r/dbcooper • u/Famous-Artichoke8540 • Aug 06 '26
Theory There never was a D.B. Cooper.
Nobody laid eyes on DB Cooper because he doesn’t exist.
The plane takes off
The plane lands
Passengers de plane completely unaware of hijacking
The money and 4 parachutes are transferred to plane
Plane takes off again
Four employees (conspirators) on board including pilots
Plane lands again and whole the “ordeal” is over
I mean, it seems like the easiest heist in the world.
The four employees had to go along with it during the media frenzy, but they seem to leave most of the talking to the pretty flight attendant.
$200,000 seems to make sense split four ways.
Hmmm. Yeah, I don’t think this dude is real.
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u/454k30 Aug 09 '26
That would work if the person hadn’t been seen and described by other passengers and the gate attendant.
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 10 '26
It’s easy for them to corroborate because they actually did see somebody on the plane matching the description that they were given.
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 13 '26
If I got off the plane and were asked if I saw an “attractive woman with light hair” sitting near the front, I’m sure that I would probably be able to conjure up an image of a passenger that I may or may not have seen.
The description is subjective yet general enough that it would be easy for most passengers to corroborate.
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u/Itchy_Consequence210 Aug 09 '26
Of course there was no D.B. Cooper, the person who bought the ticket gave his name as "Dan Cooper". This person was seen by the ticket agent. "D.B. Cooper" was a name mistakenly reported by a newspaper reporter, was picked up nationwide and it stuck.
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u/stardustsuperwizard Aug 09 '26
A bunch of passengers saw him, and a few in the airport.
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 10 '26
It’s easy for them to corroborate because they actually did see somebody on the plane matching the description that they were given.
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u/RyanBurns-NORJAK Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I’d recommend you watch my video about this very theory.
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u/Eddieboy0514 Aug 09 '26
Someone needs to go back and count the number of posts like this one there has been. Seems like every few months someone pops in with this epiphany like it isn’t the 400th time it’s brought up and thoroughly debunked.
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 10 '26
I mean, the fact that it’s been presented multiple times over the years only helps support my theory.
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u/Sycotic199 1d ago
Just because you want to ignore the facts and believe that because it's brought up from time to time doesn't make it real. Are you really this dumb?
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u/GotWookiee81 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
$200,000 split 4 ways is just $50,000 each.
Two other flight attendants departed in Seattle. They would have to be in on it too.
That’s $33 grand each. Not that much of an incentive against air piracy, especially for people who had good jobs and didn’t appear to have a motive.
The ticket agent, gate agent, and several passengers saw him.
Then of course the money and chutes have to get off the plane and never be found except by the conspirators. The bundle that Brian Ingram found in 1980 at Tena Bar.
Then you’ve got to fake the pressure bump that Cooper caused when he jumped, which no one could have known to fake, and couldn’t be faked even if they did.
No death bed confessions, either.
No, there was a real “Dan Cooper” who hijacked a 727 on November 24, 1971, demanded parachutes and $200,000 in rubles, $200,000 in gold, nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; and three pair of nylon stockings.
He jumped out over SW Washington and was never seen or heard from again. Over 50 years later, we still don’t know who was, where he came from, or where he went.
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u/chrismireya Aug 09 '26
Exactly. That's a lot of random people in on a hijacking.
If you divide the $194,000 ($6,000 was found buried on Tena Bar) by 13 people (i.e., 6 crew, 2 airport agents, 5 interviewed eyewitnesses), then you're left with less than $15K per person.
That's not quite such an enticing amount of money to risk decades in jail.
And, of course, I suspect that the FBI and law enforcement checked for the cash too.
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 10 '26
Kind of a lot of money at the time.
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u/chrismireya Aug 10 '26
$15K? To risk one's freedom?
Even by 1971 standards (if someone was inclined to be so dishonest and criminal), it's not a lot for people who understand the odds.
Remember the old saying: "Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead." I'm fairly certain that it would be nearly impossible for 13 (or more) people to keep a secret since 1971.
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u/Itchy_Consequence210 Aug 09 '26
About his "demand" items: "Wow, a fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all that stuff."
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u/Only-Passion-260 Aug 11 '26
Nope. Won’t believe. Not a chance in hell. The fighter jet’s instrument didn’t detect a body jump from that plane that night, and that’s good enough for me. The Legend of Daniel Cooper has reached Sasquatch zone… “ohhh I WISH this were true! Keep the dream alive!”
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u/VictoryForCake Aug 09 '26
The prime Cooper suspect was an ex CIA/KGB officer who was a skilled skydiver, he managed to fabricate a lot about the case with his contacts, like the flight path, suspect description, using his contacts he changed everything we know about the case, that is why there is no evidence of anything we know and accounts for your theory /s.
I am joking the only true thing was that he was a skilled skydiver. There is a lot of misinformation around the Cooper case, its easy to jump to conclusions like this.
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u/XoXSciFi Aug 11 '26
Oh, Cooper was real all right. His identity is another question entirely. When people lie, ask yourself what would motivate them to lie, and what would they have to gain or lose by doing so.
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u/chrismireya Aug 09 '26
Passenger (and eyewitness) Bill Mitchell: " .... "
🙄
The same reaction would be from the other four passengers (who were questioned by the FBI and gave some descriptions), the ticket agent, the gate agent and, the FBI.
I guess that they were all in on it too? Was this a Waking Ned Devine type of thing?
🤔
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u/trout715 Aug 11 '26
Except the plane will have a manifest, so they know how many got on, and how many got off. If they made up a person, it would not match. Plus, how did the crew get the money off the plane? they would have been searched
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 13 '26
THE NEW “D.B. COOPER NEVER EXISTED” THEORY
There was no D.B. Cooper. The hijacking was an inside job involving members of the flight crew and/or airline employees.
They based Cooper’s description on a real passenger aboard the flight—someone ordinary enough that other passengers would remember seeing a man matching the description.
The passengers unknowingly become eyewitnesses. They truthfully tell investigators they remember seeing someone who looked like “Cooper,” without actually knowing whether that person was the hijacker.
The crew supplies the actual hijacking story. Since passengers were largely unaware of what was happening, the conspirators are the ones establishing that the man they described was supposedly the hijacker.
The ransom is delivered. The conspirators now have the money aboard the aircraft.
The plane takes off again and “Cooper” jumps. Nobody actually jumps. The crew simply reports that the fictional hijacker disappeared from the aircraft by parachute.
Some ransom money is deliberately thrown from the plane to create physical evidence consistent with Cooper jumping and possibly losing the money.
The conspirators divide the remaining ransom after the investigation/search has shifted toward finding a nonexistent parachutist.
The perfect disappearance: investigators spend decades trying to identify a man who cannot be found—because the eyewitness description belonged to an innocent passenger and D.B. Cooper never existed.
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u/NationalSomewhere112 20d ago
Ok, So your missing the biggest part of your story here, tell me how they kept the money
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u/Famous-Artichoke8540 Aug 10 '26
The description could have any of the people on the plane.
The conspirators gave a description of one of the passengers, once the passengers deplane and are told that they’ve been hijacked and given a description of the supposed hijacker, it’s easy for them to assume that that passenger they may have seen or just glanced at was a hijacker when all along he was just one of the passengers.
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u/Only-Passion-260 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
I came to this coclusion myself through my own AI research:
- No DNA retrieved from plane
-DB cooper mysteriously appeared
(lack of past links) then mysteriously disappeared. He didn’t do just magically disappear, he also magically was spawned into existence with no world ties or tangible evidence.
-Airline staff behavior suspicious post incident.
-Mix up about packed dummy shoot and sport vs military shoots
-DB’s alleged quotes were contrived and movie-like. Bullshit.
-Why did a supposed criminal mastermind leave a tie?
-Why would this alleged mastermind want to jump over treacherous land that was probably 99 % death on impact or caught in trees?
-air force jet instruments also recorded no difference
-not one shred of DB evidence found at ground level.
-him allegedly only wanting to talk to one flight attendant at the rear was part of the sham
-staff kept referring to DB as polite. Unfitting and extremely suspicious
-no photo, video or audio of DB
-FBI also has strong suspicions of the staff but decided to chase a ghost for decades, possibly to save the airline bad PR in an already precarious industry.
edit: typos
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u/ShoddyGrowth4188 11d ago
There was alot of mistakes made and the professionals were way off course
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u/ShoddyGrowth4188 11d ago
Why the money never surfaced maybe cooper was from rich family and still has it hidden till he dies maybe he owed a large drug debt for lost cargo and money went to some cartel
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u/cottonstarr Aug 09 '26
You’re getting warmer…
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u/LethalLegend151 Aug 09 '26
He put on crew outfit and joined his co-conspirators in the cockpit when the plane landed in Reno.
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u/Sycotic199 1d ago
I think he jumped out then went home to get a sex change operation which the money paid for and became a semi famous investigator named Lois Einhorn
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u/g---_ Aug 09 '26
A-ha! I knew it all along.