Free Republic

This is the first of a two-part series. Part two is located here.More than five decades ago, a mild-mannered passenger in a business suit boarded a Seattle-bound flight in Oregon under the name Dan Cooper on Nov. 24, 1971. He ordered a bourbon and soda, and once in the air, handed a stewardess a handwritten note demanding $200,000 in cash and four parachutes under the threat of what appeared to be a bomb in his ratty briefcase. The plane landed in Seattle, and authorities complied with the hijacker’s demand. After refueling, the airliner took off again. Somewhere between takeoff and...

D.B. COOPER REDUX Help Us Solve the Enduring Mystery 12/31/07 On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash. Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced? It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths...