August 31, 2025 • 15 mins
Guest host Ryan Wrecker and writer Eric Ulis discuss America's only unsolved skyjacking and the enigmatic bandit who pulled it off.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Since you have investigated this and have studied it closely,
have you ever had a chance to talk to any
of the passengers on that plane.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yes, the twenty year old college student then twenty year
old college student that I referenced, Bill Mitchell, I know
quite well and I've talked with him on multiple occasions
about this, and he's an important witness because he was
he actually observed DBE Cooper very closely. He mentioned that he,
being a twenty year old college student, noticed that the
flight attendant, who was twenty three at the time, was
(00:36):
particularly attractive, and as Bill puts it, or as Bill
described it, he was trying to figure out what this
this older guy, you know, while the flight attendant was
paying attention to this older guy the entire flight, because D. B.
Cooper was a guy that was described as about fifty
years of age, so he played paid particular close attention
to Dbie Cooper, and that obviously sty authorities when it
(00:57):
came time to sketching out who you know, what Cooper
looked like?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Right, So, for the sake of investigating, you have the pilots,
you have the stewardesses, and you have the college student.
Those are primarily the three best witnesses to all of this.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
The pilots never saw or spoke with dB Cooper. The
flight attendants did. But in addition to those people, there
was the gate agent, the gentleman who actually collected the
ticket from the passengers as they boarded the jet. He
happened to notice dB Cooper as well, because the flight
was slightly delayed, as I mentioned, and all the passenger
(01:39):
all the passengers were kind of sitting together or standing together,
kind of hamming it up, talking waiting for the flight.
But he noticed that dB Cooper was off to the
side by himself, and that he was all a dressed
all in black, and so he paid particular attention to
him just because he was kind of by himself, and
it was someone noteworthy. Of course, this was before the
(01:59):
skyjacket took place. But he also said that DBE Cooper
appeared to be a guy about fifty years of age,
and importantly said that he appeared to be about six
foot one, or perhaps even a little taller than six
foot one. So the ticket agent was critical as well
in terms of filling in some of the providing some
information with respect to Dbie Cooper's description.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, it's interesting. I think about all the flights I
have taken in what I notice enough detail of another
passenger to be able to give that information to a
police officer or FBI agent, And the answer, quite frankly,
is probably not. I don't know if I would give
them any information that would be useful unless you were
looking for that sort of thing, which a lot of
(02:41):
people do not unless you're sitting directly next to them.
So it's remarkable in some ways that any of this
information was put together given the circumstances they were in
and probably the panic that was sticking.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
In Well, I don't know that anybody was panicking, because
again they were unaware that anything was taking place. Of course,
the flight attendants were aware, and there was the one
flight attendant who sat next to Cooper for hours and
obviously had conversation with him. But you know, as I mentioned,
the college student, I think normally probably wouldn't have paid attention,
would have no idea who was sitting across the aisle
(03:15):
from but in this case, because the flight attendant was
particularly attractive and there was an interest there on the
part of Bill Mitchell. Bill Mitchell, that's where this you know,
unusual amount of attention happened to be paid to DBI
Cooper himself.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So we may have to expedite the rest of the
story a little bit for the sake of getting to
more details for it. So where we left off, you
had DBI Cooper that was arguing with pilots about keeping
the stair down, not keeping the stairs down. Where does
it go from there?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Basically the jet takes off with the stairs up, but
it's important that there was also some discussion about, you know,
where the jet can go because again Dbie Cooper wanted
to fly to Mexico NonStop, and the pilot said, you
simply can't do that flying at ten thousand feet, landing
gear down, flaps at fifteen degrees all that. So ultimately
they decide to land in Reno, ostensibly to refuel on
(04:13):
the way down to Mexico. So the jet takes off
and you know, he proceeds to put the airstairs down
immediately after the jet takes off. The flight attendant who
wasn't back with him was sent to the front immediately
after the jet took off as well, and about thirty
six minutes after the jet took off, the pilots experience
(04:35):
what they call a pressure bump, a slight popping sensation,
almost as if you roll up your window driving down
the freeway, that type of thing. Which is when which
they kind of figured it was when dB Cooper jumped
from the plane. Leapt from the jet at ten thousand
feet over southwest Washington near Vancouver, Washington, never to be
(04:55):
seen or heard from again. But nonetheless the pilots didn't
go back and can firm that he was gone.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
They just continued.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
The jet continued to lumber on down toward Reno, Nevada,
which took a few hours, and ultimately, once the jet
landed in Reno, the authorities boarded the board of the
airliner and determined that Dbie Cooper was no longer there.
And as I mentioned before, he left into infamy. They
have no idea where he came from, where he went,
who he was, whether he lived, whether he died. And
(05:24):
I should say that eight years after the skyjacking took place,
a portion of the ransom was found six thousand dollars
buried along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, at a
place called Tina Barr spelled te Na. But outside of
that small portion of the ransom that was found, absolutely
nothing has been found with respect to DBI Cooper outside
(05:47):
of the jet. He did leave a skinny black clip
on tie on board the jet. That's the only item
he left on board the jet that was actually personal
to him that he owned previous to the skyjacking, which
in nineteen seventy one wasn't much in terms of providing evidence,
but in later years has been really really important. And
also two of the parachutes were left behind. But that's
(06:09):
where the that's ultimately where it was left left off.
Now you did mention something about where it stands today.
Where it stands today is the class that the case
has closed.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
As of twenty sixteen, the.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
FBI shuttered the case unsolved. It's the only unsolved skyjacking
in US history. And there have been from time to
time people that have professed to have discovered who the
real dB Cooper was. And again the latest one was
several months ago, as you mentioned before, and they mentioned
something about finding a parachute related to this guy named
(06:40):
Richard Floyd McCoy, who was one of the dB Cooper
skyjack copycats. He was a copycat of D. B. Cooper
about half a year later, but he was caught. But
the parachute.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Was not D. B. Cooper's parachute.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And we know this because we know exactly the type
of pair of that dB Cooper used, and it's very
easy to tell simply by looking at the parachute that
they apparently found that's not the same parachute. So dB
Cooper is still an enigmatic figure at this day and age.
We have no idea who he was, so he's still
(07:17):
a mystery.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So the fact that they found six thousand dollars a
portion of this money intact, would indicate that he survived
this jumped from a plane.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well, I think initially there weren't really sure what to
make of it because it was found along the shore
of the Columbia River, buried in the sand, three separate
packets buried in the sand. Interestingly, though, where the money
was found was nowhere near where they believed he jumped.
In fact, it was about twenty miles away, so that
it was a head scratcher. There was no natural means
(07:54):
for the money to work its way to where it
was ultimately found by river.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
What have you over in later years.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Scientific analysis has been conducted on the bills, and it
was determined that the bills actually were exposed to the
Columbia River, but during the summer months, not during the
winter months when dB Cooper jumped, So it doesn't appear
that dB Cooper or the money landed in the Columbia
River or anything of that nature. So the money is
(08:21):
sort of a mystery within a mystery. I believe that
the money shows us one p dB Cooper survived and
walked away, and in my mind is absolutely no doubt
about that, because that's the only thing that's been found
in the area, and I think the scientific evidence tends
to back that up as well. Moreover, they searched extensively
(08:46):
this this drop zone, this believed drop zone, and they
never found a single thing, nothing to ever indicate that
DBI Cooper was ever there. And I think that the
money actually indicates that there was an error made in
the flight that was cobbled together a day or two later. Again,
this is nineteen seventy one, it's not twenty twenty five,
so it's a different day and age. So I think
(09:07):
in reality Dbcoop were actually jumped and landed much closer
to where that money was found in nineteen eighty versus
where they officially believe he landed, which was again, you know,
fifteen twenty miles away.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Wow, the estimations, Yeah, it would be a lot more difficult,
especially when you're going back on memory. But you know,
I was under the impression too that there were certain
bills that were found based on the serial numbers that
enter circulation now and again. So every once in a while,
one of these bills will pop up, and yes, there's
a huge collector value for it, but would also indicate
(09:43):
that some of this money was actually spent.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Actually, that is not the case up to date.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
There that there's never been a single bill that's ever
been discovered in circulation. And as you noted, the two
hundred thousand dollars, the serial numbers were recorded, so that
that's how they know that the six thousand dollars that
was found on the beach, which was very rotted and decayed,
they verified that that's part of the original ransom because
many of the bills have serial numbers on them.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
But as to the.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Remaining outstanding one hundred and ninety four thousand dollars, it's gone.
They have absolutely no idea where it is, and it
may or may not have entered re entered circulation because obviously,
back in the old days, the seventies eighties, that type
of thing, the treasury didn't record numbers as serial numbers,
as the bills came back to the treasury and ultimately
(10:34):
were destroyed and then new bills were printed. So as
to whether or not any of the money was was
spent or all of it was spent, or if it's
maybe he's hanging out in Brampa's attic or buried in
the backyard somewhere, we just don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Oh wow, Well that is something you think. You go
through all that effort in the planning, and let's say
you do land and you get away with it in
the sense that you're alive. Why why wouldn't you spend
the money? But you're saying that potentially the money was spent,
but so much time has passed that those bills would
have been damaged enough that maybe let's say a bank
(11:09):
received it or someone else received it, they would have
just destroyed the money anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Well, the bank wouldn't destroy the money. But here's kind
of the answer to your question. I believe that the
evidence is crystal clear that Dbie Cooper's original plan was
to jump out of the jet with the money and
everything shortly after taking off in Seattle, in other words,
six or seven minutes later, which would have put him
in the excerbs of Seattle. But as fate would have it,
(11:36):
he was delayed. There were a couple of things that happened,
and he didn't By the time he was ready to jump,
Seattle was way in the you know, was in the
rear view mirror quite a distance. So as he'd ended
up jumping about thirty six minutes later, which happened to
put him in the Portland area, which ironically is where
this whole episode started. So I think he landed in
an area about one hundred and fifty miles from where
(11:58):
he originally intended to land.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
So I believe that he.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Buried the money temporarily on the on the beach there,
on the shore there, and then made his way back
to civilization, walked to Vancouver in all likelihood, and then
you know, at some later date, came back and retrieved
the money, the six thousand dollars that was later found. Notwithstanding,
I think it was just simply an oversight because it
was presumably retrieved in undercover of darkness, that type of thing.
(12:24):
But so I think that explains, you know, why we
got six thousand dollars that was left behind. And I
think it was a period of a time, in other words,
several months before he actually came back and retrieved the ransom.
But that may indicate that, and I believe it indicates
that he actually didn't live in the Pacific Northwest, but
rather that he lives on the near the on the
east coast, probably especially as later evidence has been developed,
(12:48):
that that seems to indicate that he may have been
involved with a specialty metals company, a supplier to Boeing
and you know that made titanium and aluminums and stainless
steels and that kind of thing. So I think that
that's the reason why. And as to whether or not,
you know, the money was spent and so forth, I
think it's entirely possible, if not likely, that it was
(13:10):
some of it would spend.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Over a period of time very judiciously. DV.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Cooper seemed to be a very smart guy. This is
a methodically planned skyjacking, and apparently he didn't talk about
it because nobody, you know, I mean, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Think that's how people get caught.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
As they talk, they talk, they tell their buddies, they
get caught or they you know, maybe they get away
with their spoils and then they decided to go and
buy a brand new nineteen seventy two you know, lime
green Catillac or something of that nature, and cash and
that and that that leads to problems. Apparently dede Cooper
avoided all those pitfalls, and that's a good part of
the reason why he managed to get away with it.
(13:46):
Very very very calculating, very smart guy in that respect.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, well, I'm guessing the FBI would have been very
interested in finding this person. They would have been invested
in this like they were for many years. Like let's say,
potentially you mentioned Vancouver. If he would have spent this
money in Canada, I'm guessing they're not tracking it as
closely as the FBI would in the United States. So
could he have potentially just laundered it from another country
(14:12):
and that's how it went undetected.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Well, I want to be very clear. When I see Vancouver,
he landed in the Vancouver area. That's Vancouver, Washington, which
is in southern Washington, Southern Washington. Now, to answer your question, absolutely,
it's entirely possible that he just simply made his way
into Canada or some other foreign country and ultimately laundered
the money.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
In a place like that.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Because again, bearing in mind, we're dealing with the early seventies,
you know, the ability to track bills and that kind
of thing was very tedious. There's certainly nothing like today.
So that is possible that some of it ultimately was
laundered overseas, and that may explain explain it. And again,
those bills would have likely eventually worked their way back
(14:56):
to the United States Treasury to be destroyed and and
then have replaced with new bills. That's possible, but then
again it's not necessary. I think it's entirely possible. Let's say,
for example, he is from the East Coast. I tend
to think the Pittsburgh area. You know, if it's spending,
you know, twenty here and there in the Pittsburgh area,
these people aren't looking for twenty dollars bills related to
(15:19):
some skyjacking on the other side of the country, you know,
especially a month or months or years later. So I
think I just can't see how he gets caught if
he's just careful as far as that spending is concerned.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Since you have investigated this and have studied it closely,
have you ever had a chance to talk to any
of the passengers on that plane.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yes, the twenty year old college student then twenty year
old college student that I referenced, Bill Mitchell, I know
quite well and I've talked with him on multiple occasions
about this, and he's an important witness because he was
he actually observed DBE Cooper very closely. He mentioned that he,
being a twenty year old college student, noticed that the
flight attendant, who was twenty three at the time, was
(00:36):
particularly attractive, and as Bill puts it, or as Bill
described it, he was trying to figure out what this
this older guy, you know, while the flight attendant was
paying attention to this older guy the entire flight, because D. B.
Cooper was a guy that was described as about fifty
years of age, so he played paid particular close attention
to Dbie Cooper, and that obviously sty authorities when it
(00:57):
came time to sketching out who you know, what Cooper
looked like?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Right, So, for the sake of investigating, you have the pilots,
you have the stewardesses, and you have the college student.
Those are primarily the three best witnesses to all of this.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
The pilots never saw or spoke with dB Cooper. The
flight attendants did. But in addition to those people, there
was the gate agent, the gentleman who actually collected the
ticket from the passengers as they boarded the jet. He
happened to notice dB Cooper as well, because the flight
was slightly delayed, as I mentioned, and all the passenger
(01:39):
all the passengers were kind of sitting together or standing together,
kind of hamming it up, talking waiting for the flight.
But he noticed that dB Cooper was off to the
side by himself, and that he was all a dressed
all in black, and so he paid particular attention to
him just because he was kind of by himself, and
it was someone noteworthy. Of course, this was before the
(01:59):
skyjacket took place. But he also said that DBE Cooper
appeared to be a guy about fifty years of age,
and importantly said that he appeared to be about six
foot one, or perhaps even a little taller than six
foot one. So the ticket agent was critical as well
in terms of filling in some of the providing some
information with respect to Dbie Cooper's description.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, it's interesting. I think about all the flights I
have taken in what I notice enough detail of another
passenger to be able to give that information to a
police officer or FBI agent, And the answer, quite frankly,
is probably not. I don't know if I would give
them any information that would be useful unless you were
looking for that sort of thing, which a lot of
(02:41):
people do not unless you're sitting directly next to them.
So it's remarkable in some ways that any of this
information was put together given the circumstances they were in
and probably the panic that was sticking.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
In Well, I don't know that anybody was panicking, because
again they were unaware that anything was taking place. Of course,
the flight attendants were aware, and there was the one
flight attendant who sat next to Cooper for hours and
obviously had conversation with him. But you know, as I mentioned,
the college student, I think normally probably wouldn't have paid attention,
would have no idea who was sitting across the aisle
(03:15):
from but in this case, because the flight attendant was
particularly attractive and there was an interest there on the
part of Bill Mitchell. Bill Mitchell, that's where this you know,
unusual amount of attention happened to be paid to DBI
Cooper himself.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
So we may have to expedite the rest of the
story a little bit for the sake of getting to
more details for it. So where we left off, you
had DBI Cooper that was arguing with pilots about keeping
the stair down, not keeping the stairs down. Where does
it go from there?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Basically the jet takes off with the stairs up, but
it's important that there was also some discussion about, you know,
where the jet can go because again Dbie Cooper wanted
to fly to Mexico NonStop, and the pilot said, you
simply can't do that flying at ten thousand feet, landing
gear down, flaps at fifteen degrees all that. So ultimately
they decide to land in Reno, ostensibly to refuel on
(04:13):
the way down to Mexico. So the jet takes off
and you know, he proceeds to put the airstairs down
immediately after the jet takes off. The flight attendant who
wasn't back with him was sent to the front immediately
after the jet took off as well, and about thirty
six minutes after the jet took off, the pilots experience
(04:35):
what they call a pressure bump, a slight popping sensation,
almost as if you roll up your window driving down
the freeway, that type of thing. Which is when which
they kind of figured it was when dB Cooper jumped
from the plane. Leapt from the jet at ten thousand
feet over southwest Washington near Vancouver, Washington, never to be
(04:55):
seen or heard from again. But nonetheless the pilots didn't
go back and can firm that he was gone.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
They just continued.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
The jet continued to lumber on down toward Reno, Nevada,
which took a few hours, and ultimately, once the jet
landed in Reno, the authorities boarded the board of the
airliner and determined that Dbie Cooper was no longer there.
And as I mentioned before, he left into infamy. They
have no idea where he came from, where he went,
who he was, whether he lived, whether he died. And
(05:24):
I should say that eight years after the skyjacking took place,
a portion of the ransom was found six thousand dollars
buried along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, at a
place called Tina Barr spelled te Na. But outside of
that small portion of the ransom that was found, absolutely
nothing has been found with respect to DBI Cooper outside
(05:47):
of the jet. He did leave a skinny black clip
on tie on board the jet. That's the only item
he left on board the jet that was actually personal
to him that he owned previous to the skyjacking, which
in nineteen seventy one wasn't much in terms of providing evidence,
but in later years has been really really important. And
also two of the parachutes were left behind. But that's
(06:09):
where the that's ultimately where it was left left off.
Now you did mention something about where it stands today.
Where it stands today is the class that the case
has closed.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
As of twenty sixteen, the.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
FBI shuttered the case unsolved. It's the only unsolved skyjacking
in US history. And there have been from time to
time people that have professed to have discovered who the
real dB Cooper was. And again the latest one was
several months ago, as you mentioned before, and they mentioned
something about finding a parachute related to this guy named
(06:40):
Richard Floyd McCoy, who was one of the dB Cooper
skyjack copycats. He was a copycat of D. B. Cooper
about half a year later, but he was caught. But
the parachute.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Was not D. B. Cooper's parachute.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And we know this because we know exactly the type
of pair of that dB Cooper used, and it's very
easy to tell simply by looking at the parachute that
they apparently found that's not the same parachute. So dB
Cooper is still an enigmatic figure at this day and age.
We have no idea who he was, so he's still
(07:17):
a mystery.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So the fact that they found six thousand dollars a
portion of this money intact, would indicate that he survived
this jumped from a plane.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well, I think initially there weren't really sure what to
make of it because it was found along the shore
of the Columbia River, buried in the sand, three separate
packets buried in the sand. Interestingly, though, where the money
was found was nowhere near where they believed he jumped.
In fact, it was about twenty miles away, so that
it was a head scratcher. There was no natural means
(07:54):
for the money to work its way to where it
was ultimately found by river.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
What have you over in later years.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Scientific analysis has been conducted on the bills, and it
was determined that the bills actually were exposed to the
Columbia River, but during the summer months, not during the
winter months when dB Cooper jumped, So it doesn't appear
that dB Cooper or the money landed in the Columbia
River or anything of that nature. So the money is
(08:21):
sort of a mystery within a mystery. I believe that
the money shows us one p dB Cooper survived and
walked away, and in my mind is absolutely no doubt
about that, because that's the only thing that's been found
in the area, and I think the scientific evidence tends
to back that up as well. Moreover, they searched extensively
(08:46):
this this drop zone, this believed drop zone, and they
never found a single thing, nothing to ever indicate that
DBI Cooper was ever there. And I think that the
money actually indicates that there was an error made in
the flight that was cobbled together a day or two later. Again,
this is nineteen seventy one, it's not twenty twenty five,
so it's a different day and age. So I think
(09:07):
in reality Dbcoop were actually jumped and landed much closer
to where that money was found in nineteen eighty versus
where they officially believe he landed, which was again, you know,
fifteen twenty miles away.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Wow, the estimations, Yeah, it would be a lot more difficult,
especially when you're going back on memory. But you know,
I was under the impression too that there were certain
bills that were found based on the serial numbers that
enter circulation now and again. So every once in a while,
one of these bills will pop up, and yes, there's
a huge collector value for it, but would also indicate
(09:43):
that some of this money was actually spent.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Actually, that is not the case up to date.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
There that there's never been a single bill that's ever
been discovered in circulation. And as you noted, the two
hundred thousand dollars, the serial numbers were recorded, so that
that's how they know that the six thousand dollars that
was found on the beach, which was very rotted and decayed,
they verified that that's part of the original ransom because
many of the bills have serial numbers on them.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
But as to the.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Remaining outstanding one hundred and ninety four thousand dollars, it's gone.
They have absolutely no idea where it is, and it
may or may not have entered re entered circulation because obviously,
back in the old days, the seventies eighties, that type
of thing, the treasury didn't record numbers as serial numbers,
as the bills came back to the treasury and ultimately
(10:34):
were destroyed and then new bills were printed. So as
to whether or not any of the money was was
spent or all of it was spent, or if it's
maybe he's hanging out in Brampa's attic or buried in
the backyard somewhere, we just don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Oh wow, Well that is something you think. You go
through all that effort in the planning, and let's say
you do land and you get away with it in
the sense that you're alive. Why why wouldn't you spend
the money? But you're saying that potentially the money was spent,
but so much time has passed that those bills would
have been damaged enough that maybe let's say a bank
(11:09):
received it or someone else received it, they would have
just destroyed the money anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Well, the bank wouldn't destroy the money. But here's kind
of the answer to your question. I believe that the
evidence is crystal clear that Dbie Cooper's original plan was
to jump out of the jet with the money and
everything shortly after taking off in Seattle, in other words,
six or seven minutes later, which would have put him
in the excerbs of Seattle. But as fate would have it,
(11:36):
he was delayed. There were a couple of things that happened,
and he didn't By the time he was ready to jump,
Seattle was way in the you know, was in the
rear view mirror quite a distance. So as he'd ended
up jumping about thirty six minutes later, which happened to
put him in the Portland area, which ironically is where
this whole episode started. So I think he landed in
an area about one hundred and fifty miles from where
(11:58):
he originally intended to land.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
So I believe that he.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Buried the money temporarily on the on the beach there,
on the shore there, and then made his way back
to civilization, walked to Vancouver in all likelihood, and then
you know, at some later date, came back and retrieved
the money, the six thousand dollars that was later found. Notwithstanding,
I think it was just simply an oversight because it
was presumably retrieved in undercover of darkness, that type of thing.
(12:24):
But so I think that explains, you know, why we
got six thousand dollars that was left behind. And I
think it was a period of a time, in other words,
several months before he actually came back and retrieved the ransom.
But that may indicate that, and I believe it indicates
that he actually didn't live in the Pacific Northwest, but
rather that he lives on the near the on the
east coast, probably especially as later evidence has been developed,
(12:48):
that that seems to indicate that he may have been
involved with a specialty metals company, a supplier to Boeing
and you know that made titanium and aluminums and stainless
steels and that kind of thing. So I think that
that's the reason why. And as to whether or not,
you know, the money was spent and so forth, I
think it's entirely possible, if not likely, that it was
(13:10):
some of it would spend.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Over a period of time very judiciously. DV.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Cooper seemed to be a very smart guy. This is
a methodically planned skyjacking, and apparently he didn't talk about
it because nobody, you know, I mean, you know, I.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Think that's how people get caught.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
As they talk, they talk, they tell their buddies, they
get caught or they you know, maybe they get away
with their spoils and then they decided to go and
buy a brand new nineteen seventy two you know, lime
green Catillac or something of that nature, and cash and
that and that that leads to problems. Apparently dede Cooper
avoided all those pitfalls, and that's a good part of
the reason why he managed to get away with it.
(13:46):
Very very very calculating, very smart guy in that respect.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, well, I'm guessing the FBI would have been very
interested in finding this person. They would have been invested
in this like they were for many years. Like let's say,
potentially you mentioned Vancouver. If he would have spent this
money in Canada, I'm guessing they're not tracking it as
closely as the FBI would in the United States. So
could he have potentially just laundered it from another country
(14:12):
and that's how it went undetected.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Well, I want to be very clear. When I see Vancouver,
he landed in the Vancouver area. That's Vancouver, Washington, which
is in southern Washington, Southern Washington. Now, to answer your question, absolutely,
it's entirely possible that he just simply made his way
into Canada or some other foreign country and ultimately laundered
the money.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
In a place like that.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Because again, bearing in mind, we're dealing with the early seventies,
you know, the ability to track bills and that kind
of thing was very tedious. There's certainly nothing like today.
So that is possible that some of it ultimately was
laundered overseas, and that may explain explain it. And again,
those bills would have likely eventually worked their way back
(14:56):
to the United States Treasury to be destroyed and and
then have replaced with new bills. That's possible, but then
again it's not necessary. I think it's entirely possible. Let's say,
for example, he is from the East Coast. I tend
to think the Pittsburgh area. You know, if it's spending,
you know, twenty here and there in the Pittsburgh area,
these people aren't looking for twenty dollars bills related to
(15:19):
some skyjacking on the other side of the country, you know,
especially a month or months or years later. So I
think I just can't see how he gets caught if
he's just careful as far as that spending is concerned.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
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George Noory
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