Tom Earnshaw
The question 'who is DB Cooper' is plain and simple for one man: it's his dad. Although private investigators are dubious about the whole situation.
Ever since 24 November, 1971, the FBI has been scratching its metaphorical head over the identity of the man who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305.
The flight, journeying from Oregon and Washington in the USA, was taken over by a man booking a ticket in the name of Dan Cooper.
Advert
The press nicknamed him DB Cooper after his escape with $200,000 (£158,604); roughly $1.54 million (£1.22 million) in modern cash. His threat if he didn't get the cash was to blow up the plane.
Cooper also demanded four parachutes, with him skydiving into the night sky with his bundles of cash.
In the 53 years since the incident, the FBI chased countless leads including the idea that Cooper could have been a woman.
One lead was Richard McCoy Jr, a US Army veteran who toured Vietnam twice.
Advert
After his career in the armed forces, he became obsessed with recreational skydiving. The thing that stuck out with McCoy was that he was the man caught in a copycat hijacking the year after DB Cooper's escape.
In April 1972, he boarded a plane with what appeared to be a hand grenade (it was a paperweight) and demanded $500,000. He also wanted four parachutes as Cooper had requested.
McCoy had used handwritten notes to put forward his demands; just as Cooper had done. In bad news for him, he left behind the note and a magazine which contained a good chunk of fingerprints to ID him through. He was caught two days later and sentenced to 45 years in prison. In prison, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame claimed that McCoy was Cooper.
Apart from the similarities in the heists, they referenced claims from McCoy's family that a tie and clip left behind on the Cooper raid belonged to him, and McCoy's continued refusal to admit or deny he was Cooper.
Advert
But the FBI threw the claim out. This was mainly due to him having an alibi for when the Cooper hijacking took place, with him at home having Thanksgiving dinner in Utah with family.
McCoy died in 1974 during a shootout with police after escaping prison. Annoyingly for the FBI, he was one of the few leading DB Cooper suspects the FBI didn't have DNA for.
For McCoy's son, Richard McCoy III, DB Cooper has to be his dad. So much so he has provided the FBI with his own DNA to try and bring the case to a close.
He told The US Sun: "The overall theme of what she [his mum] told us was that my mother was involved in everything and to keep our mouths shut. There were lots of secrets and a lot of stuff I’d hear was conversations between adults and things like that but it was beaten into us not to talk about it.
"But she would say, ‘Your dad would be upset that he didn’t get the credit [for DB Cooper]. The credit that he deserved,’ and all that type of stuff. She told us she was involved in both of the hijackings, and helped him plan them, but she always made it seem - and I’ll call BS on this - that he forced her into doing it. And trust me, nobody was forcing my mother to do anything."
Advert
For private investigators Eric Ulis and Tom Kaye, it's just not believable.
Kaye said: "If you had a link on the DNA between the Cooper case and a particular person, that knocks the case out of the park and you'd hear about it right away. I find no reason for the FBI to keep information like that secret, especially if they were looking to solve a cold case after 50-plus years."
And Ulis added: "The fact it's been six months [since McCoy handed out his DNA] indicates there was no match. The family hasn't been contacted by the FBI, the FBI has not held a news conference, and if there was a hit this would be case closed.
"The big question is, where does the FBI go from here? Does their search end now they've got McCoy's DNA or are they going to be more proactive and entertain new suspects that may or may not have hit their radar screens before?"
Advert
Watch part of LADbible's interview with Ulis here:
It comes just days after bosses at a museum in possession of one of DB Cooper's parachutes shut down rumours it had denied access to the item.
Tom Kaye had claimed a test to take DNA samples from the parachute was axed at the last minute. The parachute, which is in the possession of the Washington State History Museum, was reportedly meant to be swabbed by Kaye after having been arranged by fellow Cooper investigator, Pat Boland.
In a statement sent to LADbible, a museum spokesperson said: "The Washington State Historical Society receives many research requests related to the parachute provided to Dan "D.B." Cooper during the hijacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971. The parachute, a part of the WSHS collection, is not currently available to the public for research.
"Under the care of our collections team, the parachute is secured in environmentally controlled archival storage when not on display. Public access to the parachute has never been offered. In 2013, the WSHS consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in preparation for a D.B. Cooper exhibition at the Washington State History Museum that included this parachute. The FBI has not requested to research or test this item.
"As this item could be considered evidence in the Cooper case, the WSHS would cooperate in full with requests from the FBI, should they occur.
"The WSHS accommodates scholarly research requests for a majority of the items in our collection by appointment. Research appointments occur at the WSHS Research Center in Tacoma under the guidance and supervision of our collections team. Pieces from the collection remain on-site during the appointment.