db: Legend, Facts, Possibilities

db Education Packet by Jessica Dart, CoHo Artistic Fellow and Dramaturg

Reserve your tickets to the world premiere of db by Tommy Smith at CoHo January 13 – February 4.

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The Legend of D.B. Cooper

“(Cooper) comes off as a kind of curious Robin Hood. Taking from the rich, or at least the big and complex. It doesn’t matter whether he gives to the poor or not. The symbolism of the skyjack was one individual overcoming, for the time being anyway, technology, the corporation, the establishment, the system.” – from SKYJACK by Geoffrey Gray

For more than 45 years, amateur sleuths, conspiracy theorists, and the FBI have been intrigued by America’s only unsolved skyjacking and the person responsible for it: D.B. Cooper. Though the FBI announced they would no longer actively investigate the case as of July 2016, the legend of D.B. Cooper has endured thanks to the mystery that surrounds Cooper’s true identity and motivations, the love residents of the Pacific Northwest have for local legend/folklore, and the American obsession with the anti-hero. Despite dozens of theories and reported confessions, no one really knows who Cooper was. Did he die during his jump from the plane? Did he survive and casually reassume the identity of an average citizen? Could your 80-year-old neighbor be D.B. Cooper? Will we ever know for sure? And do we really want to know?

In many ways, Cooper is the ideal anti-hero –  a product of the challenging social, economic, and political climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s (see below). Like the fictional characters Dexter Morgan (Dexter), Don Draper (Mad Men), Walter White (Breaking Bad), Nancy Botwin (Weeds), and Omar Little (The Wire), D.B. Cooper has come to symbolize audacity, rebellion, and counterculture despite the real trauma he caused others.

THE FACTS, or WHAT WE KNOW

• On November 24, 1971: A man purchased one ticket for Northwest Airlines flight 305 from Portland to Seattle under the name “Dan Cooper.”
• The suspect wore a dark suit, a black tie, and dark sunglasses. He reportedly looked like a “business executive,” not much different from the men who usually took the short flight from PDX to SEA-TAC.
• While in the air, Cooper passed a note to a flight attendant indicating he had a bomb.
• Flight attendants Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner were the only people on board who interacted with or could describe Cooper. The police sketch to the left is based on descriptions given by Mucklow and Schaffner.
• The flight crew did not alert the other passengers about the hijacking as a protective measure. Some passengers suspected something was wrong, but nobody was truly aware of their dangerous situation until after they had been safely evacuated.
• Upon landing at Sea-Tac, Cooper demanded $200,000 in cash, four parachutes, and food for the flight crew before releasing the passengers.
• When Cooper’s demands were met, he asked to be flown to Mexico via Reno, Nevada. He allowed Tina Mucklow and three pilots to remain on board.
• About 45 minutes after takeoff, Cooper asked for help lowering the aft stairs, sent Mucklow to the cockpit, strapped the money and a parachute to his body, and jumped from the plane near Ariel, Washington, leaving only his black clip-on tie from JC Penney behind.
• The FBI investigation began immediately and  included 1,000 military troops searching the probable jump zone on foot and in helicopters. No sign of Cooper was found.
• As news of the skyjacking spread, the suspect’s name was mistakenly announced as “D.B. Cooper,” and that name stuck. In this newscast from the day of the skyjacking, Walter Cronkite identifies the suspect as “D.A. Cooper.”
• Additional physical evidence from the unsolved case includes the tie, Cooper’s airline ticket, the Tena Bar money, a warning placard from the aft staircase that became detached when the stairs were down during Cooper’s jump, and a pink parachute.
• In 1980 (9 years after the skyjacking), a 9-year-old boy named Brian Ingram found 3 bundles of decomposing money totaling $5800 while digging a fire pit at Tena Bar. The serial numbers matched those of some bills given to Cooper as ransom. In 1986, Ingram was allowed to keep half of the money, and he later profited by auctioning off some of the bills.

THE POSSIBILITIES, or WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW, BUT PROBABLY NOT, BUT MAYBE…

• 8 of the Most Intriguing Theories About Skyjacker D.B. Cooper
• Or, wait…maybe it was one of these guys?
• The Skyjacker That Got Away (Full National Geographic Channel documentary)
• Was the hijacker paying homage to Dan Cooper comics?
• The Mountain News and Citizen Sleuths will keep you busy with theories, interviews, evidence, and breaking news about the Cooper case. Be careful – you’ll be down the rabbit hole in no time!