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D.B. Cooper: One Jump. $200,000. Gone.Episode 52:00
The 939 Suspects Who Led Nowhere
A sketch, dozens of partial prints, and a massive suspect hunt generate thousands of records—but no promising name.
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Transcript
In 1971, an unidentified hijacker took over a plane—and disappeared.
November 24th, 1971: a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way Seattle ticket.
It was Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, from Portland to Seattle.
Soon after takeoff, Cooper handed a flight attendant an explosive-device note.
He demanded $200,000 for each passenger's safe return.
The flight attendant initially assumed the note was a telephone number.
The case file preserved photographs and the suspect’s initial sketch.
Seattle's National Archives holds the file, Record Group 118.
The aircraft yielded about 80 partial latent prints for examination.
The U.S. Air Force and FBI ran experiments on how the theft was carried out.
Even the aircraft’s escape mechanics became part of the investigation.
An FBI report counted 939 suspects, eliminated 922, and found none promising.
A manual search of Missing Person files produced 21 possible suspects. Processing them found no information indicating involvement.
The FBI said it investigated daily in Seattle, other divisions, and abroad.
In one reporting period, the Seattle file grew by about 30 serials monthly.
A bigger file could still leave the central mystery untouched.
In 1972, 325 suspects stayed under investigation, 220 eliminated.
Cooper told flight attendant Schaffner he had a bomb. I have a bomb.
An FBI records search located one active file.
That search found an entry for another potentially responsive, already-destroyed file.
The FBI said it could not review destroyed records to confirm whether they were responsive.
But the FBI withheld that entire active Cooper file under FOIA Exemption seven(A).
Where it leaves off
But the FBI withheld that entire active Cooper file under FOIA Exemption 7(A).
Sources
- D.B. Cooper. U.S. Attorney’s Case File for the skyjacking case involving the alias “D.B. Cooper,” dated 1971. | National Archivesarchives.govprimary
- Society for American Archivists' article "Highlights from the National Archives’ Nationwide Holdings" | National Archivesarchives.govsecondary
- D. B. Cooper - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.orgsecondary
- mysocratesnote/db-cooper-text · Datasets at Hugging Facehuggingface.coprimary
- The FBI’s New D.B. Cooper File Reveals 4 Eye-Opening Details That Were Buried Until Now - AOLaol.comsecondary
- of GOVERNMENTarchives.govprimary
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