Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - D.B. Cooper: The Man Who Hijacked A Plane, Took $200,000 and Vanished

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

On the day before Thanksgiving, 1971, a man named D.B. Cooper walked up to an airport counter, paid cash for a one-way ticket, and boarded a commercial flight. By the time the plane landed, he had collected $200,000 in ransom, strapped it to his body, and jumped out the back of a jet. No one has seen him since.In the first of three episodes on D.B. Cooper, Katie Ring takes you back to November 24th, 1971: who this man was, how he pulled off one of the most audacious crimes in aviation history, and what the evidence left behind actually told investigators.This episode involves descriptions of a hijacking and the threat of violence. Please listen with care.Follow America's Most Infamous Crimes to hear the rest of the story: https://pod.link/1882861002Join Crime House+ to binge a special limited series on Murder: True Crime Stories for America’s 250th: The Crimes That Built America. These are the cases that created the FBI, gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and gave us America’s Most Wanted. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. You’ll also get ad-free and early released episodes across the Crime House lineup.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Hi listeners, exciting news. Crime House Plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the Crimes That Built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda Rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, or you can listen to all of them right now with Crime House Plus. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page.

This is Crime House. On the day before Thanksgiving, 1971, a man in a suit walked up to an airline counter, paid cash for a one-way ticket, ordered a plane, ordered a bourbon and soda, lit a cigarette, and then somewhere over the dark force of Southwest Washington, at 10,000 feet in the rain, dressed, in a business suit and loafers, jumped out of the back of a jet, with $200,000 in cash strapped to his body. No one has seen him since. For over 50 years, the FBI hunted one of the most audacious criminals in American history. They've chased leads, interviewed suspects, and tested evidence. But today, the case remains exactly where it was the morning after it happened, wide open. This is the story of D.B. Cooper, America's most stylish thief, and its greatest unsolved mystery.

Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's most infamous crimes.

Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. please rate review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. And to get all episodes at once ad-free, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. Before I get started, please be aware that this episode involves descriptions of a hijacking and the threat of violence.

So please listen with care. This is the first of our three-episode series on D.B. Cooper, America's only unsolved skyjacking. Today, I'll take you back to November 24th in 1971, who D.B. Cooper was, how he pulled off one of the most audacious crimes in aviation history, and the trail of clues he left behind before he literally vanished into thin air. To understand the DB Cooper hijacking, you first have to understand the world it happened in, because in 1971, commercial air travel operated in a way that's almost unrecognizable today. There was no TSA, no body scanners, no ID checks at the gate. Passengers didn't even have to purchase their tickets in advance. You could literally walk up to an airline

encounter the day of your flight, pay cash, give any name you wanted, and board a plane. Security just didn't exist like it does today. And the consequences of that were predictable. By the early 1970s, the United States was in the grip of an epidemic of aircraft hijackings. The CIA was fielding about one report of skyjacking per month. Between 1968 and 1972, 137 planes were hijacked in the U.S. alone. These days, our frame of race, reference for skyjackings is the 9-11 attacks. But maximum fear and destruction wasn't really the aim before then. These weren't cold calculated plans. They were acts of desperate people, usually trying to get somewhere like Cuba for political reasons, and they didn't know how else to do

it. But then, on November 24, 1971, something shifted. It was the day before Thanksgiving, one of the biggest travel days of the year. At around 2.25 p.m., a man approached the Northwest Orient Airlines counter at the Portland International Airport and filled out the ticket voucher. He signed his name Dan Cooper, printing it in neatly blocked letters. He looked like he was in his mid-40s and was wearing a dark burgundy brown business suit with a white dress shirt and a skinny black clip on tie from JCPen, fastened to his shirt with an imitation pearl tie pin. He also had an overcoat and was carrying a briefcase. His complexion was olive-toned and he wore his hair in neat old-fashioned waves.

Someone who later described him said, quote, other than the fact that he was wearing horn-rimmed sunglasses aboard the flight, there was nothing remarkable about the man. But one thing he did at the ticket counter stood out, at least in retrospect. When he bought his ticket, the guy asked the agent whether the plane was a Boeing 727. The agent confirmed that it was, but they didn't think anything of his question. He paid $20 in cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington on flight 305. It was a quick up and down just about 40 minutes.

Around 3 p.m., Cooper boarded the aircraft and settled into the aisle seat near the back of the plane. There were five crew members on board that day. The pilot, Captain William Scott, the co-pilot Robert Radizak, senior flight attendant Alice Hancock, and two junior flight attendants, Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner. When Cooper settled into a seat, he ordered a bourbon and soda and started chain smoking. wild how things have changed. At around 305 p.m., flight 305 took off. A few minutes later, he reached into his jacket pocket

and handed a note to the senior flight attendant Florence Schaffner. She took it but didn't look at it right away. To be honest, it probably wasn't even the first note a man had handed her that day. Flight attendants in the 70s were insanely hypersexualized in airline advertisements, which gave many men permission to openly objectify them. Let's just say Florence would be used to,

ignoring unwanted attention. But then Cooper leaned over and told her she should probably read it. She unfolded it and it read, Miss, I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you to sit next to me. Florence looked at him. He told her to sit down, so she did. Then he opened the briefcase. Inside she could see a tangle of wires running from a large battery to what appeared to be a bundle of dynamite sticks. Cooper told her all he had to do was connect a wire to a small device attached to the battery, and everyone on the plane would be dead. He instructed Florence to write down exactly what he told her. Here's what he said. I want $200,000 by 5 p.m. in cash, put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny

stuff, or I'll do the job. Florence wrote it all down, then he told her to take that note to the pilot. Cooper wanted everything waiting for him when the plane landed at Seattle Tacoma International Airport, aka CETAC. He wasn't willing to sit on the tarmac and wait. Four parachutes might seem like overkill, but it was actually a calculated move. If he'd only asked for one, the authorities might have given him a defective shoot that was designed to fail. But by demanding four, he made them think he might take hostages with him. No one was going to hand a rigged parachute to an innocent person. Florence took the note to the cockpit, and when she came back, Cooper made her hand it over.

Just like that, one of the only pieces of potential evidence in this case was gone. He also had flight attendant Tina Mucklow come and sit beside him. At one point, Tina asked him if he had a grudge against Northwest Orient Airlines. He said, I don't have a grudge against your airline, miss. I just have a grudge. For the rest of the flight, Cooper stayed quiet and calm, quietly chain smoking, keeping one hand inside the briefcase at all times. Because his hand never left the bag,

Tina lit every single one of his cigarettes for him. When the matchbooks ran out, he made sure to take them with him. No fingerprints, no evidence, just a calm man in a business suit, watching the clouds pass below the window. But this was just the quiet before the storm. Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. I want to let you know that Crime House Plus and Murder

True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow murder true crime stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, or you can binge all of them right now, ad free with Crime House. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page. After Florence Schaffner passed the pilots at note, they shared the demands with ground control at CTAC, who immediately called the FBI.

At around 3.35 p.m., the pilot came on the intercom and told the 36 passengers that the plane was experiencing mechanical issues. They needed to burn off some fuel and everyone should move toward the front of the cabin. The passengers had no idea anything was wrong. The flight crew all seemed perfectly calm, so nobody had any reason to worry. In reality, the plane was circling above Seattle in a holding pattern, buying time for the people on the ground to scramble and scramble they did. Flight 305 was the only plane in the sky above Seattle. All other air traffic had been diverted.

Meanwhile, the downtown branch of Seafirst Bank was tapped to provide the cash on Northwest Orient's behalf. Bank employees arranged stacks of bills and varying amounts to make the money look like it had been hastily pulled together, but they weren't just handing over the money and letting it go. Every single serial number had been photographed and stored on microfilm, and without getting too far ahead, this played a major part in what happened later. While the money was being assembled, the airport manager got the four parachutes from a local skydiving instructor. But in the chaos of the situation, something went wrong. there was a dummy reserve shoot mixed in with the four parachutes.

The kind used for training with the main canopy sewn shut so it can't actually deploy. Normally, these training shoots are marked with a large X to keep this kind of mix up from happening. Somehow, it happened anyways. As this was all going on, the plane circled for three and a half hours, and still none of the passengers were freaking out, which says a lot about how professional the crew was. When the plane finally came down and landed at CTAC, it was go time. Snipers were in position around the tarmac, watching and waiting to make a move.

Cooper seemed to sense this. He immediately instructed the flight attendants to close all the window shades. Then he told Tina Mucklow to go get the money and the parachutes from the ground crew. Tina could have walked away at this point and saved herself, but she got back on the plane. Once she came back with the ransom, all 36 passengers were allowed to get off, along with two of the three flight attendants, Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner. What happened next is almost hard to believe. The cabin crew had done such an incredible job keeping everyone calm

that after the passengers were released, one of them actually turned around and went back on board to grab something they'd forgotten. It wasn't until the passengers were standing on the tarmac surrounded by reporters that they learned that their plane had been hijacked. The man in the suit, the one sitting quietly in the back with his bourbon and his briefcase, case had never once broken character. Now, there was only one flight attendant left on the plane, Tina Mucklow, who'd stayed by his side throughout the ordeal. He also had the pilots, the co-pilot, and the ground crew, and he had what he'd asked for. A canvas bag stuffed

with $200,000 and four parachutes, but there was a problem. He'd specifically asked for a knapsack to hold the cash, but they'd given it to him in a canvas bag. No handles, no straps, no way to carry it on his body during a jump. He would need to improvise. Cooper had brought a knife with him, so he used it to cut the suspension lines from one of the parachutes, then rigged them into a makeshift handle for the bank bag. He just cannibalized what happened to be one of the two best parachutes in the set.

He would find out later, or maybe he never found out at all, that one of the other shoots was the dummy training parachute with the canopy sewn shut. But before any of that came into play, there was still the matter of where they were going next. Cooper told the pilots he wanted to fly to Mexico City. The crew quickly calculated the distance. Over 2,300 miles, roughly five and a half hours of flight time. The plane's fuel tanks weren't big enough for that. They'd need to stop somewhere

along the way. So the crew recommended Reno, Nevada. As the first refueling stop, Cooper agreed. Then he issued his flight instructions, and this is where things get even more interesting. He told the pilots he wanted the plane to fly at no more than 10,000 feet altitude, with the wing flaps set at 15 degrees and at the speed of no more than 200 knots. That's about 230 miles per hour. When the pilot tried to argue that the plane couldn't safely fly that slowly, Cooper told him it could, and to do as he was asked. The pilot complied, and Cooper was right.

200 knots is slow for a commercial jet, but it's manageable. But here's why those instructions matter. Cooper had just demonstrated a precise technical understanding of the Boeing 727's capabilities that goes far beyond anything a casual traveler would know. The 727 was one of the only commercial aircraft of that era equipped with a retractable staircase built into the tail of the plane, known as an aft air stair. And Cooper had asked about this specific aircraft by name when purchasing his ticket. Earlier, when the plane was still on the tarmac at C-Tac, he told the plane the plane,

pilot he wanted to take back off with the aft staircase already lowered into the open position. The pilot said that was impossible because the plane couldn't take off with the staircase deployed. But then someone reached out through air traffic control channels to Boeing's engineers who confirmed something that surprised the crew. While the aircraft couldn't take off with the stairs down, the aft staircase could be lowered mid-flight. Cooper had known exactly what the plane was capable of. He'd known it before he even bought his ticket. And now, with those specific flight instructions, 10,000 feet, 15-degree flaps, 200 knots, he'd made sure that the cabin would be unpressurized.

The airspeed would be survivable for an exit, and the aft staircase door could be lowered without the pressure differential, sucking the whole rear section of the plane apart, meaning he could jump out of that plane whenever he wanted to. The plane took off from CETAC with Tina Mucklo still on board, still sitting beside Cooper and still lighting his cigarettes. He kept one hand inside of the briefcase and didn't say much. At some point during the flight south towards Nevada,

Cooper told Tina to go to the cockpit, and for the first time since the flight left Portland, Cooper was completely alone. At 7.42 p.m., a small lay on the cockpit's instrument panel lit up. It indicated that the AF's staircase door was open. The crew called the phone in the back of the plane, and Cooper answered. They asked whether he needed help with anything. No, he said, and he hung up.

At 8.12 p.m., the crew felt the plane shift. A subtle change in pressure and wait as something departed the aircraft, but that something was a someone, D.B. Cooper. Based on the plane's coordinates at the moment the crew felt the shift, investigators were able to calculate a rough drop zone. The question was, could he have survived there? The best estimate placed Cooper somewhere over an area of southwest Washington State, known as the dark divide, a wilderness of dense old growth forest with no roads, no settlements,

and no maintained trails. At more than 75,000 acres, roughly 117 square miles, it's vast, remote, and almost impossible to access. And then there were the conditions outside of the plane at the moment he jumped, which were terrible, to put it mildly. It was pouring rain, with the clouds covering up any ambient light that was coming from the quarter moon in the sky. plane was traveling at around 250 miles an hour, with temperatures well below freezing. Those aren't the conditions you casually skydive into, and Cooper was wearing a business suit and overcoat and loafers. He was carrying the briefcase with the bomb components in one hand, and the canvas bank bag with $200,000 in the other, and at this point, he had just one functional

parachute. Whatever he had planned, whatever kind of man he was, one thing seems clear. he had done this before. Or he was desperate because he jumped anyway. After D.B. Cooper's dramatic jump from the plane, it landed safely in Reno, Nevada just after 10 p.m. FBI agents were waiting on the tarmac. They boarded the aircraft immediately and started collecting whatever evidence Cooper had left behind.

And while it wasn't much, it was something. The first thing and maybe the strangest thing the investigators found was his tie. Somewhere in those last moments before he stepped off the staircase and into the dark, Cooper had unclipped his JC penny clip on tie and tossed it behind him back into the plane. They also found the imitation pearl tie pin that had kept it fastened to his shirt. Nobody could quite explain why he did it. Maybe it flew off when he opened the staircase, or maybe he did it with intention. Whatever the reason, that cheap, mass-produced tie from a department store chain

would become the most analyzed piece of fabric in the history of American law enforcement. The next clues were the two parachutes he'd left behind. Cooper was given four shoots. And of the two he did use, one was the military-grade parachute he'd presumably used for the jump. The other was the second good shoot, which he'd cut apart to make the strap for his money bag. That means he'd jumped with one real parachute and a bag handle made out of the second one. Next, the cigarette butts. Cooper had smoked at least eight cigarettes during the flight,

chain smoking throughout the hours of circling and waiting. Every single butt was collected and sent to the lab. When the forensic team examined them, they didn't find any identifiable fingerprints, zero. Investigators also found at least one strand of hair on the headrest of the seat. That hair was preserved as evidence, although in 1971, there was no such thing as DNA profiling. That technology was still more than a day.

decade away. There were also partial prints recovered from the bourbon glass and from an in-flight magazine. But investigators couldn't confirm whether any of those prints actually belonged to Cooper, or had simply been left behind by previous passengers. Let's just say that the glasses on commercial aircrafts in 1971 weren't exactly being disinfected between every flight. And then there was the note or the lack of it. The one Florence Schaffner had read and handed to the pilot and the one Cooper had asked for back. It was gone, along with any handwriting sample it might have provided. He'd also written his name, Dan Cooper, which seemed to be an alias on the ticket voucher when he bought his seat, which he'd specifically printed in block letters. And here's the thing,

block letters don't reveal much about a person's natural handwriting. Even that small piece of identifying information had been neutralized in advance. It's also worth noting the pilots never had a direct conversation with him during the entire hijacking. Everything was passed through the flight attendants like a game of telephone, so they weren't helpful in that department. In the end, the FBI was left with a clip on tie, a tie pin, a handful of cigarette butts with no prints, a strand or two of hair, and some fingerprints of uncertain origin. No handwriting, no voice, no name that was real, no face that anyone could agree on. The next morning was Thanksgiving 1971. The story was everywhere and the public reaction was not what law enforcement might have hoped

for. Nobody had been her and it was the airline and the FBI who were out $200,000, not any one person. Nobody was exactly losing any sleep over it. People felt like Dan Cooper had stuck it to the man. T-shirts were printed, songs were written. One man interviewed on the news called him one of the slickest cats to ever walk the face of the earth. He was the first person to successfully hijack a commercial airplane in the United States and escape, and that made him a folk hero. And along the way, he got a new name. When he bought his ticket, he'd given the name Dan Cooper. But during one of the early press conferences, a reporter apparently misheard law enforcement official and wrote up the story using the name DB Cooper instead. The correction

never really landed, though, because DB Cooper sounded better. It sounded like a character, and so it stuck. Meanwhile, the search on the ground was unlike anything the Pacific Northwest had seen. More than a thousand police officers and military personnel fanned out in the dark divide. The 75,000-acre wilderness in southwest Washington that investigators believed was Cooper's drop zone. It was an almost impossible search. There were no roads in the area. The terrain was dense, old-growth forest, steep ravines, and undergrowth, so thick that visibility dropped to a few yards.

and investigators weren't even sure he would have landed. The drop zone was an estimate, a calculation based on the plane's speed, altitude, and heading, not a precise location. One local millionaire was convinced that Cooper had come down into the lake and actually rented a small submarine to search it for the ransom money. It was one of dozens of creative, expensive, and ultimately fruitless efforts in the weeks and months that followed.

They found nothing. No parachute, no body, no money. No sign that anyone had ever landed in those woods at all. The lead FBI agent on the case, Ralph Himmelsbach, didn't think there was anything to find. He thought Cooper had probably never gotten his parachute open, that he'd plunged into the forest floor at terminal velocity and that his body was somewhere in the cascades, buried deep under decades of soil and undergrowth. Maybe he was right.

Maybe Cooper had overestimated himself or underestimated the conditions, or simply gotten unlucky. Maybe the money was scattered across the forest floor somewhere, rotting beneath the ferns. Or maybe, just maybe, he walked away in one piece. The FBI wouldn't close the case for another 45 years. Even then, they never stopped looking entirely, and the search is still on. At the end of each episode, I'd like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below. Was D.B. Cooper a criminal genius or just someone who got lucky at the right moment in history?

I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, there's no way he could have gotten away with anything like this nowadays with all of our security measures. In that era, there were no metal detectors, no ID checks, and no real security. He wouldn't have made it past the ticket counter alone without an ID and definitely not through TSA with a briefcase full of wires. So in some ways, he was a product of a very specific moment in aviation history that never came back. But what makes him so fascinating is the planning and execution of such a large and grandiose heist. I don't think a lack of security measures takes away from that because the planning was just extraordinary. From the ticket counter on, everything was meticulous. He asked if the plane was a Boeing 727.

He knew the exact mechanics of the plane, that it was even capable of flying, that low and slow, something the pilots weren't even aware of, and he also knew that it had an aff staircase. Then he asked for four parachutes, so they would assume he was taking hostages and not tamper with them and risk an innocent person's life. He took back his note, he pocketed the matchbooks, wore a clip on tie so it couldn't be grabbed, and knew exactly where to jump and how to land, and most importantly of all, no one got hurt. So for me, that's not a sign of someone who just got lucky, of no security measures. It is really someone who thought through every single step of this heist. So the only place where luck really enters the picture is the outcome. If he survived the

jump in those conditions, with rain near zero visibility, 250 mile per hour winds, dress in a suit and carrying a heavy bag filled with money, required either tremendous skill or an enormous amount of fortune, possibly both. So we may never know which. The public basically turn this man into a folk hero overnight. What does that tell us? I found it so interesting watching the interviews they did with people on the street at this time. You can especially see the men who thought he was such a badass. And I think Americans love a good heist movie, especially if no one is hurt. We tend to root for the underdog, the trickster, the person who outwits the institution. And the lack of violence made it feel more like a small guy coming up with an impressive plan to

stick it to the man instead of a dangerous criminal. This was an era when trust in major institutions like the government, airlines, and corporations was at an all-time low. The counterculture had been telling people for years that the system was rigged. And here was this guy who just walked into the system, took money out of it, and disappeared. Nobody died. Nobody bled. The airline was inconvenienced. The FBI was embarrassed and that's it. So obviously, the mystery of him getting away with it also adds a whole new layer of interest in the case and gives people a blank screen onto which people can project whatever version of the Robin Hood myth they prefer. So I think that's also a powerful thing. I'll say the fascination definitely hasn't gone away. This case is

over 50 years old and people are still writing books, filing lawsuits for access to evidence, and building websites dedicated to cracking it. There's even a whole group of amateur slews and fans who call themselves Cooper rights and get together every year. There's just something about an unsolved mystery involving a charismatic unknown that the human brain just can't put down. What does the level of technical knowledge Cooper showed? Tell us about who he might have been. This is the question that really drives this investigation

because it narrows the field considerably, knowing which aircraft had an aft staircase, knowing it could be deployed mid-flight, knowing the precise speed and altitude settings that would make a jump survivable, knowing how to use a parachute, and most importantly, how to pack one afterwards if you land and need to move. This isn't just trivia you stumble across. Remember, in this time, there were no personal computers. There was no real internet access for the normal everyday person. And so this was someone who had this knowledge otherwise. You couldn't just YouTube it

or look it up online. So the two most likely profiles that kept coming up were former military paratrooper or someone with deep ties to the aviation industry, whether that was a current or former airline employee or someone who worked for Boeing. The FBI and all their suspects had either one or both of these. Again, I don't want to give that away in the first episode because we have two more episodes on this. But those were definitely some things that narrowed the suspect pool because in this era, someone had to have deep knowledge of that beforehand and first-to-hand experience and all of these things to be able to pull this off. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate review and follow America's most infamous crimes so we can keep building this community together.

And to get all episodes at once ad-free, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on DP Cooper.