| Other
"Let's Be Frank" columns
It’s a real-life story that makes for a perfect Hollywood movie. In fact, it was a Hollywood script with the writer taking the usual Tinsel Town liberties. Just as in the real case, the film had no ending because to this day there is none.
On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan (D.B.) Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.
Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the money, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?
It’s a mystery. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.
Would the FBI still like to get Cooper? Absolutely. And they have reignited the case -- thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies such as DNA testing.
A few things to keep in mind, according to Special Agent Carr, “We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper. 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.”
The hijacker had no help on the ground, either. To have utilized an accomplice, Cooper would’ve needed to coordinate closely with the flight crew so he could jump at just the right moment and hit the right drop zone. But Cooper simply said, “Fly to Mexico,” and he had no idea where he was when he jumped. There was also no visibility of the ground due to cloud cover at 5,000 feet.
The FBI has a solid physical description of Cooper.
“The two flight attendants who spent the most time with him on the plane were interviewed separately the same night in separate cities and gave nearly identical descriptions,” says Carr. “They both said he was about 5’10” to 6’, 170 to 180 pounds, in his mid-40s, with brown eyes. People on the ground who came into contact with him also gave very similar descriptions.”
And what of some of the names linked to Cooper? None have panned out. Duane Weber, who claimed to be Cooper on his deathbed, was ruled out by DNA testing (the FBI lifted a DNA sample from Cooper’s tie in 2001). Kenneth Christiansen, named in a recent magazine article, didn’t match the physical description and was a skilled paratrooper. Richard McCoy, who died in 1974, also didn’t match the description and was at home the day after the hijacking having Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utah, an unlikely scenario unless he had help.
As many agents before him, Carr thinks it highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump. “Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open.”
Still, the FBI would like to know for sure, and Carr thinks someone in the general public can help.
“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream. Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.”
If anyone has information, e-mail the FBI’s Seattle field office at fbise@leo.gov.
Other "Let's Be Frank" columnsHERE |
|
