What Really Happened to D.B. Cooper

On November 24, 1971, an unknown man hijacked a plane headed from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. He demanded $200,000 and 4 parachutes, which he received in Seattle. He then instructed the pilots to take off again, this time towards Mexico. Shortly thereafter, he leapt out of the back of the plane and into pop culture lore.

Billy the Kid wasn't killed by Pat Garret. Butch and Sundance lived to be old men in Bolivia. Elvis got really round and retired to some backwater estate. We tend to give legends happy endings by leaving open the possibility that their death was faked. D.B. Cooper disappeared, not ever to be seen again, but we can't keep his legend alive because we don't even know who he was to begin with. For starters, the name he gave when he purchased the ticket to Seattle wasn't actually D.B. Cooper. He checked in as Dan Cooper, which the media mistakenly reported as D.B., but Dan Cooper wasn't his real name either. Nobody knows what his real name was. That was before you had to have proof of identification to get on a flight so you could buy a ticket under the name of Joe DiMaggio and nobody would stop you, except perhaps for an autograph. 50 years later, we still don't really know who that guy was, and probably never will now. The mystery of D.B. Cooper is my favorite true crime tale because it is the open-ended story of someone who didn't exist and who vanished forever. Some of the money was recovered a few years later, but he was never identified and none of the other cash was ever spent.

Over the years, some people have claimed to be D.B. Cooper. Others have proposed that their brother or their uncle was the infamous hijacker. Any Caucasian man who was around the age of 30 in 1971 very well could have been Cooper. Who's to say that your uncle, who vaguely matched the police sketch if you kind of squinted real hard, wasn't in Portland that afternoon? After so many years it had to be difficult to refute where someone might have been at the time unless they were definitively incarcerated or out of the country. If someone claimed their dead relative had been Cooper and the relative was no longer around to defend himself, then the relative could be said to have been on that plane and it would difficult to say otherwise. Sure, his name wasn't on the manifest, but then we already know that D.B. was an alias. With so many soldiers returning from Vietnam, it was easy to imagine that Cooper had some sort of military training in skydiving that would have facilitated his jump from the aft stairs that night. In this day of age he'd have been tracked by any number of security cameras and digital apps, plus he'd have had to show his identification in order to get through security. Back then, he was a ghost.

For some reason, people want to believe that someone in their family was a famous, elusive criminal. Innocent folk have been thrown under the bus for everything from the Black Dahlia murder to the Zodiac killings. Maybe they are seeking some kind of vicarious celebrity by being adjacent to a famous tragedy. There usually is no truth to the story. When there is, such as with the brother of the Unabomber, the relative isn't seeking notoriety at all, and hope it isn't true. Because the unknown suspect is not subject to the protections of statute of limitations, any person who came forward claiming that they were Cooper could subject themselves to arrest. Hence, most of the confessions were of the deathbed variety. People long to be famous even in death.

And that's where the tale of D.B. Cooper leads; to his death. Whoever he was, he didn't show up for the family Thanksgiving dinner the next day, nor to Christmas, nor to any other family events. Close your eyes and place your head under a running faucet; that's what he jumped into. It was a typically dark, dreary, and wet Northwest night. Below him was vast oblivion, though the driving rain would have prevented him from seeing anyway. 1 of the 4 parachutes was defective so he had a 25% chance of plunging to his death before he even got started. If he managed to get his parachute open, which would have been difficult under the conditions, successfully landing over the heavily forested terrain would have required far more luck than skill. Avoiding the uppermost branches of the sharp, pointed evergreens without becoming skewered would be tricky in daylight. Good luck doing so in the pitch black.

Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was still alive when he reached the forest floor. There would be injuries ranging from minor cuts and bruises, to broken limbs and puncture wounds. If he broke either leg in his landing it would have been a death sentence because he would never have been able to walk out. Any disabling injury would be exacerbated by the wet, cold weather. If the injuries were not life threatening, he could have begun to trek out of the woods at daybreak, but only after spending a miserable night on the forest floor with only the street clothes he walked onto the plane with. If he was left unconscious by a hard landing, he couldn't have tended to any of his injuries or protected himself from the elements. He would have been lucky to survive until morning.

Now, let's assume that he did make it until morning. It's not certain exactly where in southwest Washington he came down, but the journey back to civilization would have been long and difficult no matter what. Cooper would still be very wet and would still have to contend with whatever injuries he'd sustained the night before. The worse his injuries were, the harder and slower the trip would be, and any head injury would severely limit his ability to think rationally. After a long, damp night, it would have been a race against the clock to get somewhere he could change clothes and get warm. Chances are he doesn't make it.

The other potential danger for him, whether injured or not, would be bears and mountain lions. Both are plentiful in the area. If Cooper were attacked by wildlife after surviving a jump from an airplane into the frigid blackness, he'd be in no position to defend himself.

Cooper didn't walk out. Cooper died sometime in the first 24 hours after he bailed out of the airliner. His body was never recovered, but that isn't surprising considering the rugged topography and the number of critters that would have found his corpse to be a nice meal. Again, some of the money was recovered, but most of it never was. No trace of him, his parachutes, or anything that could have been linked to him has ever turned up. Nothing will likely ever be found now since it has been 50 years, and since the area he most probably came down in was covered by mud and ash during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May of 1980.

D.B. Cooper will always be a ghost. Like Jack the Ripper, Cooper will forever remain an unknown entity that inspires amateur sleuths, and that's how it should be. After all this time, he should be simultaneously anybody and nobody because the answers are far less tantalizing than the enduring mystery.