The Federal Bureau of Investigation finally closed the case of the notorious hijacking of a passenger plane in the early seventies. For forty-five years, employees of the American internal intelligence agency did not manage to find a mysterious terrorist who single-handedly took dozens of hostages and, without causing them any harm, received a large ransom, after which he mystically evaporated.
On November 24, 1971, an individual traveling under the apparently assumed name of Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 727 passenger airliner en route from Portland to Seattle. The man ordered a bourbon, then calmly informed one of the flight attendants that he had a bomb by opening the briefcase and showing the stewardess the cylindrical objects with wires. The hijacker said that he needed two hundred thousand dollars (over a million by today's standards) and a parachute.
When the Boeing landed in Seattle, the terrorist got everything he asked for and released the passengers. Cooper ordered the pilots to fly to Mexico, but managed to quietly jump out with a parachute on the way there. The plane was forced to make an emergency refueling in Reno, and there it was cordoned off by the special services. The assault team entered the liner and searched it from nose to tail, but the man had long been somewhere on the ground.
The terrorist disappeared without a trace
The military joined the search for the terrorist. They combed the area near the Vashugal River in Washington state, where the perpetrator supposedly landed, but to no avail. In 1980, on the banks of the Columbia River, of which Vashugal is a tributary, a child found several packets of dollars in the sand - only about six thousand dollars. The bills soaked in water turned out to be part of the ransom paid to the terrorist by the government. No one else found this money, including in circulation (the special services recorded the serial number of each banknote, and sooner or later the banknotes had to begin to surface). According to one version, Cooper did not even plan to spend the ransom.
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The Boeing crew members and passengers had time to get a good look at the hijacker, thanks to which the FBI easily compiled a photograph of the man. The perpetrator also left his tie with DNA traces on board. Nevertheless, all this turned out to be useless, since the terrorist was never caught. There were hundreds of suspects in this case. They were experienced paratroopers, former military personnel, employees of the military transport industry. None of them turned out to be wanted. Efforts by Interpol to locate Cooper were also unsuccessful.
History smacks of real mysticism. Who was the mysterious terrorist? Where did he disappear to? What did you do with the money? Why was he never caught? For the FBI, this case became a big headache - accusations of incompetence were raining down on bureau employees from everywhere. Now they have finished this investigation once and for all, considering that after so many years there is no point in wasting resources on it. Dan Cooper, if he is still alive, can also breathe now calmly.