Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (16 page)

Mexico City? Cooper ordered them to fly the 727 to Mexico. Most hijackers of that era wanted to go to Cuba. Mexico? The plane would have a range of about 1000 miles. Mexico City was over 2,000 miles away. Cooper had previously stated that no landing within continental U.S. would be permitted “for fuel or anything else.” But when he was advised of the plane’s range limitation in his specified configuration, he agreed to a destination somewhere short of the border. Cooper asked about landing in Phoenix, Arizona, and the plane’s crew relayed the message to authorities on the ground. They responded that they thought Phoenix might be within range, but that Reno, Nevada would be better as far as range was concerned. The hijacker didn’t seem concerned with this, and agreed that the plane could land in Reno.

Around 7:30 p.m., the 727, with full fuel tanks, started taxiing toward the main runway. William A. Scott, William J Rataczak, Harold E. Anderson and stewardess Tina Mucklow remained aboard the commandeered jetliner, along with their only passenger; the dark haired, dark eyed mystery man in row 18.

At 7:36 p.m., the aircrew lined the plane up for takeoff and the triple engines of the 727 wound themselves up and the plane scooted down the runway. The nose of the plane pointed upwards, and then seemed to pull the fuselage off the ground behind it.

Within four minutes, the 727 climbed to 7,000 feet. The aircrew left the landing gear down and adjusted the flaps to 30 degrees. Shortly after takeoff, the Air Force scrambled two F-106 Delta Dart jet fighter interceptors to shadow the 727. They kept the much larger 727 in visual range, but stayed far enough away to remain unseen by the occupants of the airliner.

With the 727 aloft and tuned to his special instructions, Cooper asked Tina to show him how to operate the aft stairs. She showed him the control sequence for opening the door. At 7:41 p.m., he then asked Tina to please go to the front of the aircraft and remain up front with the pilots. As she walked away, she glanced back and saw him attempting to tie the moneybag around his waist. About a minute later, Cooper picked up the cabin inter-phone and told the cockpit crew he was having difficulty getting the stairs down. About a minute after that, the aft stair warning light came on, signaling the stairs were now at least partially extended.

At about 7:55 p.m., the authorities on the ground radioed and asked for Tina’s best recollection of the exact content of the hijacker’s briefcase. She got on a radio and gave the following basic information: There were eight red sticks, about 6″ x 1″ in the left corner of the briefcase, “They look like big firecrackers.” There were two rows of sticks, four on top of four. Wires were attached to the sticks with red insulation. “There was a battery like flashlight battery, but about 6 inches high and as big around as my arm. The red sticks are about the color of my uniform.”

Unbeknownst to the flight crew, FBI agent Himmelsbach was attempting to pursue the 727 in an Army helicopter. Unfortunately, wind and freezing rain forced the helicopter to abort its pursuit and land, the weather was terrible and visibility was poor.

At 8:05 p.m., Captain Scott spoke loudly into the intercom, “Is everything okay back there? Anything we can do for you?”

“No!” Cooper replied tersely.

At 8:10 p.m., the crew reported oscillation on the rate of climb indicator, and they noticed a change of air pressure in the cabin, which was described as an “ear popping experience.” Outside the 727, at an altitude of 10,000 feet the air temperature was 22 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was blowing over 40 miles an hour from the southwest. The airliner was flying through less than ideal weather conditions with both freezing rain and strong winds. You couldn’t ask for worse conditions to make a parachute jump in. On the ground below the plane it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit with 15 mile an hour winds out of the southwest.

Sometime in the next few minutes the flight crew heard the whine of the jet engines increase momentarily, then quiet slightly. This coincided with the plane “dipping” and a “bump” in the airliner’s cabin pressure gauges. “There he goes” was the thought that went through the crew’s minds simultaneously. Nobody could see what was happening in the back of the plane from the cockpit.

Though the cabin lights were on in the forward cabin, they were off in the rear of the plane, and the curtain between first class and coach was closed. The crew could not see whether Cooper was still aboard, or if he had plunged out of the plane into the freezing, rainy vortex the jet left in its wake.

The plane’s crew spent the next half hour trying to figure out if Cooper was still onboard. Calls to the back of the plane went unanswered. At 8:52 p.m., they advised that they had had no communications with the hijacker for “about the last 55 minutes” despite several attempts on the cockpit-to-cabin inter-phone and PA system.

At 9:28 p.m., Captain Scott reported that some airframe icing was being experienced. The combination of icy temperatures and freezing rain was starting to take its toll on the jetliner.

A couple minutes later, Ken Parsch, the FAA Air Transportation Security Officer in charge of coordinating all Air Marshals on Northwest Airlines flights suggested the flight crew slowly lower the cabin temperature as much as possible to slow the hijacker’s reflexes.

A few minutes after that the authorities on the ground suggested a slow climb to 11,000 feet at Captain Scott’s discretion, to induce as much hypoxia (a condition in which the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply) in the hijacker as possible. Wisely, the plane’s seasoned crew decided against such tomfoolery and chose to maintain their course and altitude.

At approximately 11:00 p.m., nearly three and a half hours after taking off from Seattle, the 727 landed safely in Reno with its aft stairs dragging on the runway. When the jet came to a halt, FBI agents immediately searched and cleared the violated airliners cabin. There was a reserve parachute harness, with its contents splayed over the seats. Some of the chords from the chute were missing. There also was a slender black tie: a clip-on tie. In the armrest ashtray, where Cooper sat, there were eight Raleigh brand cigarette butts.

What they didn’t find was the hijacker. Cooper was gone. So were two of the four parachutes he requested, as well as the ransom money, all $200,000 of it, and Cooper’s black briefcase and paper sack that witnesses saw Cooper holding. Somewhere in the wide expanse of the 727’s flight path, Cooper exited the aft stairs and started his free fall into oblivion.

A $30,000 reward was offered by Northwest Orient Airlines for the discovery and return of the ransom money. A list of the 10,000 serial numbers of the twenty-dollar bills which made up the ransom was released to the public, banks and other financial institutions for identification of the loot.

A massive manhunt was launched the following morning, November 25, Thanksgiving Day, and police, civilians and military personnel from Fort Lewis combed the perceived drop area. The drop area was conceived by airline personnel and FBI agents, including Agent Himmelsbach, and was based on the supposed flight path of the 727 and estimated air speed, as well as the timing of the “bump” the air crew felt when it is thought that Cooper jumped, or fell out of the plane. No trace of Cooper or the money was found during that search. After a few days, the search was called off, and winter weather blanketed the area with snow.

After interviewing the Northwest ticket agent who sold Cooper his plane ticket, the FBI learned that the hijacker had given the name Dan Cooper. A miscommunication with a newspaper man resulted in the press receiving the name “D.B. Cooper.” The media ran with that name and a legend was born; the legend of D.B. Cooper.

The FBI did not correct the mistake. They reasoned that if a tip came in about “D.B. Cooper,” then it must be a fake. Only tips concerning “Dan Cooper” were looked at. And tips were pouring in.

One of the first in an eventual parade of suspects the FBI looked at, was a man who had viciously murdered his entire family just 15 days before the skyjacking. Creepy John List killed his mother, his wife and their three children. List slightly resembled Cooper, but investigators could find no direct link between List and the skyjacking so his name was dropped from the investigation. List was finally located and captured in 1989, and was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced in 1990 to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment. He died in prison in 2008.

The following spring, the FBI launched more searches. For nearly three weeks in March and April of 1972, civilian volunteers worked alongside U.S. Army personnel from Fort Lewis, as well as Washington National Guard soldiers and Air Force personnel from McChord Air Force Base. Again, nothing substantial was discovered, and the search was canceled. Cooper, for all intents and purposes, had escaped, with his fortune.

While law enforcement, military personnel and civilians were combing the hilly, wooded terrain of the suspected Cooper drop zone, another skyjacking saga was taking place in the airspace above Middle America. On April 7, 1972, a United Airlines Boeing 727 was flying from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, California with 85 passengers aboard as well as six flight crew members who were operating the aircraft and seeing to their guests needs.

The 727, Flight 855, landed in Denver, Colorado, briefly, and then returned to its course towards L.A. A passenger, trying to relieve his boredom by looking around the aircraft’s cabin at the other passengers noticed something peculiar. He noticed a nervous looking man holding an object. The object appeared to be a hand grenade. The passenger notified a stewardess of the strange passenger’s bizarre behavior, and in turn, the stewardess informed the captain that there might be a problem.

The captain asked a fellow pilot, who was aboard the flight as a passenger, to walk through the plane and see if there was anything out of the ordinary happening. When the off duty pilot approached the nervous passenger in question, the nervous passenger drew a pistol and aimed it at the surprised observer. The now obvious skyjacker handed the off duty pilot an envelope, with “Hijack Instructions,” written on it and said, “Give this to the girl, and have her take it to the captain.”

The note contained a typed message: “WE HAVE A GRENADE, THE PIN HAS BEEN PULLED. WE HAVE PISTOLS, THEY ARE LOADED, WE HAVE C-4 EXPLOSIVES.”

The hijacker requested four parachutes, just like Cooper, and a large ransom, just like Cooper. Instead of $200,000 though, the hijacker demanded a whopping $500,000, and got it. Just like Cooper, he jumped from the back stairs of a 727 into the night skies.

The jumper, Richard Floyd McCoy, was a Cooper copycat. His method was almost identical to Cooper’s. But even Cooper himself was a copycat. Cooper was actually imitating an air pirate whose exploits were plastered all over the front pages of newspapers and the evening news throughout North America a week and a half earlier. On November 14, 1971, just 11 days before Cooper made his infamous jump, another skyjacker attempted to get a large ransom and parachute from an airliner.

Paul Cini boarded an Air Canada DC-8 in Calgary with everything he thought he would need to pull off the hijacking: a sawed-off shotgun, dynamite, a sheepskin rope, a collapsible shovel, a pup tent, candy bars, hiking boots and a dark-blue parachute wrapped in a paper bag. Mind you, this was a time before metal detectors and TSA searches, and passengers could board aircraft unmolested, with just about anything they wanted.

After downing several Screwdrivers (mixed drinks consisting of vodka and orange juice), he put his sawed-off shotgun to use and proclaimed he would blow up the DC-8 unless he was given $1.5 million and passage to Ireland. The plane landed in Great Falls, Montana, where Cini was only given $50,000. Cini didn’t make an issue of his reduced ransom. He may have been so intoxicated that he didn’t notice or care.

The DC-8 was returning to Calgary to refuel when Cini asked the crew to open an emergency exit door. An inebriated Cini asked a pilot for something sharp to cut the rope tightly knotted around his parachute. The pilot offered him a fire ax, though Cini should have seen it as an opportunity for someone to “bury the hatchet.” Cini set down his sawed-off shotgun when the ax was offered to him, and the pilot immediately set upon the drunken hijacker, knocking away the shotgun and grabbing Cini’s neck in one quick motion. Another alert member of the airliner’s crew grabbed the ax and promptly buried it into Cini’s head, fracturing his skull and rendering him unconscious, thus ending his skyjacking attempt.

Even Cini got his idea from someone else. In the fall of 1970, Cini watched a newscast about a failed hijacking attempt and came up with the idea of parachuting out of the plane with the ransom, thus avoiding capture. What’s unusual about Cini’s idea is that he was deathly afraid of heights!

If Paul Cini is considered the most inept of the air pirates, then Richard Floyd McCoy could be considered the most successful skyjacker. That is if you believe, like most experts, that Cooper died during his jump. Unlike Cooper, McCoy was captured soon after his amazing jump. He was tried and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. The
Eugene Register-Guard
ran an
Associated Press
article on July 11, 1972, about McCoy’s lengthy prison sentence:

UTAH HIJACKER SENTENCED TO
45-YEAR PRISON TERM

Salt Lake City (AP)-A federal court sentenced Richard Floyd McCoy, a Vietnam veteran and former Sunday school teacher, to 45 years in prison Monday for a $500,000 skyjacking and parachute jump three months ago.

McCoy, who was a law-enforcement student at Brigham Young University, faced a possible death penalty until the day he was convicted, June 29, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against capital punishment. Judge Willis W. Ritter told the jury the death sentence no longer applied to the case. The minimum sentence would have been 20 years.

“I hope you will take into consideration my past record,” McCoy, 29, told the judge in a pre-sentence hearing, mentioning medals he won as a Green Beret and helicopter pilot in Vietnam.