August 28, 2024 • 21 mins
This week's show is about people who have disappeared without a trace. Michelle talks about the Northwest legend D.B. Cooper, and Edwin tells us about a mysterious incident in Ohio.
Campfire Story will be on hiatus after this episode. Don't worry, though. You can still catch Michelle on Tell Me A Ghost Story and Edwin on Horror Story, Scary Story, and True Scary Story on Scary.FM.
Do you have an idea for an episode theme? email us: hello@campfirestory.com
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at CampfireStory.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
Campfire Story will be on hiatus after this episode. Don't worry, though. You can still catch Michelle on Tell Me A Ghost Story and Edwin on Horror Story, Scary Story, and True Scary Story on Scary.FM.
Do you have an idea for an episode theme? email us: hello@campfirestory.com
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at CampfireStory.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The strangest part here is that there is no footage
of him leaving the barlow. So he goes in and
then that's it. He just never left. Get ready for
a campfire story.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
All right, here, we are hiking into the woods. We
got to get that energy back up and get back
to what we really like is just telling each other's
stories by the campfire.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
That's right. Disappearances.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Did you watch Mad Men?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I tried? It was too boring.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You've seen an episode?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
When I'm telling the story, I'm kind of imagining Don Draper,
the lead in that show. You're getting on a plane.
There's leg room, the cabin is full of cigarette smoke.
It's nineteen seventy one. A mysterious man in a dark
suit goes up to the counter and buys himself a
(01:12):
ticket to Seattle from Portland, leaving at two point fifty
pm that day, the day before Thanksgiving. There's no security
check and no pat downs. And no metal detectors. He
is carrying a briefcase. This mysterious man boards the plane
and places his briefcase in his lap. Shortly after takeoff,
(01:34):
the man slips the flight attendant, Florence Schaffner a folded note.
She assumes he's hitting on her and it's his phone number,
so she slips it into her bag without looking at it.
The next time she walks by his seat, the man
leans forward and whispers, miss you'd better look at that note.
I have a bomb. He then quietly opens the briefcase
(01:59):
and show Florence eight red cylinders attached to wires and
a cylindrical battery. On his note, he listed his demands
two hundred thousand dollars, which is around one million in
today's money, four manually operated civilian parachutes, and an aircraft
(02:21):
fuel truck standing by in Seattle for use. Upon their arrival,
Florence immediately went to the cockpit and told the captain,
William A. Scott's the situation. He calmly notified the thirty
five other passengers on the plane that they would be
delayed in flight due to a minor mechanical difficulty, So
(02:43):
the plane circled around the airport in Puget Sound for
two hours as emergency responders notified and gathered all of
the ransom demands, including ten thousand unmarked twenty dollar bills.
During this time, the man commented on the layout of
the land below. Witnesses claim that he was calm, well spoken, polite,
(03:07):
even going so far as to request meals for the
flight crew ahead of their arrival in Seattle. The plane
finally lands at the Seattle Tacoma Airport. And honestly, what
still surprises me about this story is that he received
all of his ransom demands. Isn't that nuts? I feel
like people don't get their ransom demands anymore. Is that like?
(03:28):
Am I like making that up in my brain?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Or now?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
It's like they negotiate with you enough, so like they
play this mental game where like, yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Win, you won't never you never win. But anyway, this
guy wins, so he gets his ransom demands, he gets
his money and his parachutes, and he's satisfied. So he
releases all the passengers and the flight attendants off the plane.
But then once the plane is refueled, they took off
again and the remaining crew are told to head for
the Reno Tahoe Airport. It's raining. Around eight pm, the
(03:59):
captain and the remaining crew noticed a sudden change in
the air pressure on the plane, indicating that a door
had been opened. As the plane was flying over a
heavily wooded area of southern Washington, the Washugo Valley, there
was a sudden movement against the airplane's tail section. The
man had jumped from the plane wearing a parachute with
(04:19):
his stolen money, and he parachuted straight into our hearts.
Because the mysterious man was never seen again, this mysterious
man became known as D. B. Cooper, which is a
slight variation of the alias he used to buy the
plane ticket, Dan Cooper aka Don Draper.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Wait, so they never found him, like they never chased
They never chased them nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
They chased him. He was actually on the most FBI
most wanted list to like I think twenty sixteen when
they just suspended the case. At this point, who's alive?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
They already spent all the money, but like.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
This disappearance and crime have never been so.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Wow, imagine pulling that off.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Evidence suggested that he did not survive the fall, but
nobody was ever found, and investigators quickly did composite sketches,
eyewitness reports, physical evidence. Following the hijacking all that jazz
aerial searches countless leads with no luck. There was no
trace of him. But then on February tenth, nineteen eighty,
(05:27):
an eight year old boy named Brian Ingram discovered three
packs of the ransom cash totaling about fifty eight hundred dollars,
as he dug in a sandy river bank on the
Columbia River at a beachfront known as Tina Bar. Police
analyzed this later and confirmed that ten bills were missing
from the packs of heavily deteriorated ransom cash, and that
(05:50):
the money had been buried in the river bank several
months after the hijacking, and no additional bills from Cooper's
ransom have ever been discovered.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So they were buried.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So someone found some of his cash that was buried
in a river bank and.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
They never found a parachute, never found nothing, like. It's
just I think he made it to the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
That's the thing is that we'll never really know if
he did or didn't, you know, Like, isn't that fascinating.
I mean there are theories, of course, do you want
to hear the theories?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Common theories. If he died jumping, you know, he would
have jumped in a remote area. Honestly, it's not that remote.
It's kind of your Mount Saint Helens. So if he
jumped in the park, yes, obviously that's kind of remote.
But if he jumped it was nighttime, it was rainy,
he could have landed in a river and then just
been swept right out to see. And also that would
(06:46):
make sense that the money was found in a river bank. Okay, okay,
the money was also never spent. And besides the kid
finding that money in the river bank, it's never turned
up in circulation because they were least the serial numbers
of the bills, so everyone had that information. This inspired
(07:07):
six copycat hijackings in nineteen seventy two, of course, and
so every single one of those guys who jumped out
of a commercial plane with a parachute lived. So the
FBI decided they need to reevaluate this whole theory that
he had just died and like jumped into a river.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I mean, it could have just given him a faulty parachute,
and that would have been that, Like.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Apparently they did give it, since they give him four,
I guess they did give him a faulty one. But
then he like emptied two and put the money in them,
like so they were backpacks, and then he jumped out
with another one. So they searched the woods that he
allegedly jumped in for years and no discoveries of the parachute,
(07:52):
nothing like that. There's been no discoveries of him, and
some investigators speculate because in nineteen eighty the eruption abount
Saint Helen's was in that area, it could have also
obliterated any remaining physical clues. So if he's dead, no
one's ever gonna.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Find anything, you know, or find the money.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Or find the money because it's under tons of lava.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I don't think that could happen today.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
No, I don't think it would work today, just in
the way. This must have been a different type of
plane too, at a lower altitude. I'm just assuming that's
I just don't think if you'd jumped out of a
plane today, like a modern plane, you'd live. But here's
some theories. If he lived, he executed his plan on
Thanksgiving Eve, ensuring four days to complete the operation. There
(08:42):
are no missing persons reports that match his profile, so
he had a clip on his tie that they found
on the plane. There was one hundred percent pure titanium
traces found, and only someone with the aerospace industry would
be exposed to such rare materials, and pure titanium was
used for the Boeing supersonic program that was active at
(09:04):
the time.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And plus he knew how to parachute, so that tells
you like he's into that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, hmmm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Also because some of the money turned up. What's strange
about the money being found is that in that location
is too far off the flight path to have gotten
there without human intervention. It's also suspiciously suggestive that it
appears along the edge of a river, suggesting he must
have drowned. It feels like the money was planted to
throw the FBI off his trail. This is the single
(09:35):
most telling bit of evidence that seems to show that
he survived.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
He wants to fake his own death, but the r
there it'll be found eventually.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
People speculate he was an experienced jumper because when he
was on the plane. He was remarking that like they
were over Tacoma, like he recognized stuff on the ground
from the sky. Yeah, And he was very calm and
used technology terms that suggested he'd been around aircraft, like
he told the flight crew to fly dirty, which means
wheels down. And then another theory is that he was
(10:06):
Canadian or had strong cultural ties a knowledge of Canada,
because he used the name Dan Cooper as his alias,
which is a French comic book hero that was published
in Canada. And so people are like, ohh, he just
simply returned to Canada or laundered the money up there.
And you know, there's been suspects throughout time, right, Like,
(10:28):
there's so many suspects. I didn't even want to like
list them because they all seem like, Oh, my strange
uncle that just died as dB Cooper. There's also another
theory that I found really funny, that the flight crew
made the whole thing up to get the money.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Wow, Okay, I like that theory.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Hell yeah, I kind of did too. For some reason.
It feels right to me where I was just like,
oh yeah. And then like there's another theory that he
never even got off the plane. Which kind of feels
like the same type of thing where it's like everybody's
in cahoots, which I kind of like.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Did anybody on the ground ever hear him, like his
demands direct?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
See That's what I don't know. You can see why
this has become like a legend that people, yeah, constantly revisit.
So at this point, I don't think we'll ever know
what really happened, and who wants to know because that
would ruin the story. But all the evidence is open
to the public if you guys want to go investigate that.
Citizen investigators are always all about this, but the crime
(11:28):
remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial
aviation history.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
In two thousand and six, there was a story on
Dateline NBC this story We're going to look at Brian Schaffer.
He's a medical student from Ohio State University. It's two
thousand and five and Brian's mom gets diagnosed with cancer. Sadly,
she dies in March of two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Gorse.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The entire family is sad devastated, and Brian is having
a particularly tough time with it.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
At one point he even asks his.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Girlfriend, like, do you want to run away? He's just
kind of getting these weird ideas right. They actually had
a trip planned out a gift from Brian's mom actually
before she passed away to Florida for spring break. During
this break, Brian has dinner with his dad, and you
know how it's with parents, sometimes you end up talking
about things like money and tough topics. This one happened
(12:27):
to be about the life insurance that the mother had.
That same night, Like, Brian goes and meets up with
his friend Clint. They go bar hopping. One of his
other friends meets up with both of them, is this.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Woman named it Meredith.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
They go from barbi Bar they end up at this
place called Ugly Tuna Saluna in Ohio, which was the
last place that Brian was ever seen.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
In the bar scene.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know how it is sometimes you go out with
friends and people drift away. They come back, they meet others,
they come back, they bring someone else. At one point,
around two am, they realized that Brian isn't with him anymore.
They look all around the bar, They go upstairs, downstairs,
nothing's there.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
They go to the bathroom. Nothing. Brian just isn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So they thought that maybe he just walked home because
the apartment wasn't that far six blocks or something like that.
So it was the following Monday they had the trip
that was scheduled.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And Brian didn't show up.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Now you're probably wondering, right, like, why did anybody sound
the alarm?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like he's been missing.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
He had gone through something similar before where he kind
of went away, didn't talk to anybody, so they thought
that this is what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Plus it was April first, April Foles.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
The family didn't think it was that big of a concern,
and he was an adult. The concern obviously grew. At
the airport, They're like, h isn't he here? So they
filed a report. They do all the things, they get
it signed to a detective, and thankfully Columbus.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Ohio has a ton on cameras.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
They look an alleys, shelters, dumpsters.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Hospitals, Brian is it anywhere?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The last footage when they go through everything, the last
thing they see of him was at two am. He
was outside of the Ugly Tuna Saluna. He was talking
to two women who were these two women maybe he
knew them, maybe they were just friends. I mean they're
just like, oh, do you have a light, you know,
that's how you meet a lot of people. The strangest
part here is that there is no footage of him
(14:30):
leaving the barlock. So he goes in and then that's it.
He just never left. This is part of the theories
that are out there. First one, some say that he
wandered off into a construction site that was just outside
of the back door, the one that wasn't monitored by
a security camera. But they say that he stumbled out,
maybe he was drunk and he hurt himself, but the
(14:51):
search was cadaver dogs and nothing was found. How they
say that if he managed to escape the construction site,
he got robbed, murder, abducted, or killed himself. The other
one is the jump cut. Now, there was a part
of the video and the security footage of the exit
where it just gets skipped like it's a certain time
(15:13):
and then all of a sudden, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like could be the camera was off.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It could be like a bunch of things where like
the recording stops and then you're like, oh, the recording.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Stops, so you like press it again and starts recording.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
But there was an employee, a guard that was there
the whole night and said that nobody used the exits
like by the construction site. But it's like during that cut,
could he have exited the other way?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
The other theory I think is a little interesting. It's
a fight with Clint as friend. So it's like some
people had mentioned it, but when he was questioned a
Clint was questioned about it, he decided to get a lawyer.
At first, he was like helping out. He's like, yeah,
this happened, has happened. But then they started really pressuring
(15:55):
him and he was like, no, I want a lawyer.
He refused to take a light detector test. He just
didn't want to talk. He was just like, Nope, you're
gonna have to go through my lawyer, which is something
that is within his rights, Like he doesn't have to
Like this is kind of a rule here.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I wouldn't talk either. I wouldn't say anything unless I
get a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Media can't fire story cares, the police are not your friends.
Get a lawyer immediately.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Don't answer any questions, whether it's a crime involved.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Ever ever ever, get a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The other theory a new life.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Maybe he just decided to leave no trace and start fresh.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Bring that up to his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
He said he wanted to leave, and he said to
break up. So maybe it's just there's logic, like he
might have had his reason again his mom had just died.
But then again, if your mom had just died, why
are you out bar hopping?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Eh? I know a lot of people have done that.
People just deal with grief in different ways, especially if
you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, No for me, I would be like, I don't
feel like doing anything, Like it's.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Hard to get me out of the house.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Maybe also, this is a theory.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
What if you told Clint about like, oh, yeah, I
want to leave and I want to disappear. I want
to start a new life, but don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, And maybe Clint was like, Okay, well let's do this.
You know, maybe he's been on the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
There are also some clues though, like when they actually
when it disappeared, they kept calling his phone. For a
few months, they kept calling his phone and it wouldn't ring.
It would just go straight to voicemail until one night
it rang three times. Investigators got involved and they pinged.
They were able to find where the phone pinged. By
the way, this is when like the cell towers recognized
(17:33):
like where you are kind of anyway, it turned out
to be that the phone was in a place called Hilliard,
fourty miles away from where he disappeared. Since then, there's
no more like, there's no news, like he's just gone.
The tragedy, though, still continued. Two years after that, two
thousand and eight, in September, there's a windstorm and a
(17:54):
tree fell on Brian's dad, Randy. It just killed him.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And for the funeral they had this online guest book
and that's where they found this message that said Dad,
I love you, Love Brian, and in parentheses it said
US Virgin Islands.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
But they looked it up and it turns out the
post was written from a computer in Franklin County, which
I don't know how far that is from where this happened.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
But that was the end of it. They're like, was
this some cruel joke?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Was it Brian?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Maybe? Oh? No, Fan corner and fan Corner, Oh, we
have an update from Petrulli Drop. They have great chemistry,
they're funny, they cover topics well. Also, I haven't heard
any fake or forced laughter. I don't know what those
reviews are about it was an early review. I remember
(18:52):
that some people were commenting on yours truly speaking style. Anyway,
Petully Drop updated this comment update, loving the new format.
Hope y'all keep it up. Skull Fairy, Elf, Unicorn and
ghost emoji.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
We did get a couple of new comments on some
of the older episodes. Oh, for example, this one on
the real origins of black Cat superstitions. There's one from
Ben Duffy that says, bird guy here, I'm forever worried
about how my parrot Boyo will meet his inevitable demise.
He turned five yesterday.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Birds always have a terrible end. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Why, and should live for another twenty five years. We
shall see. Oh that is so sad. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I just because they always die in a weird way.
I don't know why that is with birds. It's like
you'll dive bomb into boiling water or something like that.
Like you'll be like, what the.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Fuck You're twenty five more years of Boyo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Casey Stockdale says, Hello, Edwin and Michelle. My name is Casey,
and I just wanted to say how much I love
your podcast. You guys are so funny and I always
listen and wait for new podcasts. Edwin, I have listened
to all of your other podcasts start to finish, Michelle,
I am going to listen to your podcast next. Thank
you guys for being so amazing and always making me laugh. Wow,
(20:14):
so sweet do you think you?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah? I love it when people are sweet.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
On the Would you visit a ghost Town episode?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yoda is saying, I want to go to Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
All right, make sure you had your kids already.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Cuz you know, bring me a key chain.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, well, do you want a key chain from Chernobyl Vibe?
That's your choice. You do what you want to do
and tell us all about it.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Thanks all all for your comments and for following and
leading reviews where you can.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Definitely give us five stars. We're working on our algorithm
correction and.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
We're still trying to beat that kid that left us
two stars.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So please that little cutie Patuti who left us two
stars for some reason. We're not really mad, we just
need some belts.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I don't know, I'm mad. Should we put out the
I guess so?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I mean it never goes out, So bye, guys.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Let's see yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And Edwin Kovarubias. This podcast was.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Edited and sound designed by Sarah Worhez Wendel, a VW
Sound
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Make sure you follow us wherever you get your pod
The strangest part here is that there is no footage
of him leaving the barlow. So he goes in and
then that's it. He just never left. Get ready for
a campfire story.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
All right, here, we are hiking into the woods. We
got to get that energy back up and get back
to what we really like is just telling each other's
stories by the campfire.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
That's right. Disappearances.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Did you watch Mad Men?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I tried? It was too boring.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You've seen an episode?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
When I'm telling the story, I'm kind of imagining Don Draper,
the lead in that show. You're getting on a plane.
There's leg room, the cabin is full of cigarette smoke.
It's nineteen seventy one. A mysterious man in a dark
suit goes up to the counter and buys himself a
(01:12):
ticket to Seattle from Portland, leaving at two point fifty
pm that day, the day before Thanksgiving. There's no security
check and no pat downs. And no metal detectors. He
is carrying a briefcase. This mysterious man boards the plane
and places his briefcase in his lap. Shortly after takeoff,
(01:34):
the man slips the flight attendant, Florence Schaffner a folded note.
She assumes he's hitting on her and it's his phone number,
so she slips it into her bag without looking at it.
The next time she walks by his seat, the man
leans forward and whispers, miss you'd better look at that note.
I have a bomb. He then quietly opens the briefcase
(01:59):
and show Florence eight red cylinders attached to wires and
a cylindrical battery. On his note, he listed his demands
two hundred thousand dollars, which is around one million in
today's money, four manually operated civilian parachutes, and an aircraft
(02:21):
fuel truck standing by in Seattle for use. Upon their arrival,
Florence immediately went to the cockpit and told the captain,
William A. Scott's the situation. He calmly notified the thirty
five other passengers on the plane that they would be
delayed in flight due to a minor mechanical difficulty, So
(02:43):
the plane circled around the airport in Puget Sound for
two hours as emergency responders notified and gathered all of
the ransom demands, including ten thousand unmarked twenty dollar bills.
During this time, the man commented on the layout of
the land below. Witnesses claim that he was calm, well spoken, polite,
(03:07):
even going so far as to request meals for the
flight crew ahead of their arrival in Seattle. The plane
finally lands at the Seattle Tacoma Airport. And honestly, what
still surprises me about this story is that he received
all of his ransom demands. Isn't that nuts? I feel
like people don't get their ransom demands anymore. Is that like?
(03:28):
Am I like making that up in my brain?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Or now?
Speaker 1 (03:31):
It's like they negotiate with you enough, so like they
play this mental game where like, yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Win, you won't never you never win. But anyway, this
guy wins, so he gets his ransom demands, he gets
his money and his parachutes, and he's satisfied. So he
releases all the passengers and the flight attendants off the plane.
But then once the plane is refueled, they took off
again and the remaining crew are told to head for
the Reno Tahoe Airport. It's raining. Around eight pm, the
(03:59):
captain and the remaining crew noticed a sudden change in
the air pressure on the plane, indicating that a door
had been opened. As the plane was flying over a
heavily wooded area of southern Washington, the Washugo Valley, there
was a sudden movement against the airplane's tail section. The
man had jumped from the plane wearing a parachute with
(04:19):
his stolen money, and he parachuted straight into our hearts.
Because the mysterious man was never seen again, this mysterious
man became known as D. B. Cooper, which is a
slight variation of the alias he used to buy the
plane ticket, Dan Cooper aka Don Draper.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Wait, so they never found him, like they never chased
They never chased them nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
They chased him. He was actually on the most FBI
most wanted list to like I think twenty sixteen when
they just suspended the case. At this point, who's alive?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
They already spent all the money, but like.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
This disappearance and crime have never been so.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Wow, imagine pulling that off.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Evidence suggested that he did not survive the fall, but
nobody was ever found, and investigators quickly did composite sketches,
eyewitness reports, physical evidence. Following the hijacking all that jazz
aerial searches countless leads with no luck. There was no
trace of him. But then on February tenth, nineteen eighty,
(05:27):
an eight year old boy named Brian Ingram discovered three
packs of the ransom cash totaling about fifty eight hundred dollars,
as he dug in a sandy river bank on the
Columbia River at a beachfront known as Tina Bar. Police
analyzed this later and confirmed that ten bills were missing
from the packs of heavily deteriorated ransom cash, and that
(05:50):
the money had been buried in the river bank several
months after the hijacking, and no additional bills from Cooper's
ransom have ever been discovered.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
So they were buried.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So someone found some of his cash that was buried
in a river bank and.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
They never found a parachute, never found nothing, like. It's
just I think he made it to the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
That's the thing is that we'll never really know if
he did or didn't, you know, Like, isn't that fascinating.
I mean there are theories, of course, do you want
to hear the theories?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Common theories. If he died jumping, you know, he would
have jumped in a remote area. Honestly, it's not that remote.
It's kind of your Mount Saint Helens. So if he
jumped in the park, yes, obviously that's kind of remote.
But if he jumped it was nighttime, it was rainy,
he could have landed in a river and then just
been swept right out to see. And also that would
(06:46):
make sense that the money was found in a river bank. Okay, okay,
the money was also never spent. And besides the kid
finding that money in the river bank, it's never turned
up in circulation because they were least the serial numbers
of the bills, so everyone had that information. This inspired
(07:07):
six copycat hijackings in nineteen seventy two, of course, and
so every single one of those guys who jumped out
of a commercial plane with a parachute lived. So the
FBI decided they need to reevaluate this whole theory that
he had just died and like jumped into a river.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I mean, it could have just given him a faulty parachute,
and that would have been that, Like.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Apparently they did give it, since they give him four,
I guess they did give him a faulty one. But
then he like emptied two and put the money in them,
like so they were backpacks, and then he jumped out
with another one. So they searched the woods that he
allegedly jumped in for years and no discoveries of the parachute,
(07:52):
nothing like that. There's been no discoveries of him, and
some investigators speculate because in nineteen eighty the eruption abount
Saint Helen's was in that area, it could have also
obliterated any remaining physical clues. So if he's dead, no
one's ever gonna.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Find anything, you know, or find the money.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Or find the money because it's under tons of lava.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I don't think that could happen today.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
No, I don't think it would work today, just in
the way. This must have been a different type of
plane too, at a lower altitude. I'm just assuming that's
I just don't think if you'd jumped out of a
plane today, like a modern plane, you'd live. But here's
some theories. If he lived, he executed his plan on
Thanksgiving Eve, ensuring four days to complete the operation. There
(08:42):
are no missing persons reports that match his profile, so
he had a clip on his tie that they found
on the plane. There was one hundred percent pure titanium
traces found, and only someone with the aerospace industry would
be exposed to such rare materials, and pure titanium was
used for the Boeing supersonic program that was active at
(09:04):
the time.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And plus he knew how to parachute, so that tells
you like he's into that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Yeah, hmmm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Also because some of the money turned up. What's strange
about the money being found is that in that location
is too far off the flight path to have gotten
there without human intervention. It's also suspiciously suggestive that it
appears along the edge of a river, suggesting he must
have drowned. It feels like the money was planted to
throw the FBI off his trail. This is the single
(09:35):
most telling bit of evidence that seems to show that
he survived.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
He wants to fake his own death, but the r
there it'll be found eventually.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
People speculate he was an experienced jumper because when he
was on the plane. He was remarking that like they
were over Tacoma, like he recognized stuff on the ground
from the sky. Yeah, And he was very calm and
used technology terms that suggested he'd been around aircraft, like
he told the flight crew to fly dirty, which means
wheels down. And then another theory is that he was
(10:06):
Canadian or had strong cultural ties a knowledge of Canada,
because he used the name Dan Cooper as his alias,
which is a French comic book hero that was published
in Canada. And so people are like, ohh, he just
simply returned to Canada or laundered the money up there.
And you know, there's been suspects throughout time, right, Like,
(10:28):
there's so many suspects. I didn't even want to like
list them because they all seem like, Oh, my strange
uncle that just died as dB Cooper. There's also another
theory that I found really funny, that the flight crew
made the whole thing up to get the money.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Wow, Okay, I like that theory.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Hell yeah, I kind of did too. For some reason.
It feels right to me where I was just like,
oh yeah. And then like there's another theory that he
never even got off the plane. Which kind of feels
like the same type of thing where it's like everybody's
in cahoots, which I kind of like.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Did anybody on the ground ever hear him, like his
demands direct?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
See That's what I don't know. You can see why
this has become like a legend that people, yeah, constantly revisit.
So at this point, I don't think we'll ever know
what really happened, and who wants to know because that
would ruin the story. But all the evidence is open
to the public if you guys want to go investigate that.
Citizen investigators are always all about this, but the crime
(11:28):
remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial
aviation history.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
In two thousand and six, there was a story on
Dateline NBC this story We're going to look at Brian Schaffer.
He's a medical student from Ohio State University. It's two
thousand and five and Brian's mom gets diagnosed with cancer. Sadly,
she dies in March of two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Gorse.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The entire family is sad devastated, and Brian is having
a particularly tough time with it.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
At one point he even asks his.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Girlfriend, like, do you want to run away? He's just
kind of getting these weird ideas right. They actually had
a trip planned out a gift from Brian's mom actually
before she passed away to Florida for spring break. During
this break, Brian has dinner with his dad, and you
know how it's with parents, sometimes you end up talking
about things like money and tough topics. This one happened
(12:27):
to be about the life insurance that the mother had.
That same night, Like, Brian goes and meets up with
his friend Clint. They go bar hopping. One of his
other friends meets up with both of them, is this.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Woman named it Meredith.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
They go from barbi Bar they end up at this
place called Ugly Tuna Saluna in Ohio, which was the
last place that Brian was ever seen.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
In the bar scene.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know how it is sometimes you go out with
friends and people drift away. They come back, they meet others,
they come back, they bring someone else. At one point,
around two am, they realized that Brian isn't with him anymore.
They look all around the bar, They go upstairs, downstairs,
nothing's there.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
They go to the bathroom. Nothing. Brian just isn't there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So they thought that maybe he just walked home because
the apartment wasn't that far six blocks or something like that.
So it was the following Monday they had the trip
that was scheduled.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And Brian didn't show up.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Now you're probably wondering, right, like, why did anybody sound
the alarm?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like he's been missing.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
He had gone through something similar before where he kind
of went away, didn't talk to anybody, so they thought
that this is what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Plus it was April first, April Foles.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
The family didn't think it was that big of a concern,
and he was an adult. The concern obviously grew. At
the airport, They're like, h isn't he here? So they
filed a report. They do all the things, they get
it signed to a detective, and thankfully Columbus.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Ohio has a ton on cameras.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
They look an alleys, shelters, dumpsters.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Hospitals, Brian is it anywhere?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The last footage when they go through everything, the last
thing they see of him was at two am. He
was outside of the Ugly Tuna Saluna. He was talking
to two women who were these two women maybe he
knew them, maybe they were just friends. I mean they're
just like, oh, do you have a light, you know,
that's how you meet a lot of people. The strangest
part here is that there is no footage of him
(14:30):
leaving the barlock. So he goes in and then that's it.
He just never left. This is part of the theories
that are out there. First one, some say that he
wandered off into a construction site that was just outside
of the back door, the one that wasn't monitored by
a security camera. But they say that he stumbled out,
maybe he was drunk and he hurt himself, but the
(14:51):
search was cadaver dogs and nothing was found. How they
say that if he managed to escape the construction site,
he got robbed, murder, abducted, or killed himself. The other
one is the jump cut. Now, there was a part
of the video and the security footage of the exit
where it just gets skipped like it's a certain time
(15:13):
and then all of a sudden, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like could be the camera was off.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
It could be like a bunch of things where like
the recording stops and then you're like, oh, the recording.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
Stops, so you like press it again and starts recording.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
But there was an employee, a guard that was there
the whole night and said that nobody used the exits
like by the construction site. But it's like during that cut,
could he have exited the other way?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
The other theory I think is a little interesting. It's
a fight with Clint as friend. So it's like some
people had mentioned it, but when he was questioned a
Clint was questioned about it, he decided to get a lawyer.
At first, he was like helping out. He's like, yeah,
this happened, has happened. But then they started really pressuring
(15:55):
him and he was like, no, I want a lawyer.
He refused to take a light detector test. He just
didn't want to talk. He was just like, Nope, you're
gonna have to go through my lawyer, which is something
that is within his rights, Like he doesn't have to
Like this is kind of a rule here.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I wouldn't talk either. I wouldn't say anything unless I
get a lawyer.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Media can't fire story cares, the police are not your friends.
Get a lawyer immediately.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Don't answer any questions, whether it's a crime involved.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Ever ever ever, get a lawyer.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The other theory a new life.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Maybe he just decided to leave no trace and start fresh.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Bring that up to his girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
He said he wanted to leave, and he said to
break up. So maybe it's just there's logic, like he
might have had his reason again his mom had just died.
But then again, if your mom had just died, why
are you out bar hopping?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Eh? I know a lot of people have done that.
People just deal with grief in different ways, especially if
you're an alcoholic.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, No for me, I would be like, I don't
feel like doing anything, Like it's.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Hard to get me out of the house.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Right.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Maybe also, this is a theory.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
What if you told Clint about like, oh, yeah, I
want to leave and I want to disappear. I want
to start a new life, but don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, And maybe Clint was like, Okay, well let's do this.
You know, maybe he's been on the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
There are also some clues though, like when they actually
when it disappeared, they kept calling his phone. For a
few months, they kept calling his phone and it wouldn't ring.
It would just go straight to voicemail until one night
it rang three times. Investigators got involved and they pinged.
They were able to find where the phone pinged. By
the way, this is when like the cell towers recognized
(17:33):
like where you are kind of anyway, it turned out
to be that the phone was in a place called Hilliard,
fourty miles away from where he disappeared. Since then, there's
no more like, there's no news, like he's just gone.
The tragedy, though, still continued. Two years after that, two
thousand and eight, in September, there's a windstorm and a
(17:54):
tree fell on Brian's dad, Randy. It just killed him.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Dang.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And for the funeral they had this online guest book
and that's where they found this message that said Dad,
I love you, Love Brian, and in parentheses it said
US Virgin Islands.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
But they looked it up and it turns out the
post was written from a computer in Franklin County, which
I don't know how far that is from where this happened.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
But that was the end of it. They're like, was
this some cruel joke?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Was it Brian?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Maybe? Oh? No, Fan corner and fan Corner, Oh, we
have an update from Petrulli Drop. They have great chemistry,
they're funny, they cover topics well. Also, I haven't heard
any fake or forced laughter. I don't know what those
reviews are about it was an early review. I remember
(18:52):
that some people were commenting on yours truly speaking style. Anyway,
Petully Drop updated this comment update, loving the new format.
Hope y'all keep it up. Skull Fairy, Elf, Unicorn and
ghost emoji.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
We did get a couple of new comments on some
of the older episodes. Oh, for example, this one on
the real origins of black Cat superstitions. There's one from
Ben Duffy that says, bird guy here, I'm forever worried
about how my parrot Boyo will meet his inevitable demise.
He turned five yesterday.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Birds always have a terrible end. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Why, and should live for another twenty five years. We
shall see. Oh that is so sad. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I just because they always die in a weird way.
I don't know why that is with birds. It's like
you'll dive bomb into boiling water or something like that.
Like you'll be like, what the.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Fuck You're twenty five more years of Boyo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Casey Stockdale says, Hello, Edwin and Michelle. My name is Casey,
and I just wanted to say how much I love
your podcast. You guys are so funny and I always
listen and wait for new podcasts. Edwin, I have listened
to all of your other podcasts start to finish, Michelle,
I am going to listen to your podcast next. Thank
you guys for being so amazing and always making me laugh. Wow,
(20:14):
so sweet do you think you?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah? I love it when people are sweet.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
On the Would you visit a ghost Town episode?
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yoda is saying, I want to go to Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
All right, make sure you had your kids already.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Cuz you know, bring me a key chain.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, well, do you want a key chain from Chernobyl Vibe?
That's your choice. You do what you want to do
and tell us all about it.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Thanks all all for your comments and for following and
leading reviews where you can.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Definitely give us five stars. We're working on our algorithm
correction and.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
We're still trying to beat that kid that left us
two stars.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So please that little cutie Patuti who left us two
stars for some reason. We're not really mad, we just
need some belts.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I don't know, I'm mad. Should we put out the
I guess so?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I mean it never goes out, So bye, guys.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Let's see yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
And Edwin Kovarubias. This podcast was.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Edited and sound designed by Sarah Worhez Wendel, a VW
Sound
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Make sure you follow us wherever you get your pod
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