New evidence may finally solve the decades-old D.B. Cooper mystery, but longtime Cooper researchers caution that it’s too early to know for sure.
The children of longtime Cooper suspect Richard McCoy II recently turned over to the FBI intriguing evidence in the form of a parachute belonging to their father, which may match the one used in the 1971 skyjacking. The agency has not made definitive pronouncements since visiting the McCoy property to collect evidence, but speculation is raging. So has the mystery been solved?
Thanksgiving Hijacker D B Cooper
Cooper’s story is a seasonal tale for this Thanksgiving. On November 24, 1971, the day before America’s holiday feast, a man took advantage of incredibly lax airport security by modern standards and got away with $200,000. Not having to present identification, the individual purchased a plane ticket from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, and signed his name as “Dan Cooper,” later erroneously reported as “D.B. Cooper,” a name that stuck in the public consciousness.
Aboard the plane, the mysterious character handed a stewardess a note she initially ignored, assuming it was just another advance from a lonely businessman. After Cooper pressed the stewardess to look at the note, she read that he had a bomb and wanted her to sit with him. When she did so, he showed what appeared to be an explosive device and told her his demands. Following authorities’ surrender to his ransom demands of $200,000 and four parachutes upon landing in Seattle, Cooper allowed the hostages, who had remained unaware of the entire scenario, to exit the plane. He next ordered the crew to fly on to Mexico City with a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada.
If not for what happened next, Cooper might just have been another skyjacker, a crime whose frequency ramped up in the 1960s and into the 1970s. Cooper went to the plane’s rear, lowered the aft stairs and, wearing a parachute, leaped out of the aircraft somewhere over the northwest. To date, Cooper’s fate remains unknown.
A Copycat, or the Return of D.B. Cooper?
The latest evidence in this longstanding cold case points to Richard McCoy II, a man who committed a similar skyjacking in April 1972. McCoy served two tours in Vietnam, working at first as a demolitions expert and later as a helicopter pilot, in addition to being a recreational skydiver.
There were some differences between Cooper’s famous heist and McCoy’s skyjacking the following year. This time, the skyjacker brandished a firearm and displayed a grenade instead of a suitcase bomb, although authorities later determined that the “grenade” was a paperweight and the pistol unloaded. The skyjacker also upped the demand to $500,000, although this mysterious hijacker escaped by parachuting away like his predecessor.
But McCoy didn’t just neatly escape into the night. He left behind fingerprints, and the FBI arrested him just two days later. From here, McCoy’s story takes an ever more cinematic turn when he escapes a federal penitentiary two years later by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Three months later, McCoy died in a shoot-out with the FBI.
Identifying McCoy as Cooper is very problematic. The idea gained popularity following the 1991 publication of the book D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, and an FBI agent who shot McCoy claiming that McCoy had been the mysterious escaped hijacker. McCoy always remained mum about whether or not he was Cooper. Yet the FBI never found the allegations credible, as multiple Cooper witnesses denied that a mugshot of McCoy resembled Cooper, he had a credible alibi through college attendance records, and an affidavit had been provided by his children’s babysitter.
Cooperology
Like other mysteries, from UFOs to cold cases, Cooper lives on in the fascination held by small communities of amateur sleuths. Since the 1971 skyjacking, a cottage industry has sprung up, including books, podcasts, internet forums, documentaries, and conferences. Within the community, a handful of possible Cooper candidates each have their proponents, with the most recent claims put forward by controversial aviation YouTuber Dan Gryder.
A popular content creator with over 100,000 YouTube subscribers, Gryder has had an incredibly colorful career. In 2009, Delta Airlines suspended Gryder from his pilot duties after an incident in which he was accused of attempting to run down two police officers with his private plane. Others within the aviation community have linked Gryder to several restraining orders, a defamation lawsuit, and even possibly stealing evidence from a fatal accident scene to use in a YouTube video. For Gryder, Cooper is one element of his broader aviation safety focus.
The primary critic of Gryder’s work is researcher Ryan Burns of the D. B. Cooper Sleuth YouTube channel. Burns, by comparison, has a much smaller following but is a leader in the so-called “Cooper vortex” of online researchers. Burns is more focused on the Cooper topic exclusively, amassing reams of FBI files and newspaper clippings on the case.
A Parachute In A Barn
Two years ago, Gryder released his first documentary presenting McCoy as Cooper, based on The Real McCoy book, and finally engaging with McCoy’s long-reticent family. McCoy’s children explain in the documentary that the family shied away from the case this whole time due to the complicity of their mother and grandmother in McCoy’s crimes, including the Cooper episode. In a follow-up video the next year, Gryder showed off a parachute discovered on a McCoy family farm amongst Richard McCoy’s belongings that he believed to match specific characteristics of the one Cooper wore.
That parachute is where the FBI became involved. The agency met with Gryder and the Cooper children to interview them and receive the chute. At the time, the agents found the lead worth pursuing, and arranged to search the barn at the McCoy farm for more clues.
Ever with a flair for the dramatic, Gryder hid in the treeline outside of the farm, filming the FBI search for his YouTube channel. Eight cars arrived at the rural home, and the agency even requested authorization to exhume McCoy for a DNA test. The story sounded promising, and many news outlets have recently picked up the story.
Putting A Pin The Parachute Theory
Shortly after the new wave of interest erupted, Burns released a highly critical video debunking many of Gryder’s claims in the face of a torrent of positive coverage. While Burns makes some fascinating points, the apparent rivalry between the two vloggers is evident. In his earlier video announcing the FBI’s search of the McCoy farm, Gryder included an awkward segment where he tells Burns about the event that becomes uncomfortably personal. Likewise, in Burns’ video, he comments that Gryder must be too busy being an aviation influencer to do the deep research, combing through FBI documents and old newspapers.
Burns does present some compelling evidence that Gryder could be mistaken with his promotion of the McCoy theory. In his videos, Gryder refers to only being aware of a single FBI document where witnesses said McCoy’s mugshot was not “identical” to Cooper’s, which Gryder explains as McCoy being disguised and months passing before the witnesses saw McCoy’s photograph. Burns presents a wealth of period FBI documents and newspaper clippings demonstrating that witnesses provided more specific information about how McCoy’s features differed significantly from Cooper’s. Furthermore, Bruns turns around Gryder’s point about the time-lapse by noting that most of Gryder’s work relies on testimony given and books written decades later, not months.
Also problematic are the descriptions of the parachute Gryder is working from. Burns provides archival evidence from the period that the same source gave a very different, yet consistent, description of the chute on multiple occasions around the time of the incident. Finally, Burns claims that Gryder’s images of the recently recovered parachute reveal one that had been used by the Air Force, while all of the varied claims remain consistent with Cooper receiving a Navy chute.
The Mystery Remains
The question of who D.B. Cooper may have been remains as intriguing to us as ever. Until the FBI reveals what they have found, assuming that they ever do, Cooper enthusiasts are left playing the waiting game. Burn provides highly compelling evidence to discount Gryder’s claims, yet one is still forced to wonder why the FBI sends eight carloads of agents to pursue what some consider to be an obvious hoax. Did Gryder get into the agents’ heads during their meeting, or is there actually something more to the parachute?
A concrete solution to the mystery of D.B. Cooper has long felt out of reach. Based on the current information available, questions surrounding the latest round of claims could mean that this time may be no different.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds a BA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.