DB COOPER FOUND?
According to his son, Richard Floyd McCoy Jnr was the man behind the legendary heist. Will he finally ‘get the credit’?
On 24 November 1971, a man boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle, carrying what he later told flight attendants was a suitcase bomb. Once airborne, he threatened to detonate it if they did not follow his instructions. He allowed the plane to continue to Seattle, where he freed the passengers in exchange for $200,000 (£163,000) – equivalent to about $1.5m in 2024 – and two parachutes. He then had the plane take off for Mexico City, but over southwest Washington State he donned the parachutes and jumped from the rear door of the aircraft into the night, never to be seen again, although the remains of some of the money were found buried on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980. The hijacker had bought a ticket under the name “Dan Cooper”, but a reporter later confused his name with another suspect and called him “DB Cooper” and that name stuck. After years of searching and getting nowhere, the FBI closed the case in 2016, concluding that the man had died that night, his body lost somewhere in Washington’s dark and impenetrable forests. Not everyone agreed, and dedicated amateur DB Cooper sleuths have continued to investigate in the hope of identifying the man behind the mystery, whether he survived or not.
Over the years, six potential “DB Coopers” have been identified with varying degrees of credibility. The latest was in 2022, when Erik Ulis, a truecrime investigator, used an FBI report analysing residues on a tie Cooper left on the plane to identify metallurgist Vince Petersen as “DB Cooper”, although Petersen’s son was doubtful as he had no parachuting experience. Now, a seventh DB Cooper suspect has been fingered for the crime, this time by his own son, Richard “Rick” McCoy III, who says he firmly believes his father Richard Floyd McCoy Jr was Cooper. McCoy cites an alleged confession from his late mother, Karen McCoy, who, he said, claimed to have acted as an accomplice, helping his father to commit the daring crime. This claim has the benefit that not only does the older McCoy physically resemble the photofit of Cooper made after his hijack, but he was also a highly experienced skydiver and was later convicted of a hijacking with similarities to Cooper’s. This took place on 7 April 1972, a few months after the Cooper hijack. Then, the older McCoy hijacked United Airlines Flight 855, shortly after take-off from Denver, Colorado, using a gun and a grenade to enforce his demands. He, too, freed his passengers, then demanded $500k and, once airborne again, jumped from the plane over Utah using his own parachute.
Unlike Cooper, McCoy was caught after 72 hours and sentenced to 45 years in prison for his crime. He escaped, after serving two years, using a fake handgun made out of dental paste and was killed in a shootout with police in Virginia in 1974. Rick says that he always knew his mother had helped his father plan both heists, and drove him to the airport to carry them out, but had kept this secret while his mother was still alive. He says that his father struggled to find work after serving in Vietnam, and the hijackings were a way to get money and to strike back at an Establishment that was denying him employment. Rick’s mother allegedly told him that, while he successfully got away with the DB Cooper hijacking, his father made mistakes that led to him losing most of the $200,000 ransom.
He used an improved methodology to carry out the 1972 hijacking, including bringing his own parachute instead of relying on the authorities to supply one. This time though, he was swiftly apprehended and most of the money was found in his house, still wrapped in rubber bands.
Although his sentence would have been even more severe if he had been connected to the Cooper hijack, McCoy claims his mother used to say: “Your dad would be upset that he didn’t get the credit [for DB Cooper]. The credit that he deserved.” Rick McCoy has also discovered a parachute on his grandmother’s property that he believes could have come from the Cooper hijack and has agreed to hand it over to the FBI for further investigation. In addition, he has discovered his father’s jump logbook showing a pattern of practices that line up perfectly with the two crimes, and has also given this to the FBI. His father’s credit card receipts show a pattern of activity that could also implicate him in the Cooper hijack, including the potential laundering of the proceeds that he managed to retain through Las Vegas.
The Bureau has long suspected that Richard Floyd McCoy Jr might have been Cooper, but has never been able to prove it. They have repeatedly asked the family for DNA swabs to help them make the connection, but while Karen McCoy was alive, the McCoys always refused. Now, Rick says he will provide a cheek swab so that his father can finally get the credit for the DB Cooper hijack his mother always thought he deserved. Ulis called the McCoy development intriguing and believes that the FBI has taken a new interest in the case because of his findings, but thinks there is a “zero-percent chance” that McCoy is Cooper. the-sun.com, 19 Feb; popularmechanics.com, 28 Feb 2024.
For more on the DB Cooper mystery, see Brian J Robb, “Flight into Infamy”, FT412:30-37, and FT139:18, 347:20-21.
He was convicted of a hijacking with similarities to Cooper’s