Airliner hijacking terrorists are a constant headache for the governments of civilized states and the cause of fears of aircraft crews and their passengers. How could an unknown American hijack a plane, get a ransom for it and disappear, remaining a legendary hero in the memory of people?
Few aircraft hijackers have become heroes. But this is exactly what happened to Dan Cooper - one of America's most mysterious criminals, who was able to get a ransom for a passenger plane in the amount of $ 200,000 in cash and became a folk hero overnight!
Adored by millions of people who still praise him, Dan Cooper nevertheless threatened to send more than 150 innocent men, women and children to heaven if the authorities did not show up to him with money.
However, the hijacker's desperate courage and the fact that in the end no one was hurt, attracted the attention of all Americans and made the mysterious little man into a modern Robin Hood.
In reality, it was a fantastically executed crime. And these days, no one really knows what happened to Dan Cooper. Did he die after his desperate leap into the night? Did he die of an incurable disease? Or is he still alive and using his criminal prey?
No one knows how this incredible story ended, but many people know how it began on November 24, 1971 at the Portland, Oregon airport.
Hundreds of passengers crowded at the gates, eager to get home or friends as soon as possible to celebrate the American national holiday together. And none of them paid attention to the calm, short guy with a canvas bag. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the holiday, he held himself emphatically calm, hiding his eyes behind dark glasses.
An hour passed before the 150 passengers on the Seattle flight were finally invited to board.
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Short note
Dan Cooper - this is the name the man named when buying the tickets - got up from his chair in the waiting room and went to the waiting Boeing 727. His only luggage was the same canvas bag. Entering the airliner, the man sat down so that the stewardess's chair, which she occupies during takeoff and landing, was opposite.
For the next 25 minutes, as the plane moved through the clouds towards Seattle, the man continued to pose as a simple passenger. And then, about the middle of the 400-mile route, he pressed the button above his seat and called the stewardess.
Tina Maclowe, hearing the signal, decided that the passenger wanted a drink or he needed a blanket.
To her horror, the passenger handed her a short but unmistakable note: “I have a bomb with me. If I don't get $ 200,000, I'll blow everyone to pieces."
Stunned, Maclough read the note over and over again. Without taking his eyes off the girl, the man opened his bag just enough so that she was convinced that this was not a bad joke or a bluff. The girl could clearly see the rectangular tiles of dynamite, wires and a detonator inside the bag. Then Cooper closed the bag and watched the stewardess, who was struggling to walk calmly.
As soon as Maclough conveyed a threatening message from an inconspicuous passenger to the shocked crew, the pilot immediately contacted ground control in Seattle and reported what was happening on board. Within minutes, a group of the best FBI agents, police snipers and even several units of the National Guard took their places in key points of the airport. The authorities were confident that a long night of negotiations lay ahead.
All participants in the events, including Cooper, had only one thing to do - to wait. In the next 35 minutes, the plane was supposed to land in Seattle.
Waiting in Seattle
When the airliner began to descend on the way to Seattle, the commander made a short message to passengers. He warned that the disembarkation would not be delayed for some time. He did not explain the reason. And the passengers took the news with understandable despondency.
While Cooper's neighbors in the cabin were angry about disrupted business meetings and darkened holiday dinners, he got up from his chair and, clutching a canvas bag tightly to his chest, walked to the cockpit, where the commander and two of his assistants were.
"Now, gentlemen," he said calmly, "please sit still and not look back."
For the next 25 minutes, there was lively radio talk. The man explained first to those who were on the flight control tower, and then to the senior police officer that his demands were as follows: $ 200,000 in second-hand bills and 4 parachutes in exchange for the release of all the hostages.
The authorities realized that there was no way out. They had no right to endanger the lives of innocent people who might have died from an explosion in an armed attempt at liberation.
Of course, reluctantly, they nevertheless sent two FBI agents to the hijacked plane. In the form of aerodrome service workers, they wheeled a trolley on board the airliner with a bag with a seal on it. Opening it, the hijacker rejoiced: there were money and parachutes inside.
Dan Cooper kept his word and allowed all passengers to get off the plane. Incredible but true: it was only when they were in the main airport lounge that the passengers were greeted by a crowd of reporters who learned that they were hostage when the plane was hijacked by a criminal.
Explosion threatened
While the freed passengers, having learned the overwhelming news, recovered first from surprise and then from shock, Dan Cooper prepared to begin the second phase of his carefully thought-out plan.
The aircraft crew remained in their places under the threat of a bomb explosion. The hijacker demanded that the liner be refueled and provided to the pilots with all the necessary data for the flight to Mexico.
During negotiations with airport ground services and pilots, Dan Cooper showed such knowledge of the details of air traffic and the technical capabilities of the airliner that law enforcement officials realized that they were dealing with an experienced, intelligent and calculating criminal.
Once his demands were met, the hijacker ordered Captain Bill Scott to take the plane into the night sky. A US Air Force jet fighter immediately joined the Boeing's tail.
But Dan Cooper, a cautious and quick-witted man, judging by his behavior, calculated in advance all possible options for the authorities.
Shortly after the liner gained altitude, the hijacker ordered Captain Scott to head south. Moreover, he showed excellent knowledge not only of flying, but also of complex issues of aerodynamics.
“Fly with the flaps lowered 15%,” the terrorist said. Let the chassis remain released. The speed is a little less than ninety meters per second. Open the back door and do not rise above 2000 m."
Captain Scott, amazed at such precise instructions (it also became clear to him that the hijacker was not an ordinary criminal), quickly calculated the situation and informed Cooper that with such a flight regime, they could soon run out of fuel. The hijacker calmly replied that the captain would be able to land in Reno, Nevada.
Coming out of the cockpit, Dan Cooper ordered the crew to close the steel door separating the cockpit from the rest of the Boeing until the very end of the flight and activate the system to open the tailgate of the liner as soon as it exited the cockpit. The captain obeyed, and in the blink of an eye a stream of cold thin air filled the Boeing's cabin.
For the next 4 hours, Scott and his comrades flew towards the unknown, exactly following the instructions given by the criminal. It was only after they safely landed in Reno that it was revealed that their only passenger had literally melted into the night.
Subsequently, a thorough study of the readings of the "black box" instruments made it possible to establish a slightly noticeable, but undoubtedly perceptible instant rise of the plane at 8 hours 15 minutes in the morning - 32 minutes after takeoff in Seattle. Under cover of darkness and clouds that hid him from the accompanying Boeing fighter, Cooper jumped from the airliner, tied tightly to his belt his criminal prey.
At first glance, this hijacking of the plane seemed flawless in terms of its execution. Still would! Dan Cooper was not only able to successfully escape, but at the same time drew around the police, the FBI and the US Air Force, who together confronted him!
And yet, the data of the "black box" showed that he did make a mistake - the only one, but quite serious. While the hijacker was jumping from the plane, the Boeing was flying over southwestern Washington. This is a rugged terrain overgrown with dense forest.
In addition, outside the plane the air temperature was below zero. A light suit and raincoat are weak protection from the cold. Thus, the chances of the hijacker surviving the jump were slim. The prevailing opinion was that the criminal had to inevitably die.
The area of Cooper's possible landing was so inhospitable that the ground search teams every now and then fell into impassable swamps. In these conditions, the authorities were forced to organize a search from the air. This lasted two weeks in a row. But the planes equipped with sensitive touch sensors found no one.
Newspapers began to write that the terrorist would appear somewhere again. As if in response to these assumptions, three weeks after the hijacking of the plane, a mysterious letter arrived at the Los Angeles Times.
“I am not a modern Robin Hood at all, it was written in it. “Unfortunately, I only have 14 months to live. Hijacking an airplane was the fastest and most profitable way for me to secure the last days of my life. I didn’t rob an airline because I thought it was romantic or heroic. For such nonsense, I would never take such a huge risk.
I do not condemn people who hate me for what I have done, I do not condemn those who would like to see me caught and punished, especially since this will never happen. From the very beginning I knew that I would not be caught. Since the day of that incident, I have already flown several times on different routes. I'm not going to hide in a hole somewhere in an old town, lost in the wilderness. And do not think that I am a psychopath: in my entire life I have not even received a fine for parking incorrectly."
Sensation or falsification?
The letter caused a sensation. Cooper did not see himself as a hero, but society felt differently.
In the editorial offices of newspapers and on the radio, a flood of letters flooded, the authors of which spoke with admiration of his clever trick.
T-shirts with the name "Dan Cooper" on the chest instantly became as fashionable as the clothes with the words "Peace and Love" before.
Hundreds of young women were ready to call themselves his brides, of course, if he showed up.
But not everyone was fascinated by the terrorist. The FBI compiled a very convincing psychological portrait of the criminal, but did not make it public in order not to add fuel to the fire of public opinion.
There were also many who doubted that it was Dan Cooper who wrote the letter to the newspaper.
Many of the residents of the area over which Cooper jumped out of the plane, especially the lumberjacks, openly said that the letter was a trick of a clever swindler. They were sure that the hijacker had died either during the jump, or a little later, and continued persistent search for the money received by the terrorist in the wilderness. Hundreds of adventurers did the same on weekends as they set out for Cooper's booty, though they were more attracted to untrodden trails than a serious treasure hunt.
While seekers - both trained people and amateurs - flooded the area where the hijacker was supposed to land, the authorities continued to try to find from the air at least some traces of the ghost hijacker or its prey. By the way, the officials also doubted the authenticity of the letter to the newspaper and were sure that the hijacker had died after his famous jump.
However, all searches ended in failure.
A year after the hijacking of the plane, the FBI announced in the press that it was sure of the death of the criminal.
And even after 4 years, on November 24, 1976, the Cooper case was officially closed.
From that moment on, assuming, of course, that the terrorist was still alive, he could formally only be charged with tax evasion.
After that, many decided that they had heard the name Dan Cooper for the last time. And they turned out to be right … for several years.
However, in 1979, a hunter in pursuit of a deer came across a rusty sign in the forest with the inscription: "The hatch must be tightly closed during the flight." It turned out to be a warning sign from the back door of the ill-fated Boeing 727. The news caused such a stir that thousands of treasure seekers again rushed into the deep woods, where she was found.
Cooper's booty
But, despite the desperate efforts of the treasure hunters, the missing loot remained undetected for a long time. And so in 1980, exactly 9 years after Cooper threw out his number, father and son Harold and Brian Ingram walked along the muddy Columbia River, northwest of Portland. Suddenly, an 8-year-old boy noticed a stack of old twenty-dollar bills faded in the sun. When they were collected, it turned out to be $ 6,000.
The authorities came to the conclusion that these bills were brought by the current from above, from the north. The experts checked their serial numbers with the numbers on the banknotes that were given to the hijacker. There was no doubt - the money found turned out to be part of Cooper's booty.
For many, this finding has become proof that Dan Cooper actually died while jumping from an airplane.
The accidental discovery of the Ingrams served as a spark for another explosion of interest in the terrorist's money from both the local population and visitors who again flocked to the area in the hope of getting rich overnight.
And again, their hopes were not destined to come true. Nobody else found any money.
But in 1989, an amateur diver, looking for traces of Cooper's prey, found a small parachute in the river, about a mile above where the Ingrams had found the money.
To the great disappointment of those who were worried about this find (despite the fact that many years have passed, the seekers of luck did not diminish), it was found that this parachute had nothing to do with Cooper.
Earl Cossey, the man who once packed the parachutes intended for the hijacker, said that what was found could not even be compared with those that Dan Cooper received. Most likely, said Kossey, the found parachute was used to launch an illuminating rocket.
The diver who found the parachute was hired by a Californian lawyer and former FBI agent Richard Toso. For ten years, he spent every last Thursday in November looking for Cooper's tracks.
Toso, who wrote a book called “D. B. Cooper, Dead or Alive, claims that the hijacker drowned and that his remains must have been stuck between the piles that were driven into the river bed every half mile in case of flooding.
“Cooper had no idea where he was when he parachuted,” writes Toso. - He fell into the water with his back with wads of money tied to his belt, and went to the bottom. He is still somewhere there, at the bottom. And the rest of the money is also there, caught on a sharp stone or covered with silt."
Despite the searches undertaken annually, Richard Toso, like hundreds of other treasure hunters, did not find anything.
Whether Dan Cooper survived, where the rest of the money went - all this to this day remains the same mystery as it was many years ago.
And as you can see, the riddle will remain unsolved.