Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: SYSK Live: The DB Cooper Heist
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. We're moving along on our true crime
- 0:04Speaker 1: playlist with an episode we recorded live in Seattle in
- 0:08Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, on the unsolved mystery of dB Cooper. Someone
- 0:13Speaker 1: using that alias hijacked a plane flying from Portland to
- 0:16Speaker 1: Seattle in nineteen seventy one and jumped out mid air,
- 0:19Speaker 1: making off with two hundred thousand dollars. People still float
- 0:23Speaker 1: suspects today, and they usually say the case is solved,
- 0:27Speaker 1: but the FBI stopped investigating back in twenty sixteen and
- 0:31Speaker 1: they consider it unsolved. This one is pretty fun, so
- 0:33Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it, and if you like this
- 0:36Speaker 1: live show, come see us when we hit the road
- 0:37Speaker 1: again in twenty twenty six Welcome to Stuff you should
- 0:43Speaker 1: know from HowStuffWorks dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
- 0:53Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we
- 0:57Speaker 1: are here live at the beautiful Neptune Thiet and beautiful
- 1:00Speaker 1: Seattle and beautiful Washington. Thank you, guys, phenomenal.
- 1:33Speaker 2: I'm already a sweaty mess, so that must mean we're
- 1:35Speaker 2: on stage.
- 1:35Speaker 3: We are off to a great start.
- 1:37Speaker 4: That must mean I'm awake.
- 1:39Speaker 3: Or sleeping.
- 1:40Speaker 4: Yeah, I sweat my sleep too big time. It's gross.
- 1:44Speaker 3: I'm always wiping his brow.
- 1:48Speaker 2: What movie we're going to watch tonight in the hotel?
- 1:52Speaker 3: Is a spy out yet on?
- 1:55Speaker 4: And we can leave the seat up on the toilet?
- 1:57Speaker 4: I don't.
- 1:58Speaker 3: I don't do that.
- 1:59Speaker 2: I don't either because I pee sitting down because I'm
- 2:02Speaker 2: forty five years old. Do you really well, yeah, I
- 2:08Speaker 2: might as well get into it.
- 2:11Speaker 4: What you do too?
- 2:16Speaker 2: Why we never talked about this. I started being sitting
- 2:20Speaker 2: down during the middle of the night, Get up because
- 2:23Speaker 2: if it just makes sense, because you don't want to
- 2:26Speaker 2: wake up too much and you don't want to like
- 2:28Speaker 2: make a mess. And then I think I just hit
- 2:32Speaker 2: a certain age where I was like, it's just nicer
- 2:35Speaker 2: to sit down. I don't need to prove anything to anyone.
- 2:41Speaker 3: Huh, you landed your lady, You're all set.
- 2:44Speaker 2: Yeah, I stand when I pee off my deck at night,
- 2:49Speaker 2: I don't do that.
- 2:49Speaker 3: I live in a condo complex.
- 2:51Speaker 4: They would if I would be it's not good, man.
- 2:55Speaker 1: I feel like an enormous weight's just been lifted off of.
- 2:58Speaker 2: I can't believe that you're not even forty years old
- 3:00Speaker 2: yet and you pee sitting down.
- 3:01Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start the podcast.
- 3:11Speaker 2: Are there other guys out there that pee sitting down?
- 3:14Speaker 1: All right?
- 3:15Speaker 3: We're starting a movement, baby, that's right.
- 3:19Speaker 2: Your ladies will appreciate it. Oddly, I pooped standing up.
- 3:31Speaker 2: This is so off the rails already.
- 3:32Speaker 1: Like in conversation. Let's be sitting there talking to me.
- 3:36Speaker 1: You're like you're pooping right now, aren't you. Yeah, it's
- 3:39Speaker 1: like it's more efficient this way, I get more done.
- 3:42Speaker 4: We should probably start over.
- 3:43Speaker 3: We should.
- 3:44Speaker 1: We're gonna get off stage and come back out. I
- 3:47Speaker 1: can't believe what we've been talking about here this evening already. Okay,
- 3:54Speaker 1: let's all just take it down a notch. All right,
- 3:59Speaker 1: So we're poking casting. We're about to start podcasting. I
- 4:02Speaker 1: think I already started the podcast, oh god, which means
- 4:04Speaker 1: that's gonna be on like the thing.
- 4:06Speaker 4: We That's why I said we should start over.
- 4:08Speaker 3: Okay, it stays here everybody.
- 4:12Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all our secret. I think five hundred people.
- 4:19Speaker 1: Okay, hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
- 4:24Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We are live here at
- 4:27Speaker 1: the Beautiful Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington.
- 4:45Speaker 4: Man Times two that's an in joke. People will be
- 4:53Speaker 4: like even better than what.
- 5:02Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's more crossover between our fans
- 5:04Speaker 1: and Howard Stern than our fans and Mariners fans.
- 5:07Speaker 2: I think, boy, there's a Venn diagram out there that's
- 5:12Speaker 2: confusing me already.
- 5:14Speaker 1: Okay, so Chuck, yes, this is a little bit of history. Yeah,
- 5:18Speaker 1: so we're going to go back in the way back machine.
- 5:20Speaker 1: That's right, Dud's If you listen to the PR Live podcast,
- 5:30Speaker 1: you know that, like the wayback machine is imaginary. So
- 5:32Speaker 1: settled down.
- 5:35Speaker 4: They heard that live.
- 5:37Speaker 1: Yeah that was a good one too.
- 5:39Speaker 2: There are PR professionals here because they emailed me today.
- 5:42Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, I can tell that's the call of
- 5:47Speaker 1: the PR professional call. So we're going back to a cold, stormy, rainy,
- 5:57Speaker 1: pretty nasty Thanksgiving in nineteen seventy one, and the story
- 6:03Speaker 1: begins at PDX Portland Airport and a man walked into PDX,
- 6:10Speaker 1: took a picture of his shoe on the carpet, and
- 6:13Speaker 1: then walked along to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket desk.
- 6:18Speaker 1: That's right, And he walked up and he said, Hi,
- 6:21Speaker 1: I am really interested in finding more about flight three
- 6:25Speaker 1: oh five, the flight to Seattle. Would that happen to
- 6:30Speaker 1: be a Boeing seven to twenty seven Dash one hundred
- 6:32Speaker 1: airplane that you guys are going to fly on that route?
- 6:36Speaker 1: And the ticket agentment yes, as a matter of fact,
- 6:40Speaker 1: it is, and the man said that it's fantastic.
- 6:43Speaker 3: Here's my twenty dollars.
- 6:44Speaker 1: Yeah, one ticket please, for a one way ticket between
- 6:49Speaker 1: Portland and Seattle, a board flight three oh five. Yeah.
- 6:53Speaker 2: And she was like, that's a weird question, but I
- 6:55Speaker 2: guess he's very specific about what kind of plane he
- 6:58Speaker 2: likes to fly on.
- 6:58Speaker 1: Plus, it's nineteen seventy and I'm in no position to
- 7:01Speaker 1: publicly question a man, so I'll just go along with this.
- 7:06Speaker 4: It's very true.
- 7:09Speaker 2: And it was twenty dollars for that flight. This is
- 7:11Speaker 2: a very seventies podcast. So they handed him as a
- 7:16Speaker 2: little ticket voucher and said just filled this out, sir, uh,
- 7:19Speaker 2: don't need to see ID because it's nineteen seventy one.
- 7:22Speaker 2: Just tell us who you are or whoever you want
- 7:24Speaker 2: us to think you are. And he wrote down in
- 7:26Speaker 2: big block letters in a red ink pin, Dan Cooper.
- 7:33Speaker 3: You know where we're going with this, son.
- 7:36Speaker 1: So the Boeing seven twenty seven Dash one hundred is
- 7:39Speaker 1: every single person in this room knows is a smallish plane.
- 7:42Speaker 1: It's not the biggest plane in the Boeing fleet. It's
- 7:45Speaker 1: not the smallest either, but it's the only one that
- 7:47Speaker 1: had an af staircase. Right, And this particular flight flying
- 7:52Speaker 1: aboard this Boeing seven twenty seven DASH one hundred flight
- 7:54Speaker 1: three zero five had a crew of five aboard. There
- 7:58Speaker 1: was Captain William Scott, not Sean William Scott, we figured
- 8:02Speaker 1: out later on, not Stiffler.
- 8:05Speaker 3: That would have made zero sense.
- 8:07Speaker 1: Yeah, Hetty had a former life in the seventies as
- 8:09Speaker 1: an airline pilot co pilot Robert Radazak. There's a ce
- 8:14Speaker 1: in there for those of you who like that kind
- 8:16Speaker 1: of thing. And there were three flight attendants. There's a
- 8:20Speaker 1: head flight attendant who was named Alice Hancock, right, yes,
- 8:24Speaker 1: and then two I guess regular flight attendants, Tina mucclough,
- 8:29Speaker 1: who's a hero of ours, and Florence Schaffner.
- 8:32Speaker 2: I think they called him stewardess's back then to be fair, right,
- 8:35Speaker 2: But we're forward thinking guys, so we're we're gonna go
- 8:37Speaker 2: ahead and say flight attendant.
- 8:38Speaker 3: We don't use the S word.
- 8:42Speaker 4: You just make well, never mind.
- 8:44Speaker 1: Never mind, We've done quite enough extraneous stuff for her,
- 8:49Speaker 1: I know.
- 8:49Speaker 2: So Dan Cooper gets on the plane. There's thirty seven
- 8:52Speaker 2: other passengers because again it was a seventies they didn't
- 8:55Speaker 2: overbook flights back then, and say I'm sorry you bought
- 8:58Speaker 2: a ticket, but you really can't fly on this flight.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Thirty seven passengers, pretty empty, and Dan Cooper seat sits
- 9:03Speaker 2: in seat eighteen C. They pour him up a bourbon
- 9:08Speaker 2: in seven up and he lights up a cigarette.
- 9:10Speaker 3: A Raley brand cigarette.
- 9:11Speaker 2: Because it's nineteen seventy one, you got smoke on planes. Yeah,
- 9:15Speaker 2: And he looked to be about in his mid forties.
- 9:17Speaker 2: He was, you know, kind of looked like the men
- 9:19Speaker 2: of the time, which is to say you either looked
- 9:23Speaker 2: by nineteen seventy one. He either looked a little more
- 9:24Speaker 2: like Don Draper, kind of holding on to that fifties look,
- 9:28Speaker 2: or you look like Charles Manson.
- 9:30Speaker 4: He looked a little more like Don Draper. Yeah. Had
- 9:33Speaker 4: the suit had the skinny tie.
- 9:35Speaker 1: And we should talk a little bit about the suit.
- 9:37Speaker 1: The suit was a russet colored suit, which was like
- 9:40Speaker 1: that weird burgundy brown color. It's potato colored it right,
- 9:45Speaker 1: and it just so happened that he was wearing the
- 9:47Speaker 1: suit during the one six month period in history where
- 9:50Speaker 1: you could wear that color suit out in public. So
- 9:53Speaker 1: he was okay. And then his skinny tie was a
- 9:57Speaker 1: clip on from J. C. Penny. That's right.
- 10:00Speaker 2: He had a imitation Mother of Pearl type in. He
- 10:04Speaker 2: had an overcoat, he had a hat, he had a
- 10:08Speaker 2: bag kind of like a briefcase, and he had these
- 10:11Speaker 2: black corn rim sunglasses, dark kind of olive skin.
- 10:17Speaker 4: Would you say?
- 10:18Speaker 1: They call him swarthy, which I think is like stewardess
- 10:21Speaker 1: that's been phased out, you know what I mean.
- 10:23Speaker 2: I thought swarthy. I thought that was like a sea captain.
- 10:28Speaker 3: I'm sure there were swarthy sea captains.
- 10:31Speaker 2: Because, yeah, because they're out in the sun, so they
- 10:34Speaker 2: ended up getting olive skinned.
- 10:35Speaker 1: That's rugged. Okay, you're thinking of the Gordon's fishermen.
- 10:41Speaker 4: Oh right, Oh he was swarthy.
- 10:43Speaker 2: Sure, he's swarthy as h So he had he had
- 10:48Speaker 2: this kind of dark wavy hair, and other than that,
- 10:51Speaker 2: he was just sort of an unremarkable dude.
- 10:53Speaker 4: He wanted to blend in right.
- 10:55Speaker 1: Well, yeah, okay, so this guy's sitting in eighteen c
- 11:00Speaker 1: unremarkable aside from wearing the sunglasses, he's smoking with his
- 11:03Speaker 1: left hand, says, nothing to do with anything, but we
- 11:05Speaker 1: just kind of wanted to show off how much research
- 11:07Speaker 1: we've done on this. And when Florence Schaffner, the flight
- 11:13Speaker 1: attendant working his area, comes over and gives him his
- 11:16Speaker 1: bourbon and I think seven up right, yeah, he hands
- 11:20Speaker 1: her a note. And to Florence Shaffner, she was twenty three,
- 11:24Speaker 1: she was very pretty. She was at the time a stewardess,
- 11:27Speaker 1: and this happened to her all the time, like businessmen
- 11:31Speaker 1: drinking sevens and sevens like past her notes and hit
- 11:35Speaker 1: on her all the time. So when this guy in
- 11:38Speaker 1: eighteen C Dan Cooper handed her a note, she took
- 11:41Speaker 1: the note and just put it in her flight apron
- 11:44Speaker 1: without looking at it, and turned and walked away with
- 11:47Speaker 1: all the other notes right over right.
- 11:50Speaker 2: Yeah, from all the men who wanted to rescue her
- 11:52Speaker 2: from her life.
- 11:54Speaker 1: Come away with me, it sworethy. And so Dan Cooper
- 11:59Speaker 1: sees this and he goes, miss, you may want to
- 12:03Speaker 1: have a look at that note.
- 12:04Speaker 3: I have a bomb.
- 12:05Speaker 4: I think you know where we're going with this, dB Cooper.
- 12:11Speaker 1: You know, when we were coming here today, we were like, oh,
- 12:14Speaker 1: we're really rolling the dice. It's entirely possible that everyone
- 12:18Speaker 1: here had the dB Cooper case drilled into them from
- 12:21Speaker 1: like third grade on.
- 12:23Speaker 4: That's not the case, is no, you didn't study it
- 12:25Speaker 4: in class.
- 12:26Speaker 3: It's just a high relief.
- 12:28Speaker 1: I told that to you, MEI, and Yumy was like,
- 12:30Speaker 1: that's so dumb. She's like, do you know everything about
- 12:33Speaker 1: the burning of Atlanta? And I said no, and she's like, no, no,
- 12:36Speaker 1: you don't, And they don't know everything about dB Cooper
- 12:40Speaker 1: and I went back to sleep.
- 12:44Speaker 2: So this was not the first commercial airplane hijacking. It
- 12:49Speaker 2: actually the first one was in nineteen forty eight, and
- 12:52Speaker 2: remarkably between nineteen sixty eight, just three years earlier, in
- 12:58Speaker 2: the time dB Cooper hijacked this plane, there were one
- 13:01Speaker 2: hundred commercial hijackings in three years.
- 13:05Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is not new.
- 13:06Speaker 2: It was not new, but I remember, like if anyone
- 13:09Speaker 2: here grew up in like the seventies and stuff, it
- 13:11Speaker 2: was a thing like planes got hijacked all the time
- 13:14Speaker 2: because you could bring guns and bombs on planes and
- 13:17Speaker 2: you didn't need.
- 13:17Speaker 4: ID and no one cared, right, and they were like, hmm,
- 13:21Speaker 4: this is weird.
- 13:22Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty much where the FBI was at the time,
- 13:24Speaker 1: and by nineteen seventy one, they were just starting to
- 13:27Speaker 1: like get hip to the idea of hijackings being a problem,
- 13:31Speaker 1: and so their first idea was, well, we'll put an
- 13:33Speaker 1: air marshal on every flight. And then they looked at
- 13:36Speaker 1: the schedule of flights in the United States and they
- 13:38Speaker 1: were like, oh, this may have been a bad idea, but.
- 13:41Speaker 4: They tried a good idea.
- 13:42Speaker 1: It was a fine idea if everyone, if like a
- 13:46Speaker 1: third of the population of the United States were air marshals,
- 13:49Speaker 1: and yeah, it was a good idea.
- 13:51Speaker 2: It's a good idea if you want one of every
- 13:52Speaker 2: like three hundred flights with an air markets right.
- 13:55Speaker 1: Right, and the other two hundred ninety nine open for hijacking. Right.
- 13:59Speaker 1: So this was they figured out after a few years,
- 14:02Speaker 1: like why the logistics of American air tragicy.
- 14:05Speaker 2: Edgar Hoover's idea, by the way, right, he was still
- 14:07Speaker 2: in charge of the FBI in nineteen seventy one.
- 14:09Speaker 1: Yeah, so he'd been there for about fifty years, right, Yeah,
- 14:12Speaker 1: So his idea was air marshalls didn't work, but they
- 14:16Speaker 1: were still trying it. There was no air marshal on
- 14:18Speaker 1: flight three zero five, the dB Cooper hijacking flight.
- 14:21Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like Portland to Seattle. Maybe we should put
- 14:24Speaker 2: like three air marshals on that one.
- 14:26Speaker 1: I tried to light and I mean it made sense
- 14:29Speaker 1: that there would not be an air marshal on that
- 14:31Speaker 1: flight because most hijackings were crazed loan gunmen with a
- 14:35Speaker 1: handgun who wanted to be taken to Cuba for political reasons. Basically,
- 14:40Speaker 1: no one flying from PDX to c Tech wanted to
- 14:43Speaker 1: be taken to Cuba, so there was no reason for
- 14:45Speaker 1: an air marshal to beyond the flight. It was a
- 14:47Speaker 1: pretty good bet to not have an air marshal on.
- 14:51Speaker 1: They just didn't expect TB. Cooper because he was a
- 14:54Speaker 1: pretty novel person. The idea of a single guy taking
- 14:58Speaker 1: control of a flight for money with a bomb that
- 15:02Speaker 1: was new and like our whole conception of mad bomber
- 15:05Speaker 1: hijacking a flight comes from dB Cooper and Sonny Bono's
- 15:09Speaker 1: character an Airplane two.
- 15:12Speaker 2: This is actually I did a little more research between
- 15:14Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight and seventy nine. It's literally referred to
- 15:17Speaker 2: as the Golden Age of skyjacking. I was talking to
- 15:22Speaker 2: Josh's like I didn't know that you could have. I
- 15:24Speaker 2: thought a golden age was about something good. I didn't
- 15:27Speaker 2: know you could have the golden age of dysentery, right,
- 15:30Speaker 2: the good old days.
- 15:31Speaker 1: It was good for the hijackers because they could get
- 15:34Speaker 1: away with it no problem.
- 15:35Speaker 2: Maybe that's who wrote that, the Golden age of skyjacking man.
- 15:39Speaker 2: All right, So Floren Schaeffner, I'm sorry. Shaffer reads the
- 15:43Speaker 2: note and she says, you know what, give me our
- 15:48Speaker 2: Cooper says, you know what, give me that note back,
- 15:49Speaker 2: which is a very key thing because that means they
- 15:52Speaker 2: won't have a sample of his handwriting. So he asked
- 15:54Speaker 2: for the note back, and from that point on he
- 15:57Speaker 2: did not converse.
- 15:59Speaker 4: Like everything else.
- 16:00Speaker 2: He had them right down to take to the captain
- 16:02Speaker 2: so they would have no more like physical evidence of
- 16:04Speaker 2: his handwriting.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Yeah. The only handwriting sample he had was that ticket
- 16:08Speaker 1: duplicate and it was in block letters, which yeah, Cooper.
- 16:14Speaker 2: So she sits down and she says, uh, you know,
- 16:17Speaker 2: I want to know.
- 16:17Speaker 4: That this is legit, this is for real?
- 16:20Speaker 2: Can I can I like get a look at that
- 16:21Speaker 2: bomb that you're talking about?
- 16:24Speaker 4: Makes sense? And he shows her right, Yeah, he gives
- 16:26Speaker 4: her a little peak.
- 16:27Speaker 1: He opened her his bag just enough and she went
- 16:29Speaker 1: to put her fingers in and he snapped the hut.
- 16:34Speaker 2: Just like pretty woman. Yeah, yeah, and uh, but she
- 16:38Speaker 2: sees what you know. She sees red sticks of dynamite
- 16:42Speaker 2: and a battery and and I guess presumably like an
- 16:45Speaker 2: alarm clock with two bells on it.
- 16:48Speaker 1: Right, it's got like a skull and crossbones. It's like
- 16:50Speaker 1: he says, you die or something.
- 16:52Speaker 2: Electrical tape is all around it because he watched a
- 16:55Speaker 2: lot of cartoons and he knows how to make a bomb.
- 16:56Speaker 1: Well she I mean she bought it. Clearly, she saw
- 17:00Speaker 1: the bomb and she took down a note. He said,
- 17:04Speaker 1: take this down. I have a ransom demand. He said,
- 17:07Speaker 1: I want two hundred thousand dollars by five pm in cash.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes
- 17:14Speaker 1: and two front parachutes when we land. I want a
- 17:17Speaker 1: fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or all
- 17:21Speaker 1: do the job, which is h That was tough talking
- 17:24Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one.
- 17:26Speaker 2: Again, he wants a lot of cartoons. And that's what
- 17:29Speaker 2: you say when you mean business. That roughly is about
- 17:32Speaker 2: one point two million dollars today.
- 17:35Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's a little low.
- 17:37Speaker 2: If you're gonna go through a skyjacking.
- 17:39Speaker 1: It's a lot of work for a million dollars.
- 17:41Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have said, like, if you're gonna ask
- 17:43Speaker 2: for two hundred grand, ask for three hundred or four hundred,
- 17:46Speaker 2: that's just me sure, I'm no skyjacker. So this is
- 17:51Speaker 2: turns out to be the only threat that Dan Cooper
- 17:53Speaker 2: makes during the entire ordeal.
- 17:55Speaker 4: He he is this very first note that he gave up.
- 17:58Speaker 2: So from that point, like I said, he dictated everything else,
- 18:02Speaker 2: so they could just pass notes back and forth. And
- 18:05Speaker 2: aside from a couple of conversations with the pilots on
- 18:09Speaker 2: the cockpit phone from the rear of the plane to
- 18:11Speaker 2: the cockpit, they didn't have any interaction the pilots whatsoever
- 18:15Speaker 2: with Danku.
- 18:16Speaker 1: Right, So they were like almost no help whatsoever during
- 18:19Speaker 1: the investigation. Right. And then the fact that he asked
- 18:22Speaker 1: for two parachutes was a stroke of brilliant because it
- 18:25Speaker 1: did show his hand to the FBI that he was
- 18:28Speaker 1: going to jump out of the plane with the ransom money.
- 18:31Speaker 1: But it also said FBI, I'm probably going to make
- 18:35Speaker 1: a hostage jump with me, so don't tamper with any
- 18:37Speaker 1: of these parachutes, which if the FBI had would have
- 18:41Speaker 1: been murder. But we're talking about Jaegar Hoover's FBI, so
- 18:46Speaker 1: they may have tried just that. So it's pretty smart
- 18:49Speaker 1: that he asked for two pairs because they didn't know
- 18:51Speaker 1: what he was going to do.
- 18:52Speaker 4: That's right.
- 18:52Speaker 2: So Schaffner takes that ransom note, gives it to Alice Cancock.
- 18:56Speaker 2: She takes it over to the pilot and the co pilot,
- 19:00Speaker 2: and well what did they do? Josh, you do a
- 19:03Speaker 2: great pilot. They called Seatech Airport instead.
- 19:08Speaker 1: Uh, seatach We just want to advise you on a
- 19:12Speaker 1: bit of a fiddlestick. So we got going on here
- 19:16Speaker 1: son and Bono was taking control of the plane. He
- 19:20Speaker 1: wants two hundred thousand dollars in negotiable American currency by
- 19:25Speaker 1: five pm.
- 19:26Speaker 2: Negotiable American currency. Yeah, it's a very weird thing to
- 19:29Speaker 2: ask for it.
- 19:30Speaker 1: It was, And so sea Tech was like, we should
- 19:33Speaker 1: probably call the cops, and the cops said we should
- 19:36Speaker 1: probably call the FBI.
- 19:37Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this was the Seattle Police Department in nineteen
- 19:40Speaker 2: seventy one. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, we we don't
- 19:43Speaker 2: deal with things like this.
- 19:44Speaker 1: They're like, wait, wait, this guy doesn't want to go
- 19:47Speaker 1: to Cuba. We don't understand it.
- 19:48Speaker 2: Like we're literally waiting for John Rambo to wander through town,
- 19:51Speaker 2: right so we can harass.
- 19:53Speaker 1: Him just ten more years.
- 19:55Speaker 4: Wait, that was Oregon, though, wasn't it?
- 19:57Speaker 1: Okay? Pretty close? That joke will kill night tomorrow night?
- 20:02Speaker 4: Yeah, man, Rambo joke, yeah.
- 20:06Speaker 1: Remember it. So all of a sudden, like there's all
- 20:11Speaker 1: this crazy energy going on down on the ground, right,
- 20:14Speaker 1: So the FBI comes in and they're they're trying to
- 20:19Speaker 1: get the money together. They're like, you, we have an hour.
- 20:23Speaker 1: You got to give us more time. It's like, no,
- 20:25Speaker 1: you can't have more time. They're like, okay, that's fine,
- 20:27Speaker 1: we'll get all this stuff together. You guys are gonna
- 20:29Speaker 1: have to stay up there until we get everything ready
- 20:32Speaker 1: for you. So the plane is circling SeaTac and they
- 20:36Speaker 1: told the passengers that the plane was experiencing mechanical problems,
- 20:42Speaker 1: which I would have had a problem hearing, you know,
- 20:45Speaker 1: it wouldn't have like I think they could have thought
- 20:47Speaker 1: that through a little more.
- 20:49Speaker 2: Yeah, it's experiencing mechanical problems. So we're just gonna keep flying.
- 20:52Speaker 1: We're gonna stay aloft, see what happens. Captain Scott is
- 20:57Speaker 1: a gambling man.
- 21:00Speaker 2: So everyone was drinking and smoking cigarettes, so they didn't care.
- 21:03Speaker 2: They were hooking up in the bathroom.
- 21:05Speaker 4: This is ninety seventy one.
- 21:07Speaker 3: It could have been Chuck.
- 21:08Speaker 1: You would have been like I told you, we should
- 21:10Speaker 1: have driven.
- 21:11Speaker 3: It's nothing.
- 21:12Speaker 4: Could have been to Portland.
- 21:15Speaker 1: So they had to circle for an hour, and they
- 21:17Speaker 1: ended up telling the passengers, oh, we just need to
- 21:20Speaker 1: burn off some gas and everything will be fine, right,
- 21:22Speaker 1: And the passengers apparently were totally unaware that they've been hijacked.
- 21:26Speaker 1: That's how cool Cooper was, right, But one passenger later said,
- 21:31Speaker 1: I had a pretty good feeling we'd been hijacked, and
- 21:35Speaker 1: the press pool was like, shut up, go cut off
- 21:37Speaker 1: the day he was that next person.
- 21:40Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was at that game. Yeah, I was
- 21:44Speaker 4: at that game seven. It was all right, he's that dude,
- 21:49Speaker 4: you know, Oh yeah, any remarkable event. Yeah, I was there.
- 21:52Speaker 1: It was it was I knew it was a hijacking.
- 21:56Speaker 1: You really had me stumped there for a second. I'm
- 21:59Speaker 1: roll play game seven. So SeaTac is circling, right, They're circling,
- 22:09Speaker 1: circling an hour killing time, but just burning off gas.
- 22:13Speaker 1: And Florence Schaffner has gone away to take the note
- 22:17Speaker 1: to Alice han Cockley takes notes to the cockpit. She's
- 22:21Speaker 1: on the relay team basically now, and dB Cooper says, well,
- 22:26Speaker 1: Dan Cooper says, hey, Tina Mucklow, why don't you sit
- 22:29Speaker 1: beside me for a while. And she did, and she
- 22:31Speaker 1: ended up kind of taking a bit of a seat
- 22:33Speaker 1: in history, if you will feel allow us that terrible analogy.
- 22:39Speaker 1: And she sat down and she got She spent a
- 22:41Speaker 1: lot of time with Dan Cooper and they ended up chatting,
- 22:44Speaker 1: and she said Dan Cooper kept a level head during
- 22:46Speaker 1: a very tense situation, like the whole time. And they
- 22:49Speaker 1: chatted about things like Tina Mucklow's home state, which was Minnesota.
- 22:53Speaker 1: They talked about a nearby Air Force base and how
- 22:56Speaker 1: long it took to drive to SeaTac It was like
- 22:59Speaker 1: twenty minutes or something. Thing. You guys can actually probably
- 23:02Speaker 1: guess the air Force base. We don't know, uh that one. Yeah,
- 23:06Speaker 1: And then they also at one point he looked out
- 23:10Speaker 1: the window and he said, it looks like we're over Tacoma.
- 23:12Speaker 1: So all this would indicate a lot to the FBI
- 23:15Speaker 1: later on right that this guy was maybe a local.
- 23:18Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of curious. Could anyone here recognize Tacoma
- 23:21Speaker 2: from an airplane?
- 23:23Speaker 1: From an airplane or an airplane?
- 23:26Speaker 2: Why do they have a huge like field cut out
- 23:28Speaker 2: of grass? It says Tacoma corn.
- 23:35Speaker 4: What are they saying?
- 23:37Speaker 3: I think they're saying corn.
- 23:38Speaker 4: Yeah, the smell.
- 23:46Speaker 2: Oh boy, I knew that.
- 23:49Speaker 4: I knew this would go over well here.
- 23:53Speaker 2: By the way, we didn't mention they diverted all the
- 23:55Speaker 2: other flights away from from SeaTac at the time because
- 23:59Speaker 2: they wanted that to be the only plane in the area.
- 24:02Speaker 2: And to me, the most remarkable part of this whole
- 24:04Speaker 2: story is one of the other planes in the air,
- 24:08Speaker 2: the dude, the pilot gets on and tells everyone else
- 24:11Speaker 2: on that plane what's going on.
- 24:15Speaker 1: Well, he like he patched into the calm link between
- 24:18Speaker 1: flight three zero five and SeaTac for the listening enjoyment
- 24:21Speaker 1: of the passengers on his flight. It's insane.
- 24:27Speaker 2: It's like, I'm sorry, we're delayed, but here's what's going
- 24:30Speaker 2: on on another flight nearby.
- 24:33Speaker 1: A right to sit back and listen to the dulcet
- 24:37Speaker 1: tones of a skyjacking.
- 24:40Speaker 4: Again. It was the seventies. Everyone was drinking. They're like,
- 24:42Speaker 4: this is remarkable. Thank god, it's not us.
- 24:45Speaker 3: Everything's better when you're drinking.
- 24:50Speaker 4: All right.
- 24:50Speaker 2: So he recognizes Tacoma, which apparently everyone in this room
- 24:53Speaker 2: could do.
- 24:54Speaker 1: Yeah, right, we were impressed by that. But it's nothing.
- 24:57Speaker 4: Occasionally went spells like coma. So all of these are
- 25:08Speaker 4: sort of clues.
- 25:08Speaker 2: Though, if he recognized Tacoma a new by the air
- 25:10Speaker 2: Force base, that clearly maybe the guy's kind of from
- 25:13Speaker 2: the area might be a clue. Later on, So Mucklaw
- 25:17Speaker 2: at this point asked Dan Cooper. She said, do you
- 25:19Speaker 2: have a grudge against our airlines, sir? And he said, no, ma'am,
- 25:22Speaker 2: I don't have a grudge against your airline. I just
- 25:23Speaker 2: have a grudge critic right. She was like yeah, like
- 25:30Speaker 2: they did.
- 25:32Speaker 1: So back on the ground, the FBI is like going crazy,
- 25:35Speaker 1: The local cops are going crazy. Everybody's going crazy trying
- 25:38Speaker 1: to get two hundred grand in cash together. Turns out
- 25:41Speaker 1: that was the easiest part of this whole thing. So
- 25:44Speaker 1: Northwest Orients president at the time, Donald nyrop.
- 25:49Speaker 4: Any Nyrops in the house.
- 25:51Speaker 3: No, he would have been in Minnesota.
- 25:54Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah.
- 25:55Speaker 2: But I'm convinced that someone in here is going to
- 25:56Speaker 2: be related to someone in this story.
- 25:58Speaker 4: Oh I am too, Yeah, I'm just.
- 26:00Speaker 1: I'm waiting for somebody stay would be like that's a.
- 26:02Speaker 2: Lie, or for someone to stand up and say I
- 26:05Speaker 2: am dB Cooper. Oh yeah, that would be amazing. We'd
- 26:09Speaker 2: have to come up with a different show tomorrow, oh yeah,
- 26:13Speaker 2: or just bring him along.
- 26:14Speaker 3: Sure, and here he is everybody.
- 26:16Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 26:18Speaker 1: So Donald Nyrop, the president of Northwest Orient, He's like, yeah, sure,
- 26:23Speaker 1: we'll totally pay that. We have a huge insurance policy
- 26:27Speaker 1: on this kind of thing. Apparently Northwest had to pay
- 26:30Speaker 1: like twenty grand and their insurance company paid out one
- 26:32Speaker 1: hundred and eighty gram. And they tapped c First Bank,
- 26:36Speaker 1: which had a downtown branch. And in this downtown branch
- 26:39Speaker 1: they had a really great idea. They had stacks of
- 26:42Speaker 1: twenty dollars bills in varying amounts so that it looked
- 26:47Speaker 1: like a nervous teller ran into the back and like
- 26:50Speaker 1: put some twenties together in the event of a bank robbery, right,
- 26:53Speaker 1: and then would come out and be like, here you go,
- 26:55Speaker 1: a bank robbery. You're getting off scott free. But it
- 26:58Speaker 1: turns out that every serial number on every one of
- 27:00Speaker 1: those twenties had been recorded. So it worked for bank robberies,
- 27:03Speaker 1: worked just as well for sky jackings as well, so
- 27:07Speaker 1: they had the money, no problems. The parachutes were just
- 27:12Speaker 1: very difficult.
- 27:12Speaker 4: Yeah, that was actually the harder part. Yeah.
- 27:15Speaker 2: Back in nineteen seventy one, the big recreational skydiving craze
- 27:19Speaker 2: had not yet taken hold. It happened here and there. Yeah,
- 27:22Speaker 2: but uh, the manager at Sea Tax said, I got
- 27:24Speaker 2: a guy. Don't you worry. He's got an operation called
- 27:28Speaker 2: Seattle sky Sports in itsaquah.
- 27:30Speaker 1: Anybody from Mesqua shout out to Ishaquah.
- 27:37Speaker 2: Why do you call it Seattle sky Sports? Did they
- 27:39Speaker 2: mooch off of Seattle?
- 27:41Speaker 1: Yeah, off of the teat of Seattle.
- 27:45Speaker 2: He's like, I gotta guy. His name is Earl Kasi,
- 27:48Speaker 2: and he agreed to help. Little side note Earl Kassi
- 27:53Speaker 2: was actually murdered three years ago.
- 27:56Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 27:57Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently has to bring them down.
- 28:01Speaker 4: We're all having too much fun. Uh. He got killed
- 28:05Speaker 4: by a blow to the head in his garage.
- 28:06Speaker 2: But apparently you know some cooperists that are still active
- 28:10Speaker 2: today on the internet, You know these conspiracy dudes that.
- 28:14Speaker 4: His everyone did it. I love that.
- 28:17Speaker 2: Everybody see, you can all be conspiracy theorist hat, although
- 28:23Speaker 2: women can't be because they're too smart. It's always guys,
- 28:27Speaker 2: did you know so Earl Cossi was killed? But they
- 28:33Speaker 2: think it has nothing to do with it, even though
- 28:34Speaker 2: cooperists are like, are you sure they're trying to silence
- 28:37Speaker 2: some man?
- 28:40Speaker 4: Exactly? So very well timed.
- 28:50Speaker 2: So Cassi called his his operation and to the to
- 28:53Speaker 2: the dude working there and said, hey, can you get
- 28:55Speaker 2: together these parachutes and need two fronts and two backs?
- 28:58Speaker 2: The guy said sure, ruh, And in his haste he
- 29:04Speaker 2: packs three regular shoots, well, not three regular, he packs
- 29:08Speaker 2: one military shoot, two regular shoots and one thing that
- 29:14Speaker 2: I still don't understand, called a dummy shoot right that
- 29:18Speaker 2: doesn't open.
- 29:19Speaker 1: No. So, like if you were working at Seattle Sky
- 29:23Speaker 1: Sports in Issaqua, you get really, really sick of having
- 29:28Speaker 1: to fold up the whole parachute every time somebody was training,
- 29:32Speaker 1: throwing out the pilot shoot, which is just the little
- 29:34Speaker 1: shoot that comes out first and pulls the bigger shoot out. Right,
- 29:37Speaker 1: if all you're trying to do is throw that part out,
- 29:39Speaker 1: you don't need the bigger shoot. So if you are
- 29:42Speaker 1: an employee, at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaqua. You may
- 29:46Speaker 1: have the idea that you should just sew the bigger
- 29:49Speaker 1: part shut. There should be no parachute that has like
- 29:53Speaker 1: the most important part sewn shut right.
- 29:58Speaker 4: Every parachute should open right.
- 30:00Speaker 1: But this is the thing, and they're called dummy shoots.
- 30:02Speaker 1: The thing is everybody's like, oh, we got it covered,
- 30:05Speaker 1: we'llt's put a big X on it, and everybody will
- 30:07Speaker 1: know it's a dummy shoot. So one of these dummy
- 30:10Speaker 1: shoots made it into the four shoots that were delivered
- 30:14Speaker 1: to D. B. Cooper. So the money and the shoots
- 30:17Speaker 1: go in the cop car and he does a donuts
- 30:20Speaker 1: gidding out like in front of the plane and gets
- 30:22Speaker 1: out and stands outside and waits for the plane to land.
- 30:27Speaker 1: I should say, So when they get everything together, they
- 30:29Speaker 1: let flight three oh five know that they come and
- 30:32Speaker 1: get it basically, and they prepare to land, and dB
- 30:37Speaker 1: Cooper does something very smart.
- 30:38Speaker 2: Yeah he uh he said, you know what, I bet
- 30:41Speaker 2: you there's gonna be snipers on the ground, because I've
- 30:43Speaker 2: seen a movie or two. I've seen Black Sunday. Anyone.
- 30:48Speaker 1: No, didn't they come out like five or six years
- 30:51Speaker 1: later maybe uh huh.
- 30:55Speaker 4: Actually, I have to look that up.
- 30:58Speaker 3: I think that was seventy six.
- 31:00Speaker 4: You know this, sure?
- 31:01Speaker 1: All right?
- 31:04Speaker 2: He said, I have a dream about a movie one
- 31:06Speaker 2: day that would be called Black Sunday. And there's gonna
- 31:10Speaker 2: be snipers at that airport, So have everybody put the
- 31:13Speaker 2: shades down on the windows. They're all drunk, they don't care,
- 31:18Speaker 2: they won't ask any questions. And so they did so,
- 31:20Speaker 2: which turned out to be a pretty good move because
- 31:22Speaker 2: they were in fact snipers right exactly.
- 31:23Speaker 1: So the plane lands and no one's allowed to get
- 31:27Speaker 1: off yet, Cooper says, hey, Tina, do me a solid
- 31:31Speaker 1: go out and get the money in the shoots and
- 31:33Speaker 1: come back with them. Okay, then we can let the
- 31:35Speaker 1: passengers off, and Mucklowell leaves the plane. And at this point,
- 31:39Speaker 1: and this is one of the first reasons why Tina
- 31:41Speaker 1: Mucklough is one of our heroes. Once she's off the plane,
- 31:44Speaker 1: she could have been like, so long jumps see in hell,
- 31:50Speaker 1: which may have been a little harsh. Has she said
- 31:52Speaker 1: that with an earshot of somebody in this sausage situation?
- 31:56Speaker 1: She could have thought it. Her actions could have said
- 31:59Speaker 1: as much. She did. She got the shoots, she got
- 32:02Speaker 1: the money, and she essentially traded herself for the hostages.
- 32:06Speaker 3: And went back on the plane. And I mean like
- 32:09Speaker 3: that's metal.
- 32:10Speaker 1: Chuck would have said out loud, see you would hell yeah,
- 32:13Speaker 1: flight three oh five.
- 32:14Speaker 2: I would have walked straight to the baggage claim or
- 32:16Speaker 2: the ground transportation and said take me to cousin Ikes
- 32:19Speaker 2: and need some loose leaf tea. Good luck with the
- 32:24Speaker 2: skuy jacking, right, yeah, But she came back, which is amazing.
- 32:27Speaker 1: To come back. So she traded herself for these hostages.
- 32:30Speaker 1: And the hostages were allowed to leave, and so too
- 32:34Speaker 1: were Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner. The rest of the
- 32:39Speaker 1: crew is basically like, there's no reason for you to
- 32:40Speaker 1: stay here, so go. So it was down to Schaffner
- 32:45Speaker 1: and Cooper and then in the cockpit Radazac and Scott
- 32:50Speaker 1: right and Scott and Radazac repaid Tina muckloud by staying themselves.
- 32:55Speaker 1: There was a rope ladder actually that they could have
- 32:57Speaker 1: climbed out of. They had almost no interaction whatsoever with
- 33:00Speaker 1: dB Cooper. They could have at their leisure, they could
- 33:03Speaker 1: have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope
- 33:06Speaker 1: ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while and
- 33:09Speaker 1: then gone to the safety of like the FBI barricade,
- 33:12Speaker 1: and they didn't. They stuck around and they like were like,
- 33:15Speaker 1: we're gonna see this hijacking through.
- 33:17Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 33:17Speaker 2: In my like in my comedic mind's eye, I see
- 33:21Speaker 2: them getting out on the rope swing or a rope ladder.
- 33:25Speaker 3: That's different.
- 33:26Speaker 4: Rope swing, that would be amazing.
- 33:28Speaker 3: They may have like it's like a tire swing, and
- 33:30Speaker 3: the run the plane.
- 33:31Speaker 4: They get off on the rope ladder.
- 33:33Speaker 2: Tina mucklaugh never comes back and dB Cooper's just sitting
- 33:35Speaker 2: on the plane by himself.
- 33:38Speaker 3: He's like, Oh, it happened again.
- 33:39Speaker 4: Yeah, is he typing? No, that's sorry. I didn't know
- 33:49Speaker 4: they had a rope ladder. It's crazy.
- 33:51Speaker 1: Sure every airplane has a rope ladder in the cup
- 33:58Speaker 1: wake up, fashioned out of like old cheets.
- 34:02Speaker 2: So the FAA actually had a their chief psychiatrist on
- 34:07Speaker 2: the ground and this dude does a quick analysis, you know,
- 34:11Speaker 2: like let me do one of those movie readings of
- 34:13Speaker 2: who this guy is and what's gonna happen. And he says,
- 34:17Speaker 2: you know what's gonna happen is you're gonna give this
- 34:20Speaker 2: guy the money and the parachutes. You're gonna go up
- 34:23Speaker 2: there in the plane. He's gonna jump out and blow
- 34:26Speaker 2: up the plane and just let everyone know that. Right,
- 34:32Speaker 2: He's gonna tell the pilot and co pilot that this
- 34:34Speaker 2: is what's coming.
- 34:35Speaker 1: Right, He's gonna force Muckloud to jump with them and
- 34:37Speaker 1: then blow up the plane afterward. Right, but yeah, make
- 34:40Speaker 1: sure the make sure the cockpit knows. And then he
- 34:42Speaker 1: added and he probably has some sort of fixation on
- 34:46Speaker 1: longer than usual nipples, So make sure he's not exposed
- 34:49Speaker 1: to those, because he has some sort of fetish based
- 34:52Speaker 1: on his experience with his mother. Because it's in nineteen
- 35:03Speaker 1: seventy one psychoanalysts for the FAA, Hey, if I had
- 35:09Speaker 1: done that in a German accident, it would have sunk
- 35:11Speaker 1: in even faster.
- 35:16Speaker 3: Did you tell them that? Make sure you tell them that, guys?
- 35:21Speaker 3: Is that all right?
- 35:23Speaker 2: I'm gonna go ahead and say now what I'm gonna
- 35:24Speaker 2: say in like an hour backstage?
- 35:26Speaker 4: All right, that was amazing what it?
- 35:29Speaker 3: Thank you?
- 35:30Speaker 1: I thought that's not what you're gonna say.
- 35:32Speaker 4: Actually, I didn't see that one coming. You got me
- 35:44Speaker 4: when you Yeah, I had no idea where you were going.
- 35:50Speaker 2: Literally, you said longer than usual nipples, and I went
- 35:53Speaker 2: in my head, I went, am, I is this.
- 35:56Speaker 3: Happening like Josh Josh.
- 35:58Speaker 4: Am I stole in Atlanta? Is the trip? Am? I sleep? Pure? Goal? Buddy?
- 36:06Speaker 1: Thank you?
- 36:31Speaker 4: Where are we? I am so thrown?
- 36:34Speaker 1: So we said Cooper was cool, right, Yeah, the cool
- 36:37Speaker 1: head he was. He was so cool he ordered food
- 36:42Speaker 1: for the crew during the refueling process.
- 36:45Speaker 4: Yeah, he's a nice guy. You want to know who
- 36:49Speaker 4: else is cool? It's Tina Mucklaw.
- 36:50Speaker 2: Because once they released the passengers and they got the
- 36:53Speaker 2: money on board, she sat back down and he offered
- 36:56Speaker 2: her a couple of the stacks of money, and she said, well,
- 36:59Speaker 2: you go ahead and say it, no tipping aloud.
- 37:04Speaker 4: Smooth again.
- 37:08Speaker 2: Had it been me, well, first of all, I would
- 37:10Speaker 2: have been uncle likes by then. But if I was
- 37:12Speaker 2: dumb enough to get back on, I would be like, yeah,
- 37:15Speaker 2: get pay it for.
- 37:16Speaker 1: Yeah, just two stacks of bills?
- 37:18Speaker 4: Yeah, what gives jerk? I want half?
- 37:21Speaker 2: She's amazing. So the plane's being refueled. He passed along
- 37:25Speaker 2: a request, very specific request for what's to happen when
- 37:29Speaker 2: they go to take off. He said, I want to
- 37:31Speaker 2: take off with that aft staircase that I know is
- 37:34Speaker 2: back there down in the jump off the plane position.
- 37:38Speaker 2: And they said, you can't take off with the plane.
- 37:42Speaker 2: You can't take off with the door down. And he said, well,
- 37:44Speaker 2: can you check on that?
- 37:45Speaker 4: Are you sure?
- 37:46Speaker 2: And they said no, you can't do that. And he said,
- 37:47Speaker 2: are you super sure? And they said no, you can't
- 37:49Speaker 2: do that. He said all right, and they said, oh,
- 37:52Speaker 2: but once you're up there, you can totally lower it
- 37:54Speaker 2: and jump out.
- 37:56Speaker 4: And he said, well, why didn't we just start there,
- 37:58Speaker 4: because that's really the only thing that matters.
- 38:00Speaker 1: Fine. Fine, And then the pilot's like, well, where do
- 38:04Speaker 1: you want to go? And Dan Cooper says, Mexico City,
- 38:08Speaker 1: let's say. And the pilot goes, well, that's that's kind
- 38:11Speaker 1: of far. We're gonna have to refuel is Reno, okay,
- 38:15Speaker 1: And Dan Cooper goes, I don't know how I can
- 38:17Speaker 1: get this across anymore. Clearly, I'm jumping out of the
- 38:20Speaker 1: plane the next time we go up fy wherever you want?
- 38:23Speaker 1: Just fine, south southward.
- 38:25Speaker 2: Yeah, So they refuel the plane and the only time
- 38:30Speaker 2: Dan Cooper gets a little a little ruffled is when
- 38:34Speaker 2: it takes a little long for his liking, and he
- 38:36Speaker 2: says it.
- 38:37Speaker 4: It shouldn't take this long. Let's get the show on
- 38:41Speaker 4: the road, right.
- 38:41Speaker 1: He picked up for one of the few times he
- 38:43Speaker 1: picked up the cockpit or the cabin and cockpit phone
- 38:46Speaker 1: and said, let's get the show on the road. I
- 38:49Speaker 1: would have screamed it and like hit the phone and
- 38:51Speaker 1: then hit myself in the head with it and then
- 38:53Speaker 1: just started crying and been like, it's never gonna work.
- 38:56Speaker 3: This is never gonna work.
- 38:57Speaker 2: I think as well established we'd be the worst guy
- 39:00Speaker 2: and hostages.
- 39:01Speaker 4: Yeah, just getting no. I don't want any part of it.
- 39:05Speaker 2: He also gives them instructions on how to fly the plane,
- 39:08Speaker 2: which is getting really specific. He said, don't go any
- 39:10Speaker 2: higher than ten thousand feet, set your wing flaps at
- 39:13Speaker 2: fifteen degrees, which apparently we learned is an angle that
- 39:17Speaker 2: only the seven to seven to one hundred could position
- 39:21Speaker 2: those wing flaps.
- 39:21Speaker 1: Which everyone in this room knows because it's a Boeing.
- 39:24Speaker 2: Sure, And he said, don't go any faster than one
- 39:28Speaker 2: hundred and ninety miles per hour two hundred knots, So
- 39:32Speaker 2: that means they're going to be flying slow and low,
- 39:35Speaker 2: like you're cooking ribs or jumping off a plane. Because
- 39:40Speaker 2: that means the cabin isn't pressurized, and that means when
- 39:42Speaker 2: you open that door, you're not just gonna suck everything out.
- 39:45Speaker 2: It's still skydiveable.
- 39:48Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
- 39:49Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 39:49Speaker 3: Oh it's the terminology.
- 39:51Speaker 4: Okay.
- 39:52Speaker 1: So Cooper had some problems, right, He had specifically asked
- 39:56Speaker 1: for a knapsack, and the FEDS had given him the
- 39:59Speaker 1: two hundred in a bank bag, which, as we all know,
- 40:02Speaker 1: is a very unwieldy, clumsy bag. Right, it's like a
- 40:05Speaker 1: canvas bag. There's nothing to it. What do you like
- 40:08Speaker 1: tuck it under your arm? What are you supposed to
- 40:10Speaker 1: do with that? Right? So he's like, well, you need
- 40:12Speaker 1: to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one
- 40:15Speaker 1: of these parachutes for it's rigging, And he chose the
- 40:20Speaker 1: pink one, which the pink one was actually the best
- 40:23Speaker 1: one of all.
- 40:24Speaker 2: Of them, yeah, because it was the dummy shoot, the
- 40:26Speaker 2: military shoot, and then shoot is that what.
- 40:30Speaker 4: We're gonna call it?
- 40:30Speaker 2: Yeah, the medium shoot, and then the pink one, which was,
- 40:33Speaker 2: like Josh said, is the best one. So he cuts
- 40:35Speaker 2: the stuff loose, he makes a handle for it.
- 40:38Speaker 4: Things are happening at this point. They moved to the
- 40:41Speaker 4: rear of the plane.
- 40:41Speaker 2: He and Tina mucklaw, and he says, you know, I
- 40:44Speaker 2: think I need help lowering the staircase. So she goes
- 40:46Speaker 2: back there with him. She's a little freaked out at
- 40:49Speaker 2: this point. She was calm and cool, but like it's
- 40:52Speaker 2: go time, and she thinks she's gonna get sucked out, rightfully, so,
- 40:56Speaker 2: because she didn't understand the physics of you know, the
- 41:01Speaker 2: plane being that low and that slow, or she did
- 41:03Speaker 2: another road.
- 41:04Speaker 3: The hell with physics. I am still freaked out.
- 41:07Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're about to lower a staircase of ten
- 41:10Speaker 1: thousand feet.
- 41:11Speaker 4: Why did I mention physics exactly?
- 41:15Speaker 2: So she gets back there and he said, she said,
- 41:17Speaker 2: can I at least have some of that rope so
- 41:19Speaker 2: I can tie myself to the interior of this plane?
- 41:22Speaker 1: Like that's how helpful she was. She's like, just let
- 41:24Speaker 1: me lash myself to the plane.
- 41:26Speaker 4: Let me all help meself. Right, Yeah, I just spit
- 41:29Speaker 4: like all the way across it.
- 41:29Speaker 3: I spit earlier.
- 41:30Speaker 1: It's fine, Okay, good.
- 41:33Speaker 4: We should learn to synk those up, right, like in Vegas.
- 41:39Speaker 4: That's what I was thinking.
- 41:40Speaker 1: Yeah, man, we're in syncs.
- 41:42Speaker 4: Yeah, my god.
- 41:45Speaker 2: Except well, never mind, So she asked for some rope
- 41:49Speaker 2: to lash herself in, and he goes, at this point,
- 41:52Speaker 2: you know what, never mind.
- 41:53Speaker 3: He literally like this is the quote.
- 41:55Speaker 1: He goes, never mind, never mind.
- 41:57Speaker 2: He said, you know what, you just go back up
- 41:59Speaker 2: to the cockpit and you see that first class curtain.
- 42:03Speaker 4: Just don't come any further back. I got it from there.
- 42:06Speaker 2: He turns back around and looks and then he turns
- 42:08Speaker 2: back around to where she was and he just sees
- 42:09Speaker 2: like a pile of dust to where she was just standing.
- 42:13Speaker 2: She was like in the cockpit all of a sudden,
- 42:17Speaker 2: and so it's go time in the cockpit at seven
- 42:20Speaker 2: forty two pm, the little light comes on that says
- 42:23Speaker 2: a door ajar, I guess. And they said that the
- 42:31Speaker 2: pilots were like Tina like wants to call back one
- 42:35Speaker 2: more time.
- 42:35Speaker 1: He's like, no, you can't call him, and they're like, no, really,
- 42:37Speaker 1: we should call We can totally call him. Like the
- 42:40Speaker 1: FAA shrink said like he might blow us up. He
- 42:42Speaker 1: said some other weird stuff too, but he said, well,
- 42:47Speaker 1: like he's gonna blow us up, we should really butter
- 42:49Speaker 1: this guy out.
- 42:50Speaker 2: And we could have left on that rope swing and
- 42:52Speaker 2: we stayed because of you.
- 42:55Speaker 4: Rope ladder.
- 42:58Speaker 3: So they call, They do call the pilot.
- 43:00Speaker 1: It's like ring ring ring, Oh, yes, ring ring, and
- 43:05Speaker 1: you let it ring a couple of times, ring ring. Uh.
- 43:09Speaker 4: Dan Cooper hijacker.
- 43:12Speaker 1: Uh, mister Cooper, we want to make sure your FLA
- 43:15Speaker 1: is as comfortable as possible. Is there anything we can
- 43:18Speaker 1: do to help you back there to make your hijacking
- 43:22Speaker 1: more successful?
- 43:23Speaker 2: Sir, no, click, I know, it's kind of rude, he said, no,
- 43:31Speaker 2: hung up. And then at eight twelve pm, the crew
- 43:34Speaker 2: felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit, as
- 43:37Speaker 2: if someone had jumped off the rear of it, and
- 43:40Speaker 2: they said.
- 43:40Speaker 1: DNA, go jacking.
- 43:44Speaker 4: We're flying the plane. She's like, wait a minute, only
- 43:47Speaker 4: one of you is flying, you know.
- 43:48Speaker 1: It takes both of us, you don't know.
- 43:52Speaker 4: And that's it.
- 43:52Speaker 2: So from the moment that Tina Mucklaugh left shut that
- 43:55Speaker 2: first class curtain, nobody to anyone's knowledge, ever saw Dan
- 43:59Speaker 2: Cooper again.
- 44:00Speaker 4: Yep, but that's not the end of the show.
- 44:02Speaker 3: No, it's not. So there was a man hunt, all right.
- 44:07Speaker 1: So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that
- 44:10Speaker 1: he was going to jump off the back of the
- 44:12Speaker 1: seven twenty seven, and the FBI was like, we need
- 44:14Speaker 1: to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that
- 44:17Speaker 1: are in the area. We're gonna scramble them to go
- 44:19Speaker 1: follow this seven to twenty seven.
- 44:21Speaker 2: What is the scrambling? I never get that.
- 44:23Speaker 3: It's like like, go.
- 44:26Speaker 4: I know, but they.
- 44:28Speaker 2: It just sounds it sounds chaotic, like they're scrambling jets.
- 44:32Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's the point, Like people
- 44:33Speaker 1: are supposed to run around and bump into each other
- 44:35Speaker 1: and fall out and then.
- 44:36Speaker 3: Get up and get in their jets and fly off. Oh,
- 44:39Speaker 3: that's scrambling.
- 44:40Speaker 1: That's classics.
- 44:41Speaker 4: I would have renamed it would be like, activate the jets.
- 44:44Speaker 3: That's not bad, that's not bad at all.
- 44:49Speaker 4: Scramble the jets.
- 44:51Speaker 3: It sounds desperate.
- 44:52Speaker 4: You're right, activate the jets.
- 44:54Speaker 1: So either however, the jets were brought into this picture,
- 44:59Speaker 1: there was a problem with them and that they were
- 45:01Speaker 1: way too fast for the seven twenty seven, which is
- 45:05Speaker 1: putting along and one hundred and ninety miles an hour.
- 45:08Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden there's a jet that goes yeah,
- 45:13Speaker 1: and then the next one comes and they're like, what
- 45:17Speaker 1: are we gonna do, Well, We'll stick a helicopter on them.
- 45:20Speaker 1: This is like Goldilocks. The helicopter was too slow. Seven
- 45:27Speaker 1: twenty seven is just putts it along.
- 45:28Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 45:28Speaker 1: Yeah, people are going and trying to catch up. Nothing happening.
- 45:33Speaker 2: They should have scrambled a seven twenty seven and just
- 45:36Speaker 2: followed right behind.
- 45:37Speaker 3: It makes sense as matter.
- 45:38Speaker 4: What the headlights on, right, So they're scrambling.
- 45:48Speaker 1: The point is nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped,
- 45:51Speaker 1: So they used that eight twelve pm oscillation to kind
- 45:55Speaker 1: of figure out where they should start looking, and they
- 45:57Speaker 1: zeroed in on a place called aerial Water, wishing to
- 46:00Speaker 1: New Lewis River.
- 46:01Speaker 3: Anybody from Ariel, good because we got jokes.
- 46:06Speaker 2: Nobody from Ariel. Anyone ever heard of the Lewis River.
- 46:10Speaker 2: Oh okay, So they get on, they get this man
- 46:14Speaker 2: hunt going. They're combing, they're they're scrambling and combing. Those
- 46:17Speaker 2: are the two things you do.
- 46:18Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 46:18Speaker 1: In the FBI it was a massive manhunt too. There's
- 46:21Speaker 1: like a thousand troops and cops combing this area.
- 46:24Speaker 4: Yeah. No one from Seattle PD. Of course, they were
- 46:26Speaker 4: just sitting.
- 46:28Speaker 2: Around stoned, hanging out in Nisqua waiting for Rambo. Here's
- 46:36Speaker 2: another fun fact. There was a millionaire a local millionaire
- 46:39Speaker 2: who we don't know.
- 46:41Speaker 4: Do you know the name?
- 46:43Speaker 3: No, I've looked.
- 46:44Speaker 1: If anybody knows, yells, just stand up and say it
- 46:48Speaker 1: with dignity.
- 46:49Speaker 4: It was on it was on the news.
- 46:51Speaker 2: So this local millionaire says, you know what, that's near
- 46:54Speaker 2: Lake Merwin and I'm going to rent a submarine because
- 47:00Speaker 2: I'm a millionaire, and that's you know, we're what I do.
- 47:03Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't work. I'm a millionaire.
- 47:06Speaker 2: He got a submarine and he trolled the depths of
- 47:08Speaker 2: Lake Merwin. He said he rented a small submarine because
- 47:12Speaker 2: he's not an extravagant local MIDI.
- 47:14Speaker 1: Now the twenty five seems ostentatious. The hydraulics on it.
- 47:22Speaker 1: Who needs that in a submarine?
- 47:23Speaker 4: Does it have a metal detector? Which would not have
- 47:27Speaker 4: helped because it was cash bills exactly.
- 47:31Speaker 1: So you'd make a great local millionaire.
- 47:33Speaker 4: I would if only.
- 47:36Speaker 2: The other weird thing that happened was the the CIA
- 47:40Speaker 2: got involved, which is a little bit strange, and they
- 47:43Speaker 2: scrambled the SR seventy one blackbird, right.
- 47:48Speaker 3: They scrambled it several times.
- 47:50Speaker 2: Yeah, it was almost over easy.
- 47:58Speaker 4: Terrible.
- 48:01Speaker 1: You should be ashamed.
- 48:02Speaker 2: It doesn't even make sense because once you scramble it. It
- 48:05Speaker 2: can't be over easy. Terrible joke, Chuck, that's.
- 48:08Speaker 3: What I say. It's all right, rebound, rebound, Is.
- 48:11Speaker 4: This really happening? Did you talk about long nipples?
- 48:16Speaker 1: All right?
- 48:19Speaker 2: The SR seventy one Blackbird was at the time super secret.
- 48:23Speaker 2: We all know about it now, but at the time
- 48:25Speaker 2: it was very secret, and it was kind of a
- 48:27Speaker 2: big deal to get this thing up in the air.
- 48:30Speaker 1: So especially multiple times, like one time, it's like, your
- 48:35Speaker 1: dad is the head of CIA and you're the head
- 48:38Speaker 1: of Seattle PD, so you can make it happen maybe once, right,
- 48:42Speaker 1: multiple times. That's weird that the SR seventy one was scrambled.
- 48:46Speaker 4: Right.
- 48:47Speaker 1: The FBI is very studious and likes to do a
- 48:51Speaker 1: lot of obvious stuff, So they interviewed everybody in the
- 48:54Speaker 1: area with the last name of Cooper, which there's like
- 48:58Speaker 1: a square one.
- 49:00Speaker 3: This is like square negative five.
- 49:03Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, no, it's negative five. I looked it up.
- 49:07Speaker 2: Okay, So you look up all the Coopers in the
- 49:10Speaker 2: area and at this point they have a press conference.
- 49:12Speaker 2: And if you've noticed, we've been calling this dude Dan
- 49:15Speaker 2: Cooper the whole time, because up until this time he
- 49:17Speaker 2: was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference
- 49:20Speaker 2: and there's it's sort of I don't think we know
- 49:23Speaker 2: who messed it up, right.
- 49:25Speaker 1: Well, or okay, a cop, either a file clerk or
- 49:30Speaker 1: a cop of talking in front of a reporter got
- 49:33Speaker 1: either UPI or AP, depending on who you ask, And
- 49:37Speaker 1: they were saying like, what Cooper could could have done
- 49:40Speaker 1: something like this?
- 49:41Speaker 4: Right?
- 49:42Speaker 1: And somebody said, well, there's a Dan Cooper who's a
- 49:44Speaker 1: cat burglar in the area. That's a terrible suggestion. Cat
- 49:48Speaker 1: burglar does not go to hijacker, you know. And this
- 49:53Speaker 1: reporter was like, what a scoop and hit the wire
- 49:56Speaker 1: with cops looking for dB Cooper.
- 50:00Speaker 4: Yeah, he said dB Cooper.
- 50:01Speaker 3: Did I say Dan Cooper?
- 50:02Speaker 4: Yeah, that's all right.
- 50:02Speaker 1: The little part of my brain was like, you just
- 50:04Speaker 1: said Dan. Let's start over. So a cop was talking
- 50:09Speaker 1: in front of an AP reporter and they said what
- 50:12Speaker 1: Cooper do you know could have done this? And the
- 50:14Speaker 1: cop said, well, there's this d dB Cooper.
- 50:20Speaker 4: What did you just say. Did you just say a
- 50:23Speaker 4: D Cooper?
- 50:24Speaker 1: I said, there's a dB Cooper I got at that time,
- 50:30Speaker 1: he's a cat burglar. And the reporter said, this is
- 50:33Speaker 1: hitting the wire and he reported that the cops were
- 50:35Speaker 1: looking for a dB Cooper and it just changed from
- 50:41Speaker 1: that point on.
- 50:42Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he was never a dB Cooper. It
- 50:43Speaker 2: was literally a mistake. So that's why we all know
- 50:46Speaker 2: him as dB Cooper today. And the FBI actually a
- 50:49Speaker 2: little smart, believe it or not, and they said, you
- 50:51Speaker 2: know what, let's keep it that way. That way we'll
- 50:53Speaker 2: know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper,
- 50:57Speaker 2: will know it's a hot lead.
- 50:58Speaker 4: So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor.
- 51:00Speaker 1: Yeah, And anytime a tip like that came in, like
- 51:03Speaker 1: the office prankster would come in with the facts and
- 51:05Speaker 1: be like hot lead, hot lead. It was like a
- 51:08Speaker 1: joke around the Portland office. Everybody loved Richard.
- 51:16Speaker 4: And this will.
- 51:18Speaker 2: This will come up later too when it comes time
- 51:20Speaker 2: to solve the crime.
- 51:22Speaker 4: They Later on, the FBI.
- 51:23Speaker 2: Learned that there was a comic book in the nineteen
- 51:27Speaker 2: fifties about a Dan Cooper who was a Canadian jet
- 51:31Speaker 2: pilot and it was a Belgian comic, which is a
- 51:34Speaker 2: little weird, but it was you know, there was literally
- 51:37Speaker 2: a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes and comic book.
- 51:40Speaker 4: Form right exactly, could be a clue.
- 51:42Speaker 1: Maybe and that's a niche comic, right, so I would
- 51:44Speaker 1: say so printed in Belgium in the French about a
- 51:48Speaker 1: Canadian fighter.
- 51:49Speaker 4: Pilot in the frame.
- 51:50Speaker 1: All they had to do is find, like the ten
- 51:52Speaker 1: people who knew of that comedy. We're going to be like,
- 51:54Speaker 1: what'd you do? We know it was one of you.
- 51:59Speaker 1: And so the UBI had a pretty clear belief, very
- 52:04Speaker 1: openly stated belief, that D. B. Cooper died in the jump.
- 52:07Speaker 1: It was just the line that they took right off
- 52:09Speaker 1: the bat. They're like, there's no way this guy survived.
- 52:11Speaker 1: And the he wasn't the lead agent on the case,
- 52:14Speaker 1: but he became the most famous agent, Ralph himmels.
- 52:17Speaker 4: Bach Any Himmel's box in the house. No, you're a liar,
- 52:23Speaker 4: You're a.
- 52:24Speaker 1: Liar, so Himmel's Bach. Like I said, he wasn't a
- 52:27Speaker 1: lead agent, but he was out of the Seattle office,
- 52:29Speaker 1: and he became the most famous agent associated with it.
- 52:31Speaker 1: And he actually gave the case its official name nor Jack,
- 52:36Speaker 1: which is stupid.
- 52:39Speaker 4: Anyway, Northwest Jack Skyjack.
- 52:42Speaker 1: Right, but removed the sea. It's just called the D. B.
- 52:45Speaker 1: Cooper Case, you know, or Hi Steven better. So he
- 52:48Speaker 1: self published a book in nineteen eighty six about the case,
- 52:51Speaker 1: and himmels Bach said he thinks that D. B. Cooper
- 52:55Speaker 1: didn't even get a shoot open, that he plunged to
- 52:57Speaker 1: his death and hit the forest floor with such impact
- 53:02Speaker 1: that he basically was buried immediately with the parachutes still attached,
- 53:06Speaker 1: and maybe even the money. And uh, that was Himmel's
- 53:09Speaker 1: box take. It was excuse me, are you gonna get that?
- 53:13Speaker 1: I realized it wasn't its twist off, And then I
- 53:17Speaker 1: realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place.
- 53:19Speaker 3: Nice, nice going.
- 53:27Speaker 4: You.
- 53:27Speaker 1: Yeah, I just saw the sum of Chuck's college education.
- 53:39Speaker 4: So Cooper had jumped from the plane. Did he live?
- 53:41Speaker 4: Did he not? The odds are against him in a
- 53:44Speaker 4: lot of ways. Outside.
- 53:45Speaker 2: The temperature that night was twenty degrees fahrenheit.
- 53:49Speaker 1: Yeah, Hey we're in America, man, just say twenty degrees.
- 53:53Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, twenty degrees.
- 53:57Speaker 2: USA. At ten thousand feet it was negative seven degrees yeah,
- 54:05Speaker 2: and he was going one hundred and ninety miles an hour.
- 54:08Speaker 2: There was freezing rain. It was there was like a
- 54:11Speaker 2: quarter crescent or not a quarter crescent, a crescent moon. Yeah,
- 54:14Speaker 2: those are two different things. Crescent moon in the sky,
- 54:17Speaker 2: but it was cloudy and rainy, so there's probably was
- 54:18Speaker 2: zero light. It's freezing. He's ten thousand feet.
- 54:21Speaker 3: He's not dressed for the occasion.
- 54:23Speaker 4: Oh, he's wearing loafers. He's wearing an overcoat.
- 54:26Speaker 2: He's got this he doesn't have this knapsack, so he's
- 54:28Speaker 2: fashioning this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope.
- 54:31Speaker 1: Plus plus the area's jumping out into and he's flying
- 54:34Speaker 1: at ten thousand feet over the cascades. Some of the cascades,
- 54:37Speaker 1: as you guys know, are higher than ten thousand feet,
- 54:41Speaker 1: very dangerous jump. And there's a lot of pointy trees.
- 54:44Speaker 1: I mean the POINTI ist am I right? See, I
- 54:46Speaker 1: know the point is trees are round. Plus despite what
- 54:55Speaker 1: the FAA guy said, the FAA psychiatrists, yeah, he did
- 54:59Speaker 1: not leave the bomb to be detonated after he jumped off.
- 55:02Speaker 3: He took it with him.
- 55:03Speaker 1: Bank bag, bomb, overcoat, loafers, parachute was my dB Cooper pressure.
- 55:15Speaker 2: And by the way, the FBI later on they interviewed Maclock,
- 55:19Speaker 2: who was the one who saw Yeah, Schaffner saw the bomb.
- 55:22Speaker 4: Like you just did.
- 55:23Speaker 2: And she said, yeah, you have these red sticks taped together,
- 55:25Speaker 2: and they went, huh, that wasn't dynamite. Dynamite isn't red.
- 55:29Speaker 2: You've seen too many cartoons dynamite as tan. Road flares
- 55:32Speaker 2: are red. So it was more than likely a fake
- 55:36Speaker 2: bomb with an alarm clock and road flares.
- 55:39Speaker 1: Plus dB Cooper did not help his cause by his
- 55:42Speaker 1: choice of parachutes, right he So he chose a military
- 55:46Speaker 1: shoot as his main shoot. It was not a great shoot.
- 55:50Speaker 1: The ripcord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational shoots,
- 55:54Speaker 1: and once it deployed you can't steer it very well.
- 55:57Speaker 3: It was not the best choice.
- 55:59Speaker 1: Even worse was his choice of the dummy shoot for
- 56:02Speaker 1: his front reserve choot. He took the best shoot and
- 56:06Speaker 1: gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag,
- 56:09Speaker 1: let the second best shoot, and chose the two worst
- 56:11Speaker 1: shoots to jump out with. Right.
- 56:13Speaker 2: So, I didn't know you couldn't steer a military shoot,
- 56:16Speaker 2: but it makes total sense.
- 56:17Speaker 3: No, Yeah, they're just like, go for it, pal.
- 56:19Speaker 2: Yeah, because if I was in the military, I would steer.
- 56:23Speaker 2: I'd be like, well, how don't we go over here instead?
- 56:27Speaker 2: I see a lot of guns down there.
- 56:29Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take it.
- 56:30Speaker 2: This way, so they just drop you apparently. Yeah, man,
- 56:36Speaker 2: I guess they know what they're doing. Though, So some
- 56:39Speaker 2: other theories, because it's Washington, believe it or not, some
- 56:44Speaker 2: people actually posited that he was eaten by sasquatch.
- 56:48Speaker 1: Yeah, with a straight face. I mean, let's be honest,
- 56:53Speaker 1: how many of you in here were thinking the same thing.
- 56:56Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 56:58Speaker 1: Some other people say, well, he was clearly burned up
- 57:01Speaker 1: by the jet exhaust, because when you come down the
- 57:03Speaker 1: stairs of a seven twenty seven, the rear jet engines
- 57:07Speaker 1: right in front of you, and it would have been
- 57:09Speaker 1: seven eight hundred degrees right there. But the FBI conducted
- 57:14Speaker 1: a test right afterward where they took a seven twenty
- 57:18Speaker 1: seven up and they took a two hundred pound sled.
- 57:21Speaker 2: A two hundred pound prison victim.
- 57:24Speaker 3: Right, he was condemned.
- 57:27Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, it's fine, and they said, and
- 57:33Speaker 1: threw it off. And they found that the two hundred
- 57:35Speaker 1: pound sled that's the euphemism, I guess now, went straight down,
- 57:41Speaker 1: so it didn't come in contact in any way with
- 57:43Speaker 1: the jet exhaust. So it kind of did away with
- 57:45Speaker 1: this idea that he burned up.
- 57:48Speaker 2: Well, it was kind of good news bad news though,
- 57:49Speaker 2: because what it did do at least was it mimic
- 57:52Speaker 2: that same oscillation. Yeah, so they're like, oh, you know what,
- 57:54Speaker 2: it was the exact same thing happened when you were
- 57:56Speaker 2: in the air. So that eight twelve pm jump time,
- 58:00Speaker 2: like it was probably right on the money.
- 58:02Speaker 4: So we know probably where he might have landed.
- 58:04Speaker 1: Right, So there's a lot of questions remaining, right, and
- 58:08Speaker 1: there were some clues left behind. The thing that really
- 58:12Speaker 1: kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they
- 58:15Speaker 1: combed the area where they were looking for him, with
- 58:18Speaker 1: like a thousand people just combing this area, the SR
- 58:22Speaker 1: seventy one blackbirds circling around looking. They didn't find anything.
- 58:26Speaker 1: He had left a couple of things on board the plane, right.
- 58:29Speaker 1: He'd left his clip on tie, which was the second
- 58:33Speaker 1: biggest secret that night.
- 58:37Speaker 2: Well, that's what you do before you jump out. Sure,
- 58:40Speaker 2: you know, you take it off. There was a clip
- 58:42Speaker 2: on all along.
- 58:44Speaker 4: You unbutton that button and you're like, I'm out.
- 58:46Speaker 3: Of here, all right.
- 58:47Speaker 1: He left eight cigarette butts of his Rawley brand cigarettes.
- 58:51Speaker 1: He'd smoked eight over five hours, and all eight butts
- 58:54Speaker 1: have since been lost. Right, They found a hair on
- 58:58Speaker 1: the headrest. They the thing is the FBI traded in fingerprints.
- 59:03Speaker 1: That was their big thing at the time, and Dan
- 59:06Speaker 1: Cooper had been very smart to not leave a single
- 59:09Speaker 1: print on any of the cigarette butts.
- 59:11Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 59:12Speaker 2: True, but there was fingerprints on the in flight.
- 59:15Speaker 4: I guess sky Mall.
- 59:16Speaker 1: Magazine Rip sky Mall. What do you mean it's not around,
- 59:23Speaker 1: It's gone. Yeah, sky Mall's gone. Did you guys not
- 59:27Speaker 1: know this? No? Ways?
- 59:31Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I said, alright.
- 59:35Speaker 2: I know, but I just uh, I don't know where
- 59:39Speaker 2: am I going to get my putting green that doubles
- 59:41Speaker 2: as a cat feeder?
- 59:43Speaker 1: My friend, you can just go to front Gate because
- 59:47Speaker 1: fron K has everything everyone needs. What's that fron K
- 59:50Speaker 1: They advertised in sky Mall, but they have stores too.
- 59:54Speaker 4: I don't even know where I am right now.
- 59:58Speaker 3: That's uncle likes.
- 1:00:01Speaker 4: What year is it?
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: No, So it would be seven years before any trace
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: of the hijacking, any real clue turned up, and it
- 1:00:09Speaker 2: was in nineteen seventy eight. There were some hunters and
- 1:00:13Speaker 2: Oregon hunting animals. I guess, right, unless it was the
- 1:00:22Speaker 2: most dangerous game.
- 1:00:25Speaker 3: You don't know. It's Oregon.
- 1:00:27Speaker 4: You never know.
- 1:00:29Speaker 2: There are less civilized people than we have here. They
- 1:00:32Speaker 2: found a plastic instruction placard showing how to lower the
- 1:00:36Speaker 2: A F staircase in the woods.
- 1:00:38Speaker 4: So this is like a really good clue.
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: It was, but it didn't lead to anything new.
- 1:00:43Speaker 2: Well, no, it was definitely from flight three oh five,
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: which was I guess I'm saying it was cool.
- 1:00:48Speaker 1: It was cool, like if you were the Hunter, you'd
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: be like, I'm keeping this sure, But it was on
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: the flight path. So it didn't generate any new leads.
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: But it generated a lot of renewed interest in the
- 1:00:59Speaker 1: case because, believe it or not, the dB Cooper case
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: had kind of fall into the wayside in the last
- 1:01:03Speaker 1: like seven years. People just didn't think much about it anymore. Oh,
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: they just skyjackings, right exactly. So it was like a
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: diamond dozen. But all of a sudden, everybody's like, we
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: got to make a movie. Who's the biggest movie star.
- 1:01:15Speaker 1: We've got treat Williams, make him his dB Cooper, And
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: that's what they did.
- 1:01:21Speaker 4: Has anyone ever seen the pursuit of T B. Cooper?
- 1:01:24Speaker 1: No, that's that's right, everybody. God bless you, Seattle smart
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: Town chunk.
- 1:01:32Speaker 2: I figured here, like somebody because it was a local thing.
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty one, very very bad movie was made several
- 1:01:41Speaker 2: starring Treat Williams and Robert duvall Right.
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: Whose mom needed surgery at the time. To layoff.
- 1:01:51Speaker 4: So here's what you well.
- 1:01:51Speaker 2: First of all, if you want to know how big
- 1:01:53Speaker 2: a piece of garbage this movie is, it had three directors,
- 1:01:58Speaker 2: And if you know anything about film making, if you
- 1:02:00Speaker 2: have more than one director, it's probably a really bad
- 1:02:03Speaker 2: movie for one reason or another. If it has three,
- 1:02:06Speaker 2: then it's guaranteed to be bad. But all you need
- 1:02:08Speaker 2: to do is go home tonight when you get back
- 1:02:10Speaker 2: to your to your house boat.
- 1:02:13Speaker 3: In it's a quah.
- 1:02:16Speaker 4: Does anyone here live in a house boat? Now? Okay?
- 1:02:20Speaker 2: Because I was gonna ask if I could come stay
- 1:02:21Speaker 2: over because those things are awesome.
- 1:02:26Speaker 1: That was just Sleepless in Seattle. You've seen that too
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: many times.
- 1:02:29Speaker 4: Oh no, they exist.
- 1:02:32Speaker 2: Because I tried to stay in an airbnb actually before
- 1:02:35Speaker 2: I came here on a house boat. Yeah, I totally did,
- 1:02:38Speaker 2: and I ended up in some stupid hotel downtown. Go
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: home to your YouTube's type in Pursuit of dB Cooper
- 1:02:46Speaker 2: and watch the first three minutes.
- 1:02:51Speaker 4: Because this movie literally starts.
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: With the point from where dB Cooper jumps out of
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: the back of the plane. It starts from the point
- 1:02:59Speaker 2: where we know nothing else that happened is literally fictional.
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: From that point slogan on the movie posters fac smacks.
- 1:03:12Speaker 4: So it starts with the pursuit of D. B.
- 1:03:15Speaker 2: Cooper and has Robert duvall the names all come up
- 1:03:17Speaker 2: and all that, and it's got a jewe heart plane.
- 1:03:19Speaker 2: It's like Wong Bong Bong Bong Bong and Treat Williams.
- 1:03:24Speaker 2: It's a terrible voice voiceover recording. You just hear yeah.
- 1:03:29Speaker 2: And he jumps off the thing because that's what you do.
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: And he jump off a plane and your skyjacking. He
- 1:03:35Speaker 2: parachutes down in the night and the night and he
- 1:03:37Speaker 2: catches through some trees and lands and then just this
- 1:03:40Speaker 2: really little sad yahoo.
- 1:03:45Speaker 3: Everything was sad about that.
- 1:03:47Speaker 2: And Treat Williams gets on the on the ground and
- 1:03:49Speaker 2: he and he takes out a cigar and he takes
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: out a lighter because that's what you do too when
- 1:03:54Speaker 2: you successfully landed after skyjacking.
- 1:03:56Speaker 4: He doesn't light the lighter though.
- 1:03:58Speaker 2: He rips open the money bags had a one hundred
- 1:04:00Speaker 2: dollars bill and he lights that and then he uses
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: that to light a cigar, and that is how that
- 1:04:07Speaker 2: movie opens, and it goes downhill from there.
- 1:04:12Speaker 4: And Robert deval Is he's just you can tell.
- 1:04:15Speaker 1: When he starts every scene going yeah, let's do it.
- 1:04:21Speaker 2: It's so bad, But I do encourage you. It was
- 1:04:23Speaker 2: when I was a kid and it came out. It
- 1:04:25Speaker 2: was like, we got HBO on my street and it
- 1:04:27Speaker 2: was a really big deal when we got cable and HBO.
- 1:04:30Speaker 2: So I would literally watch any movie that came out.
- 1:04:32Speaker 2: It was like Kroll, that's on, I'll watch Kroll was okay,
- 1:04:37Speaker 2: Four Games, great movie. Sure, pursuit of dB Cooper, why not?
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: I was not exposed to that.
- 1:04:43Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:04:43Speaker 1: I think my mother shielded me from that movie. Good
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: for you, mom. But watch the first two minutes on
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: j So we're still talking about the Placard, weren't we?
- 1:05:18Speaker 2: No, no, no, all right, we'll go to nineteen eighty was
- 1:05:20Speaker 2: the first real good clue turns up in nineteen eighty Right,
- 1:05:23Speaker 2: this is a big clueue.
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: So there's a young lad named Brian Ingram, he was
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: eight I think at the time. Yeah, and his family
- 1:05:30Speaker 1: was camping on Tina Bar. Are you guys familiar with
- 1:05:33Speaker 1: Tina bar. Do you guys know what that is?
- 1:05:35Speaker 4: It?
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: Columbia River? Yeah, so are we correct and understanding that
- 1:05:39Speaker 1: you would just call it an island not a bar?
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: Okay?
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: All right? So Tina Island everywhere else. The Ingram family
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: was camping and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: for his family. Oh, father's going to love this fire pit.
- 1:05:55Speaker 1: He'll be proud of me. Yet, Oh, father, won't you
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: love me? And as he's as, he's like, he's going
- 1:06:04Speaker 1: like this to the sand, poor little eight year old.
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: He turns up a stack of bills, several stacks of bills,
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: actually three, and these stacks of twenty dollars bills total
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: fifty eight and eighty dollars, and he's like father.
- 1:06:22Speaker 3: And father.
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: Father takes those and starts looking at him, and he's like,
- 1:06:26Speaker 1: we should probably call the police. So they go and
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: call the police.
- 1:06:29Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:06:29Speaker 2: Again, they call the Seattle Police, which evidently all they
- 1:06:33Speaker 2: do is forward calls to the FBI.
- 1:06:34Speaker 1: At this point they're like, Seattle PD, please hold. So
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: the FBI is like, read a serial number, and he
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: reads one and they're like read us. Another reads another,
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: and they're like that's dB Cooper money and Ingram's father's like,
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: what did you say?
- 1:06:53Speaker 3: And they're like nothing.
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: So the FBI gets their hands on it, and actually
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: we should say it turns out they let little Brian
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: Ingram take some of the money. Three thousand dollars of
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: this money.
- 1:07:08Speaker 2: Actually yea later on they returned a little not bad, right, right?
- 1:07:11Speaker 2: And you want to know what's even better? In two
- 1:07:13Speaker 2: thousand and eight, little Brian Ingram sold that money on
- 1:07:15Speaker 2: eBay for thirty seven grand.
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: Right, yeah, take that, father. So the thing is, this
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: money showed up in a place where it should not
- 1:07:29Speaker 1: have been. It showed up twenty miles south of Aeriel, Washington,
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: in another river. So they were looking here in the
- 1:07:38Speaker 1: Lewis River, right, everybody knows Lewis River, Aeriel, Washington. Here,
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: Tina Barr's down here just a little south of Vancouver.
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: Is my geography, my air geography right of Vancouver, Washington.
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: Everybody Vancouver, Washington. That is it? Like this, that's even
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: more amazing. This is what I suspect. And I looked
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: it up on Google Maps and they're like, what do
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: you mean, Tina bar Josh So I wasn't able to
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that
- 1:08:09Speaker 1: it somehow ended up above it. And an FBI hydrologist
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: looked at this money.
- 1:08:14Speaker 4: Said, FBI has a hydrologist, right.
- 1:08:17Speaker 1: I'm retainer him knows Bach got ahold of him. And
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: the guy was like, so this stuff's only been exposed
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: to the elements for a year, even though it was
- 1:08:26Speaker 1: found what nine years after the robbery? Right? Yeah, and
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: it got here one of two ways, the guy said,
- 1:08:33Speaker 1: So the Columbia River flooded in nineteen seventy four, Yes,
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: and it was also dredged in like nineteen seventy seven,
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: So one of those two probably got this yere, but
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: it was.
- 1:08:46Speaker 4: So it did, Yeah, there you go, I got it.
- 1:08:50Speaker 2: It would be another twenty eight years before any more
- 1:08:53Speaker 2: clues turned up, so that's a very long wait. In
- 1:08:55Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, just eight short years ago, some
- 1:08:58Speaker 2: kids were playing on there was it their own land
- 1:09:02Speaker 2: in Amboy, h little south of Ariel.
- 1:09:04Speaker 4: Anyone from Amboy.
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: No, I suspected, not are we in Washington? Okay, yeah,
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: but nobody's from Amboy.
- 1:09:13Speaker 2: We got more response in Birmingham, No about Amboy.
- 1:09:17Speaker 3: Yeah, They're like, we like the sound of that.
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: So these kids were playing in the woods on their
- 1:09:25Speaker 2: property and they said, oh, look at there, there's a parachute.
- 1:09:30Speaker 2: And they start pulling out this parachute for like an hour.
- 1:09:33Speaker 4: It's like a magic trick. And they finally get to
- 1:09:36Speaker 4: the end of.
- 1:09:36Speaker 2: The parachute and they run and show Paw and they say, Paw,
- 1:09:40Speaker 2: I found a parachute in the woods.
- 1:09:43Speaker 4: What should we do? Right?
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: And Paw recognize that this is the most exciting thing
- 1:09:49Speaker 1: that ever.
- 1:09:49Speaker 3: Happened in Amboy, Washington.
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: Called the cops, who called the Seattle police, who called
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: the FBI, and the FBI did something smart. They're like, well,
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: you know, who would know if this was dbe Cooper's parachute?
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: Good old Earl Costy's right, he's not dead yet, not
- 1:10:08Speaker 1: dead yet, oh too soon.
- 1:10:16Speaker 4: That's a good he's not dead yet.
- 1:10:19Speaker 2: That's a celebratory None of us are dead yet, right.
- 1:10:24Speaker 1: That's a good, good way of looking at it, Chuck,
- 1:10:27Speaker 1: good save way to find the silver lining.
- 1:10:29Speaker 3: So Earl Cossi looked at this thing and he was.
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: Like, no, yeah, he said, I'm sorry. He said, uh, Cooper,
- 1:10:35Speaker 2: shoot was nylon. That's clearly silk.
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: A good try, Yeah, he said, this is I know
- 1:10:41Speaker 1: who shoot this is actually Yeah, it turns out that
- 1:10:44Speaker 1: back in nineteen forty five, a jet pilot named Floyd
- 1:10:48Speaker 1: Walling bailed out of his coarse air jet that was
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: going down and parachuted out in the woods around Amboy Washington, right,
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: which isn't too far from aerial And it wasn't Cooper's shoot.
- 1:11:00Speaker 1: You guys all remember when they found that parachute right
- 1:11:03Speaker 1: like two thousand and eight.
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: It wasn't that long ago.
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: It was a big deal and it wasn't his shoot,
- 1:11:09Speaker 1: but it did suggest that possibly he could have made
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: it because Floyd Walling had and he walked out of
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: the woods in terrible weather, just like dB Cooper would
- 1:11:18Speaker 1: have had to. So it kind of shined the light
- 1:11:21Speaker 1: on the whole thing again.
- 1:11:23Speaker 4: Yeah, it kind of kicks some interest up.
- 1:11:24Speaker 2: So over the years, there have been many, many, many,
- 1:11:28Speaker 2: many suspects, like we're talking over a thousand. The FBI
- 1:11:33Speaker 2: won't even say how many suspects they've had. Or weirdly,
- 1:11:36Speaker 2: people confessing to be dB Cooper. It's one of those
- 1:11:38Speaker 2: strange things that people do where they claim to be
- 1:11:41Speaker 2: something that will send you to prison.
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: Well a lot of them are already in prison, but
- 1:11:46Speaker 1: they're in worse prison and hoping to go to a
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: good prison.
- 1:11:49Speaker 4: No, it's true.
- 1:11:49Speaker 2: Apparently state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes
- 1:11:53Speaker 2: because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison.
- 1:11:57Speaker 3: I was thinking cinnamon bust, were you really?
- 1:11:59Speaker 2: Yep, that's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room.
- 1:12:02Speaker 4: Yeah, well no.
- 1:12:04Speaker 2: We've mentioned that in the prison. That's like a commodity
- 1:12:06Speaker 2: in prison, right, cinnamon buns.
- 1:12:08Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like currency.
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, cinnamon buns and cigarettes.
- 1:12:13Speaker 3: We know.
- 1:12:18Speaker 4: So there's a very famous sketch.
- 1:12:19Speaker 2: If you go home, before you get on YouTube and
- 1:12:21Speaker 2: look at the first three minutes of that terrible movie,
- 1:12:24Speaker 2: which you definitely need to do, just Google, get on
- 1:12:27Speaker 2: the Googles and type in dB Cooper sketch. There's a
- 1:12:33Speaker 2: very singular famous sketch of dB Cooper.
- 1:12:37Speaker 3: It looks like Kevin Spacey.
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey.
- 1:12:42Speaker 4: Yeah, or Don Draper again.
- 1:12:44Speaker 3: As Kevin Spacey.
- 1:12:47Speaker 4: I think it would be Kevin Spacey as Don Draper. Yeah, yeah, sure.
- 1:12:50Speaker 2: So if you go home and look at that, it's like,
- 1:12:52Speaker 2: you know, got this kind of shortiar guy looks like
- 1:12:53Speaker 2: he's sort.
- 1:12:54Speaker 4: Of from the fifties or sixties.
- 1:12:55Speaker 2: It's got the hair, he's got the sunglasses on, and
- 1:12:57Speaker 2: the tie, the skinny tie, and that this is the
- 1:13:00Speaker 2: only sketch that they have of dB Cooper that they
- 1:13:02Speaker 2: got from the flight attendant, specifically Tina Mucklaw, because she
- 1:13:06Speaker 2: spent like five hours right next to the dude. She
- 1:13:10Speaker 2: incidentally was really messed up after this, understandably, and she
- 1:13:14Speaker 2: went to be a nun in Oregon in the nineteen eighties,
- 1:13:18Speaker 2: which is a little weird. I didn't know they had
- 1:13:20Speaker 2: convents in Oregon.
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: Sure, comments everywhere, convents everywhere.
- 1:13:24Speaker 4: There's a convent right over in the alley.
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: Here's a comment behind us right now. But even worse
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: than that, the mother superior, in an article I read
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: at the convent, said she never really fit in here. Oh,
- 1:13:36Speaker 1: you're not supposed to. If you're a mother superior, that's
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: a mother inferior. If you ask me, you know, good one.
- 1:13:47Speaker 4: So sorry, you go ahead, all right.
- 1:13:50Speaker 2: If you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed,
- 1:13:52Speaker 2: you're going to turn up some clues.
- 1:13:54Speaker 4: And that's what the FBI does.
- 1:13:55Speaker 2: It kind of examine what happened he chose a military shoot,
- 1:13:59Speaker 2: which could mean one of two things. Either he was
- 1:14:02Speaker 2: former military, which could narrow it down, or it could
- 1:14:05Speaker 2: mean he has no idea what he's doing when it
- 1:14:07Speaker 2: comes to jumping out of a plane.
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: Right, And the choice of that dummy choot would definitely
- 1:14:11Speaker 1: suggest that, because even recreational skydivers say, like, even if
- 1:14:16Speaker 1: you're just a military parachutist, you're going to see a
- 1:14:19Speaker 1: huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: that parachute.
- 1:14:23Speaker 4: You know, I thought it stood for extreme.
- 1:14:26Speaker 3: Right, mountain dew extreme.
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people say, I think he
- 1:14:32Speaker 1: probably is ex military, had some like parachuting experience, probably
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: a paratrooper or something like that. Yeah, A lot of
- 1:14:39Speaker 1: people point to the idea that he knew a lot
- 1:14:44Speaker 1: about the plane. He knew about the wing flap degree
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: that it could go to, he knew about altitude. A
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: lot of the witnesses later on said that he clearly
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: was very much aware of what was going on in
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: the cabin.
- 1:14:57Speaker 3: He just knew the plane very much.
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: So a lot of other people say this guy was
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: probably an airline employee, maybe even a pilot actually, based
- 1:15:05Speaker 1: on the altitude and stuff that he gave him to fly.
- 1:15:08Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the weird things that he knew
- 1:15:10Speaker 2: was that the seven twenty seven one hundred had an
- 1:15:12Speaker 2: af staircase that you could lower and jump out of.
- 1:15:15Speaker 2: Because this wasn't common knowledge at the time, Apparently a small.
- 1:15:19Speaker 4: Group of people knew this.
- 1:15:20Speaker 2: You were either in an employee of Boeing or you
- 1:15:24Speaker 2: may have been in the CIA, because in the Vietnam War,
- 1:15:27Speaker 2: we actually used the seven twenty seven over Cambodia, which
- 1:15:31Speaker 2: is where we were not supposed to be, and they
- 1:15:33Speaker 2: lowered that aft staircase of the seven twenty seven to
- 1:15:36Speaker 2: drop supplies.
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: It's a go you can't steer but go well.
- 1:15:40Speaker 2: And then there's the whole thing with the SR seventy
- 1:15:42Speaker 2: one Blackbird. So a lot of cooperists still say that
- 1:15:47Speaker 2: he might have been secretly a member of the CIA,
- 1:15:50Speaker 2: right because he knew about the aft staircase, He knew
- 1:15:52Speaker 2: about the or the blackbird was scrambled, so they had
- 1:15:55Speaker 2: like some skin in the game, right.
- 1:15:57Speaker 1: So a lot of suspects have come and gone and
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: come back and stayed over the years. The FBI says
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: about it, well, they won't say, but a lot of
- 1:16:06Speaker 1: people say about a thousand, like Chuck said. But one
- 1:16:09Speaker 1: of the first ones to emerge was a dude named
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: Richard McCoy. And in February of nineteen seventy two, I think,
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: four months after the dB Cooper heist, Richard McCoy hijacked
- 1:16:20Speaker 1: a seven to twenty seven to one hundred flight and
- 1:16:23Speaker 1: he asked for five hundred thousand dollars in cash, and
- 1:16:26Speaker 1: he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah. Right, yep,
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: So a lot of people say it's pretty similar. Yeah,
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: maybe that was Dbe Cooper.
- 1:16:36Speaker 4: Well in five.
- 1:16:36Speaker 2: Hundred grand, that to me that makes sense, Like two
- 1:16:39Speaker 2: hundred grand worked out fine, right, I should have asked
- 1:16:42Speaker 2: for more to begin with.
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: Right, So let me try it again, Try it again.
- 1:16:45Speaker 2: It turns out that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam,
- 1:16:48Speaker 2: so that sort of fits with the whole profile. He
- 1:16:51Speaker 2: looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper and.
- 1:16:55Speaker 3: A little bit.
- 1:16:56Speaker 2: Yeah, he was twenty nine years old, so he was
- 1:16:59Speaker 2: much younger than but he didn't look twenty nine.
- 1:17:01Speaker 4: I'll say that he looked much older than that.
- 1:17:03Speaker 1: True.
- 1:17:04Speaker 2: He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson. I'll
- 1:17:08Speaker 2: say that absolutely. So this guy gets caught actually after
- 1:17:12Speaker 2: pulling off this, he initially and he goes to prison
- 1:17:16Speaker 2: and he makes a fake gun out of dental plaster
- 1:17:19Speaker 2: from the dentist in the prison, and he takes the
- 1:17:22Speaker 2: truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate
- 1:17:26Speaker 2: of the prison and escapes and is later killed in
- 1:17:29Speaker 2: a shootout by cops.
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: Which is to say Richard McCoy knew how to live.
- 1:17:34Speaker 4: He did.
- 1:17:37Speaker 2: And die, and his family would later go on to say, actually,
- 1:17:42Speaker 2: he was at home in Thanksgiving nineteen seventy one, so
- 1:17:46Speaker 2: it probably wasn't him, right, good suspect.
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: Though, Suspect number two is named Dwayne Weber.
- 1:17:52Speaker 4: This is your guy.
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: No, this isn't No, this isn't my guy.
- 1:17:55Speaker 3: I like this guy.
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: He's fine, but I don't like him, you know what
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, So, Dwayne Webber was a career criminal,
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: and the definition of a career criminal is one where
- 1:18:03Speaker 1: you and your alias have both done time in prison. Yeah,
- 1:18:08Speaker 1: and he and his alias had done it combined sixteen years. Right.
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: So he was on his deathbed and his wife Joe
- 1:18:16Speaker 1: came around and said, how you doing. It's like while
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: I'm still dying. I have a confession for you. I'd
- 1:18:22Speaker 1: like you to hear. I am Dan Cooper and Joe's like,
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: I don't know who that is, and Duayne blows up.
- 1:18:33Speaker 1: They have a fight on his deathbed, never speak of
- 1:18:37Speaker 1: it again, and he dies nine days later. So Joe
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: starts poking around after that. She's like, who is this
- 1:18:43Speaker 1: Dan Cooper? Which is a legitimate question after your experience
- 1:18:47Speaker 1: like that that she went through.
- 1:18:49Speaker 4: I would say so.
- 1:18:49Speaker 2: And she finds out via Internet this is nineteen ninety
- 1:18:53Speaker 2: five that Dan Cooper was Dbe Cooper, and she said,
- 1:18:56Speaker 2: you know what, I think that he was still the truth.
- 1:19:00Speaker 2: I think he was dB Cooper because you know what,
- 1:19:02Speaker 2: I remember in nineteen seventy nine, we were on a vacation.
- 1:19:06Speaker 4: We were on a car trip.
- 1:19:08Speaker 2: We were kind of right around the area where the
- 1:19:11Speaker 2: hijacking or I'm sorry, where the landing supposedly took place,
- 1:19:15Speaker 2: and my husband stopped the car and just pointed and said,
- 1:19:19Speaker 2: you know what, that's where dB Cooper walked out of.
- 1:19:22Speaker 1: The woods, which is a weird thing to say on vacation.
- 1:19:25Speaker 4: Very weird thing to say.
- 1:19:26Speaker 2: It's even weirder that she didn't say, what the hell
- 1:19:28Speaker 2: are you talking about.
- 1:19:30Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed, there's.
- 1:19:33Speaker 4: Another story later on they were on another vacation.
- 1:19:36Speaker 3: No, this is the same vacation.
- 1:19:37Speaker 4: Oh it was the same one. Yeah, yeah, all right.
- 1:19:39Speaker 2: We'll just call this the communication vacation the non communication vacation,
- 1:19:45Speaker 2: because they clearly didn't talk to one another because he
- 1:19:47Speaker 2: stopped over the Columbia River on a bridge, literally stops
- 1:19:50Speaker 2: on a bridge, gets out of the car, goes to
- 1:19:52Speaker 2: the back, opens the trunk, and it's just gone for
- 1:19:55Speaker 2: like ten minutes, gets back in the car and they
- 1:19:59Speaker 2: just drive on.
- 1:20:00Speaker 4: Yeah, and she doesn't say anything. I know you me M.
- 1:20:07Speaker 3: Would have been like, why did you take your foot off?
- 1:20:09Speaker 2: The guests, yeah, you know what there would have been
- 1:20:13Speaker 2: Emily would have had three hundred questions on why we
- 1:20:16Speaker 2: stops on a bridge and I opened the truck.
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: Yeah, not Joe, not Joe. Yeah. So a lot of
- 1:20:23Speaker 1: people still like Dwayne Webber, but he's actually the FBI said, no,
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: that's not the guy. We ruled him out with DNA. Right, Yes,
- 1:20:32Speaker 1: the next guy is my guy, Kenny Christiansen Chuckers.
- 1:20:36Speaker 4: That's right.
- 1:20:36Speaker 2: He was a pretty well liked suspect for a while.
- 1:20:39Speaker 2: He keeping with the series of family members outing their
- 1:20:44Speaker 2: family as D. B.
- 1:20:45Speaker 4: Cooper.
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: Yeah, which actually supports the family motto that I was
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: brought up with. Never trust family.
- 1:20:53Speaker 2: It's a proud Clark tradition. So his brother lyle. Actually,
- 1:20:57Speaker 2: this gets a little weird. He outed him as a
- 1:21:00Speaker 2: suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter Nora Efron
- 1:21:06Speaker 2: Sleepless in Seattle, Right, Yeah, didn't you see that coming.
- 1:21:12Speaker 2: He tried to get Nora Efron to write a movie
- 1:21:14Speaker 2: about TB. Cooper via his brother being the main suspect.
- 1:21:18Speaker 2: And he, weirdly, I guess he didn't have an agent.
- 1:21:21Speaker 2: He hired a private investigator to get him in touch
- 1:21:24Speaker 2: with Nora Evron. Right, very strange. But he championed his
- 1:21:28Speaker 2: own brother as the main suspect.
- 1:21:29Speaker 3: Or out at him, that's another way to put it,
- 1:21:31Speaker 3: for sure.
- 1:21:32Speaker 1: Sure, And a guy named Jeoffrey Gray wrote a really
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: great article in the New York Magazine if you guys
- 1:21:37Speaker 1: are interested about this particular guy. But there's a lot
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: of similarities between D. B. Cooper and Kenny Christiansen. For one,
- 1:21:46Speaker 1: he looks a lot like him right off the bat.
- 1:21:49Speaker 1: He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a
- 1:21:52Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, former paratrooper. Yeah, he was quiet. He
- 1:21:56Speaker 1: smoked cigarettes, he drank bourbon, lived in the area where
- 1:22:00Speaker 1: the hijacking took place, which is to say around here,
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: and in I think twenty eleven, Jeoffrey Gray, the guy
- 1:22:07Speaker 1: who wrote that New York Magazine article, got in touch
- 1:22:10Speaker 1: with Florence Shaffner and said, what about this guy? And
- 1:22:13Speaker 1: Florence Shafner said, I think you may be onto something here.
- 1:22:16Speaker 2: Yeah, And like Dwayne Weber, Kenny Christiansen, on his deathbed,
- 1:22:22Speaker 2: tried to make a confession to his brother Lyle. He said,
- 1:22:26Speaker 2: I have something really important to tell you, but I'm
- 1:22:29Speaker 2: not sure if I can, if I can say this,
- 1:22:32Speaker 2: and Lyle said, no, no, no, I don't want to
- 1:22:34Speaker 2: hear it.
- 1:22:37Speaker 1: Did you guys know that you can not hear a
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: deathbed confession?
- 1:22:41Speaker 2: Well, not only that, but I want nothing more than
- 1:22:43Speaker 2: to hear a deathbed confession.
- 1:22:46Speaker 4: I would be dying. I would be like, oh my god,
- 1:22:48Speaker 4: a dish, Yes, what do you have to say? But
- 1:22:50Speaker 4: he was like, no, no, no, no, I want to hear
- 1:22:52Speaker 4: what you gotta say. Just go ahead and die.
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: And then he laid on top of him yeah till
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: he stopped scoring.
- 1:22:59Speaker 4: Here the this pillow will make you comfortable.
- 1:23:03Speaker 3: You sleep now, brother, what is.
- 1:23:05Speaker 4: Going on with these people? Did you just do the
- 1:23:09Speaker 4: Buffalo bill voice? No, okay, that was coincidental. Who else
- 1:23:16Speaker 4: do we have? Ld? Cooper? Yeah, a little on the
- 1:23:18Speaker 4: nose with the name.
- 1:23:21Speaker 3: He lived in the area too.
- 1:23:22Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was also outed by a family member,
- 1:23:25Speaker 2: keeping with the Clark family tradition. Right this time it
- 1:23:27Speaker 2: was his niece. And she said, you know what I remember.
- 1:23:31Speaker 2: This is in twenty eleven. This is not too long ago.
- 1:23:33Speaker 2: She said, you know what, I remember back in Thanksgiving
- 1:23:36Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, just like it was yesterday, and Uncle L. D.
- 1:23:42Speaker 2: Showed up bruised and bleeding.
- 1:23:45Speaker 4: For dinner.
- 1:23:46Speaker 2: But he was euphoric, which was weird. And I'm just
- 1:23:50Speaker 2: now mentioning this.
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: All right. And she said, by the way, she had
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: a book coming out simultaneously.
- 1:23:56Speaker 3: She's everybody where.
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: Did she say that she overheard because this is where
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: she loses chucking me.
- 1:24:02Speaker 2: Well, yeah, she said, he went to talk to he
- 1:24:04Speaker 2: was my uncle and went to talk to my dad,
- 1:24:06Speaker 2: and they were overheard them in the hallway say we
- 1:24:08Speaker 2: did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked the plane.
- 1:24:18Speaker 2: The book by Simon and Schuster on sale now.
- 1:24:22Speaker 3: At your local airport.
- 1:24:25Speaker 2: But there were a few things. It wasn't totally out
- 1:24:28Speaker 2: of the blue. He was an engineer at Boeing.
- 1:24:30Speaker 3: No, his brother was.
- 1:24:31Speaker 2: Oh, his brother was, Yeah, but they were in on
- 1:24:33Speaker 2: it together. Sure, right, because we hijacked the plane. Right,
- 1:24:37Speaker 2: he's a silent partner. And weirdly, he remember those Dan
- 1:24:41Speaker 2: Cooper comment books. He was one of the ten people
- 1:24:43Speaker 2: on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper.
- 1:24:45Speaker 4: That's a little weird, it's pretty good.
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: The weird thing is is he didn't have any experienced skydiving,
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: which a lot of people say, Oh, it's just too
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: insane to think that somebody who never skydived before did
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: their first sky dive during a heist out of A
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: seven twenty seven. But the people who knew LD Cooper say, no,
- 1:25:03Speaker 1: he was just crazy enough to do something like that.
- 1:25:06Speaker 1: And you can make a case that that actually explains
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: the choice of the dummy shoot.
- 1:25:11Speaker 2: Tell you the truth, that's right, and the military shoot
- 1:25:13Speaker 2: even Yeah, all right, So the legacy of dB Cooper
- 1:25:17Speaker 2: to this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline
- 1:25:22Speaker 2: hijacking in the.
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: History of the world in America. In America? Really are
- 1:25:29Speaker 1: there other ones? Oh yeah, I'm only standing behind America.
- 1:25:33Speaker 4: Oh okay, I gotcha. Yeah right.
- 1:25:38Speaker 2: Every year, if you go to the Aerial Store in
- 1:25:41Speaker 2: Tavern in Ariel, Washington, you can go to the dB
- 1:25:44Speaker 2: Cooper Days Festival.
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:25:45Speaker 3: Have you guys? Has anyone ever been to that?
- 1:25:48Speaker 2: We should all go. Let's go right now, we're going
- 1:25:51Speaker 2: to meet up this Thanksgiving. You can win a dB
- 1:25:55Speaker 2: Cooper Lookalike contest.
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: If you look like Kevin Spacey yes.
- 1:25:59Speaker 2: Or Charles Manson er Don Draper, which none of us do. Well,
- 1:26:04Speaker 2: I'm talking about you and me.
- 1:26:05Speaker 1: I look like Justin Bieber.
- 1:26:17Speaker 2: I look like I ate Justin Bieber. I had to
- 1:26:24Speaker 2: spit out my tooth. That's how I lost it.
- 1:26:27Speaker 4: I broke it on Justin Bieber's bones.
- 1:26:30Speaker 3: They're pliable though.
- 1:26:33Speaker 2: You can go to that and when the contest. There
- 1:26:35Speaker 2: have been songs over the years. There was that terrible movie.
- 1:26:38Speaker 2: There have been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations.
- 1:26:41Speaker 3: Unsolved mysteries, am I right?
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: Yeah? Everybody see that one.
- 1:26:44Speaker 4: You can watch that on the YouTube too.
- 1:26:46Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:26:47Speaker 2: And there are many many Cooperist websites, most notably one
- 1:26:51Speaker 2: called drop zone dot com.
- 1:26:53Speaker 1: And drop Zone actually used to be a recreational skydiving
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: site until it got mostly taken over by dB Cooper ficionados.
- 1:27:01Speaker 4: They hijacked the website.
- 1:27:02Speaker 1: He did as a matter of fact, and this site
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: is like so hot for Cooper sluice that a guy
- 1:27:09Speaker 1: named Secret started posting on it and he seemed to
- 1:27:11Speaker 1: have a lot of information about the DBI Cooper case
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: that people didn't know about. And it turned out that
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: these Cooper Sluice were so good they unmasked the Secret
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: guy as the new agent in charge of the dB
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: Cooper case, Larry Carr, who's posting secretly as Secret on
- 1:27:28Speaker 1: the drop zone boards.
- 1:27:30Speaker 3: That's how good these people are.
- 1:27:31Speaker 4: He's like, no, I'm not, yes you are. No, I'm
- 1:27:34Speaker 4: not yes you are. You are.
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: He's like, okay, i am.
- 1:27:40Speaker 2: You can go on YouTube, boy, you got a lot
- 1:27:42Speaker 2: of YouTube and the night people. You can go on
- 1:27:44Speaker 2: YouTube as well and look up Larry Carr. And for
- 1:27:47Speaker 2: many many years they kept all this evidence sort of
- 1:27:49Speaker 2: under wraps, and you can look up videos. Now Larry
- 1:27:51Speaker 2: Carr said, you know what we should do the modern
- 1:27:54Speaker 2: ages here we have the youtubes and we can let
- 1:27:56Speaker 2: everyone see this evidence, even though I think it's kind
- 1:27:59Speaker 2: of funny that the FBI's official things like, no, he
- 1:28:01Speaker 2: totally died, right, No one told Larry car that. No,
- 1:28:05Speaker 2: you know, because he's let's make a YouTube video. Let's
- 1:28:08Speaker 2: show everyone the skinny tie.
- 1:28:10Speaker 3: All the kids are into it now.
- 1:28:12Speaker 4: He shows the clip on tie.
- 1:28:13Speaker 2: You can see all the you can see the money,
- 1:28:15Speaker 2: the clip on tie, all this evidence, hoping for a.
- 1:28:19Speaker 1: Lead, and he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from
- 1:28:23Speaker 1: the tie. They found three people's profiles. They also found
- 1:28:26Speaker 1: and we don't even know but pure titanium and impatience Pallen.
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: Hopefully that will eventually crack the case. But it made
- 1:28:34Speaker 1: everybody just be like, what we thought we had a
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: handle on this. Impatience Pallen, where did that come from?
- 1:28:43Speaker 4: So bring us home, my friend.
- 1:28:45Speaker 3: Thank you.
- 1:28:45Speaker 1: The Cooper heist it changed America forever, right, dbe Cooper's
- 1:28:50Speaker 1: the reason we all started walking through metal detector shortly afterward,
- 1:28:54Speaker 1: He's the reason.
- 1:28:54Speaker 3: Seriously, He's the.
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: Reason that the airlines were given the right to search
- 1:28:58Speaker 1: your bags before you get on one of their planes,
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: and they apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking. I
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: don't know when they took it off. Was it like
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: sea ships being hijacked? And then have no idea? I
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: don't either.
- 1:29:14Speaker 3: But the.
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing was
- 1:29:19Speaker 1: if you look at a Boeing seven twenty seven, they
- 1:29:21Speaker 1: still make them airplane. If you look at that aft
- 1:29:24Speaker 1: staircase in the back, there's a white paddle that holds
- 1:29:28Speaker 1: the stairs closed. Pretty smart. You can't open the aft
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: staircase mid flight because you have to go outside and
- 1:29:36Speaker 1: pull the paddle down and then the aft staircase will open.
- 1:29:39Speaker 1: And it's a pretty smart, easy solution to a pretty
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: complex case. And they call that little white paddle a
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: Cooper vein.
- 1:29:48Speaker 2: That's right, and that is the story of dB Cooper,
- 1:29:51Speaker 2: and that is our show.
- 1:29:56Speaker 1: Good Night Seattle, good night everyone.
- 1:29:59Speaker 3: Thank you m
- 1:30:18Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com.