Mystery of D.B. Cooper Still Pursued by FBI

The mystery of Dan "D.B." Cooper is alive and well, and still being pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's case agent Larry Carr in Seattle.

The man known as D.B. Cooper boarded a jet in Portland, Oregon on a cold and rainy Wednesday, November 24, 1971 as holiday travelers all over the United States headed home for the Thanksgiving Day holiday. After takeoff, the man known as Dan Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant, claiming he had a bomb and the plane was being hijacked. Cooper demanded that the plane land in Seattle, and he wanted $200,000 in cash and four parachutes in exchange for the 36 passengers on the Boeing 727.

During the ensuing 36 years, the FBI has compiled an impressive profile of the man who later that rainswept night jumped from the rear door of the plane moving at 200 miles per hour at 5,000 feet over mountainous terrain in Washington near the Oregon border, having given the flight crew instructions to "head to Mexico."

Cooper left behind a tie purchased at J.C. Penney's department store, from which in October 2007 the FBI managed to lift a small sample of DNA, giving them a partial match. They also recovered $5,800 in rotting $20 bills in 1980 that were given to Cooper as part of the ransom, found on the banks of the Columbia River by a young boy.

And who D.B. Cooper was, or whether he is still alive, remains a mystery. None of the other cash has surfaced, nor has the bag that it was carried in that had been firmly tied shut by Cooper using parachute cord. Whether Cooper survived the jump is at question, since neither the body nor the parachutes he used were ever recovered.

Carr feels earlier interpretations of who Cooper was and the skills he must have had to accomplish his daring feat were false starts.

"We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," says Special Agent Carr. "We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve chute was only for training and had been sewn shut-something a skilled skydiver would have checked."

Whoever D.B. Cooper was - or is - he has become part of the unique landscape of American legend and myth, having sparked and inspired various films, television plots, and even music with his daring hijack in which no one was injured, or ever really in danger. The bomb was a fake.