On a fateful November afternoon in 1971, a mysterious middle-aged man hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 on its way to Seattle. The world has since clamored for answers surrounding the identity of the crime’s mastermind, who would go down in history as D.B. Cooper. Like much of this case, though, a sheen of myth and misinformation has clouded things, including the hijacker’s name. The man who jumped from the plane with a parachute and $200,000 in cash and then completely vanished didn’t call himself D.B. — he actually called himself Dan Cooper. But not long after the hijacking, a reporter misheard the name and it stuck. This is just part of the untold truth of the D.B. Cooper plane hijacking.
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Now, one of the four parachutes Cooper asked for and received as part of his ransom has suddenly kicked open the door on a case that the FBI pretty much gave up on nearly a decade ago after years of trying to put the pieces together. The bureau has apparently reopened the case after the two adult children of one of the agency’s prime suspects, Richard Floyd McCoy II, discovered a parachute and skydiving logbook belonging to their father that seemed to tie in with the hijacking.
Richard McCoy II pulled off a similar hijacking 5 months after D.B. Cooper
Just five months after the D.B. Cooper hijacking caper that had all the earmarks of a great Hollywood film, Richard McCoy II pulled off a similar crime. On April 7, 1972, he hijacked United Airlines Flight 855 over Colorado with a hand grenade and pistol. As in the Cooper case, McCoy asked for four parachutes and an even larger ransom of $500,000. He bailed out over Utah and would have likely gotten away if not for an acquaintance who he’d told about a “foolproof” method of hijacking a plane (via the FBI).
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The 29-year-old McCoy was a Vietnam veteran, helicopter pilot, skydiver, and member of the Utah National Guard. He also had serious financial troubles. The FBI arrested McCoy not long after the hijacking based on handwriting analysis and other evidence. A federal judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison after a trial. Then, in 1974, McCoy broke out of federal prison and died in a shootout with FBI agents in Virginia Beach. The FBI ruled out McCoy as D.B. Cooper because he didn’t quite fit the hijacker’s description, just another piece of the mystery. Now, the agency may be rethinking its original assessment.
McCoy’s kids team up with a YouTuber
In 2020, Richard McCoy II’s two children, Chanté and Richard “Rick” McCoy III, broke a longstanding silence concerning their father. Following the death of their mother, Karen McCoy, who they believed had been complicit in their father’s crimes, the siblings contacted YouTuber Dan Gryder. The retired pilot had been personally investigating the Cooper case for more than 20 years. He examined the parachute found stored at an outbuilding of the McCoy home in Cove City, North Carolina and believed it was the one used in the D.B. Cooper hijacking. “That rig is literally one in a billion,” Gryder told Cowboy State Daily. They turned the new evidence over to the FBI, which also combed through the house. The agency, as part of a longstanding policy, will neither confirm nor deny whether it has reopened its investigation into the more than 50-year-old case.
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This isn’t the first time an independent investigator has sworn they’d finally identified the hijacker we know as D.B. Cooper. Back in 2016, documentary filmmaker Thomas Colbert revealed a new theory that would change everything — if it were true, which would conflict with Gryder’s evidence. Colbert believed Cooper was Robert W. Rackstraw, another Vietnam veteran with a long criminal history. Rackstraw, who died in 2019, hinted that he was indeed the hijacker. Whether Gryder and McCoy’s children have truly solved the mystery of D.B. Cooper remains to be seen.
