D.B. Cooper

Case background and investigation

On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, the eve of Thanksgiving, a man traveling under the name "Dan Cooper" boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 scheduled to fly from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. Shortly after takeoff he handed a flight attendant a note stating he had a bomb, opened a briefcase to reveal what appeared to be wiring and red sticks, and demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. After the aircraft landed in Seattle, authorities delivered the ransom in unmarked $20 bills, and Cooper released the 36 passengers and two of the crew. He then ordered the plane to take off again and fly slowly toward Mexico City. Somewhere over the wooded terrain of southwest Washington, at roughly 8:00 p.m., Cooper lowered the jet's aft airstair and parachuted into the night with the money. He was never seen again. A press misidentification early in the case attached the name "D.B. Cooper" to the hijacker, and the moniker endured.

The FBI opened an investigation it code-named NORJAK, for "Northwest hijacking," which grew into one of the longest and most exhaustive inquiries in the Bureau's history. Agents conducted extensive ground and aerial searches of the presumed drop zone, interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads nationwide, and processed physical evidence left aboard the plane, including a clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip, cigarette butts, and two of the four parachutes. Investigators circulated the serial numbers of the ransom bills widely, but none of the money entered circulation in a way that could be traced. Over the decades the FBI reviewed more than 1,000 suspects.

A significant break came on February 10, 1980, when eight-year-old Brian Ingram uncovered several deteriorating packets of $20 bills, totaling about $5,800, while digging on a Columbia River beach known as Tena Bar (also spelled Tina Bar) near Vancouver, Washington. The serial numbers matched the ransom, but the find raised as many questions as it answered, and it remains the only portion of the money ever recovered. The rest of the cash, and the fate of the hijacker, were never determined.

Numerous individuals have been proposed as suspects over the years, though none has ever been confirmed and Cooper was never identified. Names that have surfaced in FBI files, books, and media coverage include Richard McCoy Jr., who was convicted of a strikingly similar 1972 hijacking; Kenneth Christiansen, a former paratrooper and Northwest Airlines employee named by researchers after his death; Robert Rackstraw, a former military man who acknowledged parachuting experience but denied being Cooper; and others such as L.D. Cooper and Walter Reca, promoted through deathbed or family claims. In each case the evidence has been circumstantial or contested, and the FBI never charged anyone.

On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced it was redirecting the resources devoted to the NORJAK case to other priorities, effectively suspending active investigation after 45 years, while noting that any physical evidence potentially related to a parachute or the money should still be referred to the Bureau. The case is frequently described as the only unsolved act of air piracy in U.S. commercial aviation history. In the years since, amateur investigators and forensic hobbyists have continued the pursuit, examining trace particles found on Cooper's tie and, in later analysis, diatoms in the recovered money that some argued indicated the cash entered the river well after the hijacking. Documentaries, including a 2022 Netflix series, and periodic releases of case files have sustained public interest. As of 2026, the identity and fate of D.B. Cooper remain unknown, and the case is still classified as unsolved.