D.B. Cooper
I have to admit that growing up, I was always fascinated by a good D.B. Cooper story. For those of you below the age of say 30, you probably have no idea who the guy was, but there is a pretty good movie that tells the tale which you could watch. Basically it is a guy who hijacked a plane which was pretty common back in the early 1970's. Back then there were no metal detectors so you could pretty much do whatever you wanted and bring whatever you wanted on a plane. Anyway, he hijacked the plane, forced it to land, evacuated the passengers, got $200K in ransom and had the pilots of the plane take him up in the air again. At that point he opened up the back of the 727 and jumped out with a parachute. There has been no trace of him since except for about $5000 in bills from the ransom that was discovered not too far from Vancouver.
25 comments:
Let it be, it's ridiculous to waste time and money on this...
That said I love those heist movies where the guys get away with it...
OMG - the guy in the pic is Hunter S Thompson! Now it makes sense.
$200,000 seems so quaint these days (reminds me of that Austin Powers movie where Dr Evil is threatening to blow up the world or whatever unless he gets $1 million).
In fact, the whole story is kinda quaint and nostalgic--as Enty suggests, it harkens back to a time when you could just walk on the plane at the last minute and you didn't have to worry about a hijacker crashing a plane into buildings, etc.
I really didn't pay too much attention to the story at the time and DB Cooper falls far short in my eyes as a folk hero, but I guess it does push my nostalgia buttons a bit.
I always loved this story, too. Very rare I root for the criminals, but in this case I kind of do!
@ Dianne--One MIIIILLLLIIIOONNNN dollars, lol.
Throw me a freakin' bone, here. Sorry, any Austin reference makes me giddy.
Personally, I think the guy died when he landed, and is probably still hanging by his parachute strings somewhere.
This story has always fascinated me too and I hope they can solve the mystery. Those days sure were the "age of innocence" when it came to air travel. No xray machines, no intrusive pat downs etc.
Each time I see the police sketches I think he looks like Agent Smith from the Matrix ;>.
I cannot BELIEVE there were no metal detectors used back then!!!
When I hear about stuff like this it just trips me out.
And ^^ you are SO right! He DOES look like that dude from the Matrix!
I remember this story from when it was on the old Unsolved Mysteries!
Jimmy James was D.B. Cooper.
Enty=
If you're really interested in the case, there was a show called Decoded with author Brad Meltzer. They did a fascinating expose on DB Cooper. They thought it might be a former NWA employee and there was some very convincing evidence.
@dubs -- I <3 you for pulling out a newsradio reference.
The History International channel runs this series twice a day called "Vanished!" and one of their episodes is about D.B. Cooper (it aired again a couple of days ago). The fact that some of the money was found, I think the guy is dead because he wouldn't have just thrown it away.
Ah, So that's what happened to Don Knotts.
*Sigh* Newsradio - one of the best sitcoms EVER. CDAN readers have GOOD taste.
I have always been fasinated by D.B. Cooper! The episode of "In Search Of" about him was one of my favorites, and I loved all of them. Loved it when Jimmy James turned out to be D.B.
Ok News Media. That guy looks like Lee Harvey Oswald. Is this the guy they really saw, or were they watching too much colored tv in the early '70's?
Damn! I know who this man is...
It's Kaiser Soze!!!
I think he died, and the money in the riverbank was the tipping point for me.
That part of Washington state is pretty rough country. And Thanksgiving weekend in any part of the PacNW is famously wet/cold/depressing. So even if he survived the initial landing, I say he broke a few ribs, slowly died of exposure and gave the bears a buffet.
Yeah, that's what I think he would like you to believe. I think he was smarter than that and leaving some money behind was a red herring. I would like to believe he lived and had a good life afterwards. I think he earned it and since he stayed out of trouble thereafter why not? Sure he was a thief but just stole from the government. That doesn't really count does it? :)
@ Black Cat. Oh, I totally agree that it'd be great if he got away. But I've done a lot of hiking and camping in the Cascades, and I doubt someone dressed in a black suit would last very long out there. In November. In mountain lion and/or bear country. If I'm jumping into those conditions in the middle of the night, I'm not leaving a few token bills in the water, just to throw the scent off the trail.
Still, pretty cool mystery in this day/age when everything seems to be disproven via a few clicks (including some of this site's blinds).
Anybody know what movie Enty is talking about?? I'm intrigued...
LauraM, the movie starred Treat Williams and was called The Pursuit of DB Cooper. It came out a while after the actual incident happened.
Sonny Amou, I think the guy knew what he was doing, he seemed to have a superior knowledge of planes and flying and obviously parachuting. For all we know he may have been wearing something under his regular clothing to keep him warm and dry. He may have had an accomplice waiting to pick him up in the area. We will probably never know for sure.
@ Black Cat. Interesting. Not to belabor this, a lot of the ultrathin materials that could probably have helped him survive weren't even developed/widely distributed in 1971 (e.g., goretex). Several eyewitnesses stated that the guy was wearing a basic black suit as if commuting home from work like any other John Doe.
We can go a few rounds on this, and hey, that's how conspiracy theories are spun. I still say bear food but I respect your take on it.
Cheers, SA
SA and TBC, you two really know how to disagree and still be quite agreeable. It's a pleasure to read your posts. [TBC, I was playing devil's advocate along your lines here at home;-); and SA, your comments re technological advancements are well taken.]
LOL I was actually thinking how easier it would have been had some of the 21st Century technology been around - a GPS would have been a God send for him along with the clothing Sonny Amou mentioned.
I guess I think it's fun to think about what if.
At least some of you folks know what Northwest forests are like. You can die of hypothermia in the Cascades in August if you catch a bad patch of weather and don't have the right gear.
Sub-zero free-fall, in November, in the rain, into Northwest dense forest...even if he got a good chute, he was half-dead before he reached the ground. Mind you, one of the perennial suspects was a paratrooper with SERE training. That guy might have lived.
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