Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions
on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this
podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm your host, Deb, where every week I pull in different co-hosts
to tell my true crime tales too.
Season two is a little bit different because I've added a new family member to our rotation
and today you get to meet my son, Cory.
Hey guys, this is my first podcast, so don't be too judgmental.
Cory, I wanted to bring you on because on this podcast, I don't even know if you listen,
but I like to say this is a family thing.
Plus, I know you're busy, so I thought this would be an excellent time to spend a little
quality of time with your mother.
So thanks for joining in.
Thanks for agreeing to do this.
I'm excited.
Yeah, this will be fun.
I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts while I work all day, so it's kind of cool to be
on the other side of it for once.
I know, it really kind of is.
I wanted to get a guy's perspective on some of these cases and just so our listeners know,
you're going to start recognizing some themes during season two.
Cory, you're going to get the rough and tough cases because I thought it'd be really cool
not only to hear from you, but since you're in law enforcement, I wanted to hear your
take from that angle as well.
So this is kind of my thought process for season two.
In the meantime, welcome to episode 53 of Dying to be Found.
And Cory, are you ready for your very first episode?
Yeah, let's do it.
All right.
I like to open things up by asking a question to get you thinking about this case.
So when you're growing up, I know you had this real need for speed when it came to skateboarding
and playing hockey and things like that.
I know you still have that needs for speed.
Yeah, definitely.
Okay.
So I don't even know the answer to this question.
Have you ever bungee jumped or jumped out of an airplane?
I've jumped out of helicopters, but not an airplane.
Oh, how was it?
Was it a rush?
Yeah, yeah.
It's definitely a big adrenaline rush.
And yeah, you're right.
I definitely still chase that today.
Oh, how so?
Like things that get my blood going.
It's fun.
Okay.
Don't tell me anymore.
You'd probably don't want your mother to know that.
You'd scare the crap out of me, right?
Oh Lord.
Well the reason I asked this is because we're going to talk about DB Cooper today.
I don't even know if you've heard of him.
Probably not.
It was happening a long time ago.
Yeah.
I think the only time I heard about it is whenever you told me that this is the podcast
we were doing.
Okay.
So this case is known as Norjack with the FBI, which is short for Northwest Hijacking.
And the FBI considers this to be one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations
in US history.
It's about a mysterious hijacker who boarded Northwest Orient Airlines back in 1971, also
known as Northwest Airlines Today.
And he created a little bit of chaos by hijacking a plane.
He proceeded to jump out of that plane while it was in flight.
And to this day, he has never been identified.
How about that?
It seems like a lot of chaos.
Yeah, it was.
It certainly was.
On November 24th, 1971, the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, a man walked up to the
ticket counter of Northwest Orient Airlines out of Portland, Oregon.
He identified himself as Dan Cooper and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington.
And the reason, Corey, that we know that this case is DB Cooper today is because once the
news media got ahold of this story, a reporter misheard the name of the suspect and reported
him as DB Cooper.
And it stuck.
I mean, no offense to the reporters out there, but come on now, isn't it your job to report
news accurately?
How can you mess that up?
Dan Cooper, DB Cooper doesn't even sound the same.
No, I mean, you would think, no, you had one job.
Yes.
All right, obviously the name Dan Cooper was fake and there was nothing unusual about this
guy.
He was wearing a trench coat.
I mean, I don't know if you've seen movies back in the seventies, Corey.
I mean, his attire was pretty standard for the day.
He was wearing a trench coat, a business suit and loafers, which was really not uncommon
while flying back in the day because believe it or not, in those days, people actually
took pride in themselves and dressed for the occasion.
Well, I mean, if you're going to, if you're going to do some crazy stuff, then you might
as well dress like you blend in.
So it doesn't seem anything out of the norm to me.
No, it didn't seem that way with anybody.
He was described to be in his mid forties.
He was approximately six feet or 1.83 meters tall.
He was 170 pounds, had brown hair, black eyes and olive complexion.
Corey, that sounds like you.
Sounds like a very average looking person.
It doesn't stand out in any way.
Have you seen his picture online at all?
Yeah, I pulled him up on Wikipedia and he looks like, I don't know, he looks like something
out of Men in Black, like one of the agents or something out of the matrix or something.
Just one of the agents.
True.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, but very average for sure.
While he was waiting for the plane to take off, Cooper lit a cigarette because you could
do that back then while you're on in-flight, you could actually smoke cigarettes.
He ordered a bourbon and soda on Northwest Airlines flight number 305 and he sat near
the back of the plane and didn't really interact with any of the 36 passengers on board this
flight.
I'm just saying this flight was not very full.
It only had 36 passengers.
Again, nothing really stood out to cause alarm from anybody sitting around him.
However, just after 3 p.m.
Cooper got a 23 year old flight attendant's attention and when she approached, he handed
her a note and said that he had a bomb in his briefcase and he planned to detonate it
if his demands were not met.
He then proceeded to tell her to have a seat next to him.
What would you do?
Well, you would probably karate chop him.
If I was the flight attendant?
Yeah.
I mean, it depends on what my job is.
If I'm the air marshal, then things are going a little different than what she's doing.
But I mean, if you're a 23 year old female flight attendant that pure innocence, then
typically you're just going to do what he says and hope he doesn't detonate.
Absolutely.
First of all, her job was to pass out drinks and that was about it.
Drinks and snacks.
I know from experience.
Not disarmed bombs.
Correct.
And fire off terrorists.
Correct.
Well, before she complied, she actually had enough gumption to challenge Cooper and asked
to see the bomb.
That's good.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, no problem here.
He opened his briefcase and showed the flight attendant a very intricate setup of what you
would see in something like an old spy movie.
There were eight red cylinders that looked like dynamite and they were lined up in two
rows.
That was a whole lot of wiring.
I mean, I don't know how bombs were back in the 70s, but now they're very simple, especially
if they're homemade.
It's typically pipe bombs and whatnot.
They look sketchy, but they don't look as eccentric as what you would see in cheesy 80
movies.
Yeah.
But also, I don't know how they were back in the day.
Typically dynamite was a big one then, but if you have dynamite, then you don't need
all types of wires and whatnot.
Oh, back in the day you wouldn't need the wiring?
No.
You don't need dynamite and it's already an explosive, you don't need all types of wiring.
A lot of the time that wiring is just for show, that realistic.
So, I mean, it could have been a fake bomb.
I mean, it could have been real.
I don't know.
I got you.
Well, that was enough to unsettle the flight attendant because she obviously sat down next
to him and started following his instructions and Cooper wanted her to write down exactly
what he told her.
I'm going to say the timeline here, Cory, he didn't have a whole lot of time to do what
he wanted to do because the flight between Portland and Seattle is something that I like
to call a pedal jumper because back in the day when I was a flight attendant, I actually
flew these routes pretty regularly.
And this was just a one hour flight between takeoff and landing.
Really you're not in the air for very long.
Once you reach that 10,000 feet in altitude, it's almost Cory, like as soon as you get
up in the air, you're at the 10,000 feet and then you're already descending.
I did look that up.
It was about 37 minutes in flight.
So yeah, that's pretty quick.
It was an up and down flight.
Shortly into this flight, the flight attendant delivered the note to the pilots in the cockpit
who immediately contacted the air control tower.
Obviously they're being hijacked.
And in this note, Cooper demanded a couple of things.
First of all, he wanted $200,000 in $20 increments of unmarked bills.
Sounds reasonable for a hijack, right?
For our international listeners, that is approximately 268,000 in Canadian money or approximately
164 pounds.
In today's currency, that would be equivalent to 1.5 million US dollars, 2 million in Canadian
dollars and 1.2 million in pounds.
So I always try to give that, Cory, just so you know, because we do have some international
listeners out there.
Shout out to the UK.
Shout out to Canadians.
And I know we have much more than that, but that's pretty standard procedure.
Cooper's second demand was for the airlines to provide him with four parachutes.
I'm wondering why four parachutes?
Four parachutes.
Did he have anybody there to help him?
I mean, that's the only other reason.
I mean, you have your primary and your backup, so there may have been other people.
True.
No, he was all by himself.
Well, speculation was that he may have intended to take hostages with him because he was flying
solo on this, but that's a great concept.
He could have had people strategically placed in the 36 seats that were taken.
How are you going to get four people to willingly jump?
I mean, you can maybe hold on to one, maybe two people to force them out of the plane,
but you can't hold on to three people and drag them out of the plane.
I mean, at least one of those person people is going to have to willingly jump.
It's true.
Well, I mean, I guess you could push them out, but.
Yeah.
My thought process is, is that he could have asked for that many parachutes because, you
know, he's sabotaging the plane.
So they may put a junk parachute in there or a fake parachute, something like that.
So he wanted to make sure maybe that he had enough equipment.
So when he was going to take that jump, that he would at least have a working parachute.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Do they keep decoy parachutes in planes like that?
I mean, I don't really see a point in that.
They didn't have any parachutes at all.
You can't really check to see if it's a fake.
I wouldn't think.
I mean, I'm not a skydiver, but I mean, it's still packed in there and it has to be packed
incorrectly.
So you'd have to take the time to unpack it, check it, and then repack it, which take up
some time.
So that's strange.
Absolutely.
Well, Cooper was banking on receiving the working equipment, obviously.
I mean, you want to if you know you're about to jump out of the plane, but authorities
didn't want to risk the lives of any hostages on board.
And it took about two hours to coordinate Cooper's demands.
They negotiated the release of those 36 passengers once they reached Seattle, Washington.
So they landed, quarried, they got the 36 passengers off the plane.
But before they landed, the cockpit told passengers that they needed to burn fuel.
They were trying to buy some time before they could land just so that they can get all those
demands met.
They had to come up with $200,000.
They had to come up with those four parachutes.
The cockpit told passengers that they needed to burn fuel due to a minor mechanical issue.
And of course, they circled Seattle for just a bit before they could land.
And once everything was in place, they did land in Seattle.
Cooper allowed those 36 passengers off of the plane in exchange for two pilots, one
flight attendant, plus a flight engineer.
And I don't think they had those air marshals back in those days, Corey.
No, they didn't.
Not until after 9-11, I don't believe.
Gotcha.
The parachutes and ransom money in unmarked bills were also placed on board as the plane
refueled and then they eventually took off.
I mean, that's pretty wild.
They actually didn't stop him at any...
Well, he had the bomb.
Yeah.
So the passengers didn't even know that they were being held hostage.
No, they did not.
Wasn't that great though?
They did a great job of communicating with the flight crew for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, could you imagine though getting that news once you're off the plane?
Could you absolutely imagine what was going on and you didn't even know it?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about the parachutes.
Oliver received several standard parachutes that were folded and packed correctly, but
he also received one that was used for flight school instruction and it was sewn shut.
I don't know why it would be sewn shut, maybe just for demonstration, but I thought that
was interesting.
Would he not have inspected at least the outside of those parachutes to see if they were booby
trapped in any way?
Why throw in a sewn up parachute?
I don't get it.
I don't know.
You would think he'd check them at least, but I mean, if he's asking for four, he's
not going to do it.
Yeah.
I don't know.
The plane took off, but so did five other aircrafts to follow the airplane that DB Cooper
was on.
Once they were airborne, Cooper directed the pilots to remain below 10,000 feet in altitude
with the stairs attached.
And back of the day, Corey, they didn't have those air terminals like we do now where you
just simply go straight out down that walkway and board the plane.
You actually had to get outside and climb a bunch of stairs to get up on the tarmac
to get onto the plane itself.
You've seen how they do that, right?
Yeah.
I always thought I remember seeing 90s movies and being like, huh, that doesn't make any
sense.
Where's the big terminal?
Cooper also told the pilots to fly slower than 200 knots, which in layman terms, I had
to go look this up.
It was 230 miles per hour or 370 kilometers per hour.
And for inquiring minds like me, the average speed today of a commercial airplane is somewhere
around 547 to 575 miles per hour or 880 to 926 kilometers per hour, depending on the
distance that you are going.
So yeah, Corey, I actually have to look these kinds of things up just for my own inquiring
mind and hopefully that's helpful.
Yeah.
I like that.
It's nice.
It's nice little touch.
Thanks.
Cooper eventually ordered the entire flight crew and not just the pilots into the cockpit
and continued to communicate with them on the in-flight telephone system.
He instructed the flight crew to head towards Mexico, which was approximately 2,331 miles
or 3,752 kilometers south of Seattle, Washington.
However, the plane that they were on was a Boeing 727 and the pilots informed Cooper
that they would need to refuel at 1,000 miles or 1,609 kilometers, which placed them somewhere
around Reno, Nevada, if that was going to take place.
And Corey, that's one of the reasons it's a smaller airplane.
And that's why I call it a puddle jumper because they just don't have a lot of fuel in that
lane.
Communications between the cockpit and cabin stopped abruptly about 20 minutes into this
flight.
So they didn't even make it to Reno.
And this was around eight o'clock PM.
The pilots then noticed a change in the cabin's air pressure.
And when one of the flight crew members came out to inspect, they saw that the back hatch
of the airplane was wide open.
Cooper had just jumped out from the back of the aircraft, taking his ransom note with
him along with two of the four parachutes.
One of these parachutes, Corey, was that instructional one that had been sewn shut.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah, so I'm assuming that he got very lucky the very first time when they landed that
they didn't have a tactical team planned as soon as they landed because of how I would
think they do it now.
Because they have teams that are on standby constantly at every airport, especially the
bigger ones.
So he probably was pretty grateful for that and said, I'm not taking my risk anymore.
I mean, I'm close enough to where I want to be.
Let's just jump out because I already got lucky once.
I guess he took that ransom note so they wouldn't have his handwriting to compare later on.
Oh, yeah, true.
But do you know what he left behind?
A bomb?
He left his tie.
It was a clip-on.
He ripped that off, threw it onto the plane before he jumped out.
I guess he didn't want it flapping in his face as he was descending.
Who knows?
Yeah, well, they didn't have, I would say, I mean, he could have like hair follicles or
skin or something on there, but I don't think they had the DNA technology back then to be
able to connect.
Yeah, so.
They did not.
But I am actually going to talk about DNA in just a little bit because there was something
on that tie and I'll get back to that in just a minute.
But he had jumped out of the plane.
Getting ahead of myself, sorry.
No, that's okay.
When Cooper did jump from the plane, he had attached the ransom money to one of the cords
on that extra parachute that he had with him and jumped.
So he had the one parachute.
He had the extra parachute that he had attached the money to and out he went.
And do you know what?
The five planes behind him on that Northwest flight, not one pilot saw him jump out of
that airplane.
I mean, it was after eight o'clock at this point in time.
So it was pitch black.
And, you know, they obviously didn't have all the technology that they have today, but
not one pilot saw him jump out of that flight.
Well, not only is it dark, but they're going to have to have some distance from each other
for safety reasons.
Oh, yeah.
And then also, I mean, you're not going to be looking for a person to be jumping out
of a plane randomly.
They're just going to be watching the plane and see him and that in the darkness, they're
just not going to see him.
Very true.
So there are some theories and speculations behind DB Cooper.
I'll go through those.
Initial theories about DB Cooper started with the belief that he could have had military
background and was possibly a paratrooper, but he didn't really take the necessary precautions
that someone would if they were experienced.
We had talked about him being in that business suit, so he had loafers on a suit and tie.
If he were really experienced, I think you know this, Corey, he would have had the proper
equipment to prepare for the jump.
Like you see when people jump out of airplanes, they usually have that thick bodysuit on boots,
helmet, goggles, all that stuff.
I'm not really sure what he was thinking.
Yeah, but if he's carrying all that and that's going to start sending off some red flags,
that's not really typical stuff that you bring on a plane unless you plan on jumping off
of it.
True, but he only had a briefcase, so he could have also had a suitcase with that stuff in
it.
Yeah, but I mean, he's got that big cartoon bomb in there, so how's he going to fit all
that equipment in there with that giant cartoon bomb?
True.
Maybe he was only allowed one take on.
You know how they do that these days?
He would have had to check the other stuff.
Yeah, he's probably just picking and choosing what's worth taking.
Other people believe that he did not survive this jump.
One of the parachutes that Cooper selected could not be steered, so there was no telling
what terrain he would have landed in.
The area where authorities believe he could have landed was known to be very heavily wooded.
Imagine jumping out of the airplane quarry in the dark, not being able to steer your
parachute and not even being able to see the terrain below you.
That would be tough, especially if he landed in trees because we just don't know where
he ended up.
Yeah.
The weather was also pretty rough quarry and Cooper did not take this into consideration.
He didn't do his homework on the weather because on the night of November 24th, 1971, he jumped
from the plane into a heavy rainstorm and snowfall.
The clouds were very thick and hovered somewhere around 5,000 feet.
And we know the altitude that planes get up to is 10,000 feet.
Fox weather data from that day showed that it was likely that Cooper would have landed
in the Stampede Pass, which is located near Washington state.
Stampede Pass at the time was currently under a pretty good snowstorm.
The night that he had jumped out of the plane, it started off with four inches of snow, but
ended up after four days with an accumulation of 27 inches.
That is a lot of snow.
If Cooper landed at lower elevations, so not in the Stampede Pass, he would have encountered
that heavy rainfall.
So either way, he would have been trenched, not to mention it was November in the Midwest
and he would have endured some pretty frigid temperatures.
So with all he's wearing, a trench coat and loafers, I would like to say, I don't think
he could make it through the night.
He would get hypothermia.
Absolutely.
And again, I've seen some pretty crazy people survive the night in some pretty crazy situations.
I didn't think you were going to make it personally, but they do.
So never know.
But chances are not on his side for sure.
That's pretty harsh, especially in November.
Yeah, November, because there's a lot of snowfall.
I was up in Oregon just this past summer and I could see the mountains in the distance
and they were white snow caps.
What state were they in at that time?
They were traveling between Portland, Oregon, and they were making their way down to Mexico.
I would say that where he jumped was somewhere around Washington state or Oregon.
He was along that border.
Unless he's Bear Grylls, I don't think he's making it through the night.
Not only that, but as he descended when he jumped out of the airplane, experts calculated
that the winds equaled somewhere around 200 miles an hour or 322 kilometers per hour beating
against him as he jumped.
That's a lot.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, determined minds will get through a lot.
Yeah, they will for sure.
But I'm thinking like hurricane weather because even winds at 45 miles an hour are pretty
intense.
We're going to jump forward to 1980 because during that time, an eight-year-old boy was
playing outside, doing what boys do.
I know you're going back to those days, Cory, whatever you were doing back in the days.
He was digging along the sand of the Columbia River in the town of Tina, which was just
north of Portland, Oregon.
That's where I'm telling you I saw the snow cap mountains in July.
The boy happened upon a package of very old weathered and rotting $20 bills containing
$5,800 US dollars in it.
The serial numbers on those bills matched the ransom money that Cooper demanded back
in 1971.
This was nine years later, Cory, that this little boy came upon that money stash.
How interesting.
Lucky fun.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, here's a cool fact.
After six years, the boy was allowed to keep $2,760 of that ransom money.
Back in 2008, when he was around 36 years old, he sold 15 of those $20 bills at an auction
and earned $37,433 US dollars or $50,000 Canadian or 30.7 thousand pounds for this sale.
So I thought that was pretty cool.
I wonder who's got that now.
Wow.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I know, right?
The rest of the money went to Northwest Airlines Insurance Company and the FBI kept $280 US
dollars pretty much for evidence.
They wanted to keep that on file, so they didn't really keep very much.
Half of it went to the boy, a little bit went to the airlines, and then the rest of it they
kept for evidence.
Well, to this day, the other $194,000 US dollars has never been recovered.
So what do you think?
If he did survive, they were unmarked bills.
So if he spent $20 here, $20 there, do you really think they're going to be able to keep
up with that?
No, especially in 1980.
They're not going to really track it like they would be able to today.
Cash, that's why a lot of criminals like to spend cash because you can't track it.
It's not like a credit card where they can see everywhere you've gone and purchased.
So true.
Except for if you go to the ATM and get caught on camera.
Yeah.
All right.
I had mentioned, we know back in 1971, there was not a lot of DNA.
Well, DNA was on certain materials, but they weren't able to examine it the way they are
today.
So, J.C.
Cooper did leave some clues behind on that plane.
And I had mentioned the black tie that he had just ripped off before he jumped.
That tie was purchased from J.C.
Penney's and it did contain DNA evidence, which I thought was really interesting because
there was some kind of material on that tie and it was like a specific type of metal that
I'm going to talk to you in just a bit about that because I'm going to give you some ideas
on some of the suspects and it'll link towards that metal that was left on there.
But secondly, I had told you that J.B.
Cooper had lit up a cigarette before the flight.
So he actually was a smoker and he left several cigarette butts behind that obviously would
carry DNA.
But at some point in time, Corey, they lost the butts and they've never been able to retrieve
them.
Isn't that crazy?
Wow.
They were given a gift and they threw it away.
Yeah.
Oh my gosh.
All right.
Let's talk about some suspects here.
One of the suspects high on the FBI's list included a man named Richard Floyd McCoy and
he had been arrested under very similar circumstances less than five months after the D.B.
Cooper incident.
On April 7th, 1972, McCoy had traveled under a fake name, just like Cooper did.
He boarded a Boeing 727 flight, just like Cooper did, but he went to Newark, New Jersey and
headed towards Los Angeles, California.
Like D.B.
Cooper, McCoy handed a flight attendant a note demanding $500,000 this time plus four
parachutes.
The note also stated that if his demands were not met, he would bomb the plane.
Obviously, Corey, this sounds exactly like what D.B.
Cooper did.
I mean, to me, it sounds a little bit like a copycat.
What do you think?
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I don't know why you would want to test your luck because he knows he was lucky.
I think that the reason why he jumped off the plane in the first place was because it
was his last resort and I don't think he would automatically take his last resort again because
had he survived it, yeah, he's like, well, I just survived nature for however long.
I survived getting possibly raided.
I don't want to push that again.
I don't see why he would do the same exact plan because clearly it didn't exactly pan
out the first time.
Yeah.
He's not going to say, oh yeah, this worked once.
Let's try it again.
Yeah.
Based on eyewitnesses physical description of McCoy, the copycat, we'll call him a copycat,
he didn't match D.B.
Cooper, so police pretty much dropped him pretty quickly off of the suspect list.
However, McCoy was eventually caught, charged and convicted of air piracy and given 45 years
in prison for that.
Yeah.
I guess we know what D.B.
Cooper would have faced too, right?
Yeah.
I guess the same things.
On August 10th, 1974, McCoy hijacked a garbage truck inside the prison grounds and made an
escape.
So he was just a rat.
Yeah.
And then two months later he was tracked down in Virginia and ended up dying in a police
shootout.
So they tracked him down and there he went.
At least he can't potentially hurt more people.
Yeah, for sure.
Suspect number two, there was a man named Robert Rackstraw who was also considered a
suspect all the way until his death of a heart condition in July of 2019.
So really not that long ago, Cory.
Yeah.
In the news week, Rackstraw was a quote, former army paratrooper and participated in top tier
military training to successfully hijack and parachute out of an airplane, unquote.
Does that sound something like the Green Beret?
Is that something they would do?
Do you know?
Yeah.
Green Berets do a lot of skydiving, but they're experienced.
If they're saying that this guy, that D.B.
Cooper wasn't experienced, then it's not quite the same.
Gotcha.
But I mean, it's possible.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So we watched Rackstraw carefully because he actually had a little bit of a sketchy
past.
He was initially charged with his stepfather's murder, but was acquitted in a jury trial.
He also attempted to fake his own death by crashing a stolen airplane way back in 1978.
And he was arrested for this incident and spent two years in prison for that.
Yeah, he was a little sketchy.
Yeah.
This guy seems a little bit more reasonable to be the suspect because he does have the
experience of parachuting.
And there are some special operations guys that are still pretty sketchy people that
get out and they can do some bad things.
Are they made to look that way?
Is that a persona that they are trying to achieve by looking sketchy or are they just
sketchy?
It just, I mean, it depends on the person.
I mean, most of them are going to be good people doing it for the right reasons, just
like any other profession.
But some people will use their skills for the wrong reasons, especially if they've got
that past prior to joining or if they've got PTSD from their time in service.
Yeah, that's true.
Because a lot of them will get out and their only skill is that job that they've been doing
for however long.
So they'll just go do a contracting, which contracting pays a lot better.
But then there's also some, there's not as many morals behind it as there are as serving
in the actual military, because you can definitely work for some sketchy people.
Okay.
I'm so glad you're on this podcast with me.
I'm learning a lot.
Well the FBI officially closed this case in 2016 because they simply did not have enough
evidence to proceed.
Like I mentioned, this is the longest and most extensive criminal case ever investigated
in US history.
And the FBI feels that they just did not have enough leads to continue moving forward.
However, that does not mean that other agencies are not still investigating this.
So that's kind of cool.
I would say private companies, private agencies may be still trying to investigate.
Yeah.
So the FBI closed it out?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's probably some private ones.
Yeah, the FBI's case is closed.
Now let's go back to that necktie that I had mentioned that DB Cooper was wearing because
I'm going to talk about the DNA here.
According to a press conference on November 11th, 2022, Eric Ulyss, known for investigative
journalism on the history and discovery channels, he analyzed the lab reports from 2017 when
they were looking at DB Cooper's tie.
And he saw that there were those unique metal particles that I had mentioned, like titanium
specifically, that was linked to a very specific department inside a Pennsylvania metal manufacturing
plant that was in operation back in 1971.
Ulyss stated that an employee from that plant named Vince Peterson matched DB Cooper's description.
Peterson was identified as one of eight researchers who worked with titanium found on DB Cooper's
tie.
And he was a frequent flyer who traveled regularly to Portland, Oregon and Washington state back
in the seventies.
Researchers were required back in 1971 to wear ties to work, which could explain why
titanium was found on Cooper's tie as he left it behind when he jumped out of the plane.
Unfortunately though, Peterson died in 2002 and cannot be linked to DB Cooper at this
time.
Okay.
His son adamantly denies that Peterson is DB Cooper, although he bore a striking resemblance
to those sketches that you see in articles today.
Well, that certainly makes things interesting.
It sure does.
That all kind of adds up.
And of course the son's going to deny it because somebody wants to admit to even to themselves
that their parent is a criminal.
No, true.
But he's a pretty cool criminal actually.
I mean, yeah, it's kind of cool.
I'm not going to lie.
I don't know if I'd admit it or not.
It's pretty cool.
Yeah.
My dad was DB Cooper.
I would market that.
I would go do interviews.
Just get as much money as you can out of it.
Absolutely.
Oh, wait, you mean exploit it?
Yeah.
Multiple other suspects who made deathbed confessions claimed to be DB Cooper.
Of course, these people all had to be investigated and each one was ruled out for one reason
or another.
Many other former military veterans were also placed on the suspect list because of the
conversations that they held with family members.
And the list, Cory, goes on and on and on because you know that they would have to invest
everybody under this.
But yeah, to this day, DB Cooper remains a mystery.
Very interesting.
Yeah, but I could see a lot of people claiming to be him because that actually happens a
decent amount with those big stories that are in the news and it's a mystery and people
want the attention.
It's crazy that people will actually admit to something they didn't do just for that
attention.
Yeah.
Wild.
I know and that is crazy.
Well, I wanted to give a couple closing thoughts here, which I found interesting.
Following DB Cooper's hijacking, the Federal Aviation Administration, also known as the
FAA, implemented Cooper Vane standards, making it a requirement that all Boeing 727s install
a small latch on the outside of their airplanes where those rear stairs are at.
And I do remember when I worked on the plane, I would always hear them closing that latch
and you know, you just kind of heard them doing their thing back there at the back of
the latch.
So it's kind of interesting because I can envision that.
An annual CooperCon event is held in Vancouver, Washington every year.
And this is a two day festival, sort of like CrimeCon or Comic Con held every year, but
it's specifically dedicated solely to DB Cooper.
How about that?
It draws in crowds of people to listen to keynote speakers, participate in escape rooms
and watch a movie on DB Cooper himself, plus go on a road tour.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
If DB Cooper is still alive today, he would be in his 90s if the age calculations were
correct back in 1971 when they mentioned he was in his mid 40s.
Man, what a story for your grandkids.
I know, right?
Okay, Corey.
Well, that's the story of DB Cooper, mystery man, crime hero, and probably one of the most
wanted men in America.
We would love to receive feedback from our listeners on this story line and any of our
other episodes.
So be sure to DM us on Instagram or send us an email at DyingToBeFound at gmail.com.
And there you have it, Corey, the story of DB Cooper.
Awesome.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
It's a lot of fun.
I heard you had something called a teachable moment.
Yeah.
Do you want to hear it?
Of course.
What did you learn today?
Teachable moment.
Dress accordingly.
I live in Georgia and Corey, you know how extreme the heat gets here.
It gets really hot.
And I do remember one time I flew from Atlanta to Chicago, Illinois.
And what's the nickname for that town?
Do you know?
Windy City?
Yeah.
It was around November that I went and I had not packed the right clothes.
I ended up having to go buy a sweater because even for me, it was really cold in that city
that day.
So teachable moment.
When you know you're traveling, check the temperatures so that you're prepared and pack
accordingly.
So there you go.
My teachable moment.
Short and sweet.
Yeah.
I mean, I completely agree with that.
What I do, I keep thick jackets in my truck at all times because I mean, you never know
if I get stranded somewhere.
I don't want to be just in a t-shirt in my truck.
So I always keep, yeah, always keep at least one jacket in there.
I recently, over the last couple months, started putting a big thick blanket in there too.
Oh, you're smart.
Which has been nice.
It's helpful for emergencies in case I get stranded again, then I got a blanket for the
night.
And then also whenever I take Katie home, it's cold.
She's got something to throw over her until the truck warms up.
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
So we have our first episode under our belts.
What do you think?
Yeah, that was fun.
Good.
So we'll be back.
Yeah.
You'll be back for the rotation.
Good.
All right, Corey.
Well, that is it.
And to our listeners, thanks for listening.
We would love for you to give us a five star rating.
That really helps to boost us in the rankings.
And there you go.
That is DB Cooper.
And thanks for listening.
We will be back next week.
See y'all later.
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