Boeing 727 hijacking. He hijacked the plane, got a ransom and disappeared into the sky. Secret ciphers gave him away. Release of passengers in exchange for conditions

“After one of the longest and most thorough investigations in the history of the FBI, on July 8, 2016, the decision was made to redirect resources allocated to the case Dan Cooper to focus on other investigative tasks, ”the FBI website said in a statement.

As noted in the statement of the department, for 45 years a huge amount of various operational information has been processed, but it has not been possible to identify the criminal.

Passenger with a bomb in his briefcase

On November 24, a man who checked in as Dan B. Cooper boarded a Northwest Airlines flight at Portland Airport.

In the cabin, he took seat 18C, and shortly after takeoff he handed a note to a young flight attendant, Florence Shafner. The girl, thinking that the man decided to meet her, put the note in her pocket, but the passenger said: “Miss, you better look at the note. I have a bomb."

The note read: “I have a bomb in my briefcase. I use it if I deem it necessary. I want you to sit next to me. Your plane has been hijacked."

The note also contained demands for $200,000 in unmarked twenty-dollar bills and two sets of parachutes.

To prove the seriousness of his intentions, Dan B. Cooper opened his briefcase, in which the stewardess saw red cylinders, a large battery and wires, which convinced her that the bomb was real.

$200,000 and parachutes to boot

For the sake of saving the lives of passengers and crew members, the authorities decided to comply with the requirements of the invader.

The plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, near Seattle, Washington.

An employee delivered $200,000 and parachutes through a door at the rear of the plane. Cooper then let all the passengers and the stewardess go. Shafner. The pilot, second stewardess, co-pilot and flight engineer remained on board.

It was not possible to detain Cooper during the landing in Seattle. After refueling, the plane took off and headed for Mexico. Cooper then ordered the second flight attendant, who remained in the cabin, to go to the flight deck and stay there.

Jumped and disappeared

After some time, the crew, according to the readings of the instruments, discovered that Cooper had opened the tail door of the aircraft. The hijacker bailed out and disappeared forever.

It is assumed that the jump was made over the southwestern part of the state of Washington. While Cooper bailed out, the plane was passing through an area of ​​severe storm, shielded from any light sources from the ground by a cover of clouds. The parachutist could not be traced.

The Boeing returned safely to Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The FBI agents who examined the plane found no evidence that could identify the perpetrator.

A search in the proposed landing area also turned up nothing. In the hands of the police was only a sketch of the hijacker, compiled from the words of passengers and crew members.

Photofit of the hijacker, compiled from the words of passengers and crew members. Photo: Reuters

Three weeks after the hijacking, the Los Angeles Times received a letter. The following was written in it:

“I’m not a modern-day Robin Hood at all. Unfortunately, I only have fourteen months left to live. Hijacking was the quickest and most profitable way for me to secure the last days of my life. I didn't rob an airline because I thought it was romantic or heroic. I would never take such a huge risk for such stupidity. I do not condemn people who hate me for my act, nor do I condemn those who would like to see me caught and punished, especially since this will never happen. I had no doubt that I would not be caught. I have already flown several times on various routes. I'm not going to lie low in some old, lost town in the wilderness. And don't think I'm a psychopath: I haven't even received a parking ticket in my life."

Money in the river as proof of death

It is believed that this letter was not written by Cooper himself, but by a certain joker. However, it was also not possible to install the joker.

According to the main version of the special services, Dan B. Cooper did not survive the jump, crashing on landing. In 1980 father and son Harold And Brian Ingram found on the banks of the Columbia River, northwest of Portland, a stack of old, faded twenty-dollar bills, supposedly carried by the current from above, from the north. The audit showed that this money is indeed part of the ransom issued to the hijacker.

These dollars are the strongest evidence to date that the hijacker known as Dan B. Cooper died. The remains of Mr. Cooper, as well as any other traces, could not be found.

These dollars are the strongest evidence to date that the hijacker known as Dan B. Cooper died. Photo: Reuters

The guitar strap did not reveal the secret

Five years ago, in 2011, a certain Marla Wynn Cooper gave the FBI a leather guitar strap made by her uncle. Ms. Cooper believed her uncle was the mysterious Boeing hijacker.

Marla Wynn Cooper said that she last saw her uncle in 1972, but he, according to her, lived happily for more than a quarter of a century, having died in 1999.

The strap provided by the woman, however, turned out to be unsuitable for research, so it was not possible to confirm or refute the new version.

Over the past 45 years, car thief Cooper has become a cultural phenomenon in the US. His name and history are mentioned in many books, films and series. The authors of some of them offer their own options for unraveling the mystery of this crime.

All this, however, has nothing to do with reality. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has decided that it is not appropriate for its agents to continue to resemble the characters of The X-Files. The riddle of Mr. Cooper is finally given into the hands of amateur enthusiasts. Perhaps they will have better luck.

Robber Dan Cooper is the most mysterious criminal in the world. Although Jack was an ordinary maniac, of which there are dozens all over the world now, and Dan remained the only one who made the dream of millions come true - "so that we have everything, and we have nothing for it."

Although it is likely that he realized the dream for only a few minutes, but in the memory of people he remained the personification of a successful robber. The most curious thing is that until now no one knows who this lucky man really was, what his real name was and, most importantly, what became of him.

It is only known what he looked like and what he was wearing. But there is not a single photo of Cooper. There is only an image from an identikit, which depicts an ordinary, unremarkable person with a rather ordinary appearance. Eyewitnesses noted his protruding ears, thin lips, brown eyes, wide forehead and thinning hair. It was described that he was dressed rather conservatively and discreetly: a black raincoat, a black suit, a thin tie and a felt hat on his head. In those years, it was easy to get lost in the crowd in such an outfit - this is how thousands of Americans dressed.

When on November 24, 1971, he bought an air ticket to Seattle at the Portland airport for $18.52, he called himself Dan Cooper. This is not John Johnson, but also a very common name and surname in the USA. That was the time of “non-frightened aviators”, the problem of air terrorism did not yet exist, so it never occurred to anyone to let passengers through the metal detector frame, and their things through an X-ray machine. Thanks to this, Dan Cooper passed security quickly and without delay and took his seat "18C" on Northwest Airlines Flight 305, flying from Portland to Seattle. The flight was short, only half an hour of summer, the weather was good, the Boeing 727-100 was quite modern, the crew was experienced, so nothing foreshadowed anything extraordinary in this ordinary flight.

Dan Cooper - hijacking

Even before the turbines roared and the plane took off, Dan Cooper asked a 23-year-old flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, who was passing by, to bring him bourbon. This was also not unusual, many passengers brighten up their air travel with a dose of alcohol. And even the fact that a passenger from seat 18C put a note in Schaffner's pocket as she placed a glass of bourbon on his table was also nothing extraordinary. Bored passengers now and then tried to entertain themselves in flight with a light flirtation with the charming Florence. Therefore, she did not express her emotions in any way and did not get the message.

But then the passenger said in a low voice: "Better read the note, miss." The girl took out a piece of paper and read it. “I have a bomb in my briefcase,” it was written in block letters. “If necessary, I am ready to blow it up. I want you to sit next to me. This is a robbery".

Florence obeyed and sat down beside her, and the passenger, just as quietly and calmly, began to state his demands to her. There were few of them: 200 thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills and 4 parachutes, of which two were main and two were spare. The stewardess conveyed his wishes to the crew commander. He asked her to make sure that the robber was not bluffing.

So Schaffner went back to the passenger and asked to see the bomb. He did not argue and opened the briefcase so that the stewardess could see the red cylinders in it, similar to dynamite sticks, a bunch of wires and a battery.

The pilots decided not to take responsibility for checking if this explosive device worked and reported everything to the ground to the flight service. They also decided not to risk the lives of passengers and promised to fulfill the requirements of the robber. When the liner landed in Seattle, Cooper really delivered everything he ordered: 200 thousand dollars in twenty and parachutes.

After that, he allowed the 36 passengers on board and the stewardess Florence who liked him to leave the Boeing 727-100. Now, besides him, only the second stewardess Tina Macklow, Captain Scott, his assistant and navigator remained on the plane.

After refueling the "Boeing" in this composition, they took off. Dan Cooper was no brainless raider. His new requirements looked very competent: the direction of the flight to Mexico City, the height is not more than 3 thousand meters (he warned that he would check it with his hand-held altimeter), speed 320 km / h, keep the flaps at an angle of 15 degrees. He also ordered the crew to sit in the cockpit and not look into the cabin.

Cooper's scapula

After some time, a light flashed on the instrument panel in the cockpit, indicating the opening of the rear ladder. Captain Scott asked Cooper over the intercom what was wrong, received no answer, carefully opened the door and peered into the saloon. The passenger seats were empty. Dan Cooper apparently parachuted through the rear emergency exit. The only thing left after him was a tie with a mother-of-pearl clip and eight Raleigh cigarette butts.

It is curious that Dan Cooper wrote his name in the history of aviation not only by committing the only unsolved robbery in the air, but also by the fact that after his crime all Boeing 727s were equipped with a special device that did not allow opening the emergency hatch in flight. tail section of the aircraft. And this device was called "Cooper's spatula"!

The main intrigue of this story lies in the further fate of Dan Cooper. Surprisingly, it is a fact: the two fighters escorting the Boeing 727-100 did not notice the paratrooper. And searches on the ground, in which, in addition to the police, more than 400 soldiers participated, did not bring results. Dan Cooper landed in a remote area covered with forests and mountains with snowy peaks. FBI agents checked and interrogated more than a thousand people. But it did not give a single real clue.

The fate of the air robber

True, almost 20 years after this crime, in 1980, father and son Harold and Brian Ingram found on the banks of the Columbia River, northwest of Portland, a pack of old, faded twenty-dollar bills, presumably brought by the current from above. The Ingrams gave the $5,800 find to the police. Allegedly, experts have established that these are the same twenties that were issued to Dan Cooper as a ransom for the lives of passengers and crew.

Until now, the most likely version is that Dan Cooper died upon landing. Before the jump, he did not check the parachutes, he took the main one in good condition, and the spare one was inoperative (wired). Bad weather conditions and difficult terrain below played against him. It was considered that he simply drowned in a lake or in a swamp. But for the beauty of the story, Dan Cooper had to survive and happily spend the rest of his life with the stolen money.

Among the most likely candidates for the role of the surviving Cooper was a certain Kenneth Peter Christiansen, who was trained in the army as a paratrooper and knew how to handle a parachute and explosives. He lived in Washington state, where Dan Cooper made his intriguing plane jump in 1971. And in 1972, it suddenly turned out that the poor Kenneth Christiansen had 14 thousand dollars to buy a house in Bonnie Lake, a small town in the mountains, and a year later he bought another plot of land next to the house.

Curiously, before retiring, Christiansen worked as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, the same airline Dan Cooper robbed. Of alcohol, Kenneth was most fond of bourbon, and smoked Raleigh brand cigarettes. According to legend, on his deathbed, Kenneth whispered to his brother Lyle: - I have to tell you something from my past, but I can not do it!

Some time later, 77-year-old Lyle Christiansen saw a story about Dan Cooper's air robbery on the television program Unsolved Crimes. When the identikit of the criminal was shown on TV, Lyle was stupefied, so the image resembled a photo of his brother Kenneth. And it became clear to him what he wanted to tell before his death.

Lyle did not remain silent and wrote about his discovery to the FBI. And he even made an interesting suggestion why Dan Cooper demanded a ransom in twenty-dollar bills. When he and Ken were young, during the Depression years, their father took them to a fair and there, winning a boxing ring, he earned $100, a fortune for their family. The cash prize was given out in twenties, which Lyle and Ken would remember for the rest of their lives.

On November 24, 1971, one of the most mysterious crimes in the history of air terrorism took place in the sky over the American Portland. Someone D. B. Cooper, threatening with a bomb, seized a passenger Boeing 727, received a ransom of $ 200,000 and - disappeared forever, jumping out of a flying plane at an altitude of 3000 meters.

Love Note, or Terrorist Ultimatum

Passenger seat C18 was reserved in the name of Dan Cooper. Ironically, next to him was the seat of the stewardess, to whom Cooper handed the note. The girl thought that the passenger wanted to get acquainted, and, without reading, put the note in her pocket. But the man was persistent and persuaded the stewardess to read the message. It was said that there was a bomb in the plane and if the authorities did not hand over $ 200,000 to Cooper, he would blow up the plane right in the air. On board, not counting the staff, there were 36 people ...

Money and parachutes

The authorities made contact with the terrorist and decided to grant his "request". The plane landed at the airport Seattle - Tacoma, Washington. Cooper demanded a ransom in 20-dollar bills and, in addition, give him ... four parachutes. When the terrorist's demands were met, the hijacker released the hostages, leaving two pilots, a flight attendant and a flight engineer on board. The flight continues...

night chase

The plane took off. The authorities took the incident seriously: on the orders of the FBI, US Air Force F-106 fighters began pursuing the airliner. Drama was given by several factors: a thunderstorm raging in the sky over Seattle and Oregon and a complete misunderstanding of where a terrorist armed with a bomb and equipped with four parachutes was flying.

Jump in the night

The denouement of the drama occurred half an hour after the resumption of the flight. Cooper demanded that the crew gather in the cockpit and not leave it. At 20:13 onboard indicators showed that there was a depressurization of the cabin: Cooper opened the door in the tail compartment. After conferring with the FBI agents, the pilot decided to continue the flight until the fuel supplies ran out, because no one was sure that the terrorist had left the plane. Jumping from a three-kilometer height, on a November night, during a raging thunderstorm seemed crazy.

Two out of four

The plane landed in Reno. The ladder in the tail section was lowered. The FBI officers entered the cabin and found that, in fact, the criminal left the plane during the flight. The detectives had to be content with little: they found Cooper's fingerprints and two of the four parachutes. The hijacker took with him a bomb, a ransom and two parachutes.

Questions without answers

Cooper's decision defies logical explanation. Why did he demand four parachutes and jump out with two? Why did the hijacker decide to jump with a bomb that could detonate on landing? In addition, even if the terrorist managed to escape while flying through a thunderstorm, he had no chance of surviving in the American rainforest in November, without warm clothes (Cooper was wearing only a shirt and jacket) and orientation aids.

Without a trace

Mystics added the fact that Cooper's jump was not seen by any of the fighters who were pursuing the hijacked airliner. On the same night, the special services began to comb the region in which the jumped Cooper was supposed to be, but the searches did not yield results. The body of the mysterious hijacker, the diplomat with the bomb, and the briefcase containing the $200,000 were not found on the ground.

According to the descriptions of the passengers, an identikit of the criminal was compiled.

Letter from nowhere

Three weeks after the tragedy, the Los Angeles Times published a letter purportedly written by the surviving Cooper. It said that the crime was not a romantic gesture, but "the fastest and most profitable way to secure the last days" of a criminal's life. The author reported that he was mortally ill and had a little more than a year to live. This letter did not explain how miraculously Cooper managed to escape and hide from the police, and was perceived as a hoax.

money trail

The fading interest in this story revived with renewed vigor in 1980, when the boy Brian Ingram found 290 half-decayed $ 20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River. His parents reported the find to the police. Specialists checked the banknote numbers and found out that it was this money that was transferred to Cooper in exchange for the hostages. The search for traces of the terrorist resumed, but again failed. It also remains a mystery how the notes were able to survive for almost a decade in the rainforests of America.

Cooper's legacy

But it cannot be said that Dan Cooper disappeared without a trace. After the hijacking, all Boeing 727 aircraft were equipped with a device that prevented the door in the tail section of the aircraft from being opened. This mechanism is called "Cooper's paddle". And the banknotes found by the Ingram family were sold in 2008 at an auction. The deal turned out to be profitable: for 300 legendary dollars, the American family received an amount of $ 37,000.

Photo: thinkstockphotos.com, flickr.com

The man known as Dan Cooper was, of course, a criminal. But what he did caused the public, rather, admiration. In the end, no one was hurt in the deadly game he started, and he himself outplayed the state system, receiving a prize of 200 thousand dollars. The problem is that it is still not clear - who is this?

The Curious Case of Dan Cooper

Magazine: Riddles of History No. 31, July 2017
Category: Villains
Ransomed perpetrator remains unidentified
Thanksgiving eve did not bode well for the crew of the Boeing 727-51 flying from Portland to Seattle. Of the 36 passengers who arrived on board, a tall man in a dark suit with a tie would probably be one of the most unremarkable personalities, if not for dark glasses, strange for a cold day. Taking chair 18C at the very back of the saloon, he propped up his suitcase on his lap and ordered a bourbon and soda. Eight minutes after takeoff, 23-year-old flight attendant Florence Schaffner served him a drink. The passenger, in turn, shoved an envelope with a message into her hand.
Deciding that the guy was making a date with her, the stewardess shoved the note into her jacket pocket, but the man leaned closer to her and whispered:
“Miss, you better take a look at the note. I have a bomb." The content of the note was similar. So at 2:58 pm on Wednesday, November 24, 1971, this story began.

"I have a bomb"

Jump to nowhere

A story without an ending

Terrorist hijackers of airliners are a constant headache for the governments of civilized states and the cause of fear for aircraft crews and their passengers. How could an unknown American hijack a plane, get a ransom for it and disappear, remaining a legendary hero in people's memory?

Few hijackers have become heroes. But that's exactly what happened to Dan Cooper, one of America's most mysterious criminals, who was able to collect a $200,000 cash ransom on a passenger plane and became a folk hero overnight!

Adored by millions of people who continue to praise him to this day, Dan Cooper nevertheless threatened to send more than 150 innocent men, women and children to heaven if the authorities did not come to him with money.

However, the desperate courage of the hijacker and the fact that in the end no one was hurt, attracted the attention of all Americans and made the mysterious little man a modern-day Robin Hood.

In fact, it was a fantastically executed crime. And to this day, no one knows what happened to Dan Cooper. Did he die after his desperate jump into the night? Did he die of an incurable disease? Or is he still alive and enjoying his criminal prey?

No one knows how this incredible story ended, but very many know how it began on November 24, 1971 at the airport in Portland, Oregon.

Hundreds of passengers crowded at the gates, eager to get home or to friends to celebrate the national American holiday together. And none of them paid any attention to the calm, short guy with a canvas bag. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the holiday, he kept himself pointedly imperturbable, hiding his eyes behind dark glasses.

An hour passed before the 150 passengers on the flight to Seattle were finally called to board.

Short note

Dan Cooper - the name the man gave when buying tickets - got up from his seat in the waiting room and went to the Boeing 727 that was waiting for passengers. His only luggage was the same canvas bag. Entering the airliner, the man sat down so that the seat of the stewardess, which she occupies during takeoff and landing, turned out to be opposite.

For the next 25 minutes, as the plane moved through the clouds towards Seattle, this man continued to pose as a mere passenger. And then, about halfway through the 400-mile route, he pressed the button above his seat and called for the flight attendant.

Tina Macklow, hearing the signal, decided that the passenger was thirsty or needed a blanket.

To her dismay, the passenger handed her a short but undeniable note: “I have a bomb with me. If I don't get $200,000, I'll blow everyone to pieces."

Macklow, stunned, read the note over and over again. Without taking his eyes off the girl, the man opened the bag just enough so that she was convinced that this was not a bad joke and not a bluff. The girl clearly saw inside the bag rectangular tiles of dynamite, wires and a detonator. Then Cooper closed the bag and followed the flight attendant with her eyes, who tried her best to walk calmly.

As soon as Macklow relayed a threatening message from an inconspicuous passenger to the shocked crew, the pilot immediately contacted ground control in Seattle and reported what was happening on board. Within minutes, a group of the best FBI agents, police snipers, and even several units of the national guard took their places at key points in the airport. The authorities were confident that a long night of negotiations lay ahead.

All participants in the events, including Cooper, had only one thing to do - to wait. In the next 35 minutes, the plane was supposed to land in Seattle.

Waiting in Seattle

When the airliner began to descend on approach to Seattle, the commander made a brief message to the passengers. He warned that the landing would not be delayed for some time. He did not explain the reason. And the passengers took the news with understandable despondency.

While Cooper's roommates were angrily talking about disrupted business meetings and overshadowed holiday dinners, he got up from his chair and, clutching a canvas bag tightly to his chest, walked to the cockpit, where the commander and his two assistants were.

"Now, gentlemen," he said calmly, "please sit still and don't look back."

For the next 25 minutes there was lively talk on the radio. The man explained first to those on the flight control tower and then to a senior police officer that his demands were: $200,000 in used bills and 4 parachutes in exchange for the release of all the hostages.

The authorities realized that there was no way out. They had no right to put at risk the lives of innocent people who could die from an explosion during an armed liberation attempt.

Reluctantly, of course, but they still sent two FBI agents to the hijacked plane. In the form of airfield service workers, they rolled a cart on board the airliner, on which there was a bag with a seal. Having opened it, the hijacker rejoiced: there were money and parachutes inside.

Dan Cooper kept his word and allowed all passengers to get off the plane. : Only when they were in the main waiting room of the airport, the passengers met by a crowd of reporters learned that they had been held hostage when the plane was hijacked by a criminal.

under threat of explosion

While the released passengers were recovering first from surprise and then from shock at the startling news, Dan Cooper prepared to begin the second phase of his elaborate plan.

The crew of the aircraft, under the threat of a bomb explosion, remained in their places. The hijacker demanded that the airliner be refueled and given to the pilots all the necessary data for the flight to Mexico.

During negotiations with airport ground services and pilots, Dan Cooper showed such knowledge of the details of air traffic and the technical capabilities of an airliner that law enforcement officials realized that they were dealing with an experienced, intelligent and prudent criminal.

Once his demands were met, the hijacker ordered Captain Bill Scott to lift the plane into the night sky. A US Air Force jet fighter immediately joined the tail of the Boeing.

But Dan Cooper, a cautious and quick-witted man, judging by his behavior, calculated in advance all possible options for the actions of the authorities.

Shortly after the liner gained altitude, the hijacker ordered Captain Scott to head south. Moreover, he showed excellent knowledge of not only flying, but also complex issues of aerodynamics.

“Fly with the flaps down by 15%,” the terrorist said. Let the chassis remain released. Speed ​​- a little less than ninety meters per second. Open the back door and don't go above 2000m."

Captain Scott, amazed at such precise instructions (it also became clear to him that the hijacker was not a common criminal), quickly calculated the situation and informed Cooper that in this flight mode they could soon run out of fuel. The hijacker calmly replied that the captain would be able to land in Reno, Nevada.

Leaving the cockpit, Dan Cooper ordered the crew to close the steel door that separates the cockpit from the rest of the Boeing until the very end of the flight and activate the system that opens the rear door of the liner as soon as he leaves the cockpit. The captain obeyed, and in the blink of an eye the interior of the Boeing was filled with a stream of cold rarefied air.

For the next 4 hours, Scott and his comrades flew towards the unknown, exactly following the instructions given by the criminal. And only after they landed safely in Reno, it turned out that their only passenger literally melted into the night.

Subsequently, a careful study of the readings of the “black box” instruments made it possible to establish a slightly noticeable, but undoubtedly tangible instantaneous rise of the aircraft at 8:15 am - 32 minutes after takeoff in Seattle. Under the cover of darkness and clouds that hid him from the accompanying Boeing fighter, Cooper jumped off the airliner, his criminal booty tightly tied to his belt.

At first glance, this hijacking seemed flawless in terms of its execution. Still would! Dan Cooper not only managed to successfully escape, but also fooled the police, the FBI and the US Air Force, who together opposed him!

And yet, the data of the "black box" showed that he still made a mistake - the only one, but quite serious. At the time the hijacker was jumping from the plane, the Boeing was flying over southwestern Washington state. This is rugged terrain, overgrown with dense forest.

In addition, outside the plane the air temperature was below zero. A light suit and a cloak provide little protection against the cold. Thus, the hijacker's chances of surviving the jump were slim to none. The prevailing view was that the perpetrator was bound to die.

The area where Cooper could land was so inhospitable that the ground search teams kept getting into impenetrable swamps. Under these conditions, the authorities were forced to organize an air search. This went on for two weeks in a row. But the planes, equipped with sensitive sensory sensors, did not detect anyone.

Newspapers began to write that the terrorist would show up somewhere again. As if in response to these assumptions, three weeks after the hijacking, a mysterious letter arrived at the editorial office of the Los Angeles Times.

“I am not a modern Robin Hood at all,” it was written in it. “Unfortunately, I only have 14 months to live. Hijacking was the quickest and most profitable way for me to secure the last days of my life. I didn't rob an airline because I thought it was romantic or heroic. For such stupidity, I would never take such a huge risk.

I do not condemn people who hate me for what I did, nor do I condemn those who would like to see me caught and punished, especially since this will never happen. From the very beginning I knew that I could not be caught. Since the day of that incident, I have already flown several times on different routes. I'm not going to hide in a hole somewhere in the old town, lost in the wilderness of the forest. And don't think I'm a psychopath: I haven't even gotten a parking ticket in my entire life."

Sensation or falsification?

The letter caused a sensation. Cooper did not consider himself a hero, but society considered otherwise.

In the newspapers and on the radio, a flood of letters poured in, the authors of which spoke with admiration of his clever trick.

T-shirts with the name "Dan Cooper" on the chest instantly became as fashionable as the clothes with the words "Peace and Love" used to be.

Hundreds of young women were ready to call themselves his brides, of course, if he showed up.

But not everyone was fascinated by the terrorist. The FBI compiled a very convincing psychological portrait of the criminal, but did not make it public so as not to add fuel to the fire of public opinion.

There were many who doubted that it was Dan Cooper who wrote the letter to the newspaper.

Many of the inhabitants of the area over which Cooper jumped from the plane, primarily lumberjacks, openly said that the letter was a trick of a clever crook. They were sure that the hijacker died either during the jump, or a little later, and continued in the remote area in a persistent search for the money received by the terrorist. The same thing was done on weekends by the hundreds of adventurous who set off for "Cooper's booty," although these were more attracted to untrodden trails than to serious treasure hunting.

While searchers - both trained and amateurs - flooded the area where the hijacker was supposed to land, the authorities continued their attempts to detect from the air at least some trace of the ghost hijacker or its prey. By the way, officials also doubted the authenticity of the letter to the newspaper and were sure that the hijacker died after his famous jump.

However, all searches ended in failure.

A year after the hijacking, the FBI announced in the press that it was confident in the death of the perpetrator.

From that moment, if, of course, we assume that the terrorist is still alive, he could formally be charged only with tax evasion.

After that, many decided that they had heard the name Dan Cooper for the last time. And they were right... for a few years.

However, in 1979, a hunter chasing a deer came across a rusty sign in the forest with the inscription: "The hatch must be tightly closed during the flight." It turned out to be a warning sign from the back door of the ill-fated Boeing 727. The news caused such a stir that thousands of treasure hunters again rushed into the dense forests where it was found.

Cooper's booty

But, despite the desperate efforts of treasure hunters, the missing prey remained unfound for a long time. And so, in 1980, exactly nine years after Cooper rolled his number, father and son Harold and Brian Ingram were walking along the muddy banks of the Columbia River, northwest of Portland. Suddenly, an 8-year-old boy noticed a pack of old twenty-dollar bills faded in the sun. When they were collected, it turned out to be 6,000 dollars in total.

Representatives of the authorities came to the conclusion that these banknotes were brought by the current from above, from the north. Experts compared their serial numbers with the numbers on the banknotes, which were issued to the hijacker at one time. There was no doubt that the money found turned out to be part of Cooper's booty.

For many, this find was proof that Dan Cooper actually died while jumping from an airplane.

The accidental discovery of the Ingrams sparked another explosion of interest in the terrorist's money from both the local population and visitors, who again reached out to the area in the hope of getting rich overnight.

And again, their hopes were not destined to come true. No one else found any money.

But in 1989, an amateur diver looking for traces of "Cooper's booty" found a small parachute in the river, about a mile upstream from where the Ingrams had found the money.

To the great dismay of those who were excited about this discovery (despite the fact that many years have passed, the seekers of luck have not decreased), it was found that this parachute had nothing to do with Cooper.

Earl Cossey, the man who once packed the parachutes intended for the hijacker, said that the one found cannot even be compared with those received by Dan Cooper. Most likely, Kossey said, the parachute found was used to launch an illuminating rocket.

The diver who found the parachute was hired by a California lawyer, former FBI agent Richard Toso. For ten years, every last Thursday in November, Thanksgiving, he spent looking for traces of Cooper.

Toso, who wrote a book titled D.B. Cooper, Dead or Alive,” claims that the hijacker drowned and his remains must have been stuck between the piles that are driven into the bottom of the river every half mile in case of flooding.

“Cooper had no idea where he was when he was skydiving,” writes Toso. He fell backwards into the water with wads of money tied to his belt and sank. He is still somewhere down there, at the bottom. And the rest of the money is also there, caught on a sharp stone or covered in silt.

Despite yearly searches, Richard Toso, like hundreds of other treasure hunters, never found anything.

Did Dan Cooper survive, where did the rest of the money go - all this to this day remains the same mystery as it was many years ago.

And as you can see, the mystery will remain unsolved.