1971 · Pacific Northwest
D.B. Cooper, The Man Who made history.

He hijacked a plane, received $200,000, plunged into the stormy night sky – and was never seen again.

It was the final day of peace Thanksgiving, November 24, 1971.

A man in his prime wearing a black suit and a plain tie purchased a ticket for a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle.

He identified himself as “Dan Cooper.”

He revealed himself to be a perfectly ordinary man—polite, calm—so no one noticed him.

Soon after the plane took off, he given a note to a flight attendant.

She imagined it was his phone number—men did that sometimes.

She put it in her pouch without reading it.

He Bend over to her and said softly, “Ma’am, you should look at this note.

I have a bomb.”

She read it. Her face turned pale.

Cooper opened his briefcase wide enough for her to see inside, where there was something that looked like red cylinders, wires, and a battery.

It seemed completely real to her.

He told her his conditions: $200,000 in cash, four parachutes, and fuel tankers waiting in Seattle.

No games, or the bomb would go off.

The airline and the FBI complied with the demands.

What else could they have done?

The plane landed in Seattle, Cooper let all the passengers go, received his cash and his parachutes, and then ordered the pilots to fly to Mexico at low altitude and low speed.

Somewhere over the dark, rainy forests in the southern part of the state of Washington, Cooper strapped on a parachute, took the bag with the cash with him, opened the plane’s rear staircase, and jumped. In a rainstorm. In freezing temperatures On an extremely dark night. Into the void.

The FBI launched the largest Search operation in U.S. history up to that point.

For years, they investigate the forests of Washington and Oregon.

They had his fingerprints, a partial DNA sample from his tie, and descriptions from witnesses.

Over the following decades, they questioned hundreds of suspects.

In 1980, a young man found a small bundle of decaying banknotes near the Columbia River—about $5,800—whose serial numbers matched the amount of Cooper’s ransom.

That was it. That was everything.

No body was ever found.

No parachute. No more cash. No Cooper.

Did he survive the jump and disappear into a new life?

Or had he died in those dark woods, and had his bones long since crumbled to dust?

The FBI officially closed the case in 2016 – 45 years later – and the hijacker was never identified.

D. B. Cooper is the only person in the history of U.S. aviation who has hijacked an airplane and of whom no trace has been found to this day.

He exists somewhere, or he does not exist – and no one knows where he is.

He exists somewhere, or he does not exist – and no one knows where he is.