SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: SYSK Live: The DB Cooper Heist

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Live – The D.B. Cooper Heist

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. (Chuck) Bryant
Date: September 26, 2025 (original Seattle live show recorded in 2017)
Runtime: ~94 minutes

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Overview

This special live episode, recorded in Seattle, dives into the enduring mystery surrounding D.B. Cooper—the man who, in 1971, hijacked a plane, secured $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted into legend. Hosts Josh and Chuck dissect the heist, the investigation, and subsequent suspects, all with their trademark humor, sharp research, and audience engagement. It's an informative, entertaining journey through what is still America's only unsolved airplane hijacking.

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Main Topics & Timeline

1. Scene Setting and The Heist Begins

[06:54]–[14:15]

• Thanksgiving Eve, 1971: Portland Airport (PDX). A mysterious man buys a ticket for Northwest Orient Flight 305 (a Boeing 727-100) to Seattle, asking pointedly about the plane model.
• Alias Chosen: He purchases his one-way ticket under the name "Dan Cooper"—no ID required in those days.
• Description: Cooper is described as an unremarkable, 40-ish man: russet suit (brief period in history where that color was fashionable), clip-on JCPenney tie, overcoat, briefcase, horn-rim sunglasses, dark wavy hair, and "swarthy."
• Atmosphere on the Plane: Cooper sits in 18C, orders a bourbon and Seven-Up, lights a Raleigh-brand cigarette (legal on flights then), and is noticed for being extremely calm and gentlemanly—the archetype of “Don Draper” rather than “Charles Manson.”

“You could smoke on planes—he looked a little more like Don Draper.”
—Chuck [10:20]

2. The Hijacking Unfolds

[12:04]–[20:00]

• The Note: Cooper hands a note to Florence Schaffner, a flight attendant. She ignores it at first, assuming it's a come-on, until Cooper quietly insists she read it: “I have a bomb.”
• Bomb Threat: He discreetly shows her the bomb—red sticks, battery, alarm clock. She alerts the others, passing along Cooper's strict instructions for $200,000 in "negotiable American currency," four parachutes (two front, two back), and a refueled plane.
• Cooper’s Approach: He avoids providing handwriting evidence—demands back his original note, dictates further instructions.
• Integral Flight Crew: Head flight attendant Alice Hancock, as well as Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner; pilots Captain William Scott and co-pilot Robert Rataczak.

“I just have a grudge.”
—D.B. Cooper (to Tina Mucklow, via Chuck) [26:34]

3. How Hijackings Were Handled, 1970s Style

[14:13]–[21:10]

• A Common Crime: Between 1968–1971, there were nearly 100 U.S. hijackings (“golden age of skyjacking”). Air marshals were logistically unfeasible.
• FBI’s Mindset: No established protocol for a non-political, ransom-motivated hijacker.
• Flight Circles Seattle: Cooper makes demands; the plane circles for an hour while the FBI assembles ransom and parachutes.

4. Negotiations & Drop-Off

[26:40]–[35:00]

• On the Ground:
  • The airline president swiftly agrees to the ransom—insurance covers it.
  • $200,000 is assembled in marked $20 bills.
• Parachute Mix-Up:
  • Delay in securing four parachutes from Earl Cossey at Seattle Sky Sports; accidentally includes a dummy training chute that can’t open.
  • Cooper insists all window shades be drawn, anticipating snipers.
• Hostages Exchanged:
  • Mucklow bravely brings the ransom and supplies aboard in exchange for the passenger hostages—then returns to the plane by choice.

“She traded herself for the hostages... That’s metal.”
—Josh [33:17]

5. Cooper's Escape

[40:00]–[46:41]

• Flight Plan: Cooper requests to fly slow (max 10,000 feet; 190 mph), flaps at 15 degrees, and for the aft staircase to remain ready. Destination: originally "Mexico City," but Cooper clarifies he simply wants to jump.
• Jump Sequence:
  • Cooper moves to the rear (“jump-off position”) with Mucklow, then sends her to the cockpit.
  • At 8:12pm, a cockpit light alerts “door ajar”; the crew feel a slight vibration—presumed moment of Cooper’s leap.

“At this point, nobody to anyone’s knowledge ever saw Dan Cooper again.”
—Chuck [46:30]

6. The Aftermath and Investigation

[46:41]–[54:57]

• Immediate Manhunt:
  • Massive ground search in the forests near Ariel, Washington, and Lewis River—thousands of law enforcement involved.
  • Jets and helicopters fail to track the slow-moving 727.
  • The CIA’s ultra-secret SR-71 Blackbird is even scrambled (“scrambled” is debated for comic effect).
• Where Did “D.B. Cooper” Come From?
  • Initial confusion: the hijacker signed “Dan Cooper,” but a clerical/reporting error cements “D.B. Cooper” in legend.
• FBI Presumes Death:
  • Lead agent Ralph Himmelsbach (author of "NORJACK"): Cooper likely died in the jump—parachute unopened, body lost in the wilderness.

“It was just the line that they took… There’s no way this guy survived.”
—Josh [54:28]

7. Theories: Did Cooper Survive?

[56:27]–[62:09]

• Harsh Conditions:
  • Freezing night, difficult terrain, unsuitable clothing, and poor parachute/supplies choices.
• Investigation Clues:
  • Cooper left behind his clip-on tie, eight cigarette butts (since lost), and a headrest hair; FBI used fingerprints (inconclusive).
  • A 1978 hunter found a Boeing 727 staircase instruction card.

8. Key Breakthroughs and the Money Trail

[69:27]–[74:41]

• 1980: Stacks of $20 Bills Found:
  • Eight-year-old Brian Ingram discovers $5,880 near Tina Bar, a Columbia River sandbar, 20 miles from the presumed drop zone—serial numbers match ransom cash.
• Theories of Money’s Journey:
  • FBI hydrologists posit the cash arrived via a later flood or dredging, exposed to elements for less than a year.
• 2008: Parachute Discovery:
  • Parachute found near Amboy, WA (ultimately not Cooper’s—belonged to a WWII pilot); shows it’s possible to survive such jumps in the area.

9. Suspects & Pop Culture

[75:32]–[88:56]

• Numerous Suspects:
  • Over 1,000 tips/confessions, many from prisoners hoping for transfer to federal prison (better "cinnamon buns").
  • Notable Suspects:
    • Richard McCoy: Hijacked a 727 four months later in a copycat case, later killed in a shootout.
    • Duane Weber: Deathbed confession to his wife, geography/timeline fits but ruled out by DNA.
    • Kenny Christiansen: Airline employee and former paratrooper—deathbed confession avoided by family; strong likeness to sketch.
    • L.D. Cooper: Outed by his niece; suspicious behavior after the heist, but unlikely due to lack of skydiving experience.
• DB Cooper in Pop Culture:
  • 1981’s “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper” (starring Treat Williams, Robert Duvall—terrible reviews).
  • Unsolved Mysteries episodes, numerous websites (Dropzone.com community).
  • The “Cooper Vane”—a security device installed on 727s to prevent repeats of the stair jump.

“The FBI says about – well, they won’t say, but a lot of people say about a thousand [suspects].”
—Josh [80:05]

10. Legacy & Modern Investigation

[88:56]–[93:57]

• Longest Unsolved US Hijacking:
  • The case was marked officially unsolved by the FBI in 2016.
• Ongoing Sleuthing:
  • Online DB Cooper “Cooperists,” led to the unmasking of the current FBI case supervisor, Larry Carr, as a DropZone.com forum user “Secret.”
  • FBI updates evidence with new DNA testing; tantalizing finds include titanium traces and “impatiens” pollen on Cooper’s tie—still unexplained.
• Cultural Legacy:
  • Metal detectors and baggage searches at airports stem from this event.
  • Periodic DB Cooper Day festivals in Ariel, WA, including lookalike contests.

“Cooper is the reason we all started walking through metal detectors shortly afterward… and that little white paddle that holds the airplane’s stairs shut is called the Cooper vane.”
—Josh [92:54]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On 1970s Air Travel:
  “Planes got hijacked all the time because you could bring guns and bombs on planes and you didn’t need ID and no one cared.”
  —Chuck [14:15]

• On Tina Mucklow’s Heroism:
  “She essentially traded herself for the hostages and went back on the plane.”
  —Josh [33:16]

• On Deathbed Confessions:
  “Did you know you can not hear a deathbed confession?”
  —Chuck [86:50]

• On The DB Cooper Legacy:
  “To this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in the history of… America.”
  —Chuck [89:33]

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Notable Details & Fun Facts

• Cooper’s demands (parachutes): By asking for two of each type, he prevented the FBI from sabotaging the parachutes (they feared he’d force a hostage to jump as well).
• The ransom money: All serial numbers logged—some found nine years later, many unaccounted for.
• Pop culture: The hijacker’s name is only “D.B. Cooper” due to a media mistake; his ticket said “Dan Cooper,” likely taken from a Belgian-Canadian comic book.
• Lasting influence:
  • Introduction of airport security screening.
  • Retrofit of Boeing 727s to physically prevent “stair jumps.”
• On Tina Mucklow: Following the trauma, she became a nun in Oregon, though her superior claimed “she never really fit in here.”

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Final Analysis

Josh and Chuck blend deep research, sharp wit, and signature banter to bring this enigmatic case to life. They emphasize the sociocultural impact of the Cooper heist, the copious suspects and theories, and the ongoing obsession with the mystery. The audience, particularly aware of Seattle-area details, is playfully engaged and treated to local nods, tangents, and classic Stuff You Should Know digressions. While the case itself remains unsolved, the episode captures precisely why it still fascinates and why, “DB Cooper” remains a uniquely American legend.

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Quick Reference Timeline

| Time | Segment/Topic Summary | |----------|-----------------------------------------------| | 01:09 | Introduction and live show context | | 06:54 | Setting the scene—Cooper at the airport | | 13:14 | The hijack note and Florence Schaffner | | 18:05 | Cooper’s ransom & demands | | 21:57 | Flight circles Seattle, passengers oblivious | | 28:46 | Sourcing parachutes—accidental dummy chute | | 33:16 | Hostage handover—Mucklow’s bravery | | 40:08 | The escape plan & technical demands | | 46:26 | The jump—8:12pm, unseen by crew or jets | | 48:45 | Massive manhunt; CIA & “scrambling” jets | | 51:46 | Origins of “D.B. Cooper” name | | 54:28 | FBI’s official stance—believes Cooper died | | 69:33 | 1980: The money found on Tina Bar | | 75:32 | Suspect parade—McCoy, Weber, Christiansen etc.| | 91:03 | Internet sleuthing & modern investigation | | 92:54 | Legacy (airport security, Cooper vane, etc.) |

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For a full deep-dive, listen to the episode—but with this summary, you’ll know the story, key players, and why this mystery endures.

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

Welcome back, everybody. We're moving along on our true crime playlist with an episode we recorded live in Seattle in 2017 on the unsolved mystery of D.B. cooper. Someone using that alias hijacked a plane flying from Portland to Seattle in 1971 and jumped out midair, making off with $200,000. People still float suspects today, and they usually say the case is solved, but the FBI stopped investigating back in 2016, and they consider it unsolved. This one is pretty fun, so I hope you enjoy it. And if you like this live show, come see us when we hit the road again in 2026. Welcome to stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks Do. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And we are here live at the beautiful Neptune Theater in beautiful Seattle and beautiful Washington. Thank you, guys. Phenomenal.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm already a sweaty mess, so that must mean we're on stage.

[Josh Clark]

We are off to a great start.

[Chuck Bryant]

That must mean I'm awake.

[Josh Clark]

Or sleeping.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I sweat in my sleep, too.

[Josh Clark]

Big time.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's gross.

[Josh Clark]

I'm always wiping his brow while he sleeps.

[Chuck Bryant]

What movie are we gonna watch tonight in the hotel?

[Josh Clark]

Is Spy out yet on Hunters?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. And we can leave the seat up on the toilet.

[Josh Clark]

I don't do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't either. Cause I pee sitting down because I'm 45 years old.

[Josh Clark]

Do you really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. Might as well get into it. What? You do, too? Why? We never talked about this. I started peeing sitting down during the middle of the night, get up, because it just makes sense because you don't want to wake up too much, and you don't want to, like, make a mess. And then I think I just hit a certain age where I was like, it's just nicer to sit down. I don't need to prove anything to anyone.

[Josh Clark]

You landed your lady. You're all set. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I stand when I pee off my deck at night.

[Josh Clark]

I don't do that. I live in a condo complex. They would write letters to me if I did that.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not good, man.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like an enormous weight's just been lifted off.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't believe that you're not even 40 years old yet and you pee sitting down.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Let's start the podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Are there other guys out there that pee sitting down?

[Josh Clark]

All right. We are starting a movement, baby.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Your ladies will appreciate it. Oddly, I poop standing up. This is so off the rails already.

[Josh Clark]

Like, in conversation. You'll just be sitting there talking to me like, you're pooping right now, aren't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Ye.

[Josh Clark]

He's like, it's more efficient this way. I get more done.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should probably start over.

[Josh Clark]

We should. We're going to get off stage and come back out. Can't believe what we've been talking about here this evening already. Okay, let's all just take it down a notch. All right, so we're podcasting. We're about to start podcasting. I think I already started the podcast. Oh, God. Which means that's going to be on, like, the thing we.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's why I said we should start over.

[Josh Clark]

Oh. Okay. You ready? It stays here, everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's all our secret. 500 people, right?

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we are live here at the beautiful Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington. Man times two.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's even better.

[Josh Clark]

It's an in joke.

[Chuck Bryant]

People will be like, even better than what?

[Josh Clark]

Mama Booey?

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

There's a lot of. There's more crossover between our fans and Howard Stern than our fans and Mariners fans, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Boy, there's a Venn diagram out there that's confusing me already.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

This is a little bit of history.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So we're gonna go back in the Wayback Machine.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

If you listen to the PR Live podcast, you know that, like, the Wayback Machine is imaginary, so settle down.

[Chuck Bryant]

They heard that live.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was a good one, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

There are PR professionals Here because they emailed me today.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I can tell that's the call of the PR professional. So we're going back to a cold, stormy, rainy, pretty nasty Thanksgiving Eve in 1971. And the story begins at PDX Portland Airport. And a man walked into pdx, took a picture of his shoe on the carpet, and then walked along to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket desk.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And he walked up and he said, hi, I am really interested in finding more about Flight 305, the flight to Seattle. Would that happen to be a Boeing 727100 airplane that you guys are going to fly on that route? And the ticket agent went, yes, as a matter of fact, it is. And the man said, that is Fantastic. Here's my $20. Yeah, one ticket, please, for a one way ticket between Portland and Seattle aboard Flight 305. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And she was like, that's a weird question, but I guess he's very specific about what kind of plane he likes to fly on.

[Josh Clark]

Plus, it's 1971 and I'm in no position to publicly question a man, so I'll just go along with this.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's very true. And it was $20 for that flight. This is a very 70s podcast. So they handed him his little ticket voucher and said, just fill this out, sir. Don't need to see ID because it's 1971. Just tell us who you are or whoever you want us to think you are. And he wrote down in big block letters and a red ink pen, Dan Cooper.

[Josh Clark]

Few of you know where we're going with this, huh? So the Boeing 727 100, as every single person in this room knows, is a smallish plane. It's not the biggest plane in the Boeing fleet. It's not the smallest either, but it's the only one that had an aft staircase. Right. And this particular flight, flying aboard this Boeing 727100 Flight 305, had a crew of five aboard it. There was Captain William Scott, not Sean William Scott, we figured out later on, not Stifler. That would have made zero sense had he had a former Life in the 70s as an airline pilot. Co pilot Robert Radizzak. There's a C in there for those of you who like that kind of thing. And there were three flight attendants. There was a head flight attendant who was named Alice Hancock, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And then two, I guess, regular flight attendants. Tina McCloud, who's a hero of ours, and Florence Schaffner, I think they Called.

[Chuck Bryant]

Him stewardesses back then, to be fair. But we're forward thinking guys, so we're gonna go ahead and say flight attendant.

[Josh Clark]

We don't use the S word.

[Chuck Bryant]

You just make. Well, never mind, never mind.

[Josh Clark]

We've done quite enough extraneous stuff for one of you.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. So Dan Cooper gets on the plane. There's 37 other passengers. Because again, it was the 70s. They didn't overbook flights back then. And say, I'm sorry you bought a ticket, but you really can't fly on this flight. 37 passengers, pretty empty. And Dan Cooper seats, sits in seat 18C. They pour him up a bourbon and seven up, and he lights up a.

[Josh Clark]

Cigarette, a Raleigh brand cigarette.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because it's 1971. You can smoke on planes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he looked to be about in his mid-40s. He was, you know, kind of looked like the men of the time. Which is to say you either looked. By 1971, you either looked a little more like Don Draper, kind of holding on to that 50s look, or you look like Charles Manson. He looked a little more like Don Draper.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Had the suit, had the skinny tie.

[Josh Clark]

And we should talk a little bit about the suit. The suit was a russet colored suit which was like that weird burgundy brown.

[Chuck Bryant]

Color that's potato colored.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And it just so happened that he was wearing this suit during the 16 month period in history where you could wear that color suit out in public. So he was. Okay. And then his skinny tie was a clip on from JCPenney.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. He had a imitation mother of pearl tie pin. He had an overcoat. He had a hat. He had a bag, kind of like a briefcase. And he had these black horn rim sunglasses, dark kind of olive skin.

[Josh Clark]

Would you say they call him Swarthy, which I think is like stewardess. That's been phased out. You know what I mean?

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought swarthy. I thought that was like a sea captain.

[Josh Clark]

No, I'm sure there were swarthy sea captains because.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because they're out in the sun. So they ended up getting olive skinned.

[Josh Clark]

That's rugged.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

You're thinking of the Gorton's fisherman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, right. Oh, he was swarthy.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's swarthy as h. So he had. He had this kind of dark wavy hair. And other than that, he was just sort of an unremarkable dude. He wanted to blend in, right?

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah. Okay. So this guy's sitting in 18 seat, he's being unremarkable. Aside from wearing the sunglasses, he's smoking with his left hand, which has nothing to do with anything, but we just kind of wanted to show off how much research we've done on this. And when Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant working his area, comes over and gives him his bourbon and I think, seven Up, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

He hands her a note. And to Florence Schaffner. She was 23. She was very pretty. She was, at the time a stewardess. And this happened to her all the time. Like, businessmen drinking sevens and sevens, like, passed her notes and hit on her all the time. So when this guy in 18C, Dan Cooper, handed her a note, she took the note and just put it in her flight apron without looking at it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And turned and walked away with all the other notes.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

From previous flights, from all the men who wanted to rescue her from her life.

[Josh Clark]

Come away with me. Swarthy. And so Dan Cooper sees this, and he goes, miss, you may want to have a look at that note. I have a bomb.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think you know where we're going with this, D.B. cooper.

[Josh Clark]

You know, when we were coming here today, we were like, wow, we're really rolling the dice. It's entirely possible that everyone here had the DB Cooper case drilled into them from, like, third grade on. That's not the case, is it?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. You didn't study it in class.

[Josh Clark]

It's such a sigh of relief. I told that to Yumi, and Yumi was like, that's so dumb. She's like, do you know everything about the burning of Atlanta? And I said, no. And she's like, no, no, you don't. And they don't know everything about DB Cooper. And I went back to sleep.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this was not the first commercial airplane hijacking. It actually, the first One was in 1948. And remarkably, between 1968, just three years earlier, and the time D.B. cooper hijacked this plane, there were 100 commercial hijackings in three years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So this is not new.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was not new. But I remember, like, if anyone here grew up in, like, the 70s and stuff, it was a thing like, planes got hijacked all the time because you could bring guns and bombs on planes and you didn't need ID and no one cared.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were like, hmm, this is weird.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's pretty much where the FBI was at the time. And by 1971, they were just starting to, like, get hip to the idea of hijackings being a problem. And so their first idea was, well, we'll put an air marshal on every flight. And then they looked at the schedule of flights in the United States, and they were like, oh, this may have been a bad idea, but they tried. Was a fine idea if everyone. If like a third of the population in the United States were air marshals. And, yeah, it was a good idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a good idea if you want one of every, like, 300 flights with an air marshal.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right. And the other 299 open for hijacking. Right. So this was. They figured out after a few years, like, logistics of American air travel.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is J. Edgar Hoover's idea, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was still in charge of the FBI in 1971.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So he'd been there for about 50 years. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So his idea was air marshals didn't work, but they were still trying it. There was no air Marshal on Flight 305, the DB Cooper hijacking flight.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They're like, Portland to Seattle. Maybe we should put, like, three air marshals on that one hi Traffic flight.

[Josh Clark]

And, I mean, it made sense that there would not be an air marshal on that flight because most hijackings were crazed lone gunmen with a handgun who wanted to be taken to Cuba for political reasons. Basically, no one flying from PDX to Sea Tac wanted to be taken to Cuba. So there was no reason for an air marshal to be on the flight. It was a pretty good bet to not have an air marshal on. They just didn't expect DB Cooper because he was a pretty novel person. The idea of a single guy taking control of a flight for money with a bomb, that was new. And like our whole conception of a mad bomber hijacking a flight comes from D.B. cooper and Sonny Bono's character in Airplane 2.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is actually. I did a little more research between 1968 and 79. It's literally referred to as the golden age of skyjacking. I was talking to Josh, I was like, I didn't know you could have. I thought a golden age was about something good. I didn't know you could have. The golden age of dysentery, the good old days.

[Josh Clark]

It was good for the hijackers because they could get away with it no problem.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe that's who wrote that. The golden age skyjacking, man. All right, so Florence Schaffner. I'm sorry, Schaffer. Reads the note, and she says, you know what? Give me. Or Cooper says, you know what? Give me that note back. Which is a very key thing because that means they won't have a sample of his handwriting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he asked for the note back. And from that point on, he did not converse like everything else. He had them write down to take to the captain so they would have no more like physical evidence of his handwriting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The only handwriting sample they had was that ticket duplicate, and it was in block letters, which. Yeah, he went like this. Dan Cooper.

[Chuck Bryant]

So she sits down and she says, you know, I want to know that this is legit. This is for real. Can I, like, get a look at that bomb that you're talking about? Makes sense. And he shows her, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gives her a little peek.

[Josh Clark]

He opened her his bag just enough, and she went to put her fingers in and he snapped it shut. And she went.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just like Pretty Woman. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And.

[Chuck Bryant]

But she sees what, you know, she sees red sticks of dynamite and a battery and I guess, presumably like an alarm clock with two bells on it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It's got like a skull and crossbones. It says you die or something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Electrical tape is all around it. Because he watched a lot of cartoons. He knows how to make a bomb.

[Josh Clark]

Well, she. I mean, she bought it, clearly. She saw the bomb and she took down a note. He said, take this down. I have a ransom demand. He said, I want $200,000 by 5pm in cash. Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes when we land. I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I'll do the job. Which is. That was tough talk in 1971.

[Chuck Bryant]

Again, he watched a lot of cartoons. And that's what you say when you mean business. That roughly is about $1.2 million today. Yeah, I think it's a little low if you're going to go through a skyjacking.

[Josh Clark]

It's a lot of work for a million dollars.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I would have said, like, if you're going to ask for 200 grand, ask for 300 or 400. That's just me.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm no skyjacker. So this turns out to be the only threat that Dan Cooper makes during the entire ordeal. He. He is this very first note that he gave up. So from that point on, like I said, he dictated everything else so they could just pass notes back and forth. And aside from a couple of conversations with the pilots on the cockpit phone from the rear of the plane to the cockpit, they didn't have any interaction, the pilots, whatsoever, with Dan Cooper.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So there were like, almost no help whatsoever during the investigation. Right. And then the fact that he asked for two parachutes was a big stroke of Brilliance, because it did show his hand to the FBI that he was going to jump out of the plane with the ransom money. But it also said, FBI, I'm probably going to make a hostage jump with me, so don't tamper with any of these parachutes, which if the FBI had, would have been murder. But we're talking about J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, so they may have. They may have tried just that. So it's pretty smart that he asked for two pair because they didn't know what he was going to do.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So Schaffner takes that ransom note, gives it to Alice Hancock, she takes it over to the pilot and the co pilot, and, well, what did they do, Josh? You do a great pilot. They called Sea Tech Airport and said.

[Josh Clark]

Seatac, we just want to advise you on a bit of a fiddlesticks we got going on up here. Sonny Bono has taken control of the plane. He wants $200,000 in negotiable American currency.

[Chuck Bryant]

By 5pm Negotiable American currency?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was a very weird thing to ask for.

[Josh Clark]

It was. And so SeaTac was like, we should probably call the cops. And the cops said, we should probably call the FBI.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, this was the Seattle Police Department in 1971. They were like, no, no, no, no, no. We. We don't deal with things like this.

[Josh Clark]

They're like, wait, wait, this guy doesn't want to go to Cuba. We don't understand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, we're literally waiting for John Rambo to wander through town so we can harass him just 10 more years. Wait, that was Oregon, though, wasn't it? Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty close. That joke will kill tomorrow night.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man. Rambo joke.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, remember it? So all of a sudden, there's all this crazy energy going on down on the ground, right? So the FBI comes in and they're trying to get the money together. They're like, we have an hour. You got to give us more time. It's like, no, you can't have more time. They're like, okay, that's fine. We'll get all this stuff together. You guys are going to have to stay up there until we get everything ready for you. So the plane is circling Sea Tac, and they told the passengers that the plane was experiencing mechanical problems, which I would have had a problem hearing, you know, it wouldn't have. I think they could have thought that through a little more.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's experiencing mechanical problems. So we're just going to keep flying.

[Josh Clark]

We're going to stay aloft, see what Happens. Captain Scott is a gambling man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes, though they didn't care. They were hooking up in the bathroom. This is 1971.

[Josh Clark]

If it had been Chucky, would have been like, I told you we should have driven.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know.

[Josh Clark]

It's nothing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Could have been to Portland.

[Josh Clark]

So they had to circle for an hour, and they ended up telling the passengers, oh, we just need to burn off some gas, and everything will be fine. Right. And the passengers apparently were totally unaware that they'd been hijacked. That's how cool Cooper was. Right. But one passenger later said, I had a pretty good feeling we'd been hijacked. And the press Bull was like, shut up. Go get off the day.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was that guy.

[Josh Clark]

Next person. Yeah, I was at that game.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was at that game seven. It was all right. He's that dude, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Any remarkable event. Yeah, I was there.

[Josh Clark]

It was no big deal. I knew it was a hijacking. You really had me stumped there for a second.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm role playing game seven.

[Josh Clark]

So SeaTac is circling, right? They're circling, circling an hour, killing time, but just burning off gas. And Florence Schaffner has gone away to take the note to Alice Hancock, who takes notes to the cockpit. She's on the relay team basically now. And D.B. cooper says, well, Dan Cooper says, hey, Tina Muclow, why don't you sit beside me for a while? And she did. And she ended up kind of taking a bit of a seat in history, if you will, if you'll allow us, that terrible analogy. And she sat down, and she got. She spent a lot of time with Dan Cooper, and they ended up chatting. And she said, Dan Cooper kept a level head during a very tense situation, like, the whole time. And they chatted about things like Tina Mucklow's home state, which is Minnesota. They talked about a nearby Air Force base and how long it took to drive to Sea Tac. It was like 20 minutes or something. You guys can actually probably guess the Air Force base. We don't know that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then they also. At one point, he looked out the window and he said, it looks like we're over Tacoma. So all this would indicate a lot to the FBI later on, right. That this guy was maybe a local.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I'm kind of curious. Could anyone here recognize Tacoma from an airplane?

[Josh Clark]

From an airplane.

[Chuck Bryant]

From an airplane.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do they have a huge, like, field cut out of grass that says Tacoma corn? What are they saying?

[Josh Clark]

I think they're saying corn. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

The smell. Oh, boy. I knew this would go over well here. By the way, we didn't mention they diverted all the other flights away from Sea Tac at the time because they wanted that to be the only plane in the area. And to me, the most remarkable part of this whole story is one of the other planes in the air. The dude, the pilot gets on and tells everyone else on that plane what's going on.

[Josh Clark]

Well, he, like, he patched into the comm link between Flight 305 and SeaTac for the listening enjoyment of the passengers on his flight.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's insane. It's like, I'm sorry we're delayed, but here's what's going on on another flight nearby, right?

[Josh Clark]

Just sit back and listen to the dulcet tones of a single skyjacking.

[Chuck Bryant]

Again, it was the seventies. Everyone was drinking. They're like, this is remarkable. Thank God it's not us.

[Josh Clark]

Everything's better when you're drinking.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so he recognizes Tacoma, which apparently everyone in this room could do.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, right. We were impressed by that, but it's nothing. Occasionally he went, smells like Tacoma.

[Chuck Bryant]

So all of these are sort of clues, though, if he recognized Tacoma, he knew about the Air Force base. That clearly, maybe the guy's kind of from the area. Might be a clue later on. So Mucklaw, at this point, asked Dan Cooper, she said, do you have a grudge against our airline, sir? And he said, no, ma', am, I don't have a grudge against your airline. I just have a grudge.

[Josh Clark]

Cryptic, right? She was like, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like they did.

[Josh Clark]

So back on the ground, the FBI's, like, going crazy. The local cops are going crazy. Everybody's going crazy trying to get 200 grand in cash together. Turns out that was the easiest part of this whole thing. So, Northwest Orient's president at the time, Donald Nierop.

[Chuck Bryant]

Any nairops in the house?

[Josh Clark]

No, he would have been in Minnesota.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I'm convinced that someone in here is going to be related to someone in this story.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I am, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I'm just waiting.

[Josh Clark]

I'm waiting for somebody to stand up and be like, that's a lie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or for someone to stand up and say, I am D.B. cooper. Oh, yeah, that would be amazing. We'd have to come up with a different show tomorrow night.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or just bring him along.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. And here he is, everybody. So Donald Nyerop, the president of Northwest Orient, he's like, yeah, sure, we'll totally pay that. We have a huge insurance policy on this kind of thing. Apparently, northwest had to pay like 20 grand, and their insurance company paid out 180 grand. And they tapped cfirst bank, which had a downtown branch. And in this downtown branch, they had a really great idea. They had stacks of $20 bills in varying amounts so that it looked like a nervous teller ran into the back and, like, put some twenties together in the event of a bank robbery. Right. And then would come out and be like, here you go, bank robber. You're getting all scot free. But it turns out that every serial number on every one of those twenties had been recorded. So it worked for bank robberies. Worked just as well for skyjackings as well. So they had the money, no problems. The parachutes were just very difficult.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was actually the harder part. Back in 1971, the big recreational skydiving craze had not yet taken hold. It happened here and there, but the manager at sea tac said, I got a guy. Don't you worry. He's got an operation called Seattle sky sports in Issaquah.

[Josh Clark]

Anybody from Issaquah, shout out to Issaquah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Why do you call it Seattle sky sports? Did they mooch off of Seattle?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, off of the teat of Seattle.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's like, I got a guy. His name is Earl Cossey, and he agreed to help. Little side note, Earl Cossey was actually murdered three years ago. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Apparently he has.

[Josh Clark]

Chuck likes to bring the room down.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know we're all having too much fun. He got killed by a blow to the head in his garage. But apparently, you know, some cooperists that are still active today on the Internet. You know, these conspiracy dudes. That's how they type, that is everyone did it. I love that everybody. See, you can all be conspiracy theorists. Get out your tinfoil hat. Although women can't be because they're too smart. It's always guys. Did you know? So Earl, Cassie was killed, but they think it has nothing to do with it. Even though kooperists are like, are you sure they're trying to silence a man? Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

So Cassie, pretty great man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very well timed.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Kassi called his. His operation and to the. To the dude working there and said, hey, can you get together these parachutes? I need two fronts and two backs. The guy said, sure, bruh. And in his haste, he packs three regular chutes. Well, not three regular. He packs one military chute.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

Two regular shoots. And one thing that I still don't understand called a dummy chute that doesn't open.

[Josh Clark]

No. So like, if you were working at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, you would get really, really sick of having to fold up the whole parachute every time somebody was training, throwing out the pilot chute, which is just the little chute that comes out first and pulls the bigger chute out. Right. If all you're trying to do is throw that part out, you don't need the bigger chute. So if you're an employee at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, you may have the idea that you should just sew the bigger part shut. There should be no parachute that has, like, the most important part sewn shut. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We decided that is our rule. Every parachute should open.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But this is the thing. And they're called dummy chutes. The thing is, everybody's like, oh, we got it covered. We'll just put a big X on it, and everybody will know it's a dummy chute. So one of these dummy chutes made it into the four chutes that were delivered to DB Cooper. So the money and the chutes go in the cop car, and he does a donut, skidding out, like, in front of the plane, and gets out and stands outside and waits for the plane to land, I should say. So when they get everything together, they let Flight 305 know that they come get it, basically, and they prepare to land. And DB Cooper does something very smart.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He said, you know what? I bet you there's going to be snipers on the ground, because I've seen a movie or two. I've seen Black Sunday. Anyone? No.

[Josh Clark]

Didn't that come out, like, five or six years later, maybe?

[Chuck Bryant]

Actually, I'll have to look that up.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was 76.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know this?

[Josh Clark]

Sure. All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He said, I have a dream about a movie one day that would be called Black Sunday. And there's gonna be snipers at that airport. So have everybody put the shades down on the windows. They're all drunk. They don't care. They won't ask any questions. And so they did so. Which turned out to be a pretty good move because there were, in fact, snipers.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Exactly. So the plane lands, and no one's allowed to get off yet. Cooper says, hey, Tina, do me a solid. Go out and get the money and the chutes and come back with them. Okay? Then we can let the passengers off, and Mucklow leaves the plane. And at this point, and this is one of the first reasons why Tina Mucklow is one of our heroes, once she's off the plane, she could have been, like, so long, chumps. See you in hell. Which may have been a little harsh had she said that within earshot of somebody in this hostage situation. She could have thought it. Her actions could have said as much. She didn't. She got the shoots, she got the money, and she essentially traded herself for the hostages and went back on the plane.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm so out of there.

[Josh Clark]

That's metal. Chuck would have said out loud, see you in hell, Flight 305.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would have walked straight to a baggage claim and. Or the ground transportation and said, take me to cousin Ike's. I need some loose leaf tea. Good luck with the skyjacking.

[Josh Clark]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But she came back, which is amazing.

[Josh Clark]

She did come back. So she traded herself for these hostages, and the hostages were allowed to leave, and so, too, were Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner. The rest of the crew is basically like, there's no reason for you to stay here, so go. So it was down to Schaffner and Cooper, and then in the cockpit, Radissak and Scott. Right. And Scott and Radissak repaid Tina Mucklow by staying themselves. There was a rope ladder, actually, that they could have climbed out of. They had almost no interaction whatsoever with DB Cooper. They could have, at their leisure, they could have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while and then gone to the safety of, like, the FBI barricade. And they didn't. They stuck around, and they, like, were like, we're gonna see this hijacking through.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. In my, like, in my comedic mind's eye, I see them getting out on the rope swing or rope ladder.

[Josh Clark]

That's different. Rope swing.

[Chuck Bryant]

That would be amazing.

[Josh Clark]

They may have, like.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like a tire swing on the front of the plane. They get off on the rope ladder. Tina Mucklaw never comes back, and D.B. cooper's just sitting on the plane by himself. Himself.

[Josh Clark]

He's like, oh, it happened again.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Is he typing?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no. That's. Sorry. I didn't know they had a rope ladder. That's crazy.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's that?

[Josh Clark]

Before. I know every airplane has a rope ladder in the car.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wake up, man.

[Josh Clark]

Fashioned out of, like, old cheats.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the FAA actually had their chief psychiatrist on the ground, and this dude does a quick analysis, you know, like, let me do one of those movie readings of who this guy is and what's gonna happen. And he says, you know, what's gonna happen is you're gonna give this guy the Money and the parachutes. You're gonna go up there in the plane. He's gonna jump out and blow up the plane and just let everyone know that.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He's gonna force tell the pilot and.

[Chuck Bryant]

Co pilot that this is what's coming.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He's gonna force mucloud and jump with him and then blow up the plane afterward. Right. But yeah, make sure the cockpit knows. And then he added. And he probably has some sort of fixation on longer than usual nipples. So make sure he's not exposed to those because he has some sort of fetish based on his experience with his mother because it's a 1971 psychoanalyst for the FAA. Hey, if I had done that in a German accident, it would have sunk in even faster. Did you tell them that? Make sure you tell them that, guys. Is that all right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to go ahead and say now what I'm going to say in like an hour backstage.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was amazing.

[Josh Clark]

Was it? Thank you. I thought that's not what you were gonna say. Actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't. Didn't see that one coming. You got me. When you. Yeah. I had no idea where you were going, literally. You said longer than usual nipples. And I went in my head, I went, am I. Is this happening? Like, Josh, Josh, am I still in Atlanta? Is the trip. Am I asleep? Pure gold, buddy.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

And for a limited time, save [e-mail] with code fall25. Bring the boom.

[Josh Clark]

Xboom.

[Chuck Bryant]

Where are we? I am so thrown.

[Josh Clark]

So we said Cooper was cool, right? The cool head. He was so cool. He ordered Food for the crew during the refueling process.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he's a nice guy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You want to know who else is cool? It's Tina Mucklaw. Because once they released the passengers and they got the money on board, she sat back down, and he offered her a couple of the stacks of money. And she said, well, you go ahead and say it.

[Josh Clark]

No tipping allowed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Smooth again. Had it been me, well, first of all, I would have been at Uncle Ikes by then. But if I was dumb enough to get back on, I would be like, yeah, pay it forward.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, just two stacks of bills.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

What gives? Jerk. I want half.

[Chuck Bryant]

She's amazing. So the plane's being refueled. He passed along a request, very specific request for what's to happen when they go to take off. He said, I want to take off with that aft staircase that I know is back there down in the jump off the plane position. And they said, you can't take off with the plane. You can't take off with the door down. And he said, well, can you check on that? Are you sure? And they said, no, you can't do that. And he said, are you super sure? And they said, no, you can't do that. He said, all right. And they said, oh, but once you're up there, you can totally lower it and jump out. And he said, well, why didn't we just start there? Cause that's really the only thing that matters.

[Josh Clark]

He's like, fine, fine. And then the pilot's like, well, where do you want to go? And Dan Cooper says, mexico City, let's say. And the pilot goes, well, that's kind of far. We're going to have to refuel. Is Reno okay? And Dan Cooper goes, I don't know how I can get this across any more. Clearly, I'm jumping out of the plane. The next time we go up, fly wherever you want. Just fly southward.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they refuel the plane, and the only time Dan Cooper gets a little. A little ruffled is when it takes a little long for his liking. And he says, it shouldn't take this long. Let's get the show on the road.

[Josh Clark]

Right? He picked up for one of the few times he picked up the cockpit or the cabin and cockpit phone and said, let's get the show on the road. I would have screamed it and hit the phone and then hit myself in the head with it and then just started crying and been like, it's never gonna work. This is. This is never going to work.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it's well established we'd Be the worst skyjackers ever.

[Josh Clark]

And hostages.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, just get. No, I don't want any part of it. He also gives them instructions on how to fly the plane, which is getting really specific. He said, don't go any higher than 10,000ft. Set your wing flaps at 15 degrees, which apparently we learned is an angle that only the 727100 could position those.

[Josh Clark]

Wing flaps, which everyone in this room knows because it's a Boeing. Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he said, don't go any faster than 190 miles per hour, 200 knots. So that means they're going to be flying slow and low, like you're cooking ribs or jumping off a plane, because that means the cabin isn't pressurized. And that means when you open that door, you're not just going to suck everything out. It's still skydiveable.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's the terminology. Okay, so Cooper had some problems, right? He had specifically asked for a knapsack, and the feds had given him the 200 grand in a bank bag, which, as we all know, is a very unwieldy, clumsy bag. Right. It's like a canvas bag. There's nothing to it. What do you, like, tuck it under your arm? What are you supposed to do with that? Right. So he's like, well, I need to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one of these parachutes for its rigging. And he chose the pink one, which. The pink one was actually the best one of all of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because it was the dummy shoot, the military shoot, and then the so.

[Josh Clark]

So shoot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that what we're gonna call it? Yeah, the medium shoot.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then the pink one, which, like Josh said, is the best one. So he cuts the stuff loose. He makes a handle for it. Things are happening at this point. They move to the rear of the plane, he and Tina Mucklaw, and he says, you know, I think I need help lowering the staircase. She goes back there with him. She's a little freaked out at this point. Super freaked out. Like, she was calm and cool, but, like, it's go time and she thinks she's going to get sucked out. Rightfully so. Because she didn't understand the physics of, you know, the. The plane being that low and that slow, or she didn't know they were picking ribs.

[Josh Clark]

To hell with physics. I am still freaked out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Josh Clark]

We're about to lower a staircase at 10,000ft.

[Chuck Bryant]

Why did I mention physics? Exactly. So she gets back there, and he said. She said, can I at least have some of that rope so I can tie myself to the interior of this plane.

[Josh Clark]

Like, that's how helpful she was. She's like, just let me lash myself to the plane.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let me sink and I'll help myself. Right? Yeah, I just spit, like all the.

[Josh Clark]

Way across that I spit earlier. It's fine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, good. We should learn to sync those up.

[Josh Clark]

Like in Vegas.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's what I was facing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, man, we are in sync.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, my God. Except, well, never mind. So she asked for some rope to lash herself in, and he goes, at this point, you know what? Nevermind.

[Josh Clark]

He literally, like, this is the quote.

[Chuck Bryant]

He goes, never mind, never mind. He said, you know what? You just go back up to the cockpit and you see that first class curtain. Just don't come any further back. I got it from there. He turns back around and looks, and then he turns back around to where she was, and he just sees like a pile of dust to where she was just standing. She was like, in the cockpit all of a sudden. And so it's go time in the cockpit. 7:42pm the little light comes on that says door ajar, I guess. And they said that the pilots were like, tina, like, let's call back one more time.

[Josh Clark]

She's like, no, you can't call them. And they're like, no, really, we should call.

[Chuck Bryant]

We can totally call him.

[Josh Clark]

Like, the FAA shrink said, like, he might blow us up. He said some other weird stuff too, but he said, like, he's gonna blow us up. We should really butter this guy up. That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And we could have left on that rope swing and we stayed because of you. Rope ladder. So they call.

[Josh Clark]

They do call. And the pilot is like, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, am I Cooper?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Ring, ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

You let it ring a couple of times.

[Josh Clark]

Ring, ring, ring, ring.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dan Cooper, hijacker.

[Josh Clark]

Mr. Cooper, we want to make sure your flight is as comfortable as possible. Is there anything we can do to help you back there to make your hijacking more so successful, sir?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. Click. I know, it's kind of rude. He said no, Hung up. And then at 8:12pm the crew felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit, as if someone had jumped off the rear of it. And they said, tina, go check. We're flying the plane. She's like, wait a minute. Only one of you is flying?

[Josh Clark]

No, it takes both of us. You don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's it. So from the moment that Tina Mucklaw left shut that first class curtain, nobody to anyone's knowledge ever Saw Dan Cooper again. Yeah, but that's not the end of the show.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not. So there was a manhunt. Right. So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that he was going to jump off the back of the 727. The FBI was like, we need to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that are in the area. We're gonna scramble them to go. Follow this 727.

[Chuck Bryant]

What is the scrambling? I never get that.

[Josh Clark]

It's like. Like, go.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, but it just sounds. It sounds chaotic. Like they're scrambling jets.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's. I think that's the point. Like, people are supposed to run around and bump into each other and fall out and then get up and get in their jets and fly off. I would say that's classic scream.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would have renamed it. It would be like, activate the jets.

[Josh Clark]

That's not bad. That's not bad at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

Scramble the jets.

[Josh Clark]

Sounds desperate. You're right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Activate the jets.

[Josh Clark]

So either, however the jets were brought into this picture, there was a problem with them in that they were way too fast for the 727, which is putzing along at 190 miles an hour. Then all of a sudden, there's a jet that goes. And then the next one comes.

[Chuck Bryant]

And.

[Josh Clark]

They'Re like, what are we going to do? Well, we'll stick a helicopter on them. This is like Goldilocks. The helicopter was too slow. 727 is just putzing along. People are going and trying to catch up. Nothing happening.

[Chuck Bryant]

They should have scrambled a 727 and just followed right behind him. That makes sense as matters with the headlights on. Right. So they're scrambling.

[Josh Clark]

The point is, nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped. So they used that 8:12pm Oscillation to kind of figure out where they should start looking. And they zeroed in on a place called Ariel, Washington, near the Lewis River. Anybody from Ariel? Good. Cause we got Ariel jokes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nobody from Ariel. Anyone ever heard of the Lewis River. Okay. So they get this manhunt going. They're combing. They're scrambling and combing. Those are the two things you do here in the FBI.

[Josh Clark]

It was a massive manhunt, too. There's like a thousand troops and cops combing this area.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. No one from Seattle pd. Of course. They were just sitting around stoned.

[Josh Clark]

Hanging.

[Chuck Bryant]

Out in Issaquah, waiting for Rambo. Here's another fun fact. There was a millionaire, a local millionaire.

[Josh Clark]

Who?

[Chuck Bryant]

We don't know. Do you know the name? No.

[Josh Clark]

I've looked. If anybody knows, just stand up and say it with dignity.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was on the news. So this local millionaire says, you know what? That's near Lake Merwin, and I'm going to rent a submarine because I'm a millionaire. And that's, you know, we're.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I don't work. I'm a millionaire.

[Chuck Bryant]

He got a submarine and he trolled the depths of Lake Merwin. He said he rented a small submarine because he's not an extravagant local millionaire. No, no. 20 footer will do.

[Josh Clark]

The 25 seems ostentatious. The hydraulics on it. Who needs that? In a summary?

[Chuck Bryant]

Does it have a metal detector? Which would not have helped because it was cash bills.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So you'd make a great local millionaire.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would. If only. The other weird thing that happened was the. The CIA got involved, which is a little bit strange.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they scrambled the SR71 Blackbird, right?

[Josh Clark]

They scrambled it several times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was almost over easy. Terrible.

[Josh Clark]

You should be ashamed of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

It doesn't even make sense, because once you scramble it, it can't be over easy. Terrible joke, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I say. It's all right. Rebound. Rebound.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is this really happening? Did you talk about long nipples?

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The SR71 Blackbird was at the time, super secret. We all know about it now. But at the time, it was very secret. And it was kind of a big deal to get this thing up in the air.

[Josh Clark]

So especially multiple times, like one time, it's like your dad is the head of CIA and you're the head of Seattle pd, so you can make it happen maybe once. Right. Multiple times. That's weird that the SR71 was scrambled. Right. The FBI is very studious and likes to do a lot of obvious stuff, so they interviewed everybody in the area with the last name of Cooper, which there's like a square one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

This is like square. Negative five.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's negative five. I looked it up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, so you look up all the Coopers in the area, and at this point, they have a press conference. And if you've noticed, we've been calling this dude Dan Cooper the whole time, because up until this time, he was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference and there's. It's sort of. I don't think we know who messed it up. Right. Well, either a reporter or a cop.

[Josh Clark]

Either a file clerk or a cop talking in front of a reporter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Either UPI or ap, depending on who you ask. And they were saying, like, what Cooper could have done something like this?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And somebody said, well, there's a Dan Cooper who's a cat burglar in the area. That's a terrible suggestion. Cat burglar does not go to hijacker, you know? And this reporter was like, what a scoop. And hit the wire with cops looking for D.B. cooper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he said, D.B.

[Josh Clark]

Cooper. Did I say Dan Cooper?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's all right.

[Josh Clark]

A little part of my brain was like, you just said, dan, let's start over. So a cop was talking in front of an AP reporter, and they said, what Cooper do, you know, could have done this? And the cop said, well, there's this DB Cooper.

[Chuck Bryant]

What did you just say? Did you say AD Cooper?

[Josh Clark]

I said, there's a DB Cooper. I got it that time. He's a cat burglar. And the reporter said, this is hitting the wire. And he reported that the cops were looking for a DB Cooper. And it just changed from that point on.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, he was never D.B. cooper. It was literally a mistake. So that's why we all know him as DB Cooper today. And the FBI actually little smart, believe it or not. And they said, you know what? Let's keep it that way. That way we'll know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper will know it's a hot lead. So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And anytime a tip like that came in, like, the office prankster would come in with the fax and be like, hot lead, hot lead. It was like a joke around the Portland office. Everybody loved Richard.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this will. This will come up later, too, when it comes time to solve the crime. They later on, the FBI learned that there was a. A comic book in the 1950s about a Dan Cooper who was a Canadian jet pilot. And it was a Belgian comic, which is a little weird, but it was. You know, there was literally a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes in comic book form.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it could be a clue, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

And that's a niche comic. Right. So it's. I would say so printed in Belgium, in the French, about a Canadian fighter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pilot in the French.

[Josh Clark]

All they had to do was find, like, the 10 people who knew of that comic and be like, what'd you do? We know it was one of you. And so the FBI had a pretty clear belief, very openly stated belief, that D.B. cooper died in the jump. It was just the line that they took right off the bat. They're like, there's no way this guy Survived. And he wasn't the lead agent on the case, but he became the most famous agent. Ralph Himmelsbach.

[Chuck Bryant]

Any Himmelsbachs in the house? No. You're a liar, Sir.

[Josh Clark]

You're a liar. So Himmelsbach, like I said, he wasn't the lead agent, but he was out of the Seattle office and he became the most famous agent associated with it. And he actually gave the case its official name, Nor Jack, which is stupid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Northwest Jack. Skyjack.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But remove the C. It's just called the DB Cooper case, you know, Or Heist. Even better. So he self published a book in 1986 about the case. And Himmelsbach said he thinks that D.B. cooper didn't even get his chute open. That he plunged to his death and hit the forest floor with such impact that he basically was buried immediately with the parachute still attached and maybe even the money. And that was Himmel's box take.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was. Excuse me.

[Josh Clark]

You gonna get that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I realized it wasn't a twist off. And then I realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. Nice going. You just saw the sum of Chuck's college education.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Cooper had jumped from the plane. Did he live? Did he not? The odds are against him in a lot of ways. Outside the temperature that night was 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Hey, we're in America, man. Just say 20 degrees.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you're right.

[Josh Clark]

20 degrees.

[Chuck Bryant]

USA. At 10,000ft, it was negative 7 degrees.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he was going 190 miles an hour. There was freezing rain. There was like a quarter crescent or not a quarter crescent. A crescent moon.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Those are two different things.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Crescent moon in the sky. But it was cloudy and rainy, so there probably was zero light. It's freezing. He's 10,000ft.

[Josh Clark]

He's not dressed for the occasion. No.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's wearing loafers. He's wearing an overcoat. He's got this. He doesn't have this knapsack, so he's fashioned this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope.

[Josh Clark]

Plus. Plus the area he's jumping out into. And he's flying at 10,000ft over the Cascades. Some of the Cascades, as you guys know, are higher than 10,000ft. Very dangerous jump. And there's a lot of pointy trees. I mean, the pointiest. Am I right, Seattle? The pointiest trees around. Plus, despite what the FAA guy said. The FAA psychiatrist.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

He did not leave the bomb to be detonated. After he jumped off. He took it with him. Bank Bag, bomb, overcoat, loafers, parachute.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pointy tree.

[Josh Clark]

That was my DB Cooper jump impression.

[Chuck Bryant]

And by the way, the FBI, later on they interviewed Muclaulk, who was the one who saw the.

[Josh Clark]

Schaffner.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Schaffner saw the bomb like you just did. And she said, yeah, we have these red sticks taped together. And they went, huh? That wasn't dynamite. Dynamite isn't red. You've seen too many cartoons. Dynamite is tan. Road flares are red. So it was more than likely a fake bomb with an alarm clock and road flares.

[Josh Clark]

Plus, DB Cooper did not help his cause by his choice of parachutes. Right. So he chose a military chute as his main chute. It was not a great chute. The rip cord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational chutes. And once it deployed, you can't steer it very well. It was not the best choice. Even worse was his choice of the dummy chute for his front reserve chute. He took the best chute and gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag, left the second best chute and chose the two worst chutes to jump out with. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I didn't know you couldn't steer a military chute, but it makes total sense.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they're just like, go for it, pal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because if I was in the military, I would steer. I would be like, why don't we go over here instead? I see a lot of guns down there. Yeah, let's take it this way. So they just drop you? Apparently. Yeah, man. I guess they know what they're doing, though. So some other theories, because it's Washington, believe it or not, some people actually posited that he was eaten by Sasquatch.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

With a straight face.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, let's be honest, how many of you in here were thinking the same thing? Some other people say, well, he was clearly burned up by the jet exhaust because when you come down the stairs of a 727, the rear jet engines right in front of you, and it would have been 7, 800 degrees right there. But the FBI conducted a test right afterward where they took a 727 up and they took a 200 pound sled.

[Chuck Bryant]

A 200 pound prison victim.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He was condemned. Don't worry about it, it's fine. And they said and threw it off. And they found that the 200 pound sled, that's a euphemism, I guess now, sure. Went straight down. So it didn't come in contact in any way with the jet exhaust. So it kind of did away with this idea that he burned up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it was kind of good news, bad news, though, because what it did do at least was it mimic that same oscillation. So they're like, oh, you know what? It was the exact same thing happened when you were in the air. So that 8:12pm jump time, it was probably right on the money. So we know probably where he might have landed.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So there's a lot of questions remaining. Right. And there were some clues left behind. The thing that really kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they combed the area where they were looking for him with like a thousand people just combing this area, this SR71. Blackbirds circling around, looking. They didn't find anything. He had left a couple of things on board the plane. Right. He left his clip on tie, which was his second biggest secret that night.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, that's what you do before you jump out.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, you take it off and you.

[Josh Clark]

It was a clip on all along.

[Chuck Bryant]

You unbutton that button and then you're like, I'm out of here.

[Josh Clark]

He left eight cigarette butts of his Raleigh brand cigarettes. He'd smoked eight over five hours. And all eight butts have since been lost. Right. They found a hair on the headrest. The thing is, the FBI traded in fingerprints. That was their big thing at the time. And Dan Cooper had been very smart to not leave a single print on any of the cigarette butts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, true. But there was fingerprints on the in flight, I guess. Sky mall magazine.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Rip sky mall. What do you mean it's not around? It's gone. Yeah, sky mall's gone. Did you guys not know this?

[Chuck Bryant]

No way.

[Josh Clark]

That's why I said rip sky.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, but I just. I don't know. Where am I going to get my putting green that doubles as a cat feeder, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

You can just go to frontgate because frontgate has everything everyone needs.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's that?

[Josh Clark]

Frontgate. They advertised in skymall, but they have stores too.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't even know where I am right now.

[Josh Clark]

That's uncle Ike's.

[Chuck Bryant]

What year is it? No. So it would be seven years before any trace of the hijacking. Any real clue turned up. And it was in 1978. There were some hunters in Oregon Hunting animals, I guess. Right. Unless it was the most dangerous game.

[Josh Clark]

Right. You don't know it's Oregon.

[Chuck Bryant]

You never know. There are less civilized people than we have here. They found a plastic instruction placard showing how to lower the aft staircase in the Woods. So this is, like, a really good clue.

[Josh Clark]

It was. But it didn't lead to anything new.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, no, because it was definitely from Flight 305, which was. I guess I'm saying it was cool.

[Josh Clark]

It was cool. Like, if you were the hunter, you'd be like, I'm keeping this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But it was on the flight path, so it didn't generate any new leads, but it generated a lot of renewed interest in the case, because, believe it or not, the DB Cooper case had kind of fallen to the wayside in the last, like, seven years. People just didn't think much about it anymore.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was golden age of skyjacking, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So it was like a dime a dozen. But all of a sudden, everybody's like, we got to make a movie. Who's the biggest movie star we've got? Tree Williams. Make him as DB Cooper. And that's what they did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Has anyone ever seen the pursuit of D.B. cooper?

[Josh Clark]

No. That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nobody.

[Josh Clark]

That's right, Everybody. God bless you, Seattle. Smart town. Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

I figured here like somebody. Because it was a local thing. 1981. Very, very bad movie was made, several starring Treat Williams and Robert Duvall. Right.

[Josh Clark]

Whose mom needed surgery at the time to lay off.

[Chuck Bryant]

So here's what you. Well, first of all, if you want to know how big a piece of garbage this movie is, it had three directors. And if you know anything about filmmaking, if you have more than one director, it's probably a really bad movie for one reason or another. If it has three, then it's guaranteed to be bad. But all you need to do is go home tonight when you get back to your houseboat in Issaquah. Does anyone here live on a houseboat? No.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because I was going to ask if I could come stay over, because those things are awesome.

[Josh Clark]

That was just Sleepless in Seattle. You've seen that too many times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no, they exist. Because I tried to stay in an Airbnb actually, before I came here on a houseboat. Yeah, I totally did. And I ended up in some stupid hotel downtown. Go home to your YouTubes, type in pursuit of DB Cooper and watch the first three minutes. Because this movie literally starts with the point from where DB Cooper jumps out of the back of the plane. It starts from the point where we know nothing else that happened is literally fictional from that point forward.

[Josh Clark]

Like, the slogan on the movie poster is Fact schmax.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it starts with Pursuit of DB Cooper and has Robert Duvall. The names all come up and all that. And it's got a Jew's Heart playing. It's like. And Treat Williams, it's a terrible voiceover recording. You just hear, yee haw. And he jumps off the thing. Cause that's what you do when you jump off a plane and you're skyjacking. He parachutes down in the night, in the night. And he crashes through some trees and lands. And then just this really little sad Yahoo.

[Josh Clark]

Everything was sad about that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Treat Williams gets on the ground and he. He takes out a cigar and he takes out a lighter. Because that's what you do too, when you successfully landed after skyjacking. He doesn't light the lighter, though. He rips open the money bag and he takes out a hundred dollar bill and he lights that. And then he uses that to light a cigar. And that is how that movie opens. And it goes downhill from there. And Robert Duvall is. You can tell.

[Josh Clark]

He starts every scene going like this. Do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's so bad. But I do encourage you. It was, I mean, when I was a kid and it came out, it was like, we got HBO on my street and it was a really big deal when we got cable and hbo. So I would literally watch any movie that came out. It was like, krull, that's on. I'll watch Krull.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, hey. Krull was okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

War Games. Great movie.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pursuit of DB Cooper. Why not?

[Josh Clark]

I was not exposed to that. Yeah, I think my mother shielded me from that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good for you, mom. Yeah, but watch the first two minutes on YouTube. If you're waiting for your AI to turn into ROI and wondering how long you have to wait, maybe you need to do more than wait. Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. You can make a difference in someone's life, including your own, with a job in home care. These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options, and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com stop settling for weak sound. It's time to level up your game and bring the boom. Hit the town with the ultra durable LG X Boom portable speaker and enjoy vibrant sound wherever you go. Elevate your listening experience to new heights because, let's be real, your music deserves it. The future of sound is now with LG XBoom. And for a limited time, save [e-mail] with code Fall25. Bring the Boom X boom.

[Josh Clark]

So we were still talking about the placard, weren't we?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. All right, we'll go to 1980 was the first real good clue. Turns up in 1980.

[Josh Clark]

Right. This is a big clue.

[Chuck Bryant]

Big clue.

[Josh Clark]

So there's a young lad named Brian ingram. He was 8, I think, at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And his family was camping on Tina Bar. Are you guys familiar with Tina Bar? Do you guys know what that is?

[Chuck Bryant]

The Columbia River.

[Josh Clark]

Columbia river, yeah. So are we correct in understanding that you would just call that an island, not a bar? Okay. All right. So Tina Island. Everywhere else, the Ingram family was camping, and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit for his family. Oh, father's going to love this fire pit. He'll be proud of me yet. Oh, father, won't you love me? And as he's like. As he's going like this to the sand, poor little eight year old, he turns up a stack of bills, several stacks of bills, actually three. And these stacks of $20 bills total $5,880. And he's like, father love me. And father takes those and starts looking at them and he's like, we should probably call the police. So they go and call the police.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Again, they call the Seattle police, which evidently all they do is forward calls to the FBI.

[Josh Clark]

At this point, they're like, seattle pd. So the FBI is like, read us a serial number. And he reads one, and they're like, read us another. Reads another. And they're like, that's DB Cooper money. And Ingram's father's like, what did you say? And they're like, nothing. So the FBI gets their hands on it. And actually we should say, it turns out they let little Brian Ingram take some of the money. $3,000 of this money, actually. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is later on, they returned a little bit. Not bad, right?

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you want to know what's even better? In 2008, little Brian Ingram sold that money on eBay for 37 grand. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Take that, father. So the thing is, this money showed up in a place where it should not have been. It showed up 20 miles south of Ariel, Washington, in another river. So they were looking here in the Lewis River. Right. Everybody knows Lewis River, Ariel, Washington. Here. Tina Barr is down here. Just a little south of Vancouver. Is my geography, my air geography. Right. Vancouver, Washington, everybody. Vancouver, Washington. Is it like this? That's even more amazing. This is what I suspected, and I looked it up on Google Maps and they were like, what do you mean, Tina Barr? Josh So I wasn't able to conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that it somehow ended up above it. And an FBI hydrologist looked at this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Money, said, the FBI has a hydrologist?

[Josh Clark]

Right. I'm a retainer. Himmelsbach got a hold of him, and the guy was like, so this stuff's only been exposed to the elements for a year, even though it was found, what, nine years after the robbery? Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it got here one of two ways. The guy said, so the Columbia river flooded in 1970. 1974, yes. And it was also dredged in, like, 1977. So one of those two probably got this here, but no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where it was, so.

[Chuck Bryant]

It did. Yeah. There you go.

[Josh Clark]

I got.

[Chuck Bryant]

Would be another 28 years before any more clues turned up, so that's a very long wait. In 2008, just eight short years ago, some kids were playing on their. Was it their own land in Amboy? Little south of Ariel. Anyone from Amboy?

[Josh Clark]

No, I suspected not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Are we in Washington? Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but nobody's from Amboy.

[Chuck Bryant]

We got more response in Birmingham.

[Josh Clark]

No, about Amboy. Yeah. They're like, we like the sound of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

So these kids were playing in the woods on their property, and they said, oh, look at there. There's a parachute. And they start pulling out this parachute for, like, an hour. It's like a magic trick. And they finally get to the end of the parachute, and they run and show Pa, and they say, pa, I found a parachute in the woods. What should we do?

[Josh Clark]

Right? And Pa recognized that this was the most exciting thing that ever happened in Amboy, Washington. Called the cops, who called the Seattle police, who called the FBI. And the FBI did something smart. They're like, well, you know, who would know if this was DB Cooper's parachute? Good old Earl Cossey.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. He's not dead yet.

[Josh Clark]

Not dead yet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, too soon. That's a good. He's not dead yet. That's celebratory. None of us are dead yet. Right?

[Josh Clark]

That's a good. Good way of looking at it, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good save.

[Josh Clark]

Way to find the silver lining. So, Earl, Cassie looked at this thing, and he was like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He said, I'm sorry. He said, Cooper's shoot was nylon. That's clearly silk. Good try.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He said, this is. I know whose shoot this is, actually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It turns out that back in 1945, a jet pilot named Floyd Walling bailed out of his Corsair jet that was going down and parachuted out in the woods around Amboy, Washington. Right. Which isn't too far from Ariel. And it wasn't Cooper's shoot. You guys all remember when they found that parachute, right? Like 2008? It wasn't that long ago. It was a big deal, and it wasn't his shoot. But it did suggest that possibly he could have made it because Floyd Walling had. And he walked out of the woods in terrible weather, just like DB Cooper would have had to. So it kind of shined a light on the whole thing again.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it kind of kicked some interest up. So over the years, there have been many, many, many, many suspects. Like, we're talking over a thousand. The FBI won't even say how many suspects they've had. Or, weirdly, people confessing to be DB Cooper. It's one of those strange things that people do where they claim to be something that will send you to prison.

[Josh Clark]

Well, a lot of them are already in prison, but they're in worse prison and hoping to go to good prison.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's true. Apparently, state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison.

[Josh Clark]

I was thinking cinnamon buns. Were you really? Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room. Yeah, well, no, we mentioned that in the prison. That's like a commodity in prison, right? Cinnamon buns.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's like currency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

Cinnamon buns and cigarettes. We know.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there's a very famous sketch. If you go home before you get on YouTube and look at the first three minutes of that terrible movie, which you definitely need to do, just Google, get on the Googles and type in DB Cooper sketch. There's a very singular, famous sketch of DB Cooper.

[Josh Clark]

It looks like Kevin Spacey. It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey. Yeah. Or Don Draper again, as Kevin Spacey.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it would be Kevin Spacey as Don Draper. Yeah, yeah, sure. So if you go home and look at that, it's like, you know, got this kind of short haired guy, looks like he's sort of from the 50s or 60s. He's got the hair, he's got the sunglasses on, and the tie, the skinny tie. And that's the only sketch that they have of DB Cooper that they got from the flight attendants, specifically Tina Mucklaw, because she spent, like five hours right next to the dude. Yeah, she, incidentally, was really messed up after this, understandably. And she went to be a nun in Oregon in the 1980s, which is a little weird. I didn't know they had convents in Oregon.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, they've got them everywhere. Convents everywhere.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a convent right over in the alley.

[Josh Clark]

There's a convent behind us right now. But even worse than that, the mother superior in an article I read at the convent said she never really fit in here. You're not supposed to say that if you're a mother superior. That's a mother inferior, if you ask me, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Good one. So sorry. You go ahead.

[Josh Clark]

No, you all right.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed, you're gonna turn up some clues. And that's what the FBI does. They kind of examine what happened. He chose a military chute, which could mean one of two things. Either he was former military, which could narrow it down, or it could mean he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to jumping out of a plane.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And the choice of that dummy chute would definitely suggest that, because even recreational skydivers say, like, even if you're just a military parachutist, you're going to see a huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from that parachute.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, I thought it stood for extreme.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Mountain Dew Extreme. So a lot of people say, I think he probably is ex military, had some, like, parachuting experience. Probably a paratrooper or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of people point to the idea that he knew a lot about the plane. He knew about the wing flap degree that it could go to. He knew about altitude. A lot of the witnesses later on said that he clearly was very much aware of what was going on in the cabin. He just knew the plane very much so. A lot of other people say this guy was probably an airline employee, maybe even a pilot, actually, based on the altitude and stuff that he gave them to fly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And one of the weird things that he knew was that the 727100 had an aft staircase that you could lower and jump out of. Because this wasn't common knowledge at the time. Apparently a small group of people knew this. You were either an employee of Boeing or you may have been in the CIA, because in the Vietnam War, we actually used the 727 over Cambodia, which is where we were not supposed to be. And they lowered that aft staircase of the 727 to drop supplies.

[Josh Clark]

It's a go. You can't steer, but go well.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then there's the whole thing with the SR71 Blackbird. So a lot of Cooperists still Say that he might have been secretly a member of the CIA.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because he knew about the aft staircase. He knew about the. Or the blackbird was scrambled. So they had, like, some skin in the game.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So a lot of suspects have come and gone and come back and stayed over the years. The FBI says about. Well, they won't say, but a lot of people say about a thousand, like Chuck said. But one of the first ones to emerge was a dude named Richard McCoy. And in February of 1972, I think, four months after the DB Cooper heist, Richard McCoy hijacked a 727, 100 flight, and he asked for $500,000 in cash, and he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

So a lot of people say it's pretty similar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe that was D.B. cooper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, and 500 grand, that, to me, that makes sense. Like, 200 grand worked out fine. I should have asked for more to begin with.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So let me try it again.

[Josh Clark]

Let's try it again.

[Chuck Bryant]

It turns out that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam. So that sort of fits with the whole profile. He looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper and.

[Josh Clark]

A little bit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He was 29 years old. So he was much younger than Cooper, but he didn't look 29. I'll say that. He looked much older than that.

[Josh Clark]

True.

[Chuck Bryant]

He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson.

[Josh Clark]

It's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll say that.

[Josh Clark]

Absolutely.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this guy gets caught, actually, after pulling off this heist initially, and he goes to prison, and he makes a fake gun out of dental plaster from the dentist in the prison, and he takes the truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate of the prison and escapes and is later killed in a shootout by cops, which is.

[Josh Clark]

To say Richard McCoy knew how to live.

[Chuck Bryant]

He did and die. And his family would later go on to say, actually he was at home in Thanksgiving, 1971. So it probably wasn't him. Right. Good suspect, though.

[Josh Clark]

Suspect number two is named Duane Weber. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is this your guy? No. This isn't your guy?

[Josh Clark]

No, this isn't my guy. I like this guy. He's fine, but I don't like him. You know what I mean? Yeah. So Duane Weber was a career criminal. And the definition of a career criminal is one where you and your alias have both done time in prison, and he and his alias had done a combined 16 years. Right. So he was on his deathbed, and his wife Joe came around and said, how you doing? It's like, well, I'm still dying. I have a confession for you I'd like you to hear. I am Dan Cooper. And Joe's like, I don't know who that is. And Dwayne blows up. They have a fight on his deathbed, never speak of it again. And he dies nine days later. So Jo starts poking around after that. She's like, who is this Dan Cooper? Which is a legitimate question after an experience like that that she went through.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would say so. And she finds out via Internet, this is 1995, that Dan Cooper was D.B. cooper. And she said, you know what? I think that he was telling the truth. I think he was D.B. cooper. Because you know what? I remember in 1979, we were on a vacation. We were on a car trip. We were kind of right around the area where the hijacking, or I'm sorry, where the landing supposedly took place. And my husband stopped the car and just pointed and said, you know What? That's where D.B. cooper walked out of the woods.

[Josh Clark]

Which is a weird thing to say on vacation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very weird thing to say. It's even weirder that she didn't say, what the hell are you talking about?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, agreed.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's another story later on. They were on another vacation.

[Josh Clark]

No, this is the same vacation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it's the same one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll just call this the communication vacation, the non communication vacation. Because they clearly didn't talk to one another. Because he stopped over the Columbia river on a bridge. Literally stops on a bridge, gets out of the car, goes to the back, opens the trunk, and it's just gone for, like, 10 minutes. Gets back in the car, and they just drive on. And she doesn't say anything.

[Josh Clark]

She's just sitting there like this.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know Yumi.

[Josh Clark]

Yumi would have been like, why'd you take your foot off the gas?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, Emily started to break. There would have been. Emily would have had 300 questions on why we stopped on a bridge. And I opened the trunk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Not Joe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not Joe.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So a lot of people still like Duane Weber, but he's actually. The FBI said, no, that's not the guy. We ruled him out with DNA, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

The next guy is my guy. Kenny Christensen. Chuckers.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. He was a pretty well liked suspect for a while. He keeping with the series of family members outing their family as DB Cooper.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which actually supports the family motto that I was brought up with. Never trust family.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a proud Clark tradition. So his brother Lyle. Actually, this gets a little weird. He outed him as a suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter Nora Ephron Sleepless in Seattle.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Right. Yeah. It's all coming for supposed to.

[Chuck Bryant]

Didn't even see that coming. He tried to get Nora Ephron to write a movie about DB Cooper via his brother being the main suspect. And he, weirdly, I guess he didn't have an agent. He hired a private investigator to get him in touch with Nora Ephron.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very strange. But he championed his own brother as the main suspect.

[Josh Clark]

Or outed him. That's another way to put it. For sure, sure. And a guy named Geoffrey Gray wrote a really great article in New York magazine, if you guys are interested about this particular guy. But there's a lot of similarities between D.B. cooper and Kenny Christiansen. For one, he looks a lot like him right off the bat. He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a big deal. Former paratrooper. He was quiet. He smoked cigarettes. He drank bourbon. Lived in the area where the hijacking took place, which is to say around here and In, I think, 2011, Geoffrey Gray, the guy who wrote that New York magazine article, got in touch with Florence Schaffner and said, what about this guy? And Florence Schaffner said, but I think you may be onto something here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And like Duane Weber, Kenny Christensen, on his deathbed, tried to make a confession to his brother Lyle. He said, I have something really important to tell you, but I'm not sure if I can say this. And Lyle said, no, no, no. I don't want to hear it.

[Josh Clark]

Did you guys know that you can not hear a deathbed confession?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, not only that, but I want nothing more than to hear a deathbed confession. I would be dying. I would be like, oh, my God.

[Josh Clark]

Dish. Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you have to say? But he was like, no, no, no. I don't want to hear what you got to say. Just go ahead and die.

[Josh Clark]

And then he lay it on top of him until he stopped squirming.

[Chuck Bryant]

Here, this pillow will make you comfortable.

[Josh Clark]

You sleep now, brother.

[Chuck Bryant]

What is going on with these people? Did you just do the Buffalo Bill voice?

[Josh Clark]

No. Okay, that was coincidental.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who else do we have? L.D. cooper?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Little on the nose dad with the name.

[Josh Clark]

He lived in the area, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he was also outed by a family member, keeping with the Clark family tradition. This time, it was his niece. And she said, you know what? I remember this was in 2011. This is not too long ago. She said, you know what I remember back in Thanksgiving, 1971, just like it was yesterday. And uncle ld showed up bruised and bleeding for dinner. But he was euphoric, which was weird. And I'm just now mentioning this.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And she said, by the way, she had a book coming out simultaneously as she's telling everybody this. What did she say that she overheard? Because this is where she loses Chuck and me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, she said he went to talk to. He was my uncle, and he went to talk to my dad. And they were. I overheard them in the hallway say, we did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked the plane. The book by Simon and Schuster on sale now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, at your local airport.

[Chuck Bryant]

But there were a few things. It wasn't totally out of the blue. He was an engineer at Boeing.

[Josh Clark]

No, his brother was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, his brother was. Yeah. But they were in on it together.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because we hijacked the plane.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's a silent partner. And weirdly, he would remember those Dan Cooper comic books. He was one of the 10 people on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper comic book.

[Josh Clark]

That's a little weird.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's pretty good.

[Josh Clark]

The weird thing is, he didn't have any experience skydiving, which a lot of people say, well, it's just too insane to think that somebody who never skydived before did their first skydive during a heist out of a 727. But the people who knew L.D. cooper say, no, he was just crazy enough to do something like that. And you can make a case that that actually explains the choice of the dummy chute, to tell you the truth.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And the military shoot, even.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so the legacy of DB Cooper. To this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in the history of the world.

[Josh Clark]

In America.

[Chuck Bryant]

In America.

[Josh Clark]

Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Are there other ones? Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I'm only standing behind America.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah, right. Every year, if you go to the Ariel Store and Tavern in Ariel, Washington, you can go to the DB Cooper Days Festival.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Have you guys. Has anyone ever been to that?

[Chuck Bryant]

We should all totally go right now. We're going to meet up this Thanksgiving. You can win a DB Cooper lookalike.

[Josh Clark]

Contest if you look like Kevin Spacey.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Or Charles Manson. Or Don Draper, which none of us do. Well, I'm talking about you and me.

[Josh Clark]

I look like Justin Bieber.

[Chuck Bryant]

I look like I ate Justin Bieber. I just spit out my tooth. That's how I lost it. I broke it on Justin Bieber's bones.

[Josh Clark]

Justin Bieber's Bones. They're pliable, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can go to that and win the contest. There have been songs over the years. There was that terrible movie. There have been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations.

[Josh Clark]

Unsolved Mysteries. Am I right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Everybody see that one?

[Chuck Bryant]

You can watch that on the YouTube, too. And there are many, many Cooperist websites, most notably one called dropzone.com and dropzone.

[Josh Clark]

Actually used to be a recreational skydiving site until it got mostly taken over by DB Cooper aficionados.

[Chuck Bryant]

They hijacked the website.

[Josh Clark]

They did, as a matter of fact. And this site is, like, so hot for Cooper Sleuths that a guy named Secret started posting on it. And he seemed to have a lot of information about the D.B. cooper case that people didn't know about. And it turned out that these Cooper Sleuths were so good, they unmasked the Secret guy as the new agent in charge of the DB Cooper case, Larry Carr, who's posting secretly as Secret on the Drop Zone boards. That's how good these people are.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's like, no, I'm not.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, you are.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm not.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, you are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, you are.

[Josh Clark]

He's like, okay, I am.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can go on YouTube, boy. You got to go. You got a lot of YouTube in today night, people. You can go on YouTube as well and look up Larry Carr. And for many, many years, they kept all this evidence sort of under wraps. And you can look up videos now. Larry Carr said, you know what we should do? The modern age is here. We have the YouTubes, and we can let everyone see this evidence. Even though I think it's kind of funny that the FBI's official thing is like, no, he totally died, right? No one told Larry Carr that, you know, because he's like, let's make a YouTube video. Let's show everyone the skinny tie.

[Josh Clark]

All the kids are into it now.

[Chuck Bryant]

He shows the clip on tie. You can see all the. You can see the money, the clip on Tie, all this evidence, hoping for a lead.

[Josh Clark]

And he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from the tie. They found three people's profiles. They also found, we don't even know, but pure titanium and impatiens pollen. Hopefully, that will eventually crack the case. But it made everybody just be like, what? We thought we had a handle on this. Impatiens pollen. Where did that come from?

[Chuck Bryant]

So bring us home, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. The Cooper heist. It changed America forever, right? D.B. cooper's the reason we all started walking through metal detectors shortly afterward, he's the reason? Seriously. He's the reason that the airlines were given the right to search your bags before you get on one of their planes. And they apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking. I don't know. When they took it off, was it like sea ships being hijacked? And then.

[Chuck Bryant]

I have no idea.

[Josh Clark]

I don't either. But I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing was if you look at a Boeing 727, they still make them airplane. If you look at that aft staircase in the back, there's a white paddle that holds the stairs closed. Pretty smart. You can't open the aft staircase mid flight because you have to go outside and pull the paddle down and then the aft staircase will open. And it's a pretty smart, easy solution to a pretty complex case. And they call that little white paddle a Cooper vane.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And that is the story of D.B. cooper. And that is our show. Good night, Seattle.

[Josh Clark]

Good night, everyone. Thank you. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com foreign hey guys.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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