On the afternoon of November 24 , 1971 , an strange man boarded flight 305 from Portland , Oregon , to Seattle , Washington . He sat there and order a Bourbon dynasty and soda , before slipping a note to a trajectory attendant as she go about her duty , the root of one of the strangest unresolved mystery story of the twentieth Century .
The man had booked his one - way ticket under the name Dan Cooper , which was almost surely an alias . clip sprucely in a courtship and mostly cultured , flight attendant Florence Schaffner assumed he – like so many other single man on her flights – was assay to fall away her his issue when he passed her that piece of paper .
" Miss , you ’d better look at that note,“he before long cleared up , " I have a dud . "
Schaffner sit beside him , where he showed her the bomb and explained to her his demands .
“ I desire $ 200,000 by 5:00 p.m. In cash . Put in a knapsack . I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes . When we land , I want a fuel hand truck quick to refuel . No laughable hooey or I ’ll do the job . ”
Schaffner differentiate the pilot the situation . While he conveyed the demands to the primer , she returned to the passengers , and found Cooper sit there , still calm and now wearing shades to go with his full suit . The man ’s unagitated deportment help to convince the crew and say-so to go along with his demands .
" He appear to be as rational as someone could be who would do something like that , " co - pilot Bill Radaczaklater say . " Because he did not appear to be emotional , we feel we could keep the position in hand if we went along with his postulation . "
When the plane land to refuel – the authorities having foregather the necessitate money and parachutes while the plane encircle overhead – Cooper released the passenger as he had promised . The Boeing 727 lease off once more , this time with only Cooper and four crew members on display panel , and head to the new goal of Mexico .
He would never pass on that name and address . While the crew sat in the cockpit , they point out a change in air pressure . Cooper – presumably using one of the chute he requested – had jumped from the plane , never to be seen again .
Since the highjacking , there have been many hypothesis about who DB Cooper ( as he became known , due to a transcription error by a diary keeper ) , much of it establish on surmisal about various grapheme . But what do we have in the way of physical evidence ?
The tie
Physical grounds is scant to say the least , but Cooper did leave his tie behind on the aircraft . As technology has improved , the tie has been re - study several times since the hijacking by various fact-finding team . Using electron microscopy , a team in 2011 were capable to find evidence on the clip - on tie that Cooper could have been a dissatisfied ex - employee with a grudge against Boeing .
“ One of the most illustrious particles that we ’ve found , that had us the most excited , was titanium alloy , ” lead scientist Tom Kayeexplained at the fourth dimension . Titanium was a lot rare in the 1970s , but it was used in Boeing ’s Super Sonic Transport task , one of the first passenger planes to use the metal .
“ In 1971 there was a big upheaval in the Ti industry with the cancelling of the SST labor , which bechance to be at Boeing , and that laid a lot of masses off in the diligence . So Cooper could have been part of the fallout . "
“ Because he wore a linkup , we think he was an engineer or manager who went out on the shop floor on a regular basis , " Kaye said .
The money
In 1980 , a son vacation at the Columbia River with his sept found three packets of Cooper ’s ransom money money as he raked the river bank in order of magnitude to build a fervency . It was a right tether , but seek to analyze the money would only make the mystery weirder .
The big money was weather and largely disintegrated , with geologist reason out it had beenweathered by the river as it float along it , rather than being by choice buried . The fix of the cash brush aside previous possibility on Cooper ’s drop geographical zone , unless the John Cash had found some method of swimming its way upstream . What was weird , however , was that 10 bills were missing from one of the packets , as though they had been taken before the parcel was resealed . And it does n’t stop there .
analytic thinking in 2020 show further ludicrous problems . A team analyse the money andfound flyspeck deposit of alga .
“ The diatom that we found [ on the Cooper money ] are a spring species , " amateur scientist Tom Kaye – who published apaperon the finding – told King 5 . " They bloom in the spring . They do not flower in November when Cooper startle . "
The money made its way into the river , according to the analysis , months after the hijacking .
We ’re still not done , however , as another analysis of the notes and the caoutchouc band paint a picture that they would have had to have washed up on the shore within a twosome of years , otherwise the band would havedeteriorated and come apart apart . This does n’t correspond with geological evidence , which suggested the notes must have get on the bankafter a dredging of the river in 1974 .
unfortunately , other than DNA taken from the necktie which may or may not belong to Cooper himself , other strong-arm evidence from the event is non - real . Despite this , there are many convincing theories as towho he might be , and whether or not he survive the parachuting .
