In Search Of…D.B. Cooper
During the waning hours of Thanksgiving eve 1971, a Boeing 727 leaves Portland bound for Seattle. This plane and its passengers will become the most infamous skyjacking in American history. A man called DB Copper by the news media jumped from the plane over dense forest carrying four parachutes, and 200,000 dollars. Why is the crime still unsolved? Who is Cooper? Where is the money today?
So starts another episode In Search Of… and another intriguing mystery examined.
Living in the Pacific Northwest all my life, a year does not go by where you don’t hear the name DB Cooper mentioned somewhere. Granted, not as often as you once did; but the mystery still remains unsolved.
This particular episode of In Search Of… aired in 1979, before some 200,000 dollars was found by a young boy in 1980 along the Columbia River.
The show dives deep into what was known up to that point. We hear from people also on the plane that day, detectives looking for Cooper, a hunter that found possible evidence, and a survivalist who determines whether Cooper could have survived in the area he supposedly jumped into from that Northwest Orient Boeing 727.
A hearty amount of conjecture is mixed in for good measure, but what would you expect from In Search Of…?
Even in 1971, it amazes me a person could walk up to an airline desk, buy a ticket with cash, and have no need for identification. As we all know too well, that can never happen these days; which just adds to the legend.
A guy no one knew, buys an airline ticket, hijacks an airplane, demands money, gets his demands met, and jumps from the airplane, never to be seen again.
A legend is born! Did Cooper make it? While driving from Seattle to Portland earlier today, I sure wondered that myself. What a legend indeed.
