He ordered a bourbon and water. He paid his bill. Then, Dan Cooper—erroneously immortalized by a wire service typo as "D.B."—jumped into a freezing, pitch-black November rainstorm over the Pacific Northwest and vanished.
The pursuit of DB Cooper didn't just become a manhunt. It became an obsession that ate up forty-five years of federal resources, birthed a subculture of "Cooperites," and left the FBI with a 60-volume case file that essentially says: We have no idea where he is. Honestly, the sheer audacity of the 1971 hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 is why we’re still talking about it in 2026. A guy in a business suit hijacks a Boeing 727 with a briefcase he claims contains a bomb, demands $200,000 and four parachutes, and then leaps out of the aft stairs somewhere near Ariel, Washington. He didn't leave much behind besides a clip-on tie, 66 unidentified DNA samples, and a legend that refuses to die.
The Night the Pursuit of DB Cooper Began
It was Thanksgiving Eve.
Flight 305 was a short hop from Portland to Seattle. Cooper was seated in 18C. He handed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. At first, she thought he was just another businessman hitting on her and dropped the note in her purse. Cooper leaned over and whispered, "Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb."
He wasn't a manic or aggressive hijacker. In fact, the crew described him as rather nice. He even tried to pay for his drinks. When the plane landed in Seattle to exchange the passengers for the cash and parachutes, he stayed calm. Once the money was on board, he ordered the pilots to head toward Mexico City at the lowest possible airspeed and an altitude of 10,000 feet.
Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, over the rugged terrain of the Lewis River, the pressure in the cabin changed. Cooper was gone.
The initial pursuit of DB Cooper was a mess. The weather was atrocious. Visibility was near zero. F-106 fighter jets were trailing the airliner, but they couldn't see him jump. One pilot was flying in a "S" pattern to stay behind the slow-moving 727; another almost stalled out. Nobody saw a parachute open. Nobody saw a body fall.
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NORJAK and the FBI’s Longest Slog
The FBI officially called the case NORJAK (Northwest Hijacking). For decades, they chased every "uncle who went missing in 1971" story in the country. They looked at over 800 suspects in the first five years alone.
Why the DNA is a Dead End
You'll hear people talk about the tie. Cooper left his black J.C. Penney clip-on tie on seat 18C. In 2007, the FBI managed to pull a partial DNA profile from it. But here’s the thing: it’s a clip-on tie. It was likely second-hand, or handled by dozens of people at the factory, or contaminated by investigators in an era before "forensic DNA" was even a term.
Tom Kaye, a paleontologist with the Citizen Sleuths project, used an electron microscope on that tie and found something fascinating. He discovered particles of pure titanium and rare earth elements like cerium and strontium. In 1971, these weren't common. They were used in high-tech manufacturing or Boeing’s own plants. This led many to believe Cooper was a disgruntled aerospace contractor or a lab tech.
But finding titanium doesn't give you a name. It just gives you a profile of a guy who probably wore a suit to a chemistry lab.
The Brian Ingram Discovery
In 1980, a kid named Brian Ingram was vacationing with his family at Tina Bar on the Columbia River. He was digging in the sand to start a campfire when he found three bundles of cash. It was $5,800 of the original ransom money, rotting and held together by rubber bands.
This was the first—and only—physical evidence found outside the plane. It sparked a fresh pursuit of DB Cooper in the mud. Geologists studied the diatoms (microscopic algae) on the bills to see when they were buried. Some argued the money washed there years later; others claimed it was buried shortly after the jump. If the money was there, where was the body? The FBI searched the area nearby, but the river had likely moved the bills miles from the original drop zone.
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The "Best" Suspects: Who Really Fit the Suit?
Everyone has a favorite Cooper.
- Sheridan Peterson: A flamboyant skydiver and former Marine who worked at Boeing. He once joked to his ex-wife that he could have been the hijacker. The FBI took his DNA in the early 2000s, but it was inconclusive.
- Richard McCoy Jr.: He actually pulled off a nearly identical "copycat" hijacking four months after Cooper. He jumped with $500,000. The FBI caught him, and he later died in a shootout after escaping prison. Many agents, including Russell Calame, are convinced McCoy was Cooper. The FBI officially disagrees because McCoy didn't match the physical descriptions provided by the flight attendants.
- Robert Rackstraw: A former Army paratrooper with a checkered past. A civilian task force led by Thomas Colbert spent years trying to prove Rackstraw was the man. Rackstraw himself loved the attention, often giving coy "maybe" answers to reporters. However, the FBI ruled him out early on because of his age and appearance.
The reality? Cooper probably didn't survive the jump.
Think about it. He jumped in loafers and a trench coat into a 200-mph slipstream. The wind chill would have been well below zero. He jumped into a wilderness of Douglas firs so thick you can’t see the ground from the air. He had a non-steerable parachute. Most seasoned jumpers in 1971 called it a suicide mission.
Why the FBI Finally Gave Up
In July 2016, the FBI officially suspended the active investigation into the pursuit of DB Cooper. They didn't "close" it in the sense that they found their man. They just stopped throwing money at it. They needed to focus on "more pressing" matters like terrorism and cybercrime.
They left the door cracked: if anyone finds the parachutes or more money, they’ll look at it. Until then, the file is in the archives.
This move actually helped the case's legacy. It moved the mystery from the hands of bureaucratic investigators into the hands of "citizen scientists." Every year, "CooperCon" draws hundreds of amateur sleuths to the Pacific Northwest. They map flight paths, analyze soil samples from Tina Bar, and debate the merits of various suspects over beers.
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What the Experts Say Now
Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the case in 2006, famously shifted the focus to the public. He believed that the only way to solve it was through a "community-sourced" approach. He was the one who released the tie data. He also pointed out a glaring flaw in the Cooper-as-a-pro-diver theory: no experienced paratrooper would have jumped into that storm, in that outfit, with a parachute he couldn't steer.
Cooper wasn't a mastermind. He was a desperate man who got lucky—or he's a skeleton hanging in a tree somewhere in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
How to Do Your Own "Cooper" Investigation
If you’re looking to join the pursuit of DB Cooper, don’t expect a smoking gun. Expect a rabbit hole. The case is a masterclass in how evidence decays over time and how human memory is incredibly fallible.
Actionable Steps for the Amateur Sleuth:
- Analyze the Flight Path: Use the "Yellow 20" flight path maps. Most researchers now believe the jump occurred further south than the original FBI search area. Look into the "Ariel" versus "Washougal" drop zone theories.
- Study the Particle Analysis: Don't just read Wikipedia. Look at the Citizen Sleuths’ reports on the titanium particles found on the tie. This is the most "modern" evidence available and points toward a specific type of worker in the early 1970s.
- Visit the Washington State Historical Society: They house several artifacts and the most extensive public records of the hijacking. Seeing the scale of the forest he jumped into changes your perspective on his survival odds.
- Review the Testimony of Bill Rataczak: He was the co-pilot that night. His accounts of the flight’s handling and the "bump" they felt when Cooper jumped provide the best timestamp for where the plane was in the sky.
The search for Cooper isn't really about the $200,000 anymore. That money would be worth over $1.5 million today, but it’s likely long since disintegrated or sitting in a collector's vault, unspendable. The pursuit is about the only "perfect" crime in American history. It’s about the man who stepped out of a plane and into a cloud, leaving the world to wonder for the next fifty years.
If you find yourself in Vancouver, Washington, head to the woods. Keep an eye out for a rotted parachute pack or a 1970s-style buckle. You wouldn't be the first person to look, and you definitely won't be the last.