D.B. Cooper Day 2024 is on Sunday, November 24, 2024: Who was D. B. Cooper?
Sunday, November 24, 2024 is D.B. Cooper Day 2024. D. B. Cooper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia DBCooper.jpg
He pulled off a robbery of cash in a passenger filled airliner and jumped out the back door of a Boeing 727. To this day no 100% solid real proof he has been caught or positively identified has come around. Some cash was found by a young boy on the bank of a river proven by the bill serial numbers to be from the robbery. Some people think the cash was a plant to throw off the FBI/ Secret Service. Others think "D.B.COOPER" died when he landed or shortly there after. The whole D.B. Cooper thing has brought around cult followers and legendary status.
your thoughts please D.B. Cooper dead or alive?
I tend to think he made it out alive (maybe he's dead now from old age or some other cause), although I have no more proof than the next person. I agree with Gen. Patton in that it amazes me in how the FBI seems willfully obtuse at times. For example, they say now that Cooper was not an experienced skydiver, because no experienced skydiver would have jumped in the kind of bad conditions that he jumped into off the plane. Um, ok, so we have a guy who's willing to risk his life and hijack a plane for $200,000 in the face of incredible odds, but he wouldn't be willing to jump into conditions like that if he knew better? (The jump has been replicated by others, by the way - albeit in less tough conditions - and proven very do-able) That seems silly to me. Seems logical to me that someone willing to pull off a stunt like that would be crazy enough to jump into that kind of storm.
The guy leading the investigation right now for the FBI thinks that Cooper panicked so badly after jumping that he didn't even pull the ripcord. I find that silly as well. Think about it: you've just successfully gotten the loot in one of the tensest, biggest hijackings in American history, and your very life quite obviously depends on you PULLING the RIPCORD - I think your'e going to find a way to pull the ripcord, regardless of how bad the wind is or how cold it is. But maybe that's just me. The FBI takes the evidence of the money that was found on the riverbank as evidence that Cooper didn't make it. Yet, 1) Where's the rest of the money? and 2) there is some evidence from the witness reports, however small, that Cooper didn't put all the money into the bag, which means some of it might have fallen out of a pocket or something at some point. Who knows?
He might well be dead, but it is amazing that, with all the stuff that's been found in that area - a placard off the plane's rear staircase, $5,880 of the money, not to mention other things unrelated to the case, including a 1921 penny on the forest floor, a dead body from previously unsolved mystery, etc., etc. - that they haven't been able to find a single trace of him. Not his body, not the parachute, not the bag, not the briefcase, not the rest of the money.
The FBI says: no one could keep a secret this long. Well, I think they could. Also, there's the bit about the money never showing up in circulation; some people try to use this as a major selling point that Cooper died. Don't believe it. Yeah, there's no proof that any of the bills did make it back into circulation - but what many people won't tell you is that there's also no proof that any of the bills did NOT make it back into circulation. Today, the United States prints about 6-7 million new $20 bills EACH day. In 1971, it would have been far less than that, but suppose it was only 500,000 a day. That would still mean over 182 million $20 bills printed in 1971 alone. Most bills only last about 2 years in circulation anyway. Certainly, the FBI notified banks, savings and loans and various businesses in the Washington area to look for the bills. But if not showed up in a couple months after the crime, they almost certainly lost their chance. What do you suppose the FBI's capability was of tracking bills nationally or internationally was in 1970s with 1970s technology? I talked to a friend who was a banker from about 1950 to 1990, and he said it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially with the technology available - or not available - in the early 1970s.. The FBI did solve two cases in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s by tracing bills - but in each instance, the criminal spent the traceable money days after the crime and got arrested within 6 weeks. If Cooper had waited a good while before spending the money and did it in remote areas of the country or at least away from the Pacific region, it would have been VERY difficult to trace the money back then. Trying to find 9,700 specific bills that could be laundered in a sea of tens of millions if not hundreds of millions, with tellers and clerks looking at $20's with their hands and having to try to match up serial numbers of each $20 against a list of thousands? Yeah, good luck with that.
Sorry for all the wordiness, but I obviously find the case interesting as well, and there are aspects that baffle me - not just Cooper and whether he got away but how people look at the case. Basically, I think you're kidding yourself if you don't at least concede that it's POSSIBLE that he survived and got away with it. Whether he made it or not, I'm not sure Cooper was a master criminal mind, but I do think he was smarter than that what the FBI seems to give him credit for.
And I think the case tells us a lot about ourselves and human nature. People basically think what they want to, whether evidence points to it or not. The FBI seems to want to protect their reputation and think that Cooper died. Some people like to make a hero out of Cooper and therefore like to think he got away. Yet others are convinced that "their" suspect did it for sure and hold on to that thought, no matter what, and are just as tenacious in their position as the FBI is in its, if not even more so. People like to be right, but that's what makes the Cooper case fascinating. No matter what anyone tells you at this point, only a very small number - maybe even only one or zero - really, truly, and honestly know what happened. Like death or something, it's just a big dang mystery.
I hope we find out someday.
DEAD OR ALIVE at old age? D B COOPER 1971 parachute robber of 200,000.00 by jumping out of 724 jet.?
The story of D.B. Cooper is very interesting and I'm suprised that more people have not heard it. He's probably the only hijacker that people look at as a cultural icon rather than an evil devil. The site n467us.com is very informative on the subject.
When it comes to the money, Brian Ingram, who was 8 years old at the time, found $5580 dollars of D.B. Cooper money in $20 bills near the Columbia River in Washington State, near where they think Cooper jumped. He found it in 1980. Cooper jumped in 1971.
There are a few great suspects all listed on . If you read, however, the CIA has cleared everyone on that list at one point or another, mostly due to lack of evidence. It looks like the world will never know for sure who really hijacked the plane that day. But who knows...they didn't find the body of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna until 2007, nearly 90 years after her death.
Officially, the CIA thinks Cooper died that day but the case is not closed. Whether he died or survived, people want to know who did it to complete the story. And it is possible that he survived: Richard Floyd McCoy did a copycat hijacking four months after Cooper and survived (he's even a suspect in the Cooper hijacking). Read the article in the link about possible suspects: it's really interesting. I personally think he survived and the most likely suspect is Duane Weber. What do you think?
