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Premieres 29 October 2026 at 6pm UK time
The Old Fox: Case Files · Episode 4
D.B. Cooper: the hijacker who jumped and vanished
How do you vanish from a jet in mid-air with a bag full of cash?
1971: a man in a clip-on tie hijacks a plane with a briefcase 'bomb', swaps the passengers for $200,000 and four parachutes, then jumps into the night. Only a sliver of the money has ever been found.
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What the fox said
How do you vanish from a jet in mid-air, with a bag full of cash? Let's see what's on.
The night before Thanksgiving, 1971. Portland, Oregon. A man buys a one-way ticket to Seattle.
He calls himself Dan Cooper. Dark suit, clip-on tie, sunglasses. He orders a bourbon and soda.
Then he hands a flight attendant a note. He has a bomb.
He opens his briefcase. Wires, and red sticks. It looks real enough.
His demands: two hundred thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills, and four parachutes.
In Seattle, he gets his money and his parachutes, and lets the passengers go.
The jet takes off again, bound for Mexico. A little after eight at night, he lowers the rear stairs, and jumps.
He's never seen again. The press got his name wrong, and D.B. Cooper stuck.
The FBI had recorded the serial numbers of all ten thousand bills.
In 1980, an eight-year-old boy on a sandy riverbank finds five thousand eight hundred dollars in rotting twenties. The numbers match.
It's the only ransom money ever found. Hundreds of suspects. None confirmed.
In 2016, the FBI stopped actively investigating. It's still the only American airline hijacking never solved.
Did he float off with the cash? Nobody knows. Case closed. Keep your nose to the wind.
Sources
- On 24 November 1971, the eve of Thanksgiving, a man who bought his ticket as 'Dan Cooper' hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle; the name 'D.B. Cooper' came from a media mix-up (FBI, 'D.B. Cooper Hijacking'; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Columbia Journalism Review).
- He showed a flight attendant a briefcase containing wires and red sticks; it was never proven to be a real bomb (history.co.uk; The Points Guy).
- At Seattle-Tacoma he received $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes, released the passengers, and a little after 8 pm, as the plane flew towards Mexico via Reno, jumped from the rear airstair (FBI, 'D.B. Cooper Hijacking').
- The FBI had recorded the serial numbers of all 10,000 bills. On 10 February 1980 an eight-year-old boy found $5,800 in matching notes at Tena Bar on the Columbia River, the only ransom money ever recovered (FBI; KIRO 7).
- Investigators looked at hundreds of suspects (more than 800 by some counts), and none has been confirmed (History.com; Encyclopaedia Britannica).
- The FBI stopped actively investigating the case in July 2016 (FBI Seattle Field Office, press release, 2016).
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