After takeoff, he handed a note to a flight attendant, who assumed he was hitting on her and placed it in her purse. He then told her he had a bomb in his briefcase and demanded $200,000, four parachutes and “no funny stuff.”
The passenger identified himself as Dan Cooper, but thanks to a reporting error as the story was breaking he was forever immortalized as “D.B.” Cooper.
The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where authorities handed over the items and evacuated most of the passengers. Cooper then instructed the pilot to fly toward Mexico City at a low altitude and ordered the remaining crew into the cockpit. A short time later, he jumped out of the plane and into a raging thunderstorm. He was never seen or heard from again. Since his disappearance, the FBI has investigated and subsequently ruled out more than a thousand suspects; they agency now believes it is likely Cooper died in the fall. While his body has never been recovered, in 1980 an 8-year-old boy found a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington.
The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where authorities handed over the items and evacuated most of the passengers. Cooper then instructed the pilot to fly toward Mexico City at a low altitude and ordered the remaining crew into the cockpit. A short time later, he jumped out of the plane and into a raging thunderstorm. He was never seen or heard from again. Since his disappearance, the FBI has investigated and subsequently ruled out more than a thousand suspects; they agency now believes it is likely Cooper died in the fall. While his body has never been recovered, in 1980 an 8-year-old boy found a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington.
