The parachute used by the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper to leap out of a Boeing plane with $200,000 in cash after taking the passengers and crew hostage more than 50 years ago may have been found.
Sunday marked the 53rd anniversary of the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. aviation history. Now, years after the FBI declared the case inactive, the agency may be having another, informal look, examining evidence that has recently come to light, reports Cowboy State Daily in Wyoming. The evidence is a parachute found in an outbuilding on the family property of Richard McCoy II, whose children have long suspected their father was Cooper, they told the outlet.
The unassuming-looking man who would come to be known as D.B. Cooper bought a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines from Portland, Ore., to Seattle under the name Dan Cooper on Nov. 24, 1971. Just after the craft became airborne, Cooper handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb, then flashed a briefcase full of crisscrossed wires and other items. He demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills, which were given to him upon landing in Seattle. The 36 passengers were released in exchange, and Cooper demanded the plane take off again, along with several crew members, destination Mexico City.
Just after 8 p.m., though, Cooper leaped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money, and disappeared into the night between Seattle and Reno, Nevada. Years later, three bundles of bills from the heist washed up along the shores of the Columbia River. After a years-long investigation yielded clues but no definitive answers, the FBI closed down the case in 2016.
McCoy, who is known to have pulled off an almost identical heist five months later, over Utah, has long been on the FBI’s shortlist. He was arrested for that, broke out of jail, and was eventually killed in a police shootout.
The mystery has tantalized many over the years, spawning books, documentaries and even a conference. Gryder, an aviation-obsessed YouTuber who is a retired pilot and skydiver, has been documenting his search on his YouTube channel.
McCoy’s grown children, Chanté and Richard “Rick” McCoy III reached out to him after the death of their mother, Karen, in 2020. They had held back before then because they suspected she was complicit.
The FBI did not immediately answer the Daily News’s inquiry on Monday.