, so I'm thinking a commercial flight isn't normally gonna carry backpacks Or no, so he's expecting for them to land the plane then to give him the money and the backpacks and everything else Right. Yeah, and then he's gonna take off again. Exactly. Okay,

Kyle Risi: 20:47

So Tina goes up to the cockpit to relay the demands of the pilots and when she gets back he's kind of put on these sunglasses and he's just calmly sitting there. He orders another drink, he pays his tab and he's just really calm and collected and like he's not nervous or anything. It's like he's done this a million times before.

Adam Cox: 21:03

I was gonna say anyone that's done this would have been quite nervous. Yeah for sure. Right.

Kyle Risi: 21:06

Not him. Yeah. Like he's just like, yeah man I'm a cool cat. I know what I'm doing. So Tina describes how polite it was towards her. Like during the flight he's looking out the window and he is telling Tina all about the terrain that the flying over, which to Tina told her that he had a kind of a good idea of what the area was like. So he can see Tina's like really nervous, so he just casually chats with her and he even asks her like if she's eaten yet and if she wanted him to demand like that the crew get fed when they land at the airport and she's lol, no, we're gonna be okay. So at one point Tina asks him like. Is there a grudge that you have against the airline? Is this the reason for the hijacking? And he's like, no. but I do have a grudge. And he doesn't say anything else. He does have a grudge. He does have a grudge, which is interesting. Yeah, but it's not with

Adam Cox: 21:52

you, but you have got caught up in it.

Kyle Risi: 21:55

Yeah, sorry. So meanwhile the pilots have called to Seattle airport and they tell them that of course they've been hijacked and that there's a man with a bomb and here are his demands. And the president of the airline tells the flight crew to completely cooperate. and do not let the passengers know that anything is going on. So all the crew know that this guy is on board, he has a bomb, and they just have to completely act as if nothing has happened. How would you do that? It's scary.

Adam Cox: 22:21

It's a scary prospect. That makes me think, that must be protocol, right? Like now. I don't know. So if you're on a flight, would you even know that? Unless someone's going, you know, crazy.

Kyle Risi: 22:31

I don't think anyone gets to a plane anymore with a bomb. I think they get. Pulled out before that even happened, right? With all the scanning and, I mean, if they won't let me take a liquid on, come on, they're gonna find a bomb. True, true that. Right? If you're carrying a briefcase, a big cache, and there's bombs and wires and stuff in there And it's ticking. And it's ticking. What's that ticking? Ah, my vibrator. Okay, on you go. And so down on the ground, things are set in motion to get DB Cooper everything that he's asked for. They organize to get the 200, 000 in 20 bills, which the local bank actually have Already set aside in case there's like a bank robbery But obviously because of the increase of hijackings that were happening over the last decade They were also setting this money aside for hijackings as well. So banks were doing this Yeah, they had this money set aside already And the thing about the cash is that the bills are all batched together in sequential order With all the serial numbers photographed as well on the kind of this microfilm Interesting. So at the very least the money can at least be used to track the hijacker If they ever do get away. That's actually quite smart. It is really smart. So they organized for a fuel truck to be waiting at the Seattle airport and they tried to organize the parachutes but this was kind of the hardest part of his demands because skydiving wasn't even a common thing at the time at all. However, they do manage to track down a military skydiving training center and that's where they get the parachutes from. So this is also again where he's smart, right? Because he demands two parachutes, right? So four total, two primary, two reserve. Because if he only asks for one, right, there's a risk that they might try and give him a dud. Yeah, so asking for two indicates them that maybe he's gonna take a hostage with him, right? Yeah, okay, and they don't want to risk potentially harming an innocent civilian. So they can't just give him a dud This is his way of guaranteeing that one of them's gonna work. Well, no, this is what his way of guarantee Adam, they're not gonna send two parachutes and go, This one's for you, DB, and this one's for your hostage. He's gonna be like, Uh, no, I'll take the one for the hostage, thank you very much. Why is there a hole in my one? No, they don't label them. Okay. They just give him two functioning parachutes. And this is where he's smart again, right?

Adam Cox: 24:46

Yeah, way smarter than me, clearly.

Kyle Risi: 24:48

Which one's mine?! I can't do this! So it takes around two hours to get everything together. Remember, this is a 30 minute flight, right? But the plane's not allowed to land until everything has been arranged. So the plane has to just circle around the airport for like one and a half hours and the pilots just tell the passengers like there's a mechanical issue On the plane. But none of the passengers mind, obviously because it's the 1970s, everyone can smoke and drink on the flight. The booze is flowing. It's just a dream. Eventually they can finally land in Seattle and Tina is sent to the back stairs of the aircraft to meet the person who will hand over the cash and the parachutes. And the money is delivered in a duffel bag and not a backpack. Which is going to make it difficult to jump out of the airplane holding essentially a weekend bag. A lesbian weekend bag. Right? That's not practical. Lesbians, they need straps, right? They need backpacks. They need to keep their hands free I'm gonna have a rummage down your cabin.

Adam Cox: 25:45

God, no.

Kyle Risi: 25:46

So yeah, it's delivered in a duffel bag so it's gonna cause a problem for him. So, DB checks the parachutes and the cache, they're all good, and he agrees to finally just let everyone off the airplane except for Tina and the two pilots, who have not left the cockpit at all. So, they never talk to him or even see what he even looks like, right? Everything is just relayed through Tina alone. So, while the plane is being refueled, DB Cooper tells Tina his next set of demands. The plane is to take off again and is to be directed towards Mexico City. He demands that the planes back stairs be down during take off and also that they fly no lower or no higher than at ten thousand feet. And the speed that they need to fly at should be no more than 200 miles per hour. Which is literally the slowest possible speed that that plane can fly at. So just for a bit of context. So the Boeing 727 that they're currently in, that flies roughly around about 35, 000 feet in the air, and travels at a maximum speed of 570 miles per hour. Okay. Right? So, when Tina tells a pilot, they tell her, okay, you need to tell him that A, having the back stairs open means that the plane physically cannot take off, At all. By open, do you mean the door open? So some planes have like the stairs that come out of the aeroplane and then come down, right? So he wants those

Adam Cox: 27:08

open. So whilst they're flying, the stairs being out? Yes. So we can have a bit of a run down if he's gonna like jump out. Yeah, I

Kyle Risi: 27:14

guess so. Scary. So they say basically physically can't take off with those back stairs open, so you'll have to open those stairs yourself when we're in the air. B, the fuel on board will not take you anywhere close to Mexico City. Like, you will run out of fuel long before we even get there. And C, flying at 200 miles per hour is not possible. Like, this will result in the aeroplane stalling and we will fall out of the fucking sky. Jeez.

Adam Cox: 27:40

So, he's not that smart.

Kyle Risi: 27:42

Hold your little horses. Okay. But D. B. Cooper is like, uh, guys, number one, I'm not actually going to Mexico City, right? So, just fly as far south as the fuel will get you. I don't care. I'll be long gone by then. Right. Number two, I know that this particular plane can fly 200 miles an hour, so just do what I say. Is he a pilot? Number three, no problem, I'll open the back stairs myself when we're airborne. Okay,

Adam Cox: 28:08

he's, he must be used to like airplanes, right?

Kyle Risi: 28:12

He knows stuff, right? He knows stuff. He knows

Adam Cox: 28:14

stuff. So he's either worked for an airline or maybe he's like a RAF, but not RAF because it's America, but the equivalent of the Air Force, right?

Kyle Risi: 28:21

And this is a time where skydiving wasn't a normal thing, right? And he is asked for two parachutes. Um, in some accounts he says that he's asked for steerable parachutes, but he hasn't. He's just asked for parachutes. Steerable parachutes? Yeah, so some parachutes can be steered. Military ones can't really be steered. But yeah, he knows stuff, right? Yeah, I

Adam Cox: 28:38

feel like he's a military type kind of man. I think so as well.

Kyle Risi: 28:41

He's been in war. And also the reason for maintaining the 10, 000 feet at 200 miles an hour is because this is the level where the air pressure inside the plane is so balanced with the outside, meaning that opening the plane door you won't get sucked out. Ah, smart. So also flying at 200 miles an hour is optimal for skydiving, right? So him knowing this stuff really helps to narrow down who DB Cooper may be based on all this knowledge. Yeah. So they agree to go to Reno, which is about 600 miles south of Seattle. That's about as far as the plane will get on the current fuel that it's got. So the plane is refueled, they take off and they start heading south and Tina sees DB Cooper cutting up one of the parachutes to make a makeshift container to hold the money because, as I said, they delivered the money in a duffel bag, which is not a backpack. and it would just make it impossible for him to jump out the airplane without losing the duffel bag or making him like spin out of control. So he knew this, right? So he puts on the other parachute and he asked Tina to help him open up the back stairs but she is terrified because all of her training has taught her that she will be sucked out of that airplane if that happens. So she doesn't understand that flying at 10, 000 feet means that she's going to be fine. So she's completely freaking out. So he just says to her, do you know what? Don't worry about it. Just go into the cockpit with a pilot, shut the door, do not come out until the plane lands. And that's what she does. And that is the last time she sees this man. Soon after Tina and the pilot see a little light go on that indicates that the back stairs have now been opened. And soon after that, they feel a sudden jerk in the aeroplane. Which kind of they assume is DB Cooper jumping out of the aeroplane. Which is amazing for a 727. To cause that kind of, that jerk of just one person disembarking, right? Yeah, to

Adam Cox: 30:30

notice that, movement. Yeah. And throwing it off kilter a little bit. But then, is that just maybe with the wind coming in and stuff like that? It could be, they're

Kyle Risi: 30:38

not sure what it is, they just assume that's what the case is, right? Because they followed the little indicator coming on saying that the back stairs are open. So the pilot's radio is down to mark this exact spot where DB Cooper jumped and then they just keep flying because they aren't actually sure if he actually did jump. They don't want to go out because remember, he's got a bomb that he can just blow up at any time, right?

Adam Cox: 30:57

Right, and then, so are all the passengers, they're not on?

Kyle Risi: 30:59

No, all the passengers have been disembarked, they were allowed to get off the plane after they got the money and the parachutes, yeah. So just to give you a feel of what it was like that night, weather wise, right? A storm had just brewed in from the south of Seattle. And as we know, the plane was flying at a very low altitude below the clouds. So they were traveling through a storm. And DB Cooper, with a parachute and 200, 000 strapped to him, opens up the doors of the back stairs. In the pitch black of night and he proceeds to step out down a small flight of stairs at 200 miles per hour. Geez, he is a brave man. Yeah, and all the while he's just staring into the black before just jumping into the abyss. Can you imagine how terrifying that must be?

Adam Cox: 31:41

I wonder, is there a reason he needed those stairs open? Is that to get clearance, do you think, away from the plane? From like jumping, so he doesn't end up jumping and then somehow being caught up in the plane?

Kyle Risi: 31:52

It, yeah, possibly. I think that's quite plausible. Also, maybe he just didn't think that they could be opened from in the air. Okay. Potentially. So that's why he asked them to be opened. Yeah. So maybe that also highlights maybe that he didn't know this particular plane, but then he knew some other things about the aircraft that maybe he could have read up, right? Yeah, yeah. Who knows? So then at 10 15 p. m. The plane lands at Reno Airport with the back stairs down the FBI the SWAT teams They're all there ready because they're not entirely sure if he's actually jumped or if he was still on the plane. When they're on board, the bomber's gone. The money is gone. He is gone. All they find are the cigarette butts in his ashtray, in his chair, and a clip on tie that he removed just before he jumped out of the aeroplane. So immediately they start a search on the ground and there is just no trace of him anywhere. No discarded parachutes, no bodies, nothing. Some people do theorize that maybe he might have been incinerated by the back engine the second he jumped out. Oh, okay. But they did tests and later they find that was probably unlikely. And finding any evidence was near impossible just because of the vastness of the area that he jumped. What made it even more difficult was the bad weather. For instance the wind blowing just one degree in this particular direction would mean that he could potentially land in an area over 500 square miles.

Adam Cox: 33:10

So that's really, so he doesn't know exactly where they were going to land though, did he? So how does he, I'm just thinking if he survived and he said I'll just fly as far south because I'm going to be long gone. In the

Kyle Risi: 33:23

direction of New Mexico. Just in the

Adam Cox: 33:25

direction of that. So maybe he must have had a rough idea of how far that plane would go because you wouldn't just jump out. He could be like in a desert or a rainforest or whatever it might be. Do you know what I mean?

Kyle Risi: 33:36

I think he had an indication of where he was going to jump out. Because he seems to have a, an understanding of the area. Maybe he didn't think things through. Maybe he wasn't as intelligent as we think he was. Maybe. But Hey, so when the hijack was reported, the military dispatched two fighter jets to fly at 40, 000 feet above the second plane when it finally took off so they could keep track of him to see where he jumped out. But because he insisted that the plane fly so slow, the fighter jets were not able to maintain the speed of 200 miles an hour. So they kept just overshooting him and then having to turn back, trying to relocate him. But so they just missed the whole thing. They have no idea where he jumped out of.

Adam Cox: 34:13

Ah, so they were trying to keep an eye out but they couldn't because

Kyle Risi: 34:16

they couldn't because they were too damn fast. So it's just nearly impossible. Also, a lot of people think that he couldn't have made it on account of kind of the geography and of the weather. Remember this was kind of November in the Northwest of the USA and the parachute was a military one, which of course, as I mentioned earlier on, couldn't. be easily steered. So if he did survive the jump, then he would have had to have contended with kind of the wilderness and the cold, right? And the chances of him banging into a tree and getting trapped and injured were pretty likely, but they don't find anything. They don't find a body. They don't find the money. They don't find the parachute. They just don't find anything.

Adam Cox: 34:52

I guess that must be like looking for a needle in a haystack though. Then I wonder, based on the fact that he took that note back, I imagine he probably wouldn't want to have left anything anyway, so it's not like he just discarded his, parachute if he did land and then just left it in the field. I think he would have done something with it. Do you reckon? It

Kyle Risi: 35:11

feels like he would. Hmm. Is it an aeroplane going over? Maybe it's D. B. Cooper. He's gonna skydive in and tell us the facts. And so for decades the FBI continued to look for any clues that might lead to his capture. And that brings us to that iconic criminal sketch headshot of him from Tina's description. Which if you google DB Cooper, that's going to be the very first image that you find. So the FBI do track casinos and race courses and various other places where typically criminals would try and do big transactions to try and launder the money, but not a single one of them ever shows up. Any of the 20 bills. And like I said at the beginning of this episode because of the economic hardships that were being faced by millions of ordinary Americans at the time, DB Cooper just became an absolute legend, like people when the news broke, news reports are like, yeah, good on him. Like, yeah. Sticking up to the man, man. Yeah. Yeah. Good for him! It's crazy!

Adam Cox: 36:09

I guess, oh yeah. Although, would they not be a bit mad? Because they're a bit like, we're poor. We could have done with some of that money.

Kyle Risi: 36:15

Yeah, but he's like, in American culture as well, it's all about do what you can to pull yourself up from the bootstraps, you know? Make something of yourself, go and get it. It's part of that culture, so I don't think people were angry that they were doing without. It was like, oh, he's found an opportunity to get what he needs, right? And the funny thing is that His name wasn't even DB Cooper. Remember, when he was buying the ticket, he put his name down as Dan Cooper. But the flurry of news reports following the hijacking, a local news reporter misheard the name as DB Cooper, which quickly then got picked up by other news agents. And then the name DB Cooper just became the most widely recognized moniker, but technically His name is Dan Cooper.

Adam Cox: 36:55

Dan Cooper, is that even his name?

Kyle Risi: 36:57

Who knows? Oh, it's probably not his name, right? Yeah. You didn't need to give ID.

Adam Cox: 37:01

I was gonna say they would have located, oh, this is Dan Cooper from, I don't know, Stephen street.

Kyle Risi: 37:05

So almost nine years later in 1980, an eight year old boy named Brian Ingram was camping with his family along a little strip of beach known as Tenerbaugh. Um, and it's not far from Portland, Oregon. And while he was digging in the sand preparing a fire pit, he finds three packets of badly damaged 20 bills all bundled together using elastic bands and it totaled 5, 800. And Brian's, yeah. And Brian's dad was like, this seems dodgy.

Adam Cox: 37:33

You don't come across five grand. No. Every day. No.

Kyle Risi: 37:38

Plus, the cash was pretty unusable anyway. So they like, let's just call the police, right? Because we can't use this money anyway. So the FBI, they look up the serial numbers of the bills and they're all connected to the DB Cooper kind of Really? Yeah, hijacking. That's it. But this is only three little stacks of the 200, 000. So where the hell's the rest of it?

Adam Cox: 37:57

So what was wrong exactly with this money? It was like burnt or kind of

Kyle Risi: 38:00

charred or? It wasn't charred. It was just really weathered. It was damaged, water damaged, it was rotting, etc. Right. So it'd been out there a while by the looks of it.

Adam Cox: 38:10

So there's either two thoughts here. One, he could have discarded of it because. It's I can't use this anyway, or two it's been dropped or whatever falling out or maybe he didn't survive. And so it's landed somewhere and it's just

Kyle Risi: 38:24

where's the rest of it then? Yeah, I don't know. The reports are pretty divided, so I'll go into the most interesting version. So it said that. An assessment was carried out on the riverbed where the money was found? And they deduced, I love that word, deduced that a layer of the riverbed sediment dating back to two years after the hijacking in 1974 had been found on top of the money? Which indicates that the money had been buried later than 1974. Because it was sediment from 1974, that layer that was on top of the money, so someone had dug a hole and put it in there. But I don't buy this theory that someone had intentionally buried the money three years after the hijacking, and here's why. First off, if you're going to bury money to keep it safe, A, you don't bury it anywhere, anywhere, near water. No, doesn't make sense. B, you don't just bury stacks of paper money without first wrapping it in some kind of container to keep it dry and clean. Sure. Right? So it says to me that if DB Cooper did survive that jump then a few stacks of their cash just flew out of that Kind of makeshift bag that he had made in haste to carry the money before he had jumped. Mm hmm. Do

Adam Cox: 39:31

you think well? Yeah, I guess that's one of the only explanations, right? If it's fallen out mid parachute, that, that makes sense. But then I guess if nothing else has been found, where are the rest of it?

Kyle Risi: 39:43

Exactly. No, I agree with that. Where is the rest of it? Because you would expect

Adam Cox: 39:46

maybe more of it to be scattered around, not just a few. Bits of money falling out. Yeah, I don't know.

Kyle Risi: 39:52

But at the same time, this money was found on a riverbed. So it could have been washed up on shore, the rest of it could have been washed away. Oh, yeah. Good point. So who knows? So either way, the FBI keep half of the bills as evidence, and Brian gets to keep the other half He auctions 15 of them off in 2008, I think, which makes him like 37, 000, and he keeps the rest. He still has all those bills to this day.

Adam Cox: 40:13

That's cool. That's a good, little souvenir. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: 40:15

I think so. So, suspects. Let's do it. Of course, over the years, there have been loads, loads of suspects. Of course, we can't go through all of them, so I'm just going to tell you about the most interesting ones. First up, we have Marla Cooper who claims that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper was the man himself. She says that when she was a little kid, she remembers one night her uncle had come over, covered in blood, and there was a commotion between her dad and her uncle before hearing it. None of your business. Get back to bed! And then after that she just, he just disappeared and she never saw him again. And years later her dad tells her that her uncle had gone into hiding because he had hijacked the plane that night and the police were looking for him. So she's always just believed that her uncle was DB Cooper. The night that she remembered in her account was the result of him kind of landing somewhere in the wilderness and like making his way back to their house all injured. Really? yeah.

Adam Cox: 41:12

but then, so the dad told her that story or confirmed it to her that it was her uncle that was D. B. Cooper? Yeah. Yeah, but then like, parents will always tell their kids, fairy tales and stuff like that. maybe her uncle went and killed someone and went it's better to tell him, her, that it was D. B. Cooper.

Kyle Risi: 41:30

That's true, because at the time he's not a bad guy, right? Yeah, he's a criminal, but he's also a hero, right? D. B. Cooper. So that might be a better thing to tell Yeah. In other accounts of the story say that her dad was actually looking after the money that he eventually then shows his daughter. Okay. But Lindoyle Cooper dies in 1999. So sadly, he's not available to confirm or deny this.

Adam Cox: 41:53

But where's that money then that he was looking

Kyle Risi: 41:55

after? Exactly. Yeah. Where is that money? Yeah. Because

Adam Cox: 41:58

if he did survive, this guy, D. B. Cooper, he would have spent some of it, right?

Kyle Risi: 42:02

But then they also probably would have tracked that down, right? Yeah. Or

Adam Cox: 42:05

can you put it into a

Kyle Risi: 42:06

savings account or something? Absolutely not. It's tainted money now, right? So then we have Barbara Dayton. Now she was born Bobby Dayton in 1926. So she underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1969 to become Barbara Dayton, who was an experienced pilot, but was never able to get her commercial license because she was transgender. So Feeling vengeful towards the FAA, she supposedly disguises herself as the man that she used to be and basically pulled a DB Cooper on a plane with 42 people on board. So after parachuting out of the airplane, apparently she navigates towards her predetermined landing area near kind of Hazelnut Orchard in Woodburn in Oregon and she stashes the money before returning home and years later she confesses to her friends Ron and Pat Foreman before eventually dying at the age of 76. And remember D. B. Cooper did say that night that he did have a grudge. Okay,

Adam Cox: 43:05

it's fair that he has a grudge, but then this is very far fetched. Why? For her to dress as how she used to, identify. Yeah. Like those, drawings doesn't I don't know, they look very

Kyle Risi: 43:17

manly. Yes, they are very manly, but she was, she's transgender, right? Probably gender reassignment operations back then weren't as sophisticated with all the hormones and stuff. True. And if she did that later in life, then maybe she would have still been quite masculine. I've seen a picture of her she could be either way, male or female.

Adam Cox: 43:33

Okay. Yeah. I'm just trying to work out. That's quite a lot to go through to do that.

Kyle Risi: 43:36

I don't know. I mean, that's one of the most popular theories and one of the most interesting, I guess. I quite like the idea of her doing that, like a transgender woman who's been wronged by society, sticking her two fingers up and going, screw you, I'm going to hijack this plane. Yeah, fair point. It's a romantic notion, right? Justice prevails. We always love those kind of angles. She gets her way back. Good for her. Then we have a man called Duane Webber, who is a veteran. A war veteran. Yeah, so he had a bit of a criminal past and he served time in several prisons for burglary and forgery. On his deathbed, he confesses to his wife, Jo Webber, that he was DB Cooper. And this prompts Jo to do a little research. So she finds a bunch of juicy stuff. She discovers a safety deposit box that Duane had kept a secret. And in it, she finds loads of fake identities that Duane had been using throughout the years. In fact, the man that she thought that she was married to wasn't his true identity at all. She also finds an old Northwest Airlines ticket stub from 1971, and a letter from Duane with the kind of the words hijacked being used in a really strange context. That's all I know, right? So Jo is going through all her past memories about Dwayne and she starts looking at things a little bit differently? For instance, she remembers that he had one night severely injured his knee, which he tells her was from a car accident, but she thinks based on what she's discovered That maybe it was from the parachute jump on the day that he hijacked the plane. She also remembers that during a trip, Dwayne was kind of speculatively pointing out things in relation to DB Cooper. Like, if I had jumped from the plane, this is exactly where I would have kind of like, come out of the woods, you know? And, uh, And he'd be like, and I bet if this happened, then I would have done this, and then I would have gone here. like when you're a big fan girl, basically. Guys get like that sometimes, Yeah,

Adam Cox: 45:33

is it his way of like bragging, this is what happened, and retelling the

Kyle Risi: 45:37

story. Exactly. So also that same night Dwayne leaves the motel that they're staying at for a few hours and when he comes back He tells Joe that he's coming to some money he also says that some of the money was no good So he had to throw somebody in the river and This sparks a big argument between the two because he's then littered in the river and she's really upset about it Then a few years later Little Brian Ingram goes off and he finds the money. So

Adam Cox: 46:04

he said that before the, yeah, it's actually

Kyle Risi: 46:06

found. I don't know what came first. Oh, okay. I think maybe this came afterwards and maybe it could be that she's manufactured the story to fit in with that narrative of Brian. I'm not quite sure. Thing is that we don't know the full extent of this information that she's been given, right? We know that they found a ticket stub from 1971 from Northwest Airlines, but was it from the day of the flight? Some say that it was because they do find some of his fingerprints on a magazine on that flight. So, did Dwayne go back to collect the money that he had hidden? Or was Dwayne just someone that was so super interested in the DB Cooper case that he went out that night? And he found where the real D. B. Cooper managed to bury the money. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you don't just go and speculatively guess where maybe you would have hidden the money if you were D. B. Cooper and then find it, right? No. What are the

Adam Cox: 46:59

chances? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. You'd go and get the money where you buried it, right?

Kyle Risi: 47:04

Mm. So either he's D. B. Cooper or Joe's lying. All these

Adam Cox: 47:08

people, I feel, I don't know what they got to gain from lying. Oh,

Kyle Risi: 47:12

notoriety, right? Like, it connects to one of the biggest stories in America. I don't know if I trust any of these people. So Joe takes all this information to the FBI and they do confirm that Dwayne's fingerprints do match those found on a magazine in the hijacked plane. That's interesting to me. Um, but the FBI never publicly confirms that Dwayne was D. B. Cooper. Eventually they rule him out as a suspect based on the fact that Dwayne's DNA did not match the partial DNA profile. From the DNA they found on DB's tie they left on the airplane. Right, okay. And these are just some of the suspects. In all, the FBI followed more than four thousand people, which they whittled down to just twenty, but ultimately, They never had enough evidence to arrest anyone in this case.

Adam Cox: 47:57

Do you think there's a reason why the FBI would never want to reveal? The real identity of DB Cooper. Is there like a reason they wouldn't do that? I

Kyle Risi: 48:06

think that the government would want to set the record straight if they knew who he was, because of everything that D. B. Cooper stood for. he stood for anti establishment, right? Sticking it up to the man, I know I keep saying that, but they would want to quash that, right? Like, nobody wins against the government.

Adam Cox: 48:24

Unless there's, another secret. Because, as you mentioned, he's got a grudge and that maybe there's more to the story that's being revealed. Possibly. Maybe there's something, I don't know.

Kyle Risi: 48:35

if he was a military man, I would imagine the grudge would probably be, like, veterans pension or something like that. They're not looking after the veterans, maybe. But then

Adam Cox: 48:42

to steal the money, but then not to be able to use it all this time. I

Kyle Risi: 48:46

just Unless he died.

Adam Cox: 48:48

Yeah. There's a lot of effort to go into this and it's dangerous. Yeah. So you'd want to be able to use that money, right?

Kyle Risi: 48:55

I would say so. Yeah, after all that effort and then just having to stash it for like 40 years.

Adam Cox: 49:01

Like, where's, where's the fun in

Kyle Risi: 49:02

that? Yeah, no, there's no fun in that. He died. Yeah. Yeah, that's sad if he did. But even today, there are people who either claim that they are DB Cooper or that they know definitively who he is. Or that they know someone who knows someone who knows who he is. Everyone just seems to have their own theories about it, which makes cracking his true identity even more unlikely as the years go on. But there are armies of internet sleuths actively following up on leads even today There's this Netflix documentary that I watched over the weekend called DB Cooper. Where are you? Which is a four part documentary miniseries released in 2022 So it's like the most up to date chapter on the case, right and it's wild the series recounts in detail what happened on that night and they go through the entire investigation and they interview a bunch of people that were involved in the case and it's definitely worth watching if you found this episode interesting of course i'll leave a link in the show notes but in 2016 the fbi they officially closed the case they don't have any leads and they don't have any more money to keep investigating this case So they just closed the case.

Adam Cox: 50:08

Yeah, I guess like what's what's to come of it now like the guy if it's 1971 so 50 years ago. Hmm, and he was probably what 20 or 30 at the time to be in good health, maybe 40 max Yeah, then it's probably dead now

Kyle Risi: 50:23

probably so Tina Mucklow. She's still crack a lapping. She's 74 years old and they interview Tina in the documentary and She talks about how when DB Cooper was packing up the cash, like he just offers her two stacks of it but she's like, lol, no, sorry, we're not allowed to accept tips.

Adam Cox: 50:41

It's like a little something for your trouble. Thanks, but no, thanks. I'll be like, no, I'm taking that. I've just been on a hijacked

Kyle Risi: 50:49

plane. Can she use the money? Um,

Adam Cox: 50:52

Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

Kyle Risi: 50:53

Who knows? All she remembers is that how lovely it was towards her and not like anything she imagined a hijacker would be. And Tina retires as a flight attendant in 1979 because, you know, she becomes too old. And, she becomes a nun until 1991. And it's really fascinating to hear her tell her story.

Adam Cox: 51:12

I like that she thinks of him quite fondly. It's nice to know that there are polite hijackers

Kyle Risi: 51:17

out there. Yeah, not everyone's an evil killer, right? Yeah. And again, it just feeds into that kind of, that notion that he's this folk hero. He's acting on behalf of the people. People love him. So following DB Cooper the US introduced a bunch of new security measures. They develop a new profiling protocol which helps security teams at airports look for who would be hijackers. They also install the first metal detectors and x ray machines in airports, and they start retrofitting planes with what they call the Cooper vane, which basically makes it impossible to open the stairwell during flights. Oh, so you can't do that now? No, no, no, not at all. And yeah, it gets named after him, they still use it today, the Cooper vane. And just in case that wasn't enough, the US government also specifically make hijacking a plane a federal crime.

Adam Cox: 52:01

And it wasn't at that point? No, it wasn't. How did they go so long? Every five days as well, and they were like, Oh, do you know what? Now that someone's actually stolen money, we better take this seriously.

Kyle Risi: 52:12

Yeah, so they're making a federal crime. Of course, in the shadow of this hijacking, over a dozen copycat attempts are made. One notable one happened just 30 days later after this one, and a guy called Everett Holt hijacked a flight from Minneapolis going to Chicago. And he demanded 300, 000 and two parachutes. But when he is counting the money, he gets distracted. And the flight crew, including the pilots, escape from the cockpit, so he's got no choice to surrender because he's got no one to fly the

Adam Cox: 52:41

plane. Whilst on the ground. Let me just like count my ones and my twos and everything else.

Kyle Risi: 52:46

Yeah, but probably the most famous copycat case is Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. So he hijacks a United Airlines passenger jet in April 1972, going from Denver airport. So he threatens the crew with a gun and a hand grenade and he demands four parachutes, five hundred thousand dollars, and he jumps out. of the plane over Utah, leaving behind an unloaded gun And the grenade was just a paperweight. So he is eventually caught. He's sentenced to 45 years in prison, but he ends up breaking out using a fake gun that he fashions using dental paste. And then he crashes the prison's rubbish truck through the main prison gate entrance. But again, they eventually find him and there's a standoff between them and yeah, he gets killed. But,

Adam Cox: 53:32

like, how do you manage to fool people twice with like fake weapons?

Kyle Risi: 53:37

I don't know, he managed to do it. He was an opportunist. I love him. and so the case of DB has just continued to capture people's imaginations. And I swear to God, if you haven't noticed it yet, you will after listening to this episode because it will just keep coming up in all sorts of pop culture references from now on until the day you die, because that's all I see now. Do you remember Mad Men? Yeah. Of course you do, because you were obsessed with that show. I loved Mad Men. Well, there is a mystery surrounding the true identity of the main character, Don Draper, right? And for a long time, it was well established, until they changed it at the last minute, that the show would end with Don Draper buying a ticket at the airport using the name D. B. Cooper. No way! Yep. I did not know that. Also, another show that D. B. Cooper was referenced is Prison Break, where a character Charles Westmoreland So he's portrayed as this older, wiser inmate who throughout the series is hinted as being D. B. Cooper until he eventually confesses and then there's this whole revelation that he had hid the stolen ransom money somewhere and that just ends up becoming like a real critical part of the main storyline. But then, of course, as you pointed out at the beginning of the show, there's also the Disney Plus series Loki, for a brief moment, Tom Hiddleston is depicted as being D. B. Cooper in a flashback scene, where it shows like Loki becoming kind of D. B. Cooper as a result of him losing a bet with Thor, and then there's and then he flashes back into the next scene, and the next scene, etc. But yeah, recently a group of scientists did analyse the tie that D. B. Cooper had left behind, and while they didn't find a complete DNA profile, they did find exotic particles on the tie. Exotic

Adam Cox: 55:19

particles? What

Kyle Risi: 55:20

does that even mean? I know, that kind of language just sounds like really conspiratorial, but it's not. So the particles that they're referring to are I might butcher these. Cerium, strontonium, and pure titanium would suggest that DB might have worked as an engineer who supplied metal to the aerospace industry. Okay. So he was connected to that industry in some way, right? He must have been. And he was an engineer. Yeah.

Adam Cox: 55:48

Based on his knowledge of the planes and knowing what sort of speed to go out of. Yeah. and jumping out of one. Exactly.

Kyle Risi: 55:54

Yeah. But sadly, while the FBI acknowledges the evidence, they haven't confirmed what they have done with that information, and the case is still closed to this day. And so it's likely that we'll never know who this illustrious folk villain actually is. And that is the story of D. B. Cooper. That was really

Adam Cox: 56:13

cool. Do you like that? I like the fact that there's still this mystery around and we still don't know. Although frustrating as it is, I'd love to know who it is. There must be some people out there, maybe even one of the people that you raised today. Maybe one of those people are

Kyle Risi: 56:28

him. There are so many, that's just three of 4, 000. there's loads of people that claim to be him. Those are just the ones that I found the most interesting. And I could only give you a brief overview of some of the evidence. There's so much more to their stories and their evidence. And every time you're reading through them, or you're diving down a rabbit hole, you go, they definitely did it. It was definitely them. And then you read the next one, it's nah, it was definitely them. There's this one. no, it's this one. So yeah, there's just so many people could be but so much time has passed and so many Angles have been covered and reused and retyped and rerun that it's difficult to know what's true, what's not true, right? Like when I was going through the Joe Webber kind of evidence, not knowing whether or not, yes, they found a stub from the Northwest Airlines. Was at the same flight. Yeah. We don't know that information and where did that information come from? I can't get a defensive timestamp on it. The note that was left that used the word hijack in it in an out of context way. What was the note? What was the wording? Do you know what I mean? I don't

Adam Cox: 57:26

have access to that. Why are they still holding on

Kyle Risi: 57:28

to that? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. So I can't verify how credible a lot of the stuff is. But it's an interesting story to explore and I can see why it would have captured a lot of people's attention. I imagine something similar could happen today, not maybe a hijacking, but something similar where people would look to that person and go, yeah, they're sticking up to the man. They're, they're all about anarchy. They're all about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Right. So yeah. Yeah. Who knows?

Adam Cox: 57:57

Yeah, I guess the chances of him surviving, I just don't know, but I'd love for him to have survived. that'd been a really nice ending for his story.

Kyle Risi: 58:04

Yeah, I think it's unlikely that he did survive though. Because nothing was found. over the years they did find like scraps of parachute on people's farms and things like that. But they can't verify any of that. That could be anyone's, right? Yeah, it could be. one thing that they did find in the wilderness was, which is no surprise, was there was like an instruction plate that gave you instructions on how to open up the back stairs. That was found, some kid found that. but again, only really tells you maybe the area that he fell, but again, because of the weather conditions, he could have been blown within a 500 mile radius, of that area where that was found, but yeah, should we run the outro? Let's do it. And so we come to the end of another episode of the Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. If you found today's episode both fascinating and intriguing, then subscribe and leave us a review. Don't just stop there. Schedule your episodes to download automatically as soon as they become available. We're on Instagram at The Compendium Podcast, so stop by and say hi, or visit us at our home on the web at thecompendiumpodcast. com. We release every Tuesday, and until then, remember, a leap into the unknown can sometimes be a leap into immortality. See you next week. See ya.