Who is D B Cooper?
On Nov. 24, 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 was scheduled for a 30-minute hop from Portland, Ore., to Seattle that afternoon when a man dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase bought a one-way ticket at the counter under the name Dan Cooper.
He took a seat near the back of the plane, which included 36 other passengers, and after it was airborne, about 3 p.m., handed flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note which she initially ignored < >
He leaned forward and whispered to her, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."
... his demands: $200,000 in unmarked $20 bills [that is one thousand stack of $20 bills] and four parachutes
The flight crew — <> — convinced him the plane couldn't be flown to Mexico without refueling < > Cooper agreed to let the plane land in Reno
It departed Seattle <> 7:40 p.m. It was a dark and stormy night <>.
About 40 minutes in <> an indicator light showing the drop-down stairwell near the tail of the plane had opened.
The pilot then <> landing the plane at 11 p.m.<>
LE using police dogs searched the airport grounds. A search was also launched in a nearby Reno neighborhood.
All that was found in the plane was the clip-on black tie and mother of pearl tie tack Cooper had been wearing,
two of the four parachutes and several cigarette butts.
"At this point, no one knew whether he was still on the plane,"
Cook < > believes William Gossett, a Korean and Vietnam war vet who died in 2003, was Cooper.
FBI, including < > Ralph Himmelsbach, has long believed the hijacker could have never survived the jump.
A tale of the '70s: When D.B. Cooper's plane landed in Reno
