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-(quiet rumbling) -(jet roaring)
-(clicking) -(indistinct announcement)
-(airport chatter) -Walter Cronkite: When he got on a plane
in Portland, Oregon, last night,
he was just another passenger.
But today, after hijacking a Northwest Airlines jet,
a description on one wire service...
master criminal.
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: It was Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, when a hijacker named
DB Cooper parachuted out of the tail door
of a Northwest Airlines 727...
Reporter 2: A daring parachute escape somewhere
between Reno and Seattle, Washington.
(helicopter hovering)
Reporter 3: The only unsolved airplane hijacking
in United States history.
Man: He demanded $200,000 and four parachutes.
Then, he disappeared.
Reporter 4: They really didn't know
if the hijacker parachuted around here.
Reporter 5: The story begins there, but how it ends?
That's the mystery.
Reporter 6: But today, they still could not explain
what really happened to DB Cooper.
Reporter 7: Leaving only the question,
did the man the world now knows
as the legendary DB Cooper live...
or did he die?
♪ ♪
Bruce Smith: DB Cooper. Don't know his identity.
Don't know where he came from.
Don't know what happened to him.
It's just one more mystery after another.
♪
Marla Cooper: I remembered my father telling me this story.
"Don't you remember? He hijacked that airplane."
Ben Anjewierden: He ended up being my roommate,
and he talked an awful lot about hijacking.
Bernie Rhodes: He knew that I was closing in on him.
Cooper: The first thing that kind of hit in my head was
that looks like my dad.
♪ ♪
Geoffrey Gray: It almost defied the imagination.
Defied the imagination to do it...
and defied the imagination to get away with it.
(birds chirping)
John Dower: DB Cooper.
Sounds like he's been a big part of your life.
Yeah.
It's used up a lot of good years
that I could've put somewhere else.
That I should have put somewhere else.
And I lost a lot of my life. I mean, you know...
I wish he had never told me anything.
(slide projector clicking, focusing)
♪ ♪
He treated me nice. He...
When he would dance with you,
he knew exactly where to put his hand on your back.
I mean, it was... I'd never been treated like a queen.
(projector clicking)
Dower: What did you know about his past life?
Weber: I didn't ask.
If you love someone,
the past is not important.
(clicking)
We were married March the 27th, 1978.
He died on March the 28th, 1995.
And that's where the story starts.
(clicking, focusing)
He was in the hospital
three days before he died.
-(ECG beeping) -(ventilator hissing)
♪ ♪
He had some kidney disease.
At first, he allowed them to dialysize him,
and then he removed himself from the machine.
The doctors told him he would be dead within so many days.
When you're like that, you're going back into things.
Your brain takes you back to your memories.
-(ventilator hissing) -(ECG beeping)
I went to adjust his pillow,
and then he tries to tell me something.
(inaudible)
He kept on rambling, rambling,
"I buried a bucket and I don't know where-- I can't find the bucket."
-Tim Collins: Jo. -Huh?
You know it better than I do.
No, the day, the day you brought him,
you brought him to the hospice care,
-and you were helping him put on his pants. -Weber: Uh-huh.
And you asked him about his knee.
Yeah. He said he hurt it jumping out of a plane.
Right. Then, you got to hospice care...
♪ ♪
And when the nurses left,
he wanted to tell you a secret. He says, "Come closer."
-And you thought he wanted a cigarette. -Weber: Yeah.
-Collins: So start, start with that. -Weber: Right.
(beeping)
He says, "Jo, you and I've got to talk."
(inaudible)
He was trying to tell me who he was.
He says-- talking about jump out of a plane.
I said, "You jump out of a plane? Come on. Gimme a break."
And that's when he... I'm gonna say a bad word.
That's when he shouted, "Oh, fuck!
Let it die with me." Well, then they came in
and started giving him injections.
He still kept trying to tell me the story.
I did not know what he was talking about.
Dower: But there was one key thing he said to you.
"I'm Dan Cooper."
(ECG continuous beep)
♪ ♪
Those were his last words...
except, "I love you."
Dower: What did you do next?
Called the FBI.
♪ ♪
Narrator 1: The jet age is now here.
The advent of commercial flying
by jet clipper.
Near sonic speed,
but inside, one of the most stunning discoveries.
There is no feeling of movement at all.
(jet whirring)
Narrator 2: Now, over 400 flights a day
by 22 airlines serving over 80 destinations.
You'll find this airplane
much more roomy than the ones you've been used to.
♪
Narrator 3: If this is what comes with the coffee,
you can imagine what goes before.
Tina Mucklow: Let's see if I can find anything else.
Some letters...
My name is Tina,
and, um, I was hijacked
many years ago.
-Dower: There's you. -Mucklow: And there's me.
Think I must've been 20 or 21
at the time of the hijacking.
They painted the job as being glamorous, and it...
I guess, to a certain extent, it was glamorous.
Narrator: When a Braniff International hostess
meets you on the airplane...
she'll be dressed like this.
♪ ♪
Pilot: I believe that
for every dollar that our passengers give us,
they're gonna get $1.50 back in terms of service.
We do it because we want to and not because we have to.
Mucklow: We signed a contract that we wouldn't gain
over a certain amount of weight, but when I was hired,
even if you were married and you became pregnant,
you had to resign.
Plus one thing no other airline can ever offer.
Me.
It was a different world.
Another airplane has been hijacked.
This time by a gunman who said he wanted to go to Cuba
because he said he was tired of TV dinners.
♪ ♪
John Chancellor: Governments of Cuba and the United States
are talking about getting together to curb hijacking.
The only time American planes go to Cuba
is when they've been hijacked.
(siren blaring)
William Rataczak: There was a fair amount of frequency of hijacks.
Typically Cuban nationals
who wanted to return to their homeland.
Everybody on the airplane would get a bottle of rum
and a couple of cigars and got back on the airplane
and flew home and thought it was really a fun thing.
But this one was different because it was
a hijacking demanding money.
♪ ♪
Bill Mitchell: I was coming home for Thanksgiving
from the University of Oregon.
I had run into Portland Airport.
I threw down cash.
This is 50 years ago,
and there was no...
metal detectors. It was just...
a different era.
Bob Fuhriman: All you had to have was a ticket
to get on the flight.
Dower: Security?
What? (laughs)
(plane idling)
Mitchell: You just walked up
the back steps of the stairs and sat down.
He sat
in the middle seat
on the back row on the right.
♪ ♪
This guy in this suit and tie,
he had sunglasses on,
and it was dark.
And I thought...
that's not very cool.
Rataczak: Florence Schaffner, the number two stewardess, was...
tending to the passengers when they came in,
helping them find their seats
and magazine handouts and what have you.
Um, and he gave her this note.
And she thought he was hitting on her.
So she tucked it in her coat pocket,
if you will, her jacket pocket.
Finally, he said,
"Miss, I want you to read that note."
Just as we were starting to roll down the runway...
(PA announcement)
the flight attendant next to me, Flo,
handed me this note,
and it said, um,
"Miss, you're, um...
you're being hijacked. I've got a bomb. Come sit next to me."
♪ ♪
He opened the briefcase and showed me that
there were these, what looked like, dynamite.
They were strapped together with electrician's tape,
and out of it was running wire,
and there was a large battery.
And he also expressed
that he wasn't going to be taken alive.
(plane chatter)
Rataczak: We were rolling down the runway.
All of a sudden, we hear chimes.
-(chiming) -One chime is usually,
"Would you like a cup of coffee?"
Harold Anderson: Immediately followed by
a number of rings.
-(ringing) -Rataczak: When a series of chimes rings,
that is an emergency.
And it was Tina Mucklow that came on--
on the interphone, and she said,
"We are being hijacked, and I'm serious."
But it was too late to abort the takeoff.
(jet engines roaring)
♪ ♪
Mitchell: I did think, you know, this is, I guess,
my college sophomore ego.
But I couldn't quite figure out
why this young flight attendant
would be sitting next
and talking to this guy.
Mucklow: He had ordered a drink, a bourbon.
He was a smoker, and I actually lit
several of his cigarettes
because he didn't wanna take his finger off that trigger.
I said a prayer for the passengers,
and for the crew, and...
for the hijacker as well.
Um, you know, I didn't know what his history was.
I wanted to run.
But, you know, on a 727,
there's no place to run.
♪ ♪
(insects chirping)
-Dower: If you could mentally time travel... -Ron Forman: Yeah.
Dower: ...go back to that very first day.
Pat Forman: I was just hanging out at the airport, as always,
and Ron took
a break, and he said,
"Let's go over and talk to that lady
that's out there on the field."
♪ ♪
Ron: Every weekend, if the weather was good,
she was up flying. And if it was a rainy day,
she would just be sitting in her car,
you know, if it's pouring down, always by herself.
And I thought there was something unusual about her,
but I didn't know what,
so that's why I decided, let's go talk to her, right?
And then, Ron was telling her
that he had just got his pilot's license,
and he was actually flying
for the Kiwanis Club to build up hours
to get a commercial license.
Dower: And what was she like as a pilot?
-Pat: Oh, man. (laughs) -Ron: Great.
-She was great. And she was daring. -Pat: She was a great pilot.
-She had all the talents, I mean... -She had all the talents.
Pat: She was parachuting.
Ron: Then, after that, she came over every Sunday night.
When she came over, after we knew her a year, right?
That's when she told us, you know...
You-you-you tell that story.
♪ ♪
Pat: Well, she came over one Sunday night, as usual.
She said that she had something that she had to tell us.
All of a sudden, I had this funny feeling.
It was really weird.
I started forming in my mind that...
maybe she used to be a man.
Can that be possible? Can they do that?
Barb stopped talking in the middle of talking,
and she told Ron, she says,
"Well, your wife knows now."
(laughs)
Then she started telling us all the details
of what she had gone through,
and why she had gone through it.
Ron: She was the first woman to have a sex change
-in Washington. -Dower: Or the first man.
-Yeah, first man! Yeah, first man. Yeah. -(laughing)
Dower: What was she called before she had the sex change?
Pat: Her name was Robert Dayton.
(click)
Dower: How did DB Cooper first come up?
Pat: The pilots always are discussing DB Cooper.
-Dower: Well it's this area? -Ron: Yeah, it's this area right here.
And it's one of the, you know, a great mystery, you know?
Pat: Every time there was an article
that said that DB Cooper was an idiot,
-that he did stupid things... -Common criminal.
He was a common criminal, she would actually get angry.
♪ ♪
-She just went off. -Ron: She really defended DB Cooper.
I just looked at her,
and I don't know what made me say it, I just said,
"You know what? I know who DB Cooper is. It's Barb."
And, man, all of a sudden,
she just stared at me, gave me a really dirty look.
She says, "Don't ever say that again."
So I thought that was kinda unusual.
-(birds chirping) -(plane flying)
And then, it was a few--
-a week or two later, right? She came over. And I... -Pat: Right.
happened to have a newspaper article about it, you know,
with a picture of DB Cooper, the sketch.
I said, "Let me comb your hair to the side."
So we combed it to the side, and we put sunglasses on,
and we had one of the old Instamatic cameras.
You know, you take a picture, and it develops.
-(flash) -We were watching it develop,
and I looked at the sketch, and I said, "Jesus Christ."
I said, "She really matches.
I think maybe she is DB Cooper."
♪ ♪
Pat: We had another couple here.
Ron: A couple here, too, a young couple here, too.
And we all kind of just were sitting around the table
with our mouths open, watching her, like,
what is she-- what is she doing here?
And all of a sudden, she realized
nobody was talking. We were all sitting there staring at her.
And then she,
you know, she said, "Well," she says, "Okay.
I am Dan Cooper."
Ron: The couple that was with us, she panicked.
-She just started screaming. -(screaming)
"We're all going to jail now," you know.
And she just went into a panic, and she just tore it
into little bitty pieces.
Threw it down, and they went home.
♪ ♪
We just spent another sleepless night
just like we did when she told us
she was a man because we were...
what if this is true? I mean,
what if, uh,
she starts thinking about it,
and she just told us this, and she comes back here
-and kills us? (laughs) -Yeah, 'cause we know this secret, you know.
(projector clicking, whirring)
Pat: I don't think I wanted to believe it actually.
♪ ♪
But then there kept being more and more and more things
that were popping up.
Then she started giving us details about the jump.
She said she jumped from 10,000 feet.
She kept the chute. She didn't open the chute till 1,000 feet.
Pat: She told us that she had tied
-the money belt around her waist... -The strap around.
...in a manner that, um,
-she could use it as a depth finder. -Depth finder.
And she described the dynamite to us, too, right?
And I said, "Was it real dynamite, Barb?"
"I don't do anything phony," she said.
-Got mad at me because I brought that up. -(laughing)
♪ ♪
Pat: She told us that she landed in the field near Woodburn.
Which is a perfect place. There is the Interstate 5,
the freeway, there's lights there.
Did the jump, changed her clothes,
took off her suit and tie,
put a blonde wig on.
A policeman could've picked her up.
Could've hitchhiked home, they would have never--
She's got a wig on. She's a woman.
Who's gonna-- who's gonna stop her?
♪ ♪
Dower: So what happened next?
Anderson: Well, once we got into the climb,
Florence Schaffner came up to the cockpit
with the other note that had all of the demands on it.
$200,000 in negotiable currency,
four parachutes,
fuel truck standing by,
and, "no fuzz."
Rataczak: That got us thinking that
this guy is no dummy. Four parachutes.
One for him, and one for each one of us.
That was our concern that
he wanted us to bail with him.
I get a hold of our company in Seattle on our
discrete frequency,
and tell them what's going on.
So, the FBI was involved stat.
-(phones ringing) -(office chatter)
Fuhriman: I remember being in the office,
and all of a sudden, over the PA system, came an announcement.
Man (on PA): Attention all agents.
We've had a hijacking.
Then a few minutes later, the boss,
the special agent in charge,
came out of his office and grabbed me.
He says, "You're driving me to the airport. Let's go."
♪ ♪
In any hijacking, or a case like that,
potentially lives are at stake.
But I just remember he was saying,
"Get me there. Let's go."
(plane humming)
I asked Scotty, I said, "Scotty, do you think I should make a PA
"and kinda keep people from roaming around the airplane
while we're trying to get organized here?"
And he said, "I think that's a good idea."
My mother and dad told me never to lie, but...
I told a fib,
and I told them that we had a mechanical problem,
but it was no great consequence.
It was just something that we're gonna--
We're gonna go up into a holding pattern,
most passengers will refer to it as circling.
(engines roaring)
-(siren blaring) -Fuhriman: We had no plan.
The boss is talking to Northwest Airline people,
the airport people, the airport police.
Everybody was coordinating who's gonna do what,
how do we handle this? What do we do?
(engines roaring)
Mucklow: I did ask him
did he have a grudge with the airline.
(inaudible)
He said, "No. I don't have a grudge
with the airline, but I do have a grudge."
♪
(tires screech)
♪ ♪
Fuhriman: Upon landing in Seattle,
the money,
the parachutes were brought out.
One of the flight attendants
was allowed to get off and pick those up.
I got the money,
brought it back to him.
And then, we asked
if he would allow the passengers off.
And once he had the money,
he was okay with passengers getting off.
(siren blaring)
Mitchell: It was dark, rainy...
and we are...
miles away from Sea-Tac terminal.
A stairs came up, portable stairs.
And as we all walked down,
we were all kinda standing there,
and somebody on the plane said,
"Hey, we-- we were hijacked."
We didn't know anything was happening.
Nobody knew anything was happening.
-Reporter: When did you find out? -After we landed.
When they brought the money aboard.
The crew kept us ignorant of what was taking place,
I guess to avoid a panic.
And so, we really didn't know what was taking place.
We cruised around for two and a half hours up there.
Wasn't until we got off the plane, got near a vehicle,
and it looked like a money bag was being handed over.
I then thought of a statement
that I'd heard early on right as we were just in the air
a few minutes when one of the stewardesses said,
"Keep the curtain open so he can see."
(birds cawing)
Dower: Nice room.
It's very, um, "Twin Peaks."
(Cooper laughs)
Cooper: Well, back when that show as on, apparently,
I looked a lot like the dead girl.
And I would hear it all the time. "You look like
the dead girl in 'Twin Peaks.'" (laughs)
Dower: Now...
why am I here, sitting talking to you?
What's, what's your-- Where do you come into the story?
♪ ♪
Cooper: It was 1971.
We were back in my grandmother's home in Oregon,
a couple days before Thanksgiving.
And my uncles, LD and Dewey, are there.
(projector clicking, focusing)
I was always intrigued by them.
They were really rowdy.
And on this particular Thanksgiving,
we go out in the woods near my grandmother's house,
and I'm walking along with Uncle LD, just shadowing him.
(birds chirping)
I had a great affection for him.
He was a very sweet man and...
always my favorite in my dad's family.
They were talking about
something they were plotting, and I,
I said, "What are you doing? What are you up to?
What's going on?"
-(dogs barking) -And they said, "Oh,
we're gonna go hunting tomorrow morning."
I said, "Are you going turkey hunting?
Because it's almost Thanksgiving,
and I'm really looking forward to a turkey.
And, and they kinda laughed.
"Yeah, we're gonna go--
we're gonna go shoot us a great big turkey."
And they're just sort of playing a game
of mental keep-away with me.
Like they've got a secret. What they're telling me
is not the whole truth, and so I keep probing,
trying to get information out of them,
and they're not talking about it.
They're just taunting me with this story of a turkey hunt.
And so early the next morning, I'm waiting in the driveway.
And they came driving up, and I came
running to the side of the car.
♪ ♪
And I looked in the passenger seat,
and there was my Uncle LD,
in a white T-shirt that had blood all over it,
and he's nearly unconscious.
♪ ♪
"Daddy, Daddy! Come out here! Uncle LD's hurt!"
And my dad came running out of the house,
and ordered me to go back inside.
But I didn't go back inside.
-(barking) -And then I heard Uncle Dewey say,
"Well, we did it. We hijacked the airplane.
We're rich. Our money problems are over."
As soon as my uncles left, my dad sat me down,
and he swore me to secrecy, telling me
it's a matter of life and death.
"You cannot talk about this to anybody."
I was 8 years old, and now,
I am left
with keeping a secret that
one of them is hurt horribly, and...
and not able to talk about what I'd seen that morning.
(engines roaring)
♪ ♪
Fuhriman: We know the destination was supposed to be Reno, Nevada,
and he wanted to go further south from that,
I believe into Mexico as I recall.
But... (clears throat)
we didn't know.
Rataczak: I guess I said something about,
"Oh goody. Maybe he wants to go to Acapulco.
(laughs)
That beats Seattle on a rainy night."
-(radio chatter) -We got rid of the people.
We got rid of two of the three stewardesses.
We have a supposedly calm...
guy back there,
and Tina is still there.
Mucklow: I brought him to the back of the airplane.
I was trying to keep him,
and probably myself,
grounded (laughs) and calm.
Whenever I could, I tried to engage the intercom,
and I would just leave it engaged,
so the cockpit could hear
some of the conversation that was going on.
So I think they were aware that his anxiety was going up
as the time lapsed.
♪ ♪
Rataczak: The hijacker demanded
the airplane flew in at 10,000 feet.
"I want the flaps down and the gear down."
Dower: Do you remember what your reaction in the cockpit
-to those instructions were? -(chiming)
Well, it was quite obvious
he was going to jump out of the airplane.
Rataczak: Our biggest concern was how it was going to fly
when and if he lowered the stairs,
which he seemed like he was intent on doing now.
Mucklow: He wanted me to
open the airstairs.
Rataczak: There is a bulkhead door that opens inward,
and it's very noisy when that door was open.
Mucklow: At that point, he just said,
"I'll do it. You go up front."
Rataczak: And all of a sudden, the cockpit door opens,
and it's Tina. And I said, "Tina,
"I've never been so happy in my life
to see a young lady as you."
-(cranking) -(alarm blaring)
So he's taken over the telephone back there.
So the first thing we hear is
-he's got the door open. -(alarm continues)
Now it gets really noisy.
-(rattling loudly) -And so,
he's...
(PA, distorted): "I can't get the, the stairs down.
I can't get the stairs down. The stairs won't open up."
(undistorted, imitates wind) All this noise.
Because the stairs will not come down
all the way because there's too much wind.
♪ ♪
We slowed the airplane down, and I got on the phone then and said,
"Alright, now you should be able to lower the stairs."
-(wind blowing) -(alarm blaring)
(mechanical whirring)
Then we got a big bump.
-(loud bang) -Rataczak: We felt those stairs
bounce back and closed,
and we felt a pressure bump in our ears.
-(engines whining) -(rattling, wind blowing)
Anderson: Bill turned around and said,
and he said this over the air...
Mark your screens
'cause I think our friend just took leave of us.
-(rattling) -(alarm blaring)
(alarm fades away)
♪ ♪
(traffic noise)
Fuhriman: Seattle had just gone through what they called
the Great Boeing Bust.
It was a Boeing town largely.
And so, when Boeing laid off something like 60,000 people,
it just devastated the whole city.
Man: This is in anticipation
of early direction from the Department of Transportation
to close the program down.
Fuhriman: The economy was hurting.
In fact, there was a billboard that we saw
when we drove into town that said,
"Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights."
Gray: You think about the time in which the jump took place.
Poverty.
People, especially in the Pacific Northwest,
were losing their jobs.
They're losing their jobs to big machines.
They're losing their jobs to corporations.
(clicking)
So along comes Cooper, who sticks it to everybody,
and walks away with the cash scot-free.
And so, I think the Robin Hood element
represented an act of defiance.
I think he's one of the slickest cats that ever walked
on the face of the Earth right now.
-Reporter: You think he's sort of a hero? -Oh, sure.
I just think that any time that a fellow's got this much nerve,
and is successful this far that
everybody's kinda rooting for him a little bit.
But, uh, the man's beat the system so to speak a little bit.
And I respect a man who takes his time
to do a job well done.
(clicking)
Gray: The cult of Cooper started
before the plane even landed.
Even though it was a crime, there's a whole community
of people who are obsessed with this story.
♪ ♪
(birds chirping)
Jerry Thomas: I started walking these woods
back in 1988.
That's about 31 years now total.
Dower: How much area have you covered?
Oh, more than I care to remember.
(birds chirping)
Dower: And how would you describe the terrain?
Thomas: Oh, man.
Gotta be some of the roughest terrain on Earth.
You're not gonna be looking for a body at this point.
At this point, you're gonna be looking for a parachute.
That's what you're looking for.
Dower: So you've spent 31 years looking,
not for DB Cooper, but for his parachute.
Thomas: Right.
He didn't make it out alive that night.
That's an impossible thing for him to do. He died that night.
-Dower: You believe. -I know.
I served in the military for 20 years.
I enjoyed it. I miss it,
basically.
That's about it.
-Dower: Vietnam? -Yeah.
-Dower: Special Forces? -Thomas: Yeah.
♪ ♪
I got out of the military, and I didn't really...
I just didn't fit in.
I withdrew. I lived off the grid for 10 years.
I didn't really care that much to be around a lot of people.
Dower: And what do you think about when you're,
you know, walking the woods out here?
Thomas: Actually, not really much of anything. Just a blank mind
to keep my, um, train of thought
as to what's beneath my feet.
Dower: If he died out here, would you not have found him?
Thomas: No, not necessarily.
There was a man that crashed his aircraft up here.
A hunter found his skull
and parts of the aircraft 60 years later.
Now, you tell me.
(chirping)
I just would like to see this case solved.
I don't care who solves it.
But, um, oh, yeah, I'll keep looking.
Dower: How would it be possible for him to land without any trace?
You know...
in that area of the country...
under good conditions, or even under bad conditions
like the ones he jumped in,
if he were able to hit an open space
and land and recover the parachute,
get up and walk away,
it's very possible.
There were other episodes that followed, one in particular
involving a guy named Richard McCoy
where he did a similar thing, where he jumped
out of an airplane and was able to survive.
♪ ♪
(traffic noise)
(thunder rumbling)
Dower: How did you know Richard Floyd McCoy?
Anjewierden: We were in the National Guard together.
I was in the Special Forces,
and he was in the engineers, but quite often,
he'd come and fly with us.
And McCoy was a fun one to fly with.
He was very adventurous.
He was a Mormon, and he was...
a group leader in Vietnam.
Dower: And he was a war hero as well, wasn't he?
I understand that he had received quite a few...
medals in Vietnam.
And McCoy ended up being my roommate.
And he talked an awful lot about hijacking.
(quiet chatter)
You've gotta remember
that I was a Special Forces officer.
And in there, we would plan raids,
and ambushes,
and in this case, we just carried it
a little further. "What would you do?"
♪ ♪
We did some brainstorming,
and we would discuss things like...
that you come in disguise?
Things like that.
Dower: So would you act out
scenarios of how you would do it?
(chuckles)
I guess that's basically it.
Trust me. I wasn't serious at all.
Dower: So these conversations came up
after the DB Cooper hijacking.
Anjewierden: Right. He would
appear to be fascinated with it
because DB Cooper had--
had already done his thing then, see.
♪
Nick O'Hara: McCoy, using the name James Johnson,
boarded a flight to Colorado,
then to LA. And in the process,
produced a note,
a handgun, a grenade,
and demanded a half-million bucks.
♪ ♪
He basically followed the instructions that
Dan Cooper had given in Seattle.
Not to say that they're the same person and not that
McCoy didn't go to school on Cooper,
but there is such
a remarkable, um...
pattern that's followed in
the McCoy that was used in the Cooper case
that people say you could almost overlay them.
Reporter: The young man wanted $500,000
and requested four parachutes.
♪ ♪
O'Hara: So once he gets airborne,
he is aware now how to redeploy the rear airstairs.
Which the first aircraft hijacking,
Cooper had to have help doing that.
McCoy deploys the airstairs, bails out,
lands near Provo.
Anjewierden: I was right here,
and I discussed with the wife.
"I wonder if that's McCoy?"
And called the FBI.
Then they went to his house,
searched it, and found
half a million dollars up in the attic.
Minus $20.
He'd pulled a $20 bill off
for lunch.
Reporter: He was arrested here in his home
in Provo, Utah, early this morning.
He was dressed for a National Guard drill today.
And when the FBI men came, he did not resist.
♪ ♪
Anjewierden: I think he knew the jig was up.
And he told me...
"You know, some of that money was for you."
You know?
Well, shoot, you shoulda told me!
And I'll be honest...
I felt like I'd betrayed him.
But I knew it was the right thing to do.
This is the sketch of DB Cooper
from witnesses on the aircraft.
And this is an arrest photograph
of Richard McCoy.
And...
people can look at that and form their own conclusions.
You think McCoy looks like Cooper?
-(engines roaring) -(radio chatter)
(tires screech)
Dower: And so you finally land in Reno.
Yes, we do, John.
♪ ♪
We got off the airplane. We hugged each other,
and there's a great sigh of relief.
Mucklow: It really wasn't until I got in the FBI car
that I think the aftermath hit me.
As I sat down and then Bill got in the car,
I just burst into tears,
and just sobbed for a couple minutes, you know.
That was kinda the release of it all.
(inaudible)
-Dower: But it was over. -Rataczak: Well,
um, it was what...
(clicks tongue)
Young Rataczak: We felt, in this specific situation,
that we had his confidence. We felt he...
was assured that we were honoring his requests...
and therefore, we made no attempt to impede his...
the completion of his mission, if you will.
He was not nervous. He seemed rather nice.
He never tried to harm myself
and although he was impatient a few times,
he was never cruel or nasty or,
um, impolite to me in any way.
Anderson: They wanted to get the airplane to Seattle
as soon as they could
because they still had the passenger baggage onboard.
We boarded up the backstairs,
and came on, and we hear cheers
and clapping. (laughs)
That makes me emotional. I'm sorry.
♪ ♪
There's a huge manhunt on in the state of Washington
for the middle-aged man who hijacked a jetliner
and got $200,000 in ransom money,
then escaped by parachuting into the night
from the hijacked plane.
Reporter 1: They're looking around here because the hijacked crew
felt a bump as they flew over here.
Perhaps the hijacker jumping out.
Reporter 2: The morning after the skyjack,
the FBI launched NORJAK,
the codename for the biggest manhunt
the Portland office had ever seen.
The FBI had enlisted the aid
of an Army battalion, the local police,
and even the Boy Scouts.
Reporter 3: So, the searchers set out to scour an area
about five miles long and one mile wide,
where they felt they had the best chances
of finding something. They don't know his real name.
They probably wouldn't know him if they saw him,
and he had a big head start.
♪
Smith: Well, you're in Cooper country, so welcome.
-Dower: Is this also where you do your writing? -Smith: Yes. Right here, baby.
This is action central.
We are sitting in the center of my world.
Dower: And this is where you wrote your book...
-Yep. -"DB Cooper & the FBI"?
Correct. Right here.
♪ ♪
(helicopter whirring)
Reporter: An FBI spokesman in Portland,
who declined an on-camera interview,
said his agents are checking for clues
and circulating a composite picture
in a 200-mile corridor south to the California border.
(birds chirping)
Smith: Where do we go looking for DB Cooper?
They're asking Northwest Orient,
"Where was your plane when Cooper jumped?"
"Well, we don't know where the plane was,
"but we know it was 8:13 in the evening.
It would've been around here somewhere."
Well, around here is about
20 to 25 miles of woods.
So Cooper had 40 hours lead
before anybody was on the ground looking for him.
♪ ♪
Fuhriman: And they brought in some military people,
as well as FBI agents. There were a lot of people
searching the mountain area for him,
or for any remains of whatever might be there.
(helicopter whirring)
Trooper: He either got away, or else he sure made
a big hole in the ground up there.
And if he made a hole in the ground,
he's gonna be hard to find also.
Fuhriman: I think there's a good chance
that he hit a tree or a rock
or fell in a body of water and died.
I also think he might've known enough about what he was doing
that he was able to steer himself into an area
where he could land and get out and go.
♪ ♪
Mitchell: I had FBI over for probably over a year,
two or three times
a week, with pictures.
I mean, they'd always come with 10 pictures.
(clicking)
They were making a composite drawing.
Fuhriman: Well, from the composite picture,
he had a slender face and, and, uh...
a Caucasian, maybe dark Caucasian features.
Gray: It was very thin hair to the sides,
almost a little balding.
There was a very thin nose.
There was sunglasses over the eyes,
one without sunglasses,
but how would they know what his eyes looked like?
Fuhriman: Uh, no unusual...
identifying characteristics.
The picture on your left is
the artist's conception of the hijacker.
The picture on the right is a picture of me.
When I got a copy of the sketch,
I sent it to my mother without saying anything about it.
Her comment back to me was,
"Who did that sketch of you?
Looks pretty accurate." (laughs)
And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa! That's not me.
(water lapping)
Smith: Well, I'm one of the few people that put a harsh light,
or I like to think
a strong light, on the FBI.
In 1971, the FBI,
I think fairly, was considered to be
the premier law enforcement agency in the world.
But we now know that bigness does not mean greatness.
And there were a lot of gaps, and a lot of limitations.
Dower: They lost the most valuable piece of evidence.
Oh, they've lost a ton of stuff!
♪ ♪
They lost the cigarette butts.
The cigarette butts are probably
the most salient piece of evidence right now
because we now have DNA testing.
-Dower: So what happened to the cigarette butt? -Montoya: Good question.
A very, very good question.
Um, I don't know. I can't answer that question
because I don't know what happened to them.
Dower: Some say they might've been lost.
Montoya: That's always a possibility.
-Dower: Is anyone looking for them? -You know, I,
I think there have been multiple efforts
over the last four decades
to do so, um, but I don't...
I don't know what the answer is to that.
They're-- They weren't available to us, so.
Dower: There were also issues with
the fingerprinting on board the plane after it landed in Reno.
Smith: Oh! What a mess that is.
What a mess. To this day, I don't know
how many fingerprints were recovered.
That is total meshugas!
Dower: I mean, do you think it was fair to say that the FBI
made mistakes in this case?
(chuckles) I don't know what you mean by mistakes.
The FBI worked with the best information available
and used...
the best judgment that they could
get together at the time with the facts they had,
and perhaps there were mistakes made,
which is not that unusual in any investigation.
-(river flowing) -(birds chirping)
Smith: Eight and a half years after the skyjacking,
the FBI had diddly squat.
There was no hard evidence in the DB Cooper case.
No body, no parachute,
no bomb, no briefcase,
no Cooper, no money.
Then, in 1980...
(birds chirping)
a kid found three bundles
on a beach on the Columbia River.
Oh my God.
Bob Schieffer: A child has led the FBI to the start of a trail
it hopes will help them solve
the eight-and-a-half-year-old mystery of skyjacker
DB Cooper. The first break in the only unsolved
airplane hijacking in United States history
came on a Columbia River beach,
along the Oregon- Washington border,
where an 8-year-old boy dug up the shreds of
$3,000 on Sunday.
Reporter: How do you feel right now?
Well, I feel pretty good.
I'll feel a lot better after we get the money though.
You know, after it's all over.
Smith: Now, the story gets a little bit more complicated.
There's no question that the three bundles of money
were Cooper's money from the ransom
because the serial numbers match up.
But, to this day,
nobody knows how that money got there.
Or when.
How long was it at the beach?
Money was wet, soggy,
had holes in it. It was very compressed.
As if it had been under weight,
and the paper, the bills,
were stuck together. When you tried to peel the bills off,
you'd get chunks.
Dower: But also the thing about Tina-Bar is
it's 45 miles south of where DB Cooper
-supposedly landed. -Yep.
So how'd the money get there?
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: Finally, we close tonight with a mystery story.
It has a villain and a hero, but in this case,
they may be the same person. A man in a dark suit
who bought a $20 one-way plane ticket
from Seattle to Portland...
Weber: I'm gonna go smoke this, or part of it anyway.
Reporter 2: At age 60, Jo Weber admits
she fell in love and fell hard
for a slick-looking, smooth-talking insurance salesman.
And since her husband's death in 1995,
she's pieced together clues dropped over the years.
In fact, a forensic artist who has worked with the FBI
says the physical similarities between
this composite sketch of Cooper
and a younger Duane Weber are striking.
What makes you so sure that he's the guy?
There's too many pieces of the puzzle that fit.
♪ ♪
Weber: Holy cow.
I don't know where the albums are.
They are not where they're supposed to be.
I'm starting to panic.
Collins: This happens to me, too, at home.
Dower: Remind me how you two know each other.
Collins: I grew up about five miles from where
DB Cooper jumped, so I was curious about
what happened, and contacted Jo,
and we've been talking ever since.
-Weber: Okay. Yeah. -Collins: Right there, Sentimental journey.
-Collins: Right there. -Weber: Yeah. We got it.
Well, he's like a son to me.
I mean, he has been...
been there when no one else could give me answers.
He's brilliant. He sees things
that other people can't see like this.
This was the wallet that we found
in the vehicle after he died.
-Dower: So that's the driving license? -Weber: This one is a fake one.
-Dower: John Carson Collins. -Weber: I did not know
who that was, but that was his picture on there.
Dower: So was his real name
John Carson Collins or Duane Weber?
Weber: Duane Weber.
But he'd gone and gotten fake IDs.
-Dower: That's all the different IDs. -Collins: Yes. Yeah.
What was all this about?
And then to find out that he had actually been
in prison under the name of John C. Collins.
These are in a very, very old criminal file.
-Reporter: This is your husband in prison? -Weber: Yes.
Reporter: A man who she now knows lived a lie,
and may have kept a secret of legendary proportions.
Collins: This tax return really meant something to me.
Right after the crime, Duane purchased two cars.
Brand new, paid cash.
He made that year
little more than $1,000. He didn't have that much money.
He buys two new cars right after the crime.
I mean, it was like...
a great, big puzzle!
It bugged the hell out of me,
and it still bugs the hell out of me.
He handed over his will to her in the hospital,
with a safety deposit key taped to the will.
The one that you were able to open, you found this.
Dower: Strange thing to leave in a safety deposit box, isn't it?
Why would a guy who confessed to DB Cooper have this magazine?
And my jaw drops.
"The Man Who Held the Secrets."
-That's Duane. -(Weber laughs)
Collins: What secrets...
did we miss? What did we miss?
Weber: That's Duane up there.
Dower: It's a very pretty urn.
Well, I figured, you know,
we'll be together again one day.
So, when they bury me, that gets buried same time.
Dower: So you married Duane Weber.
He then tells you on his death bed that he's Dan Cooper,
and then a few months later,
you find a wallet in which
-a driving license says he's John Collins. -Mm-hmm.
You then started having these memories,
strange things that Duane told you,
places he took you.
The picture fell together.
♪ ♪
(insects chirping)
Weber: We had a convention in Seattle.
And he said, "I want to go, uh...
a few days early."
He showed me an awful lot of things
and I never did ask a lot of questions.
One point he stopped at
was not too far from Lake Merwin.
And he pointed about at a place,
and he said something about, "That's where Cooper
walked out of the woods." And I didn't know who Cooper was.
Dower: You basically went on a trip to the DB Cooper drop zone.
Weber: I labeled it "the sentimental journey"
because of all the places he wanted to go to,
the places he took me to, the places he disappeared.
♪ ♪
Dower: Not long after Duane's deathbed confession,
she started having these memories,
and even pointed to the woods
and says, "That's where Cooper walked out."
Collins: Right. So, she remembered the journey,
but she didn't know its significance
until she later...
understood who Dan Cooper was.
Dower: That's kind of your role with Jo, isn't it?
You sort of help put her memories
into some sort of order or...
I would say so.
I would say even today she doesn't-- she has these memories
but she doesn't quite understand
all the significance of different parts of them.
Whereas I can listen, I'll filter out a lot of it,
but I can pick out pieces
that seem, um, relevant.
♪ ♪
Weber: I remember when he stopped
at a place on the water.
There was a little motel at that time
called the Red Lion.
What made it significant is
what happened at the location.
Weber: The next morning,
he tells me he's got some place he's gonna go.
He left 7:00 in the morning.
It's getting close to checkout time.
Just about that time, he walks in the door,
he has to go take a bath.
He'd been digging in something.
-And-- -Dower: What made you think he'd been digging?
'Cause he was dirty!
He had on dress pants, but his hands were dirty.
I don't know what he went digging. I don't know where he went.
While he was cleaning up and I handed him a drink,
and I still have the picture
where when I went to take the picture, he gets up,
and he jumps. "Geronimo!"
(shutter snaps)
Like he was jumping, okay?
I got the picture to prove that
because I snapped the daggum picture at that time.
(slide projector clicking)
♪ ♪
And when he gets into the car,
I said, "What's in that paper bag?" He says,
"Oh, just some trash I'm gonna get rid of at the next stop."
He spent an awful lot of time there,
just looking out at the water.
It was odd. It was strange.
And I said, "What you doing?" He says,
"Watching that bag go down the river, flow down."
I hit the ceiling.
I said, "You littered?! You put what?!
"You put a bag in the water?!
A bag of trash in the water?!"
I was angry because I had been raised,
you do not contaminate your waterways.
You do not throw things in there.
If I had done that, I'd have got the whipping of whippings.
Collins: He buried the money someplace.
He left that morning, drove all the way
to wherever it was he had buried this.
Located it, dug it up.
So this is the night when he says "Geronimo,"
and, and she took the picture of him.
Sift through the money and he's discovered that
almost all of it's in great condition.
He's just elated, but some of it's damaged.
Had he thrown the paper sack into the trash,
which probably would've been a wiser choice,
no one would've ever looked inside it,
no one would ever been the wiser.
But instead, he threw it in the river,
which then ultimately was found
about nine miles away from here. Tina-Bar.
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: The speculation is endless. For instance,
is it possible that DB Cooper lived
and buried some of the money right here, next to the tree?
Reporter 2: By analyzing the sand,
geologists hope to learn how several thousand dollars
in Cooper ransom money arrived here.
(waves washing ashore)
Collins: So the FBI,
they thought, "We don't have the expertise to decide
when did this money get here."
They dug trenches three feet down.
Now, the money was found at the top,
but there's a dredge layer down in the middle of the trench.
That dredge layer was from October 1974.
The money's found above that dredge layer.
♪ ♪
The crime happened in 1971.
So if the money got here that night or whatever,
it should be under
that identifiable strata in the sand.
But it wasn't. It was found at the top.
Reporter: The area where the money was found has been dug and re-dug
and results of yesterday's geologic survey are
that the money couldn't have been on this beach
as long as nine years.
Dower: So this is a map that you've made, Tim.
Yeah. Basically, what I wanted to see was the waterways
in all of the county, where do they go.
So, if he lands in this area here,
all the waterways here
go to the north this way.
Yet, the money's found down here.
Well, if you listen to Jo,
he came back in 1979
and threw in a paper sack right here.
And the money drifted around this bend
and stopped here.
It explains everything.
♪ ♪
(rumbling)
Barbara Dayton used to be Bobby Dayton,
until 1969, or Robert Elmer Dayton.
That was my father.
(click)
(sniffles)
Picture of my dad when he was younger,
with, I guess, his first car
or something. Doesn't say.
And this is a picture of my dad at the ranch house.
He was like a cowboy,
and my mother thought he looked really sexy.
But, according to my mother,
my dad kept dressing in women's clothes.
He wanted to come out and play cards
wearing the women's clothes. He'd ask her,
"Do you mind if I wear your clothes today?"
And she would say, "Fine."
But, I think she began looking at him as a friend
instead of a lover.
When I had left home, my brother was in Vietnam.
♪ ♪
But, he died in 1975.
And I came out to the funeral,
and my dad flew down in his Cessna 140.
And I got to meet her
as a her for the first time.
And he told me about the surgery and why
and that he was a freak.
And I felt bad. I felt really bad
that he kept calling himself that.
I was on my way with my cousin.
We were going to Catheys Valley after the funeral.
As we were traveling,
my cousin Billie-Jan said, um,
"Did you know your dad was DB Cooper?"
And I said, "No. Who's DB Cooper?"
♪ ♪
Sharon Power: When the composite sketch came out,
and her dad saw it, Bill saw it.
-He said, "That's my brother." -And it scared him. It scared my dad.
Dower: This was at the actual time of the hijacking?
Whenever that sketch came out in Bakersfield, California,
because I remember exactly where we were sitting 'cause it just--
We were sitting in a car and it was pouring down rain.
He was reading the paper, like he always did and he goes,
"That's Bobby." And just like that.
And I could tell he was afraid, you know?
And, uh, but he never really, to me,
Dad never really talked about it after that point. It was like--
-No, he didn't. -He didn't wanna...
-deal with that. -He didn't approve of it at all.
Yeah, yeah, well, and the sex change.
He didn't approve of that either.
♪ ♪
Dower: And those are-- these are the diaries?
Ruddell: We don't really know where he was that Thanksgiving.
When the DB Cooper hijacking happened,
my grandmother kept diaries of every year.
My dad would say
that he wasn't coming to Thanksgiving
or where he was gonna be on Thanksgiving.
That one particular year in 1971,
he said nothing.
It just says, "house cleaning, etc.
"Ruth brought the turkey.
Irene made pumpkin pies."
So nothing was even mentioned.
It was just nothing. And I believe my grandparents knew.
Dower: And so, when it comes to DB Cooper,
and your father,
-you're a believer. -Ruddell: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
I definitely believe.
I believe it's my dad.
♪ ♪
Gray: You know, it's hard to pick
among these suspects who's more fascinating.
You have Barbara Dayton,
who had the ability, the guts,
-to just do the job. -(shutter flash)
I really saw Barb Dayton with that kind of mind,
with that kind of jump experience, and with nothing to lose.
Dower: What do you make of the Floyd McCoy story?
Gray: Yeah, McCoy was somebody, to me, who,
who, mentally, had the capacity
to be a skyjacker
and understand the skyjacker,
but was he the one?
-(street chatter) -(shutters snapping)
Smith: Uh, the full story of Richard McCoy
has not been told.
A lot of it has been told by Bernie Rhodes.
-(projector clicks) -Bernie Rhodes was
a federal sentencing officer
in the McCoy copycat case.
But, um, Bernie won't talk to me.
Bernie won't talk to anybody.
Dower: I've been trying to get hold of him for over a year.
I've been trying to get a hold of him for 11 years!
-(insects chirping) -(cars passing)
Dower: Don't know...
Mr. Bernie Rhodes.
-Finally! -Bernie Rhodes: Hello!
-Am I gonna sit back down? -Yes, sir.
-(grunts) -Awesome.
Smith: Bernie has a unique perspective
because, at the time,
the whole FBI office in Salt Lake City
were absolutely convinced that McCoy
did the copycat thing as a second skyjacking
because he must've lost the money on the way down.
Dower: If Richard McCoy was DB Cooper,
why in the world would he go back
five months later
and hijack Flight 855?
Because he lost the money the first time.
The Bureau in Seattle brought aboard
a duffel bag that had
no handles, no zippers,
so that it would be easily...
uh, fallen out of-- the money would've fallen out
of the bag on the way when he jumped.
-(wind blowing) -(engines roaring)
Dower: Where did you interview Richard McCoy?
Set the scene for me.
Rhodes: It was in the old county jail.
Dower: You asked him where was he
the Thanksgiving the year before,
the day of the DB Cooper hijacking.
He was adamant...
that he was home.
There was no question in his mind.
And there was no question in my mind that he was not.
♪ ♪
Dower: You put the picture of DB Cooper on the table.
How did he react to the picture being there?
Rhodes: At one point,
he reacted...
emotionally. And, uh...
I think turned his head away. He avoided it,
until the end of that day,
when I had been tough on him.
And then he became very suspicious.
Did his mood change?
Did his personality change?
-Yes. -Smith: He didn't deny...
that he was DB Cooper.
He didn't deny that he had any part
in the Cooper case. He just said,
"I ain't talkin' about that."
Rhodes: Richard's eyes
rested on the Cooper drawing.
He was clearly curious,
but, uh, he never touched it
with his hands.
To me, that seemed a little bit unnatural.
From where I sat that morning,
the face across from me seemed identical
to the composite drawing of DB Cooper.
♪ ♪
He knew that I was
close enough and I was closing in on him.
(inaudible)
He just kept saying, "I was home,"
when we knew he wasn't.
We had all of the evidence
from the Power Thrust service station
in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Dower: McCoy was in Las Vegas, Nevada,
the day after the Cooper hijacking,
despite saying that he was at home
-in Utah for Thanksgiving. -Bingo.
Gas receipts, telephone transcripts
from the phone company that he made a phone call back home
the night of Thanksgiving Day,
that he wasn't home. He was in Las Vegas.
There are, there are multiple pieces of hard evidence
putting McCoy in Las Vegas.
Rhodes: So there was no question that
McCoy was in Las Vegas,
and then went to a casino, which we think
he laundered the $8,000 or $10,000
that he had, and had not lost.
And, uh, called his wife in Provo,
and said, "I'm on my way home."
Now, that's pretty compelling.
Is it circumstantial?
I think it's pretty close to being hard evidence.
♪ ♪
-(reporters chattering) -Smith: McCoy didn't take that lying down.
He busted out of jail the next day.
Got apprehended a second time.
Got sent to a little bit higher security prison.
Busted out of there, too,
and was on the lam for quite a while.
And then the FBI got really serious about Richard McCoy.
Particularly Agent Nick O'Hara,
who actually apprehended McCoy
many months later.
And actually killed him in a gun battle.
Dower: What's it like to shoot a man though?
Well, it's pretty easy if they shoot first
because you get a lot of second guessing
on police-involved shootings,
but ours was very clean
because he came in, he could've given up,
he chose not to, and...
-(clicking) -he just...
when it's, when it's clean like that...
that's about it.
It doesn't... I don't feel anything, honestly.
♪ ♪
Reporter 1: The FBI has reignited a cold case
that has haunted the bureau for years.
And this morning, we have the exclusive story
from the woman who believes she knows
the infamous hijacker DB Cooper,
and her name is Marla Cooper.
Reporter 2: A woman who gave the FBI
one of its most important leads in the mystery of DB Cooper
says she thinks the case is all but solved.
-You're kidding me. Cooper as in... -(laughs)
DB Cooper. No-- This is not an alias.
-No. -You believe that your uncle was DB Cooper.
Yes, I do.
(indistinct chatter)
Cooper: Thanksgiving 2011, I actually met
the FBI agent here in Seattle,
and he told me that he was closing the case.
He said, "I'm satisfied that you're telling the truth.
I think everybody here is satisfied."
♪ ♪
Dower: Was that the first time the FBI had actually
nailed their colors to a mast on a...
-Smith: Yeah. -Dower: suspect?
I think they wanted to bury the case.
I think it was the first effort
by the FBI to walk away.
Dower: She did pass a polygraph test.
I think she believes it!
(stammers) Marla's credible!
Marla believes her story!
Cooper: The last time I saw Uncle LD
was Christmas a year after the hijacking.
♪ ♪
It was that Christmas
that my parents took him
to the airport,
and I never saw him again.
(projector clicking)
And every year, at Christmas and Thanksgiving,
I would say, "Where's LD? Has anybody heard from LD?"
And nobody ever did.
(children laughing)
Dower: So how did this then all resurface
nearly 25 years later?
Cooper: I remembered my father telling me this...
story which was in 1995 at Christmas.
And I said, "Dad,
what do you think ever happened to Uncle LD?"
(inaudible)
He, he goes, "I really don't know, Marla.
I don't have any idea." And I said,
"Do you think he's still alive?" He said,
"Oh yeah. I'm sure he's still alive."
He said, "But I think he's still hiding."
And I said, "Hiding? Who would he be hiding from?"
And he said, "You know, the CIA
and the FBI." And I said,
"Dad, why would Uncle LD be hiding
from the FBI?" And he goes,
"Don't you remember? He hijacked that airplane."
♪ ♪
So when Dad said this to me,
it was like
he unlocked
a secret box inside of my mind
that was-- that I'd forgotten.
My dad died one month after
I visited him at Christmas.
He had called me several times
and said, "You know what happened. You'll remember."
(indistinct chatter)
And I hadn't taken him very seriously at the time.
But when my memories did surface,
I remembered that mandate from him.
(projector clicking)
Dower: Do you believe your uncle was,
or is, DB Dan Cooper?
I know my uncle was DB Dan Cooper.
Dower: You think your husband was DB Cooper?
I know he was DB Cooper.
I know it, with all my heart
and all my soul.
Do you think I would've given up 23 years of my life
if I didn't believe it with all my heart and soul?
Dower: Do you believe that Richard Floyd McCoy
was DB Cooper?
You know, I don't know how you can just
dismiss all of the evidence.
Dower: So do you believe Barbara was DB Cooper?
Definitely.
-Hundred-- -Little by little,
just every little detail that kept coming together,
and um...
-I just definitely believe he was. -I never had a doubt
from the minute I saw that picture when
we combed the hair back, and I'd flown with her.
I knew her, what she was capable of doing.
(rumbling)
Let me grab the ashes, too.
This is Barb Dayton's ashes, and I...
every now and then, she kind of likes to go for an airplane ride, you know?
-Dower: So, you seriously take her ashes-- -I do seriously. Yes I do, yeah.
-(rumbling) -Dower: Why do you think they believe so much?
Smith: Part of it is
it's a validation of their friend.
This is what their friend told them.
And there's enough compelling evidence...
to...
make all the neurological synapses fire
to put it into the truth category.
(plane rumbling)
(roaring)
Dower: Now, you're one of the few people who
have access to the FBI files.
Yeah.
♪ ♪
I walked into the basement of the FBI archives
in a bureau field office,
and I just saw these big closets of files,
and I thought,
"This is the Holy Land.
"Like, I'm in, man. I'm in.
"It's gotta be here somewhere.
The answer's gotta be here somewhere."
No disrespect to the FBI, but I thought,
"I can spend the time and go through 40 years later,
and nail the sucker."
But what happens in the Cooper case
is that the Cooper case files, the majority of them,
they are hundreds,
if not thousands of letters,
poems, different pranks,
different suspicions of people, who all
flooded the FBI with their best tips,
thinking that their neighbor was Cooper,
their ex-wives were Cooper.
Every complaint that people seemed to have in America
seemed to be blamed on Cooper.
In the whole FBI file, the vast majority of it
are just a sort of depository of paranoia.
♪ ♪
Mitchell: I've had people that
come up and tell me that they've got
wife's cousin who,
on his deathbed, said he was DB Cooper,
trying to get me to point to...
somebody-- that I would recognize something.
Reporter: Take the annual DB Cooper festival
at the Ariel Washington Tavern and Store.
There, enthusiasts even reenact Cooper's parachute jump.
(indistinct chatter)
Cooper is right here in this place at this very minute.
I think he made it myself.
I do think so that DB Cooper will live on.
Cooper: The first thing that kinda hit in my head was,
"That looks like my dad."
Woman 1: That is Bobby! That looks just like Bobby! That's Bobby!
Man 1: And he called me
to his bedside, and he said,
"There's something you should know."
Mr. DB Cooper.
Ruddell: I definitely believe that was my dad.
Pat: I miss her a lot.
I even talk to her sometimes. (laughs)
Woman 2: Can't say that he came home bloodied and bruised
'cause he just never came home.
Man 2: That's where the bomb was. Right in this attaché case.
Mitchell: And they would send me a picture and say,
"Can you tell me if this guy was DB Cooper?"
You know, 50 years ago.
And I... no, I can't.
I've quit answering them.
♪ ♪
(wind blowing)
Collins: I realize that there are thousands of people who say,
"I know who Cooper is. He's my dad, he's my uncle,
"he's so-and-so. I've done all this research,
I know it, I know it, I know it."
And I realize I sound exactly like those people.
So I look at myself and go, okay.
Is there any difference between
what I'm seeing and what they're seeing?
Am I just as delusional or whatever?
-Dower: It's endless. -Collins: Yeah. It's like an endless loop.
It just sucks people in.
♪ ♪
Dower: These people all have a DB Cooper-shaped hole
-in their lives. -Smith: Hm.
I hadn't realized that, but I think you're right.
I think that's an interesting perspective.
Dower: What is your DB Cooper-shaped hole?
-Why are you so engaged with this story? -(Smith sighs)
I don't have a full understanding of it.
I don't have a complete answer for you on that.
But I think Cooper speaks to something bigger and deeper
in more people.
People who think,
"I'm just not tough enough,
"I'm just not rich enough,
"and I just don't have enough opportunities.
"And if I had a little bit more of something,
"I'd have a better life.
"But Cooper figured it out.
"He's a smart guy, I'm a smart guy.
"He figured, okay.
"I'm gonna jump out of this airplane, 200,000.
"I'm gonna be in the woods,
"and he got away with it. I wanna be a Cooper.
"I wanna be tough enough to jump out of an airplane,
"in November, at 8:00 at night, in the rain.
"Not give a shit.
"And be smart enough to make it. I'll get down to the ground.
"I'm a tough guy. I'll know how to survive.
Country boys know how to survive."
♪ ♪
Like I said, all Cooper all the time.
Gray: It's really not about him anyway.
It's about the people.
It's about believing in the fantasy.
It's about believing in something.
We're kinda designed to believe in things, and right now,
like what do you have to believe in?
You know, there's not really that much out there
that you get to believe in that has
a sense of mystery, a sense of notoriety attached,
a treasure to find.
It gives people a chance to believe.
Dower: It's kind of overwhelming.
There's so many different stories,
so much evidence.
It's so easy to get lost down the rabbit hole.
Well, I'll tell you what. I want you to walk
through that rabbit hole right there.
Just walk out through there, and then come back.
And that actually wasn't planned. (chuckles)
♪ ♪
But he can see where he's going now.
But he couldn't see it at night, could he?
And look at how hard of a time he's having now.
Crew Member: I think he's lost.
(chuckles)
He's having some fun, isn't he?
Okay, just look for any moving branch.
I lost track of him.
He'll be circling around on us.
Montoya: There is the reputation and the mystique
that the FBI always gets its man.
They're kinda like the Canadian Mounties, right?
But there are also those instances
when we kinda have to grin and bear it
and say, well, not in this case.
Reporter: Agent Montoya, why, why now?
Why the decision to close this case now?
♪ ♪
Montoya: We would love to have solved this.
There's no question about it.
I mean, to see justice served,
and it doesn't feel good
to acknowledge that this is
the only unsolved skyjacking in American history.
I think that what helps is the fact that it was 45 years old,
and realizing that there just wasn't a lot to go on.
(stammers) That it was time for us to make that decision,
time for me to make that decision to move on to other things.
That's not to say that it's, you know, dead and over with forever.
If something were to arise,
those parachutes or that money, we would gladly
take that and run with it.
It's transpired, along with my history so to speak.
I remember watching television
and seeing the original reports.
Never did I think I'd be in this position today,
saying to you that we're closing the case and it's not resolved.
♪ ♪
Whether we like it or not, it's part of our cultural history.
Whether it's Jesse James, you know,
or Butch and Sundance,
or Bonnie and Clyde.
I mean, there are a lot of mysteries out there.
There's no question about it, and this is gonna be one of those.