Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Live: The DB Cooper Heist

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Join Josh and Chuck live from Seattle as they (sky)dive into one of the most brazen robberies in the annals of crime and the only unsolved airline hijacking in American history. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey everybody Chuck here with another call for guests for movie crush my new show Debuting November 3rd where I sit down with famous people to talk about their all-time favorite movie So if you are a secret celebrity listener get in touch with me at movie crush at howstuffworks.com Especially if you happen to be filming in Atlanta where our studios are because in person is always best But we can always do it remotely with partner studios. All right. Thanks a lot and look out for movie crush November 3rd Hey friends, this is Chuck just wanted to intro this show really quickly because it is from the archive

It's a live show that we did on our tour last year all about the mysterious disappearance of Skyjacker DB Cooper And this was recorded live in Seattle, Washington at the Neptune theater And it was one of the best shows on the tour and we hope you enjoy it and keep in mind This is recorded before we found out more recent news about the DB Cooper case So that stuff has happened since then but please to enjoy Welcome to step you should know from howstuffworks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and we are here live at the beautiful Neptune theater in beautiful Seattle and beautiful Washington

Thank you guys phenomenal I'm already a sweaty mess. So that must mean we're on stage. We are off to a great start. That must mean I'm awake Or sleeping. Yeah, I sweat my sleep too Big time. It's gross. I'm always wiping his brow while he sleeps What movie we're gonna watch tonight in the hotel Is a spy out yet? I don't know and we can leave the seat up on the toilet. I don't I don't do that I don't either because I pee sitting down Because I'm 45 years old

Do you really? Well, yeah, I Might as well get into it What you do too Why we never talked about this I I Started being sitting down at during the middle of the night get up because if it just makes sense Because you don't want to wake up too much and you don't want to like you make a mess and then I think I just hit a certain age Well, I was like it. It's just nicer to sit down. I don't need to prove anything to anyone

Huh, you landed your lady. You're all set. Yeah, I stand when I pee off my deck at night. I Don't do that. I live in a condo complex. They would write letters to me It's not good. Man. I feel like an enormous weights just been lifted off I can't believe that you're not even 40 years old yet and you pee sitting down. Yeah Let's uh, let's start the podcast. Are There other guys out there that pee sitting down. All right, we're starting a movement, baby. That's right Your ladies will appreciate it Oddly I poop standing up

This is so off the rails already like in Conversation you just be sitting there talking to me like you're pooping right now, aren't you? Yeah, it's like it's more efficient this way I get more done We should probably start over we should we're gonna get off stage and come back out Can't believe what we've been talking about here this evening already Okay, let's all just take it down a notch. All right So we're podcasting we're about to start podcasting. Mm-hmm. I think I already started the podcast Oh God, which means that's gonna be on like the thing we that's why I said we should start over. Okay, yeah

It stays here everybody. Yeah, it's all our secret 500 people Okay Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant And we are live here at the beautiful Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington Man times two That's not a better. It's an in-joke People be like even better than what

Really There's a lot of cross there's more crossover between our fans and Howard Stern than our fans and Mariners fans. I think Boy, there's a Venn diagram out there. That's Confusing me already Okay, so Chuck. Yes, this is a little bit of history. Yeah, so we're gonna go back in the way back machine. That's right It's if you listen to the PR live podcast, you know that like the way back machine is imaginary so settle down They heard that live Yeah, that was a good one, too. There are PR professionals here because they email me today. Oh really?

Yeah, I Can tell there they are all of the PR So we're going back to a cold stormy rainy pretty nasty Thanksgiving Eve in 1971 and the story begins at PDX Portland Airport and a man walked into PDX Took a picture of his shoe on the carpet and then walked along to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket desk. That's right, and he walked up and he said hi. I am Really interested in finding more about flight 305 the flight to Seattle

Would that happen to be a Boeing 727-100 airplane that you guys are gonna fly on that route and The ticket agent Yes, as a matter of fact, it is and the man said that is fantastic. Here's my $20. Yeah One ticket, please for a one-way ticket between Portland and Seattle aboard flight 305. Yeah, and she was like that's a weird question But I guess he's very specific about what kind of plane he likes to fly on plus. It's 1971 And I'm in no position to publicly question a man. Oh, so I'll just go along with this It's very true

And it was $20 for that flight. This is a very 70s podcast So they handed him his little ticket voucher and said just fill this out, sir Don't need to see ID because it's 1971. Just tell us who you are Or whoever you want us to think you are and he wrote down in big block letters in a red ink pen Dan Cooper You know where we're going with this, huh? So the Boeing 727-100 is every single person in this room knows is a smallish plane It's not the biggest plane in the Boeing fleet some of the smallest either But it's the only one that had an aft staircase, right?

And this particular flight flying aboard this Boeing 727-100 flight 305 Had a crew of five aboard it. There was Captain William Scott not Sean William Scott. We figured out later on Not stifler. That would have made zero sense. Yeah, had he had a former life in the 70s as an airline pilot Copilot Robert Radeczak. There's a C in there for those of you who like that kind of thing And there were three flight attendants. There's a head flight attendant who was named Alice Hancock, right? Yes, and then two, I guess regular flight attendants Tina Mucklough Who's a hero of ours and Florence Schaffner? I think they called them stewardesses back then to be fair, right, but we're forward-thinking guys

So we're gonna go ahead and say flight attendant. We don't use the S word You just make no, I'll never mind Never mind. We've done quite enough extraneous stuff I know so Dan Cooper gets on the plane There's 37 other passengers because again, it was the 70s. They didn't overbook flights back then and say I'm sorry You bought a ticket, but you really can't fly on this flight 37 passengers pretty empty and Dan Cooper seats sits in seat 18 C They pour him up a bourbon and seven up and he lights up a cigarette a Raleigh brand cigarette because it's 1971

you smoke on planes yeah, and He looked to be about in his mid 40s. He was you know kind of look like the men of the time Which is to say you either looked by 1971 you either looked a little more like Don Draper Kind of holding on to that 50s look or you look like Charles Manson He looked a little more like Don Draper Yeah Have the suit had the skinny tie and the we should talk a little bit about the suit The suit was a russet colored suit which was like that weird burgundy brown color

That's potato colored it right and it just so happened that he was wearing this suit during the one six-month period in history Where you could wear that color suit out in public? So he was okay, and then his skinny tie was a clip-on from JC Penney. That's right He had a imitation mother of pearl type in he had an overcoat He had a hat he had a bag Kind of like a briefcase, and he had these black horn rim sunglasses dark kind of Olive skin, would you say they call him swarthy, which I think it's like stewardess. That's been phased out

You know what I mean? I thought swarthy. I Thought that was like a sea captain. No, I'm sure there were swarthy sea captains Because yeah, cuz they're out in the sun so they ended up getting olive skinned. That's Rugged, okay? You're thinking of the Gorton's fisherman. Oh, right. Oh, he was swarthy sure you swarthy is H So he had he had this kind of dark wavy hair And other than that he would just sort of an unremarkable dude. He wanted to blend in Right. Well, yeah, okay, so this guy's sitting in 18c. He's being unremarkable

Aside from wearing the sunglasses he's smoking with his left hand says nothing to do with anything But we just kind of wanted to show off how much research we've done on this And When Florence Schaffner the flight attendant working his area comes over and gives him as bourbon and I think seven up, right? Yeah he hands her a note and To Florence Schaffner. She was 23. She was very pretty. She was at the time a stewardess and and

This happened to her all the time like businessmen drinking Sevens and sevens like pastor notes and hit on her all the time So when this guy in 18c Dan Cooper handed her a note She took the note and just put it in her flight apron without looking at it and turned and walked away With all the other notes, right? Previous flight right yeah from all the men who wanted to rescue her from her life Okay, come away with me right for the And so Dan Cooper sees this and he goes

Miss you may want to have a look at that note. I have a bomb. I think you know where we're going with this DB Cooper You know we when we were coming here today, we were like how we're really rolling the dice It's entirely possible that everyone here had the DB Cooper case drilled into them from like third grade on That's not the case. No, I didn't study it in class. It's such a sigh of relief I I told that to you me and you me was like that's so dumb She's like do you know everything about the burning of Atlanta? And I said no and she's like no No, you don't and they don't know everything about DB Cooper and I went back to sleep

So this was not the first commercial airplane hijacking it actually the first one was in 1948 and remarkably between 1968 Just three years earlier in the time DB Cooper hijacked this plane There were 100 commercial hijackings in three years. Yeah, so this is not new It was not new but I remember like if anyone here grew up in like the 70s and stuff it was a thing Like planes got hijacked all the time because you could bring guns and bombs on planes And you didn't need ID and no one cared right and we're like hmm. This is weird

Yeah, that's pretty much where the FBI was at the time and by 1971 They were just starting to like get hip to the idea of hijackings being a problem And so their first idea was well We'll put an air marshal on every flight and then they looked at the schedule of flights in the United States and they're like Oh, this may have been a bad idea But they try to get idea it was a fine idea if everyone Like if like a third of the population of the United States were air marshals, and yeah, it was a good idea It's a good idea if you want one of every like 300 flights with an air right right and the other

299 open for hijacking right so this was they figured out after a few years like while the logistics of American air so Edgar Hoover's idea by the way right he was still in charge of the FBI in 1971 Yeah, so he'd been there for about 50 years, right? Yeah, so his idea was air marshals didn't work But they were still trying it. There was no air marshal on flight 305 the DB Cooper hijacking flight Yeah, they're like a Portland to Seattle. Maybe we should put like three air marshals on that one. I traffic right and I mean it made sense that there would not be an air marshal on that flight because most hijackings were crazed lone gunmen with a handgun who wanted to be taken to Cuba for political reasons basically right no one flying from PDX to SeaTac wanted to be taken to Cuba so there's no reason for an air marshal to be on the flight

It was a pretty good bet To not have an air marshal on they just didn't expect DB Cooper because he was a pretty novel person The idea of a single guy taking control of a flight for money with a bomb That was new and like our whole conception of a mad bomber Hijacking a flight comes from DB Cooper and sunny bonus character in airplane 2 This is actually I did a little more research between 1968 and 79 It's literally referred to as the golden age of sky-checking I was talking to Josh's like I didn't know you could have I thought a golden age was about something good

I didn't know you could have the golden age of dysentery The good old days it was good for the hijackers because they could get away with it. No problem. Maybe that's who wrote that right the golden age of sky-checking man, all right, so Florence Schaffner, I'm sorry Schaffer reads the note and And she says you know what give me or Cooper says you know what give me that note back Which is a very key thing because that means they won't have a sample of his handwriting Yeah, so he asked for the note back and from that point on he did not

Converse like everything else. He had them right down to take to the captain So they would have no more like physical evidence of his handwriting Yeah, the only handwriting sample they had was that ticket duplicate and it was in block letters, which yeah, he went like this So she sits down and she says You know, I want to know that this is legit. This is for real Can I can I like get a look at that bomb that you're talking about? Makes sense. He shows her right. Yeah, he's a little peak He opened her his bag just enough and she went to put her fingers in any snap of shut

Just like pretty woman. Yeah, yeah And but she sees what you know She sees red sticks of dynamite and a battery and and I guess presumably like an alarm clock with two two bells on it Right. It's got like a skull and crossbones. It's like says you die or something electrical tape is all around it because he Watched a lot of cartoons. He knows how to make a bomb. Well, she I mean she bought it clearly She saw the bomb and she Took down a note. He said take this down. I have a ransom demand. 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 Which is tough talking 1971 Again, he wants a lot of cartoons And that's what you say when you mean business that roughly is about 1.2 million dollars today Yeah, I think it's a little low if you're gonna go through a skyjacking It's a lot of work for a million. Yeah, I would have said like if you're gonna ask for 200 grand ask for 300 or 400 That's just me. Sure

I'm no skyjacker So this is it turns out to be the only threat that Dan Cooper makes during the entire ordeal he He is this very first note that he gave up So from that point on like I said, he dictated everything else so they could just pass notes back and forth and aside from a couple of Conversations with the pilots on the cockpit phone from the rear of the plane to the cockpit They didn't have any interaction the pilots whatsoever with Dan Cooper So they were like almost no help whatsoever during the investigation, right? And then the fact that he asked for two parachutes was a stroke of brilliance because it did show his hand to the FBI

That he was going to jump out of the plane with the ransom money But it also said FBI. I'm probably going to make a hostage jump with me So don't tamper with any of these parachutes which if the FBI had would have been murder But we're talking about J. Edgar Hoover's FBI So they may have they may have tried just that so it's pretty smart that he asked for two pair because they didn't know What he was going to do that's right So Schaffner takes that ransom note gives it to Alice Hancock. She takes it over to the the pilot and the co-pilot and Well, what did they do Josh? She'd do a great pilot. They called SeaTek Airport and said

SeaTek, we just want to advise you on a bit of a fiddlesticks we got going on up here Sonny Bono has taken control of the plane. He wants two hundred thousand dollars in negotiable American currency By 5 p.m. negotiable American currency. Yeah, it's a very weird thing to ask for it was and so SeaTek was like we should probably call the cops and the cops said we should probably call the FBI Well, yeah, this was the Seattle Police Department in 1971. They're like no, no, no, no, no we We don't deal with things like this. They're like wait wait this guy doesn't want to go to Cuba We don't understand like we're literally waiting for John Rambo to wander through town right so we can harass him just 10 more years Wait, that was Oregon though, wasn't it?

Okay Pretty close that joke will kill that tomorrow night. Yeah, man Rambo joke. Yeah, remember it. So all of a sudden like There's all this crazy energy going on down on the ground, right? So the FBI comes in and They're they're trying to get the money together They're like you we have an hour. You got to give us more time. It's like now. You can't have more time They're like, okay, that's fine. We'll get all this stuff together. You guys are gonna have to stay up there Until we get everything ready for you

so the plane is circling SeaTek and they told the passengers that The plane was experiencing mechanical problems Which I would have had a problem hearing, you know, it wouldn't have like I think they could have thought that through a little more Yeah, it's experiencing mechanical problems. So we're just gonna keep flying gonna stay aloft See what happens Captain Scott is a gambling man So everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes. They didn't care. They were hooking up in the bathroom. This is 1971 It would have been shucky. It would have been like I told you we should have driven. I know it's nothing

Could have been to Portland So they had to circle for an hour and they ended up telling the passengers Oh, we just need to burn off some gas and everything will be fine, right? And the passengers apparently were totally unaware that they've been hijacked That's how cool Cooper was right, but one passenger later said I had a pretty good feeling we've been hijacked and The the press pool is like shut up go get off the day. He was that guy next person. Yeah So I was at that game Yeah, I was at that game seven. It was all right He's that dude, you know, oh, yeah, any remarkable event. Yeah, I was there. It was it was oh God

Yeah, I knew it was a hijacking You really had me stumped there for a second I'm role-playing game seven So CTAC is circling right they're circling circling an hour killing time, but just burning off gas and and Florence Schaffner is has gone away to take the note to Alice Hancock who takes notes to the cockpit She's on the relay team basically now

and DB Cooper says well Dan Cooper says hey Tina Mucklough. Why don't you sit beside me for a while and She did and she ended up kind of taking a bit of a seat in history if you will feel allow us that Parable analogy And she sat down and she got she spent a lot of time with Dan Cooper and they ended up chatting She said Dan Cooper kept the level head during a very tense situation like the whole time and they chatted about things like Tina Mucklough's home state, which is Minnesota They talked about a nearby Air Force Base and how long it took to drive to CTAC

There's like 20 minutes or something you guys can actually probably guess the Air Force Base. We don't know That one. Yeah, and then They also at one point he looked out the window and he said it looks like we're over to coma So all this would indicate a lot to the FBI later on right that this guy was maybe a local Yeah, I'm kind of curious. Could anyone here recognize Tacoma from an airplane from an airplane Wow, they have a huge like field cut out of grass. It says Tacoma Corn what are they saying? I think they're saying corn. Yeah, the smell Oh boy, I knew that I knew this would go over well here

By the way, we didn't mention they diverted all the other flights away from From CTAC at the time because they wanted that to be the only plane in the area and to me The most remarkable part of this whole story is one of the other planes in the air The dude the pilot gets on and tells everyone else on that plane. What's going on? Well, he like he patched into the com link between flight 305 and CTAC for the listening enjoyment of the passengers on his flight It's insane, it's like I'm sorry we're delayed, but here's what's going on on another flight nearby All right Just sit back and listen to the dulcet tones of a skyjacking

Again, it was the 70s. Everyone's drinking. They're like, this is remarkable Thank God, it's not us. Everything's better when you're drinking All right, so he recognizes Tacoma, which apparently everyone in this room could do. Yeah, right We were impressed by that, but it's nothing Occasionally went suppose like Tacoma So all of these are sort of clues though if he recognized Tacoma He knew about the Air Force base that clearly maybe the guys kind of from the area, right might be a clue later on so

Muclaw at this point asked Dan Cooper. She said do you have a grudge against our airline, sir? And he said no ma'am. I don't have a grudge against your airline. I just have a grudge Critic right She was like Yeah, like they did So back on the ground the FBI is like going crazy the local cops are going crazy Everybody's going crazy trying to get 200 grand and cash together turns out that was the easiest part of this whole thing So Northwest Orient's president at the time Donald Nyrop

Any Nyrops in the house? No, he would have been in Minnesota. Oh Okay, yeah, but I'm convinced that someone in here is going to be related to someone in this story Oh, I am too. Yeah, I'm just waiting for somebody to say I'd be like that's a lie Or for someone to stand up and say I am TV Cooper. Oh, yeah That would be amazing. We'd have to come up with a different show tomorrow. Oh, yeah Or just bring him along sure and here he is everybody So Donald Nyrop the president of Northwest Orient, he's like, yeah, sure. We'll totally pay that we have a huge insurance policy on this kind of thing

Apparently Northwest had to pay like 20 grand and their insurance company paid out 180 grand And they tapped C first bank which had a downtown branch and in this downtown branch They had a really great idea. They had stacks of $20 bills in varying amounts So that it looked like a nervous teller ran into the back and like put some 20s together in the event of a bank robbery, right and then would come out and be like here you go bank robbery You're getting off scot-free But it turns out that every serial number on every one of those 20s have been recorded So it worked for bank robberies worked just as well for skyjackings as well

So they had the money no problems the parachutes were just a very difficult. Yeah, that was actually the harder part Yeah Back in 1971 the big recreational skydiving craze had not yet taken hold it happened here and there Yeah, but the manager at SeaTac said I got a guy. Don't you worry? He's got a operation called Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah anybody from Issaquah Yeah, shout out to Issaquah Why do you call it Seattle Sky Sports? Did they mooch off of Seattle? Yeah off of the teat of Seattle He's like a got a guy. His name is Earl Cossey and

He agreed to help little side note Earl Cossey Was actually murdered three years ago Yeah Yeah, he likes to bring the room down. I know we're all having too much fun He got killed by a blow to the head in his garage, but apparently You know some cooperists that are still active today on the internet, you know these conspiracy dudes. It's a little tight That is Everyone did it. I love that everybody

See you can all be conspiracy Get out your titty ball hat Although women can't be because they're too smart. It's always guys. Did you know? So Earl Cossey was killed, but they think it has nothing to do with it even though cooperists are like Are you sure they're trying to silence a man? Exactly So Cossey Very well-timed

So Cossey called his his operation and to the to the dude working there I said hey, can you get together these parachutes and need two fronts and two backs the guy said sure brah and In his haste he packs three regular shoots. Well, not three regular he packs one Military shoot. Yeah, two regular shoots and one thing that I still don't understand called a dummy shoot Right that doesn't open. No So like if you were working at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah You would get really really sick of having to fold up the whole parachute Every time somebody was training throwing out the pilot shoot

Which is just the little shoot that comes out first and pulls the bigger shoot out Right if all you're trying to do is throw that part out You don't need the bigger shoot So if you're an employee at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, you may have the idea They should just sew the bigger part shut There should be no parachute that has like the the most important part sewn shut, right? We decided that is our rule every parachute should open right But this is a thing and they're called dummy shoots the thing is everybody's like oh, we got it covered

We'll just put a big X on it and everybody'll know it's a dummy shoot So that one of these dummy shoots made it into the four shoots that were delivered to DB Cooper So the money and the shoots go in a cop car and these Does a doughnuts getting out like in front of the plane and gets out and stands outside and Waits for the plane to land I should say so when they get everything together they let flight 305 know that they come get it basically and They they prepare to land and DB Cooper does something very smart. Yeah, he He said you know what I bet you there's gonna be snipers on the ground because I've seen a movie or two

I've seen Black Sunday Anyone no didn't that come out like five or six years later? Maybe Actually I'll have to look that up And I think that was 76 you know this sure all right? He said I have a dream about a movie one day That would be called Black Sunday And there's gonna be snipers at that airport so have everybody put the shades down on the windows They're all drunk. They don't care

They won't ask any questions And so they did so which turned out to be a pretty good move because there were in fact snipers right exactly so the plane lands and No one's allowed to get off yet Cooper says hey Tina do me a solid go out and get the money in the shoots and come back with them Okay, then we can let the passengers off and Mucklough leaves the plane and at this point And this is one of the first reasons why Tina Mucklough is one of our heroes Once she's off the plane. She could have been like so long jumps see in hell Which may have been a little harsh had she said that with an earshot of somebody in this

Situation she could have thought it Her actions could have said as much she didn't she got the shoots She got the money and she essentially traded herself for the hostages and went back on the plane I would have been so out of there. That's metal. Chuck would have said out loud. See you in hell Yeah, flight 305. I would have walked straight to baggage claim and or the ground transportation and said take me to cousin Iks I need some loose leaf tea Good luck good luck with the skyjacking right Yeah, but she came back which is amazing come back. So she traded herself for these hostages and

The hostages were allowed to leave and so too were Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner They the rest of the crew is basically like there's no reason for you to stay here. So go so it was down to Schaffner and Cooper and then in the cockpit Rada Zach and Scott right and Scott and Rada Zach Repaid Tina Mucklough by staying themselves there. There was a rope ladder actually that they could have climbed out of they had almost No interaction whatsoever with DB Cooper. They could have at their leisure They could have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while and

Then gone to the safety of like the FBI barricade and they didn't they stuck around and they like we're like We're gonna see this hijacking through. Yeah in my Like in my comedic mind's eye. I see them getting out on the rope swing or a rope ladder That's different rope swing. That would be amazing. They may have like it's like a tire swing on the run the blame They get off on the rope ladder Tina Mucklough never comes back and DB Cooper's just sitting on the plane by himself He's like oh it happened again. Yeah Is he typing no, no, that's all right, I Didn't know they had a rope ladder

That's crazy. Sure. What's that poor? Every airplane has a rope ladder in the car Wake up man out of like old cheats so the FAA actually had a Their chief psychiatrist on the ground and this dude does a quick analysis, you know like let me do one of those movie readings of who this guy is and what's gonna happen and He says, you know, what's gonna happen is you're gonna give this guy the money and the parachutes You're gonna go up there in the plane

He's gonna jump out and blow up the plane and just let everyone know that Right, he's gonna tell the pilot and co-pilot that this is what's coming right He's gonna force Mucklough to jump with them and then blow up the plane afterward, right? But yeah, make sure that make sure the cockpit knows and then he added and he probably has some sort of fixation on Longer than usual nipples so make sure he's not exposed to those because he has some sort of fetish based on his experience with his mother Because the 1971 psychoanalyst for the FAA Hey, if I had done that in a German accent, it would have sunk in even faster Did you tell them that to make sure you tell them that guys?

Is that alright? I'm gonna go ahead and say now what I'm gonna say in like an hour backstage. All right, that was amazing. What is it? Thank you. I thought that's not what you're gonna say actually I didn't didn't see that one coming You got me When you yeah, I had no idea where you were going Literally you said longer than usual nipples and I went in my head I went am I is this happening like Josh? Josh. Am I still in Atlanta? Is the trip am I asleep?

Pure gold buddy. Thank you Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could What could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house of her Childhood home now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb dot ca Slash host on the podcast. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we Take you back to the 90s listen to hey, dude The 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

Where are we I am so thrown so we said Cooper was cool, right? Yes, the cool head He was He was so cool. He ordered food for the crew During the refueling process. Yeah, he's a nice nice guy. Yeah You want to know who else is cool as Tina mucklough? Yeah, because once they released the passengers and they got the money on board She sat back down and he offered her a couple of the stacks of money and she said well you go ahead and say it No tipping allowed

Again had it been me well first of all I would have been an uncle likes by then, but if I was dumb enough to get back on I would be like yeah Get paid for yeah, just two stacks of bills. Yeah, what gives jerk? I want half She's she's amazing. So the plane's being refueled. He passed along a request Very specific request for what's to happen when they go to take off He said I want to take off with that aft staircase that I know is back there down In the jump off the plane position and they said you can't take off with the plane Can't take off with the door down and he said well can you check on that? Are you sure and they said no

You can't do that and he said are you super sure and they said no you can't do that He said all right and they said oh, but once you're up there you can totally lower it and jump out And he said well, why didn't we just start there because that's really the only thing it matters like fine fine and then the the pilots like well, where do you want to go and Dan Cooper says Mexico City, let's say and the pilot goes well, that's that's kind of far We're gonna have to refuel is Reno. Okay, and Dan Cooper goes I don't know how I can get this across anymore clearly I'm jumping out of the plane the next time we go up fly wherever you want just fly south or yeah

So they refuel the plane and the only time Dan Cooper gets a little a little ruffled is when it takes a little long for his liking And he says it it shouldn't take this long Let's get the show on the road right he picked up for one of the few times he picked up the cockpit or the cabin a cockpit phone And so let's get the show on the road I would have screamed it and like hit the phone and then hit myself in the head with it And then just started crying and been like it's never gonna work This is never gonna work. I think as well established. We'd be the worst skyjackers ever and hostages. Yeah, just get no I don't want any part of it

He also gives them instructions on how to fly the plane which is getting really specific. He said don't go any higher than 10,000 feet Set your wing flaps at 15 degrees Which apparently we learned is an angle that only the seven two seven one hundred could position those wing flaps I wish everyone in this room knows because it's a Boeing sure And he said don't go any faster than 190 miles per hour 200 knots So that means they're gonna be flying slow and low like you're cooking ribs Or jumping off a plane Because that means the cabin isn't pressurized and that means when you open that door you're not just gonna suck everything out

It's still skydive able Skydive able Yeah, no, that's the terminology. Okay so Cooper had some problems right he had specifically asked for a knapsack and the feds had given him the 200 grand in a bank bag, which as we all know is a very unwieldy clumsy bag, right? It's like a canvas bag. There's nothing to it. What do you like tuck it under your arm? What are you supposed to do with that? Right?

So he's like well, I need to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one of these parachutes for it's rigging and He chose the pink one Which the pink one was actually the best one of all. Yeah, cuz it was the dummy shoot the military shoot and then so so shoot Is that we're gonna call it? Yeah, the medium shoot Yeah, and then the pink one which like Josh said is the best one so he cuts the stuff loose He makes a handle for it. Things are happening at this point. They move to the rear of the plane He and Tina muck law and he says, you know, I think I need help lowering the staircase so she goes back there with him She's a little freaked out at this point

Super freaked out he was common cool But like it's go time and she thinks she's gonna get sucked out rightfully so because she didn't understand the physics of you know the The plane being that low and that slow or she did another to hell with physics. I am still freaked out Yeah, we're about to lower a staircase of 10,000 feet. Why did I mention physics? exactly So she gets back there and he said she said can I at least have some of that rope so I can tie myself To the interior of this plane like that's how helpful she was. She's like just let me lash myself to the plane

Let me help you right. Yeah, I just spit like all the way across. I spit earlier. It's fine. Okay, good We should learn to sink those up Like in Vegas that's what I was thinking. Yeah, man, we're in sync. I know my god Except well never mind So she asked for some rope to lash herself in and he goes at this point, you know it never mind He literally like this is the quote. He goes never mind. Never mind he said you know what you just go back up to the cockpit and You see that first-class curtain just don't come any further back. I got it from there

He turns back around looks and then he turns back around to where she was and he just sees like a pile of dust Where she was just standing She was like in the cockpit all of a sudden and so it's go time in the cockpit It's 742 p.m. The little light comes on that says a door ajar, I guess And They said the pilots were like Like let's call back one more time. She's like now you can't call them. They're like no really we should call We can totally call them like the FAA shrink said like he might blow us up. He said some other weird stuff too, but he said

Like he he's gonna blow us up. We should really butter this guy out and we could have left on that rope swing and we stayed because of you rope ladder So they call they do call and the pilot is like Yes, ring ring. They let it ring a couple of times ring ring ring Dan Cooper hijacker Oh Mr. Cooper, we want to make sure your place as comfortable as possible So anything we can do to help you back there to make your hijacking more successful, sir No

click I Know it's kind of rude. He said no hung up and then at 812 p.m The crew felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit as if someone had jumped off the rear of it and And they said We're flying the plane right. She's like wait a minute only one of you is flying. No, it takes both of us You don't know And that's it So from the moment that Tina muck law left shut that first-class curtain

Nobody to anyone's knowledge ever saw Dan Cooper again. Yeah, but that's not the end of the show. No, it's not So there was a manhunt, right? So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that he was going to jump off the back of the 727 The FBI was like we need to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that are in the area We're gonna scramble them to go follow this 727. What is this scrambling? I never get that. It's like Like go I know but they'll It just sounds It sounds chaotic like they're scrambling. I think that's I think that's the point like people are supposed to run around and bump

Into each other and fall out and then get up and get in their jets and fly off I would say that's scrambling. Yeah, that's classic. I would renamed it would be like activate the jets That's not bad That's not bad at all Scrambled the jets Sounds desperate. You're right activate the jets. So either however the jets were brought into this picture There was a problem with them in that they were way too fast For the 727 which is putting along and a hundred ninety miles an hour and all of a sudden there's a jet that goes

And then the next one comes And they're like what are we gonna do well, we'll stick a helicopter on them. This is like Goldilocks the helicopter was too slow Oh, 727 is just puttin along people are going Trying to catch up nothing happening. They should have scrambled the 727 And just followed right behind it makes sense as matter with the headlights on Right So they're scrambling the point is nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped so they use that 812 p.m. Oscillation to kind of figure out where they should start looking and they zeroed in on a place called Ariel Washington near the Lewis River

Anybody from Ariel? Good because we got jokes Nobody from Ariel anyone ever heard of the Lewis River Okay So they get them they get this manhunt going they're combing they're scrambling and combing those are the two things you do Yeah, it was here in the FBI. It was a massive manhunt to there's like a thousand troops and cops combing this area Yeah, no one from Seattle PD. Of course. They were just sitting around stoned

Hanging out in Nisquah waiting for Rambo Here's another fun fact there was a millionaire a local millionaire who we don't know Do you know the name? No, I've looked If anybody knows yeah, just stand up and say it with dignity. It was on it was on the news So this local millionaire says you know what that's near Lake Merwin, and I'm going to rent a submarine Because I'm a Millionaire and that's you know, we're what I do. Yeah, I don't work. I'm a millionaire

You got a submarine and he trolled the depths of Lake Merwin He said he rented a small submarine Because he's not an extravagant local He's 20 footer will do The 25 seems ostentatious the hydraulics on it who needs that in a submarine. Does it have a metal detector? Which would not have helped because it was cash bills exactly So you'd make a great local millionaire. I would if only

The other weird thing that happened was the the CIA got involved which is a little bit strange Yeah, and they scrambled the SR 71 blackbird Right, they scrambled it several times. Yeah, the that it was almost over easy Terrible You should be ashamed it doesn't even make sense Because once you scramble it it can't be over easy terrible joke Chuck. That's what I say It's all right rebound rebound. Is this really happening? Did you talk about long nipples? All right

That's our 71 blackbird was at the time super secret We all know about it now, but at the time it was very secret and it was kind of a big deal to get this thing up in the air So especially multiple times. Yeah, like one time It's like your dad is the head of CIA and you're the head of Seattle PD So you can make it happen. Maybe once right multiple times That's weird that the SR 71 was scrambled, right? The FBI is very studious and likes to do a lot of obvious stuff So they interviewed everybody in the area with the last name of Cooper Which there's like a square one sure this is like square negative five

Yeah, sure, you know, it's negative five. I looked it up So you look up all the coopers in the area and at this point they have a press conference And if you've noticed we've been calling this dude Dan Cooper the whole time Yeah, because up until this time he was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference and there's it's sort of I Don't think we know who messed it up, right? Well, okay a cop either a file clerk or a cop Okay talking in front of a reporter got you either UPI or AP depending on who you ask and They were saying like what Cooper could could have done something like this, right and somebody said well There's a dang Cooper who's a cat burglar in the area

That's a terrible suggestion cat burglar does not go to hijacker, you know And This reporter was like what a scoop and hit the wire with cops looking for DB Cooper Yeah, he said DB Cooper. Did I say Dan Cooper? Yeah, that's all right. The little part of my brain was like you just said Dan Let's start over so a cop was talking in front of an AP reporter And they said what Cooper do you know could have done this and the cop said well, there's this date DB Cooper What did you just say did you just say a D Cooper I said There's a DB Cooper. I got at that time

He's a cat burglar and the reporter said this is hitting the wire and he reported that the cops were looking for a DB And it just changed from that point on yeah, I mean he was never DB Cooper. It was literally a mistake So that's why we all know him as DB Cooper today and the FBI actually a little smart believe it or not And they said you know what let's keep it that way that way We'll know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper. We'll know it's a hot lead So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor Yeah, and any time a tip like that came in like the office prankster would come in with the facts and be like hot lead hot lead

It was like a joke around the Portland office Everybody loved Richard and this one This will come up later too when it comes time to solve the crime that they later on the FBI learned that there was a comic book in the 1950s about a Dan Cooper who was a Canadian jet pilot and it was a Belgian Comic which is a little weird, but it was you know, there was literally a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes and comic book form Right exactly could be a clue maybe and that's a niche comic, right? So it's I would say so printed in Belgium in the French about a Canadian fighter pilot in the French

All they had to do was find like the 10 people who knew of that comic would be like what'd you do? We know it was one of you And so the FBI had a pretty clear belief very Openly stated belief that D.B. Cooper died in the jump It was just the the line that they took right off the bat They're like there's no way this guy survived and The he wasn't the lead agent on the case, but he became the most famous agent Ralph Himmels Bach Any Himmels box in the house?

No, you're a liar sir. You're a liar. So Himmels Bach like I said, he wasn't the lead agent But he was out of the Seattle office and he became the most famous agent associated with it And he actually gave the case its official name nor Jack Which is stupid And it's Northwest Jack skyjack right but remove the sea. It's just the DB Cooper case, you know or hi Steven better So he self-published a book in 1986 about the case and Himmels Bach said he thinks that DB Cooper didn't even get a shoot open that he plunged to his death and

Hit the forest floor with such impact that he basically was buried immediately with the parachutes still attached and maybe even the money and That was Himmels box take that was excuse me. You're gonna get that. I Realize it wasn't a twist off And then I realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place nice Nice going You yeah, just saw the psalm of Chuck's college education So Cooper had jumped from the plane did he live did he not the odds are Are against him in a lot of ways outside the temperature that night was 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah

Hey, we're in America, man. They say 20 degrees. Yeah, you're right 20 degrees USA At 10,000 feet it was negative seven degrees. Yeah And he was going 190 miles an hour. There was freezing rain It was there was like a quarter crescent or not a quarter crescent a crescent moon Yeah, there's two different things sure crescent moon in the sky, but it was cloudy and rainy So there's probably was zero light. It's freezing. He's 10,000 feet. He's not dressed for the occasion. He's wearing loafers He's wearing an overcoat. He's got this. He doesn't have this knapsack

So he's fashioned this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope plus plus the area he's jumping out into and he's flying At 10,000 feet over the Cascades some of the Cascades as you guys know are higher than 10,000 feet Very dangerous jump and there's a lot of pointy trees I mean the pointiest am I right Seattle the point is trees are out Plus despite what the FAA guy said the FAA psychiatrist Yeah, he did not leave the bomb to be detonated after he jumped off He took it with them bank bag bomb overcoat loafers parachute Pointy tree was my DBQ

And by the way the FBI later on they interviewed Muk-Lok or who was the one who saw yeah shaffner saw the bomb Like you just did and she said yo, you have these red sticks taped together and they went That wasn't dynamite dynamite isn't red you've seen too many cartoons dynamite is tan Road flares are red, so it was more than likely a fake bomb with an alarm clock and road flares Plus DB Cooper did not help his cause by his choice of parachutes, right? He he so he chose a military shoot as his main shoot It was not a great shoot it the rip cord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational shoots and once it deployed You can't steer it very well. It was not the best choice even worse was his choice of the dummy shoot for his front reserve shoot

He took the best shoot and gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag Let the second best shoot and chose the two worst shoots to jump out with right so I didn't know you couldn't steer a military shoot But it makes no sense. Oh, yeah, they're just like go for it pal. Yeah Yeah, because if I was in the military I would steer. I would be like, well, how do we go over here instead? I see a lot of guns down there. Yeah, let's take it this way So they just drop you apparently. Yeah Man, I guess they know what they're doing though So some other theories

Because it's Washington believe it or not some people actually posited that he was eaten by Sasquatch. Yeah With a straight face, I mean, let's be honest. How many of you in here were thinking the same thing Some other people say well He was clearly burned up by the jet exhaust because when you come down the stairs of a 727 The rear jet engines right in front of you and it would have been seven 800 degrees right there But the FBI conducted a test Right afterward where they took a 720 a 727 up and they took a 200 pound sled a 200 pound prison victim

He was condemned don't worry about it. It's fine and They said yep and threw it off and they found that the 200 pound sled That's a euphemism. I guess now sure went straight down So it didn't come in contact in any way with the jet exhaust So it kind of did away with this idea that he burned up Well, it's kind of good news bad news though because what it did do at least was it mimic that same oscillation? Yeah, so they're like, oh, you know what it was the exact same thing happened when you were in the air So that 8 12 p.m. Jump time like it was probably right on the money

So we know probably where he might have landed right so there's a lot of questions remaining right and There were some clues left behind The thing that that really kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they combed the area where they were looking for him with Like a thousand people just combing this area the sr. 71 blackbirds circling around looking They didn't find anything he had left a couple of things on board the plane, right? He'd left his clip on tie, which was a second biggest secret that night Well, that's what you do before you jump out sure, you know, you take it off and there's a clip on all along You unbutton that button and you're like, I'm out of here

He left eight cigarette butts of his Raleigh brand cigarettes He'd smoked eight over five hours and all eight butts have since been lost, right? They found a hair on the headrests They the thing is the FBI traded in fingerprints That was their big thing at the time and Dan Cooper been very smart to not leave a single print on any of the Cigarette butts. Yeah, true, but there was fingerprints on the in-flight. I guess sky mall magazine All right peace guy mall What do you mean? It's not around

It's yeah, it's guy malls gone. Did you guys not know this? No way it's yeah That's why I said all right peace. I know but I just I don't know Where am I gonna get my putting green that doubles as a cat feeder? My friend you can just go to front gate because front gate has everything everyone needs. What's that front gate? They advertised in sky mall, but they have stores too. I don't even know where I am right now That's Uncle Ike's what year is it? No

So it would be seven years before any trace of the hijacking any real clue turned up and it was in 1978 there were some hunters in Oregon hunting animals, I guess Right Unless it was the most dangerous game right You don't know it's Oregon you never know there are less civilized people than we have here They found a plastic Instruction placard showing how to lower the aft staircase in the woods So this is like a really good clue it was but it didn't it didn't lead to anything new

Well, no, it was definitely from flight 305, which is I guess I'm saying it was cool It was cool. Yeah, like if you were the hunter you'd be like I'm keeping this sure, but it was on the flight path So it didn't generate any new leads But it generated a lot of renewed interest in the case because believe it or not The DB Cooper case it kind of fall into the wayside in the last like seven years Sure, just didn't think much about it anymore. Oh, no major skyjacking, right exactly So it was like a dime a dozen, but all of a sudden everybody's like well, we got to make a movie Who's the biggest movie star we've got tree Williams make him his DB Cooper and that's what they did

Has anyone ever seen the pursuit of DB Cooper? No, that's right. Nobody. That's right everybody. God bless you Seattle Smart town chunk. I figured here like somebody because it was a local thing 1981 very very bad movie was made several starring treat Williams and Robert DeVal Right, whose mom needed surgery at the time to lay off So here's what you do. Well, first of all if you want to know how big a piece of garbage this movie is

It had three directors And if you know anything about filmmaking if you have more than one director It's probably a really bad movie for one reason or another that has three then it's guaranteed to be bad But all you need to do is go home tonight when you get back to your to your houseboat in Issaquah Does anyone here live in a houseboat No, okay, because I was gonna ask if I could come stay over because those things are awesome That was just sleepless in Seattle you've seen that too many times. Oh, no they exist Because I tried to stay in an Airbnb actually before I came here

Yeah, I totally did and I ended up in some stupid hotel downtown Go home to your YouTubes Type in pursuit of DB Cooper and watch the first three minutes Because this movie literally starts with the point from where DB Cooper jumps out of the back of the plane It starts from the point where we know nothing else that happened It's literally fictional like the slogan on the movie poster is Fax Max So it starts with the pursuit of DB Cooper and has Robert DeVall the names all come up and all that and it's got a jewish heart playing it's like

mind mind mind mind mind mind mind and Treat Williams, it's a terrible voice a voiceover recording you just hear And he jumps off the thing because that's what you do and he'd jump off a plane and you're skyjacking He parachutes down in the night and the night and he crashes through some trees and lands and then just this really little sad yahoo Everything was sad about that and treat Williams gets on the on the ground and he and he takes out a cigar And he takes out a lighter because that's what you do too when you successfully landed after skyjacking He doesn't like the lighter though. He rips open the money bag and he takes out a hundred dollar bill and he lights that

And then he uses that to light a cigar And that is how that movie opens And it goes downhill from there and Robert DeVall is these just you can tell he starts every scene going Yeah Let's do it. It's so bad, but I do encourage you it was I mean when I was a kid and it came out It was like we got HBO on my street And it was a really big deal when we got cable and HBO so I would literally watch any movie that came out Yeah, it was like Krull that's on all right. Hey, Krull was okay games great movie sure pursuit of DB Cooper

Why not I I was not exposed to that. Yeah, I think my mother shielded me from that movie. Good for you mom. Yeah But watch the first two minutes on it Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could What could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard Treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca slash host on the podcast pay dude the 90s called David Lasscher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces

We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and we live it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Gameboy

Blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts So The we're still talking about the placard. Why don't we no no no all right? We'll go to 1980 was the first real good clue turns up in 1980, right? That's a big clue big clue. So there's a young lad named Brian Ingram He was eight I think at the time. Yeah, and his family was camping on Tina bar Are you guys familiar with Tina bar? Do you guys know what that is the Columbia River?

Columbia River? Yeah, we're so are we correct in understanding that you would just call it an island not a bar Okay, all right, so Tina Island Everywhere else the Ingram family was camping and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit for his family Oh father's going to love this fire pit. He'll be proud of me yet. Oh father. Why don't you love me? And as he's as he's like is he's going like this to the sand poor little eight-year-old He turns up a stack of bills several stacks of bills actually Three and these stacks of twenty dollar bills total fifty eight hundred and eighty dollars, and he's like father Father

Love me father father takes those and starts looking at him He's like we should probably call the police so they go and call the police and again. They call the Seattle police which Evidently all they do is forward calls to the FBI at this point They're like Seattle PD. Please hold So the FBI is like read a serial number and he reads one and they're like you just another Reads another and they're like that's DB Cooper money and Ingram's father is like what did you say and they're like nothing? So the FBI gets their hands on it and actually we should say it turns out they they let little Brian Ingram Take some of the money three thousand dollars of this money. Yeah, this is later on they returned a little not bad, right?

Right, and you want to know what's even better in 2008 little Brian Ingram sold that money on eBay for 37 grand? Right yeah take that father So the thing is this money showed up in a place where it should not have been it showed up 20 miles south of Aerial Washington in another river, so they were looking here in the Lewis River Right, everybody knows Lewis River Aerial Washington here Tina bars down here just a little south of Vancouver It's my geography my air geography, right a Vancouver, Washington everybody Vancouver, Washington Is that is it like this?

That's even more amazing This is what I suspected and I looked it up on Google Maps and they're like what do you mean Tina bar Josh So I wasn't able to conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that it somehow ended up above it And they an FBI hydrologist looked at this money said the FBI has a hydrologist, right? I'm retainer. He was back got a hold of him and The guy was like so this stuff's only been exposed to the elements for a year Even though it was found what nine years after the robbery, right? Yeah, and it got here one of two ways the guy said so the Columbia River flooded in

1974 yes, and it was also dredged in like 1977 so one of those two probably got this here, but no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where it was So it did yeah, there you go. I got it It would be another 28 years before any more clues turned up, so that's a very long wait In 2008 just eight short years ago some kids Were playing on their was it their own land in Amboy mm-hmm little south of Ariel anyone from Amboy No, I suspected not are we in Washington? Okay, yeah, but nobody's from Amboy. We got more response in Birmingham. No about Amboy. Yeah

They're like we like the sound of that so these kids were playing in the woods on their property and they said oh Look at there. There's a parachute And they start pulling out this parachute For like an hour. It's like a magic trick and they finally get to the end of the parachute and they run and show pa and They say pa found a parachute in the woods What should we do right and pa? Recognize that this is the most exciting thing that ever happened in Amboy, Washington Called this the cops who called the Seattle police who called the FBI

And the FBI did something smart they're like well, you know who would know if this was DB Cooper's parachute good old Earl Cossie, that's right. He's not dead yet. Not dead yet Oh Too soon That's a good He's not dead yet. That's a celebratory. None of us are dead yet right That's a good good way of looking at it Chuck good save way to find the silver lining

So Earl Cossie looked at this thing and he was like no, yeah, he said I'm sorry. He said Cooper shoot was nylon. That's clearly silk A good try. Yeah, he said this is I know who shoot this is actually yeah, it turns out that back in 1945 a jet pilot named Floyd walling bailed out of his course air jet that was going down and Parachuted out in the woods around Amboy, Washington, right? Which isn't too far from Ariel and it wasn't Cooper's shoot you guys all remember when they found that parachute, right like 2008 It wasn't that long ago. It was a big deal and

It wasn't his shoot But it did suggest that possibly he could have made it because Floyd walling had and he walked out of the woods in Terrible weather just like DB Cooper would have had to so it kind of Shined the light on the whole thing again. Yeah, it kind of kicks him interest up. Yeah, so um Over the years there have been many many many many suspects Like we're talking over a thousand the FBI won't even say how many suspects they've had or weirdly people confessing to be DB Cooper it's one of those strange things that people do right where they claim to be something that will send you to prison Well, a lot of them are already in prison, but they're in worse prison and hoping to go to good prison

No, it's true. Apparently state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison. I Was thinking cinnamon buns. Were you really? Yep That's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room. Yeah Well, no, we've mentioned that in the prisons. That's like a commodity in prison, right cinnamon buns. Yeah, it's like currency Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, because cinnamon buns and cigarettes We know So there's a very famous sketch if you go home before you get on YouTube and look at the The first three minutes of that terrible movie, which you definitely need to do just Google get on the Google's and type in

DB Cooper sketch There's a very singular famous sketch of DB Cooper. It looks like Kevin Spacey It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey. Yeah, or Don Draper Has Kevin Spacey It would be Kevin Spacey is Don Draper. Yeah. Yeah, sure So if you go home and look at that, it's like, you know, got this kind of short of your guy It looks like he's sort of from the 50s or 60s. It's got the hair He's got the sunglasses on and the tie the skinny tie

And that's the only sketch that they have of DB Cooper that they got from the flight attendants specifically Tina Mucklaw Because she spent like five hours right next to the dude. Yeah she incidentally Was really messed up after this understandably and she went to be a nun in Oregon in the 1980s Which is a little weird. I didn't know they had Convents in Oregon. Sure Convents everywhere. There's a convent right over in the alley. There's a comment behind us right now But even worse than that the mother superior in an article I read at the convent said she never really fit in here. Oh

You're not supposed to say that if you're a mother superior. That's a mother inferior if you ask me, you know Yeah, good one. So Sorry, you go ahead. No, you all right if you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed You're gonna turn up some clues and that's what the FBI does it kind of examine what happened He chose a military shoot which could mean one of two things either He was former military which could narrow it down or it could mean he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to jumping out Of a plane right in the choice of that dummy shoot would definitely suggest that because even Recreational skydivers say like even if you're just a military parachutist

You're gonna see a huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from that parachute, you know About it stood for extreme Mountain Dew extreme So there's a lot of people say I think he probably is ex military had some like parachuting experience Probably a paratrooper or something like that. Yeah, a lot of people point to the idea that He knew a lot about the plane He knew about the wing flap degree that it could go to he knew about altitude a lot of the witnesses later on said that He clearly was very much aware of what was going on in the cabin

He just knew the plane very much So a lot of other people say this guy was probably an airline employee maybe even a pilot actually based on the Altitude and stuff that he gave him to fly Yeah, and one of the weird things that he knew was that the 727 100 had an aft staircase That you could lower and jump out of because this wasn't common knowledge at the time Apparently a small group of people knew this you were either an employee of Boeing or you may have been in the CIA Because in the Vietnam War we actually use the 727 over Over Cambodia, which is where we were not supposed to be and they lowered that aft staircase of the 727 to drop supplies

It's a go You can't steer but go. Well, and then there's the whole thing with the SR 71 blackbird So a lot of Cooperists still say that he might have been secretly a member of the CIA, right? I knew about the aft staircase knew about the or the blackbird was scrambled So they had like some skin in the game, right? So a lot of suspects have come and gone and come back and stayed over the years The FBI says about it. Well, they won't say but a lot of people say about a thousand like Chuck said

but one of the first ones to emerge was a dude named Richard McCoy and In February of 1972, I think four months after the DB Cooper heist Richard McCoy hijacked 727 100 flight and he asked for $500,000 in cash and he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah, right? Yeah, so a lot of people say It's pretty similar. Yeah, maybe that was DB Cooper. Well and 500 grand that to me that makes sense Like 200 grand worked out fine, right? I should have asked for more to begin with right So let me try it again try it again. It turns out that he was a green beret in

Vietnam so that sort of fits with the whole profile He looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper and a little bit. Yeah He was 29 years old. So he was much younger than Cooper, but he didn't look 29. I'll say that he looked much older than that True. He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson. It's true. I'll say that absolutely So this guy gets caught actually after pulling off this heist initially and he goes to prison and he makes a fake gun out of Dental plaster from the dentist in the prison and he takes the truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate of the prison and escapes and is later killed in a shootout by cops Which is to say?

Richard McCoy knew how to live. He did And die And his family would later go on to say actually he was at home in Thanksgiving 1971 So it probably wasn't him right Good suspect though suspect number two is named Dwayne Weber, right? Is this your guy? No, this isn't my guy I like this guy. He's fine, but I don't like him. You know, I mean Yeah, so Dwayne Weber was a career criminal and the definition of a career criminal is one where you and your alias Have both done time in prison. Yeah

And he and his alias had done a combined 16 years, right? So he was on his deathbed and his wife Joe came around and said, how are you doing? It's like well, I'm still dying. I have a confession for you. I'd like you to hear I Am Dan Cooper and Joe's like, I don't know who that is and Dwayne blows up. They have a fight on his deathbed Never speak of it again. And he dies nine days later So Joe starts poking around after that. She's like who is this Dan Cooper? Which is a legitimate question after sure experience like that that she went through I would say so and she finds out via internet

This is 1995 that Dan Cooper was DB Cooper and she said, you know what? I think that he was telling the truth I think he was DB Cooper because you know what I remember in 1979 we were on a vacation. We were on a car trip We were kind of right around the area where the hijacking or I'm sorry where the landing supposedly took place and My husband stopped the car and just pointed and said, you know what? That's where DB Cooper walked out of the woods Which is a weird thing to say on vacation very weird thing to say It's even weirder that she didn't say what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, agreed

There's another story later on they were on another vacation. No, this is the same vacation. Oh, it's the same one. Yeah All right, we'll just call this the communication vacation The non-communication vacation because they clearly didn't talk to one another because he stopped over the Columbia River on a bridge Literally stops on a bridge gets out of the car goes to the back opens the trunk and it's just gone for like 10 minutes Gets back in the car And they just drive on yeah, and she doesn't say anything I know Yumi Yumi would have been like why'd you take your foot off the gas? Yeah

There would have been Emily would have had 300 questions on why we stopped on a bridge and I opened the truck Not Joe not Joe. Yeah So a lot of people still like Dwayne Weber, but he's actually the FBI said no, that's not the guy We ruled him out with DNA, right? Yes The next guy is my guy Kenny Christiansen Chuckers. That's right He was a pretty well-liked suspect for a while he Keeping with the series of family members outing their family is DB Cooper Yeah, which actually supports the family motto that I was brought up with never trust family

Proud Clark tradition So his brother Lyle actually this gets a little weird He outed him as a suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter Nora Efron Sleepless in Seattle, right? Yeah Didn't you see that coming He tried to get Nora Efron to write a movie about DB Cooper via his brother being the main suspect and he weirdly I guess he didn't have an agent. He hired a private investigator to get him in touch with Nora Efron, right? Very strange

But he championed his own brother as the main suspect or outed him That's another way to put it for sure and a guy named Geoffrey Gray wrote a really great article in New York magazine if you guys are interested about this particular guy, but There's a lot of similarities between DB Cooper and Kenny Christiansen for one He looks a lot like him right off the bat. He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a big deal Yeah, former paratrooper. Yeah, he was quiet. He smoked cigarettes He drank bourbon lived in the area where the hijacking took place, which is to say around here and And I think 2011

Geoffrey Gray the guy who wrote that New York magazine article got in touch with Florence Schaffner and said What about this guy and Florence Schaffner said I think you may be on to something here Yeah, and like Dwayne Weber Kenny Christiansen on his deathbed Tried to make a confession to his brother Lyle He he said I have something really important to tell you But I'm not sure if I can if I can say this and Lyle said no, no, no, I don't want to hear it Did you guys know that you can not hear a deathbed confession Well, not only that but I want nothing more than to hear a deathbed

I would be dying of you like oh my god dish. Yes. What do you have to say? But he was like no, no, no, I don't want to hear what you got to say. Just go ahead and die. And then he lied on top of him Yeah, he stopped squirming here. This pillow will make you comfortable You sleep now brother. What is going on with these people? Did you just do the Buffalo Bill voice? No, okay. That was coincidental Who else do we have LD Cooper? Yeah, little on the nose dad with the name he lived in the area, too Yeah, and he was also outed by a family member keeping with the Clark family tradition right this time It was his niece

And she said you know what I remember this was in 2011. This is not too long ago. She said you know what? I remember back in Thanksgiving 1971 Just like it was yesterday And uncle LD showed up bruised and bleeding For dinner, but he was euphoric, which was weird and I'm just now mentioning this right And what she she said by the way, she had a book coming out simultaneously She's telling everybody Imagine what did she say that she overheard because this is where she loses chuck in me

Well, yeah, she said he went to talk to he was my uncle and went to talk to my dad They were I overheard them in the hallway say we did it our money problems are over we hijacked the plane The book by Simon and Schuster on sale now, yeah at your local airport But there were a few things It wasn't totally out of the blue. He was an engineer at Boeing. No, his brother was his brother was yeah But they were in on it together sure right because we hijacked the plane, right? he's a silent partner and Weirdly, he would remember those Dan Cooper comic books

He was one of the ten people on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper That's a little weird. It's pretty good The weird thing is is he didn't have any experience skydiving which a lot of people say Oh, it's just too insane to think that somebody who never skydived before did their first skydive during a heist out of a 727 but the people who knew LD Cooper say no he was just crazy enough to do something like that and You can make a case that that actually explains the choice of the dummy shoot the truth. That's right and the military shoot even yeah

All right, so the legacy of DB Cooper to this day the heist remains the only Unsolved airline hijacking in the history of the world in America in America Really are there other ones you okay? I'm only standing behind America. Okay. I got you Yeah, right Every year if you go to the aerial store in Tavern in aerial Washington you can go to the DB Cooper days festival Yeah, have you guys has anyone ever been to that? We should all go right now We're gonna meet up this Thanksgiving you can win a DB Cooper lookalike contest if you look like Kevin Spacey. Yes, or Charles Manson or Don Draper

Which none of us do? I'm talking about you and me. I look like Justin Bieber I look like I ate Justin Bieber I just spit out my tooth That's how I lost it. I broke it on Justin Bieber's bones. They're pliable though You can go to that and when the contest there have been songs over the years. It was that terrible movie There've been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations unsolved mysteries. Am I right? Yeah, everybody see that one You can watch that on the YouTube too. Yeah, and there are many many

Cooperist websites most notably one called drop the zone calm and drop zone actually used to be a Recreational skydiving site until it got mostly taken over by DB Cooper aficionados They hijacked the website did as a matter of fact and this site is like so hot for Cooper sleuths that a guy named Secret started posting on it and he seemed to have a lot of information about the DB Cooper case that people didn't know about And it turned out that these Cooper sleuths were so good They unmasked the secret guy as the new agent in charge of the DB Cooper case Larry Carr Who was posting secretly as secret on the drop zone boards? That's how good these people are. He's like, no, I'm not Yes, you are. No, I'm not

Yes, you are He's like, okay, I am You can go on YouTube boy. You got you got a lot of YouTube into the night people You can go on YouTube as well and then look up Larry Carr and for many many years they kept all this evidence sort of under wraps And you can look up videos now Larry Carr said, you know, we should do the modern ages here We have the YouTube's and we can let everyone see this evidence Even though I think it's kind of funny that the FBI's official things like no, he totally died, right? No one told Larry Carr that Yeah, you know because he's also make a YouTube video. Let's show everyone this the skinny tie all the kids are into it now

He shows the clip on tie. You can see all that you can see the money the clip on tie all this evidence Hoping for a lead and he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from the tie They found three people's profiles. They also found and we don't even know but pure titanium and Impatience pollen Hopefully that will eventually crack the case, but it made everybody just be like what we thought we had a handle on this Impatience pollen. Where did that come from? So, um, bring us home my friend. Thank you the Cooper heist it changed America forever, right? D.B. Cooper is the reason we all started walking through metal detectors shortly afterward

He's the reason seriously is the reason that the airlines were given the right to search your bags before you get on one of their planes and They apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking I don't know when they took it off. Was it like sea ships being hijacked and then I'm no idea. I don't either but the the I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing was if you look at a Boeing 727 They still make them airplane if you look at that aft staircase in the back There's a white paddle that holds the stairs closed pretty smart. You can't open the aft staircase Mid-flight because you have to go outside and pull the paddle down and then the aft staircase will open

And it's a pretty smart easy solution to a pretty complex case and they call that little white paddle a Cooper vein That's right, and that is the story of D.B. Cooper and that is our show Good night Seattle. Good night everyone. Thank you For more on this and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works calm On the podcast hey dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping-off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Tell everybody yeah everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye. Bye. Bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.