The last time anyone saw D.B. Cooper dead or alive, he parachuted out of a Mexico City-bound airplane with $200,000 in ransom strapped to his body, vanishing over the Pacific Northwest and initiating one of America’s greatest manhunts.
Forty-five years later, the FBI is closing the books and giving up on ever solving this unsolved case…
“We have arrived at our conclusion today that it was just time to close the case because there isn’t anything new out there,” said Special Agent in Charge Frank Montoya, Jr. “There’s a lot that goes into that decision but really it was just time.”
The infamous hijacking that took place in 1971 became one of the bureau’s “longest and most exhaustive investigations,” according to the FBI.
While the bureau has chased down an immense number of leads and tips from the public, including accounts of sudden unexplained wealth and detailed descriptions matching the hijacker, none has resulted in definitive answers.
For 45 years proof of D.B Cooper’s identity has been elusive.
On November 24, 1971, a dark-haired man who called himself Dan Cooper approached the ticket counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon, and used cash to buy a one-way ticket to Seattle.
After takeoff, he handed a flight attendant a note saying he had a bomb in his briefcase, opening it to show a mass of wires and red sticks.
When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, keeping several crew members on board. The flight took off again after he ordered it to fly to Mexico City.
At an altitude of about 1.9 miles, Cooper made his dramatic exodus, disappearing into the night from the back of the jetliner, wearing a suit jacket and with the money strapped to his body.
From there D.B Cooper became a mystery, a legendary apparition of a man who’s identity has been the most intriguing whodunit of the the 20th Century American crime.
And it seems much like all great mysteries, it will remain just that…
