DB Cooper, the man behind the most notorious airplane hijacking in American history

On November 24, 1971, a man walked up to the Northwest Orient ticket counter at the Portland, Oregon International Airport.  After waiting on line for a few moments, he paid $20 dollars in cash for a ticket for Flight 305 to Seattle, a scheduled 30 minute trip leaving at 2:50 PM.

He gave his name as “Dan Cooper” for the purposes of ticketing but he was not required to show identification.  Dressed in a dark suit, black tie and white shirt with a black raincoat he looked identical to any number of business travelers anxious to make it home for the following day’s Thanksgiving celebration.  He was assigned seat 18C, an aisle seat in the last row and boarded the plane with 36 other passengers, not including the crew.

On April 7, 1972, a man flying under the alias “James Johnson” boarded flight 855 in Denver, Colorado.  The plane’s flight began on the East coast and was supposed to fly from Denver to Los Angeles.  It was a Boeing 727, the identical craft hijacked by D. B. Cooper.  James Johnson was actually a Mormon, national guard member , ex-Green Beret BYU student named Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr.  He sat in the last row on the aisle in the exact location used by Cooper.  Heavily made up and wearing a wig, McCoy hijacked the plane to San Francisco, claiming to have explosives, a grenade and a pistol, which he brandished at the flight attendants and some passengers who became aware of the situation when the plane rerouted to San Francisco.  McCoy demanded 500,000 dollars in different denominations and four parachutes.  He got the money and the chutes and got off the ground before agents could storm the plane. A duffel bag filled with the ransom money was attached to his parachute harness.  This time, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were better prepared for such an eventuality.

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