The Jump the FBI Tried to Rebuild

Name: The Jump the FBI Tried to Rebuild
Genre: Documentary

Cooper disappears through the back of the aircraft, leaving investigators to reconstruct an escape without a known landing point.

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Transcript

The hijacker jumped from the back of the plane with a parachute.
November 24th, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket.
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 traveled from Portland to Seattle.
Soon after takeoff, Cooper gave a flight attendant a note on an explosive device.
Cooper demanded $200,000 for each passenger's safe return.
He ordered the plane to Mexico, with a refueling stop planned in Reno.
The eventual jump occurred somewhere between Seattle and Reno.
Before the jump, Cooper opened the aft door and deployed the aircraft's airstair.
The United States attorney's office expected the case to be solved quickly.
Instead, the FBI and Air Force conducted experiments to reconstruct the theft.
A 1964 Boeing 727 test involved flying with the aft airstair down.
Cooper parachuted into the night, and his true identity remains unknown.
That uncertainty left investigators with suspects, but none were promising.
FBI report listed 939 suspects, 922 eliminated.
Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb.
Investigators had photos and an initial sketch, but aircraft gave roughly 80 partial prints.
FBI found one active file, withheld under the Freedom of Information Act's Exemption seven A.
It also found another potentially relevant file entry that had been destroyed.

But when the rebuilt jump could not name the hijacker, investigators were left with a face in a file and roughly 80 partial prints.

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