D.B. Cooper: He Jumped Out of a Plane With $200,000

Odd, non-graphic true-crime stories and courtroom curiosities.

The story

In 1971, a man hijacked a plane, got two hundred grand, and jumped out the back. Nobody ever found him. Day before Thanksgiving, a quiet fella calling himself Dan Cooper pays cash for a ticket, Portland to Seattle. He orders a bourbon and soda, then hands the stewardess a note: he's got a bomb. He wants two hundred thousand dollars and four parachutes.

In Seattle he trades the passengers for the money, and they take off again for Mexico. A little after eight that night, he lowers the back stairs and jumps into the dark. The plane lands in Reno. The FBI searches it and finds his black clip-on tie, pearl tie clip still on it, left right on his seat.

In 1980, a boy on the Columbia River finds five thousand eight hundred dollars of it in the sand. The rest? Never found. Neither was he. Years later, the FBI pulled DNA off that tie. It never matched a name. In 2016, the FBI stopped actively working the case. And he never did come back for his tie.

Sources

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