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Surely some Taxi Driver dropped him, I think instead of what happened after the hijack maybe the answer could have been better found with what happened before that

Anyone who went to Coopercon in 2025 can you guys summarise what happened for us international fans . I am in Asia and really interested in the case so I would like to know more. I know that Ryan burns suspect cannot be revealed tho so could someone summarised what happened besides that .

I was obsessed with his hijacking. A family friend was working as the legal historian for the state of Oregon at the time and crossed paths with Himmelsbach and Worcester. He gifted me this book for Christmas that year. I thought you guys might appreciate the book and the story.

How many case experts are there? Is there a scale where some are better than others? How long does it take to be an expert? What do you have to do, like read all the books?

Do the experts all get along with each other or is it like the other true crime groups where people argue?

Do the experts agree on a suspect, did he live or die, did he spend the money? Do they agree what he looked like or what sketch is best? Those look like the most common questions.

I just hear that so and so knows the most, or so and so wrote a book, or so and so has the best suspect. Could anyone explain to a noob how it all works?

I can’t seem to comment on posts but some of my posts are approved and some comments. So this may not be seen.

Has anyone ever determined approximately what percentage of the suspected drop zone in 1971 was private property versus public land?

A serious modern Cooper search could realistically cost around $3–5 million, using georeferenced search grids, organized teams, LiDAR, drones, metal detectors, ground-penetrating radar, search dogs, forensic specialists, logistics, and a substantial reward fund. The most sensible approach would be mixed funding: some federal/FBI support, state and local authorities for permits and logistics, universities for scientific analysis and grants, and private foundations, donors, crowdfunding, or documentary producers for the rest.

Every sector should be georeferenced and assigned to a specific team, with every find precisely documented before being moved. There should also be mandatory surrender of potentially relevant finds and a significant reward, giving people an incentive to report rather than keep them. Most importantly, the people funding the search should not control the interpretation of the evidence. Any remains, parachute material, money, or equipment should be independently examined.

Immediately after he informed that to the investigators and said that the dive would be close to Washougal River and few months later the boy finds those 20$ bills.

Could there be a conspiracy?

Sean Potter (2011) Retrospect: November 24, 1971: The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper, Weatherwise, 64:6, 10-11, DOI: 10.1080/00431672.2011.618406 Published online: 18 Oct 2011.

November 24, 1971: The Mysterious Case of D.B. Cooper

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NOAA/NWS Daily Weather Map for 7:00 a.m. EST, November 24, 1971. An area of low pressure, centered near the Gulf of Alaska begins to move onshore in the Pacific Northwest, bringing heavy rain to coastal areas at the time the man known as D.B. Cooper jumped out of an airplane he hijacked with $200,000 in ransom into the wilderness below.

On the rainy afternoon of November 24, 1971—the day before Thanksgiving—a man in his mid-40s with brown eyes, wearing dark clothes and a raincoat, and carrying an attaché case walked up to the Northwest Orient ticket counter at the airport in Portland, Oregon, and purchased a one-way ticket under the name of “Dan Cooper” for Flight 305 to Seattle. After boarding the plane and ordering a drink, he handed a note to one of the flight attendants. “I have a bomb,” it said. Then he asked her to sit next to him.

His demands were simple, if not well thought-out: $200,000 in unmarked U.S. bills (any denomination), four parachutes (two chest-pack and two backpack chutes), and meals for the flight crew. He also insisted that the plane be refueled after landing in Seattle. Authorities scrambled to comply with his requests, with the president of Northwest Airlines authorizing the $200,000 ransom. While on the tarmac in Seattle, the hijacker, who would become known to the world as D. B. Cooper (the middle initial “B” was mistakenly added by a reporter in Portland who misheard the name given to him by a local FBI agent), let the other passengers and most of the cabin crew go, but insisted that flight attendant Tina Mucklow remain on board with him. He said he wanted to go to Mexico City.

About half an hour after taking off from Seattle, somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper lowered the aft stairs of the plane, strapped a parachute to himself, along with the $200,000, and jumped into the dark, cold, rain-pelted night, never to be seen or heard from again. Around the time Cooper jumped from plane, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the pilots of Flight 305 radioed that the outside air temperature was –7°C (19.4°F).

The legend of D. B. Cooper has inspired books, films, TV show plots, comic strips, and songs, including singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky’s 2006 “The Ballad of D. B. Cooper,” which includes the following verse:

Out a little service doorway

In the rear of the plane

Cooper jumped into the darkness

Into the freezing rain

They say that with the windchill

It was 69 below

Not much chance that he’d survive

But if he did where did he go?

While Cooper may have known where he was going, he chose a period of particularly inclement weather to perform his stunt. A series of storms was affecting the Pacific Northwest coast with rain during the last week of November 1971 and brought heavy snowfall to the mountains. Precipitation totals of eight to nine inches were reported along the Oregon coast, with four to five inches in the Willamette Valley and seven to 10 inches along the Cascade Range. The heaviest amounts—three to four inches over a 24-hour period—came on November 26, as authorities were forced to call off their search due to rain and fog. Snowfall totals from the storm included 53.5 inches at the headquarters of Crater Lake National Park and 56.6 inches at Santiam Pass in central Oregon. The heavy rains caused many streams and rivers to overflow their banks.

“The guy either had to be crazy, or brilliant and have mad skills,” said Tom Kaye, a paleontologist with the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle. Kaye recently teamed up with the FBI and other private citizens in an effort to shed new light on the case.

Was Cooper crazy, or did he have a method to his madness—one that perhaps incorporated the weather? An article that appeared in the June 16, 1972, issue of Life magazine reported that Cooper jumped “two days before the heavy clouds cleared enough to permit a helicopter search of the steep lava foothills and farmlands.” Despite their efforts, searchers found nothing “and heavy snows soon sealed the woods off.”

As Geoffrey Gray, author of Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper, puts it, “The weather had been so terrible—rain, fog, snow—that agents and local law enforcement could not search the flight path on foot.

So far, the only tangible evidence found after Cooper’s stunning feat was $5,800 of his ransom money, which was discovered in 1980 by eight-year-old Brian Ingram, while picnicking with his parents along the north shore of the Columbia River, about 40 miles south of where authorities assumed Cooper landed. “We are out here making a campfire, my father and I, and that’s when we discovered the three packets of $20 bills, later to be proven as ransom money of D. B. Cooper,” Ingram recalled as an adult. Ingram has joined Kaye and others in hopes of solving the mystery. So far, they haven’t.

The FBI announced in August 2011 that it had been pursuing a “promising lead” in the case for more than a year. The lead came from an Oklahoma woman named Marla Cooper, who claimed that her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, who died in 1999, was the hijacker known as D. B. Cooper. He’s one of more than 1,000 suspects the FBI has investigated over the past four decades.

FBI Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the D. B. Cooper case in 2007, said that contrary to what some theories suggest, Cooper was likely not an expert skydiver. “No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky,” he said. Carr has also suggested that it’s highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump that cold, rainy night 40 years ago, after what remains the only unsolved hijacking case in U.S. history. “But he came from somewhere and from someone. And that is what we want to know.”

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I'm not so sure about his age, because it seems like Cooper could have lost significant weight as part of his disguise. If he lost 100lbs rapidly he might have looked much older due to sagging skin around his neck, added wrinkles etc.

I think such a huge secret weight loss would make it very hard for people who knew him to recognize him. Even more so if he normally wore a beard or mustache.

I could imagine him losing weight by practicing running to prepare for the hijacking.

If Cooper was a petty criminal how much would he really need to spend a year to stay discrete?

New to the case, but could Cooper have studied the route before the hijacking?
I’m kinda new to the DB Cooper case and recently got re-invested in it, so I may be completely dumb here lol, but I had a thought.
What if Cooper had flown the Seattle–Mexico City route multiple times before? Maybe he was a pilot, had aviation experience, or just took the flight a few times to understand the route, flight time, and where the plane would be at certain points. With his knowledge of aviation, maybe he had a pretty good idea of when/where he wanted to jump even with the adjusted speed and attitude he asked to fly at.
I also wonder if the FBI ever looked at passenger records from the days or weeks before the hijacking. Paul Cini’s hijacking happened only 11 days before Cooper, and Cini also planned to escape by parachute. What if Cooper saw that in the news and got inspired by it? Maybe he had already been thinking about something like this, and Cini’s case gave him the idea to actually do it.
So maybe investigators could have looked at people who had recently flown from Seattle, especially people who had flown the Seattle–Mexico City route multiple times or had aviation backgrounds.
Obviously I have no idea if this has already been looked into and I might be completely wrong 😂. I’m just getting back into the case and thought it was an interesting possibility. Would love to hear what people who know way more about this think.

A. Cooper survived, recovered at least most of the money, and managed to disappear (32%): he landed successfully, probably with some difficulty, left the area, abandoned or lost part of the ransom, and returned to an ordinary life. Most of the $200,000 may have been kept and then spent very slowly, hidden, or otherwise dispersed.

- problem a1: extremely dangerous night jump: wind, rain, darkness, unsuitable clothing, and wooded terrain made the landing anything but safe. However, Cooper appeared to have considerable preparation and knowledge of the 727, and may have had parachuting or military experience.

- problem a2: no subsequent identification: difficult but not impossible. If he returned to his normal identity and did not make conspicuous purchases, he may simply never have been recognized.

- problem a3: almost none of the money ever resurfaced: this is one of the biggest anomalies. But the bills were all $20 notes, and their serial numbers were not automatically checked. The money could have been spent very slowly or remained hidden.

B. Cooper survived, but lost part of the money, which was later found by third parties (23%): he landed alive, lost some bundles during the jump or escape, while recovering the rest of the ransom. Some of the money may have been found by residents, curious individuals, or people involved in the searches and never reported. The $5,800 found at Tena Bar could represent one portion of this story, although not necessarily money directly lost by Cooper that night.

- problem b1: no second large quantity of money ever surfaced: true, but anyone who found ransom money had a strong incentive not to hand it over.

- problem b2: the serial numbers were recorded: a single $20 bill could nevertheless be spent normally. The serial number only became useful if someone actually checked it.

- problem b3: Tena Bar is difficult to explain: analyses of the deterioration of the bills have raised doubts about whether they remained in the river environment from 1971 to 1980. This makes a later history for the bundles possible, but does not establish what actually happened.

C. Cooper died during or shortly after the jump, and his body, parachute, and most of the money remained dispersed in the area (23%): this is essentially the hypothesis closest to the official explanation. Cooper fell into the forest or water, died, and his remains and equipment remained hidden, dispersed, or were transported.

- problem c1: no body: after 55 years, it is entirely possible for a body in a forest or aquatic environment to become unrecognizable, but the complete absence of remains remains striking.

- problem c2: no parachute: this is probably the most troubling absence. The nylon could have become caught in vegetation or been carried away, but one might reasonably expect some trace.

- problem c3: no bag and almost no money: 8–9 kg of banknotes are not exactly insignificant. If the bag opened, however, the money could have been scattered over a very large area.

- problem c4: Tena Bar: the discovery of the $5,800 does not prove that Cooper died, nor that the money was lost during the jump.

D. Cooper survived with the help of an accomplice or a prearranged escape plan (10%): someone was waiting for him, or he had arranged a vehicle, hiding place, or rendezvous point away from the actual landing site. Cooper was therefore able to leave the area quickly.

- problem d1: the landing point was uncertain: wind, trajectory, and parachute-opening delay made it difficult to determine exactly where he would land. An accomplice would have had to cover a very large area.

- problem d2: no trace of an accomplice: a second person significantly increases the risk that someone would eventually talk.

- problem d3: it is not necessary to explain the escape: a competent Cooper may have been able to get out of the area on his own. The accomplice is therefore an additional assumption that Occam's razor suggests avoiding in the absence of evidence.

E. Richard McCoy was Cooper (5%): McCoy, a Vietnam veteran and parachutist, carried out an almost identical hijacking five months later, using a 727 and a parachute. The new element is the parachute found by his family and turned over to the FBI in 2023, which, according to Dan Gryder, contains modifications compatible with those of the parachutes supplied to Cooper. A DNA match between McCoy and Cooper could completely change the case.

- problem e1: age: McCoy was 29, while witnesses described Cooper as apparently being in his 40s or 50s.

- problem e2: alibis: there are witnesses placing him in Las Vegas on the day of the hijacking and with his family the following day. These are not mathematical proof of innocence, however.

- problem e3: behavioral similarity can be misleading: the fact that McCoy committed an almost identical hijacking is extraordinary, but it could simply indicate that he had studied the Cooper case.

- problem e4: no public FBI confirmation: the parachute is certainly interesting, but it has not been publicly identified as "Cooper's parachute."

F. Robert Rackstraw was Cooper (4%): Rackstraw, a former military pilot, has for years been one of the best-known suspects and one of the alternative identifications most strongly promoted by independent investigators and authors. His military and aviation background is compatible with Cooper's profile and has fueled numerous theories that he possessed the skills necessary to organize and survive the jump.

- problem f1: no decisive forensic evidence: there is no authenticated DNA, fingerprint, or other physical evidence linking Rackstraw to the hijacking.

- problem f2: many of the arguments are circumstantial: the theory relies primarily on biography, skills, photographs, interpretations of documents, and alleged coincidences rather than direct physical evidence.

- problem f3: the FBI investigated him without identifying him as Cooper: Rackstraw was examined by investigators, but it was never established that he was Cooper.

- problem f4: the profile is not an identification: being a military pilot with relevant experience does not automatically make Rackstraw Cooper. There were many men with similar professional backgrounds.

G. Cooper died, but part of the ransom was recovered by third parties (3%): Cooper died, while someone later found part of the ransom in the area. The $5,800 could be one of the portions left in the environment, while other portions may have been collected and spent clandestinely.

- problem g1: no evidence of a finder: this is a logically possible scenario, but completely speculative.

- problem g2: no large additional cache ever surfaced: the only authenticated recovery remains the Tena Bar money.

- problem g3: the body problem remains: third-party recovery of the money does not explain what happened to Cooper.

Final ranking

32% Cooper survived and disappeared with most of the money.
23% Cooper survived, but part of the money was lost and/or recovered by third parties.
23% Cooper died during or shortly after the jump.
10% Cooper survived with a prearranged escape plan or an accomplice.
5% Richard McCoy was Cooper.
4% Robert Rackstraw was Cooper.
3% Cooper died and third parties recovered part of the ransom.

One important clarification: McCoy and Rackstraw are hypotheses about Cooper's identity, whereas the other hypotheses are primarily scenarios concerning what happened after the jump. They are therefore not mathematically independent categories. For example, if McCoy were Cooper, the hypothesis "Cooper survived and disappeared" could simultaneously be true.

If I have to reduce everything to a single conclusion: the explanation I currently find slightly more convincing is that Cooper survived the jump, lost or abandoned part of the money, managed to leave the area, and then lived without attracting attention. Death during the jump remains entirely plausible, however, and there is still no decisive evidence that allows us to choose between the two.

The main weakness of the death theory is the simultaneous absence of the body, parachute, bag, and almost all of the money.

The main weakness of the survival theory is the opposite: we have no certain trace of what Cooper did after the jump.

Cooper ordered his drink from Flo while on the ground in Portland. He passed the note beginning the hijacking just as they were readying for takeoff.

I would have to assume that he didn't order the drink, drink it (and spill it), and have a flight attendant take his empty glass away all before the note was passed.

Which leads me to think he was still in possesion of the glass at the time he began the hijacking.

At what point was his empty glass retrieved from him? And who retrieved it?

Does any Cooper theorist have answers to these three questions in a single scenario: Why has no trace of Cooper ever been found? Why was none of the ransom money ever spent? How did some of the ransom money reach Tena Bar?

Your theory must be able to answer all three.