10 Most Compelling Suspects In The D.B. Cooper Hijacking
These are the people who may have gotten away with the heist of the century.
On 24 November 1971, a man entered an airport and bought a ticket from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington with the name Dan Cooper. He then boarded his flight, issued a note claiming to have a bomb in his briefcase and demanded $200,000 as well as four parachutes. After his requests were granted via a brief stop in Seattle, the figure demanded to be flown to Mexico City. But shortly after take off, he parachuted out of the plane never to be seen or heard from ever again.
In the over 50 years since the incident, D.B. Cooper - as he was dubbed by the media - has become one of the most famous and legendary missing men of all time. Since the day of the crime, the likes of the FBI and countless private investigators have taken to the case to try and track down Cooper and the $200,000.
Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written on the subject and there exists countless websites and online sleuths dedicated to tracking Cooper down. With the fugitive still possibly at large, here are the ten most compelling suspects who just might have gotten away with committing the crime of the century.
10. Lynn Doyle Cooper
Our first contender for pulling off the hijack of the century is a man who was first put forward as a suspect by his niece back in 2011. Marla Cooper believed her uncle, Lynne Doyle, or L.D. Cooper, may have been the mysterious hijacker.
Apart from sharing the same last name, this Cooper, who was 40 years old at the time of the crime, was recalled to be planning something devious around the time of the incident along with his brothers. One interesting piece of trivia to do with the case is that the name Dan Cooper was, apart from being the name on the flight ticket purchased by D.B. Cooper, also the name of a fictional star of a comic series about a Canadian fighter pilot. L.D. Cooper was a huge fan of Dan Cooper, having posters of Dan all over his walls, which his niece believes links him to the crime.
The day after the parachute jump of D.B. Cooper from the Boeing 727, L.D. Cooper came to Thanksgiving with a bloody shirt, which he explained as a result of a car accident. This led his family to believe he was responsible for the hijacking, as he also matched one of the witness sketches of the appearance of D.B. Cooper.