A passenger on a Northwest Orient flight claimed to have a bomb, collected $200,000 and four parachutes in Seattle, then jumped from the rear stairs of the airliner into a stormy night. He has never been identified.
Read it like a field journal. Each chapter logs evidence onto the board, and the plot twists stay redacted until you declassify them.
The man bought his ticket at Portland airport under the name Dan Cooper. A reporting error later turned him into “D. B. Cooper”, the name that stuck.
Shortly after take-off he passed a note to a flight attendant and showed her what looked like a bomb in his briefcase. He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes. The crew's descriptions of him later became the FBI's composite sketches.
In Seattle the passengers were released in exchange for the money and parachutes. The plane took off again for Reno with a few crew aboard and Cooper in the rear cabin.
Somewhere over south-west Washington he lowered the aft stairs and jumped into the rain and darkness. He left behind a clip-on tie on his seat.
Cooper's clip-on tie was one of the few things he left behind. The FBI later recovered a DNA sample from it. That sample has not identified anyone.
In 1980 a boy found $5,800 in decaying bundles on a Columbia River beach. The serial numbers matched the ransom. It linked the money to the crime, but not how it got there.
The FBI's NORJAK file grew to thousands of pages of leads and suspects. In July 2016 the Bureau redirected its active resources away from the case, while saying it would still examine physical evidence related to the parachutes or the money.
Months after Flight 305, Richard McCoy hijacked another airliner in a strikingly similar way and parachuted out with a ransom. He seemed an obvious match. The FBI says he was ruled out.
Flight 305 is hijacked after leaving Portland.
The ransom is delivered in Seattle. Cooper later jumps from the aft stairs.
$5,800 with matching serial numbers is found on the Columbia River.
The FBI redirects its active investigative resources.
Drag the photos around. Tap one to examine it. Then pick a theory: the threads show which evidence it rests on.
Witness accounts and sketchWitness accountExamined
The tieDocumentedExamined
The recovered ransomDocumentedExamined
The NORJAK filesDocumentedExamined
Which explanation do you believe? Each is labelled by how well it's supported.
The record shows exactly how the hijacking happened and that part of the money reached the Columbia River. It does not show who Cooper was or whether he survived the jump.
No. The FBI has not identified the hijacker. It redirected its active resources away from the case in 2016.
Yes. In 1980, $5,800 in ransom bills with matching serial numbers was found on a Columbia River beach. The rest has never been publicly confirmed as found.
