1 00:00:23,608 --> 00:00:24,776 Here he is. 2 00:00:26,027 --> 00:00:27,070 Stay low, guys. 3 00:00:29,822 --> 00:00:31,991 Target is at the place of business now. 4 00:00:32,658 --> 00:00:35,286 Copy. -This could go south quickly. 5 00:00:36,496 --> 00:00:37,997 He's getting out of the car. 6 00:00:38,831 --> 00:00:41,542 Blue ballcap. Tan short-sleeve shirt. 7 00:00:41,626 --> 00:00:43,419 Blue jeans, white sneakers. 8 00:00:47,090 --> 00:00:51,219 Bob, why won't you just come out and say that you are not D.B. Cooper? 9 00:00:57,767 --> 00:01:01,771 On Thanksgiving eve, 1971, a Northwest flight was commandeered… 10 00:01:01,854 --> 00:01:03,564 The FBI couldn't crack the case… 11 00:01:03,648 --> 00:01:06,109 Cooper became a legend after hijacking a plane 12 00:01:06,192 --> 00:01:09,821 and parachuting out of it with $200,000 cash. 13 00:01:09,904 --> 00:01:11,864 …the daredevil thief called D.B. Cooper. 14 00:01:11,948 --> 00:01:12,907 D.B. Cooper… 15 00:01:12,990 --> 00:01:14,575 -D.B. Cooper… -D.B. Cooper… 16 00:01:14,659 --> 00:01:15,910 -D.B. Cooper… -D.B. Cooper… 17 00:01:15,993 --> 00:01:20,414 The most clever and certainly the most audacious airplane hijacker 18 00:01:20,498 --> 00:01:21,541 of all time. 19 00:01:22,208 --> 00:01:25,169 It's incredible to think we've just passed the 50th anniversary 20 00:01:25,253 --> 00:01:26,671 of the D.B. Cooper case, 21 00:01:26,754 --> 00:01:30,049 and it's still the only unsolved skyjacking 22 00:01:30,133 --> 00:01:31,801 in the history of our time. 23 00:01:31,884 --> 00:01:34,262 What he accomplished was truly amazing. 24 00:01:35,096 --> 00:01:36,597 He got away with it, 25 00:01:36,681 --> 00:01:40,476 he stuck it to the man, and he didn't hurt any civilians doing it. 26 00:01:41,811 --> 00:01:46,149 That is why he is the legend that he's become today. 27 00:01:46,858 --> 00:01:49,068 We have eyewitnesses that have you in Oregon 28 00:01:49,152 --> 00:01:51,404 at the time of the hijacking. Were you there? 29 00:01:51,487 --> 00:01:54,407 My team has no doubt we have found D.B. Cooper. 30 00:01:54,490 --> 00:01:56,409 We have over a hundred pieces of evidence. 31 00:01:57,618 --> 00:02:01,330 We're dealing with a man who has multiple identities, and is a con artist. 32 00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:05,459 I'm here because I want the truth out. 33 00:02:06,210 --> 00:02:08,254 If it hurts, it hurts. 34 00:02:11,090 --> 00:02:12,633 This case is a marathon. 35 00:02:12,717 --> 00:02:17,221 It's a sacrifice, it's a gauntlet. It forces you to question your own sanity. 36 00:02:18,264 --> 00:02:21,601 It forces you to truly believe in the impossible. 37 00:02:22,935 --> 00:02:27,440 Bottom line is, I don't do theories, I don't do folklore, I don't do legends. 38 00:02:27,523 --> 00:02:28,566 I do facts. 39 00:02:30,943 --> 00:02:32,195 Hello? 40 00:02:32,278 --> 00:02:34,447 A team of cold case investigators 41 00:02:34,530 --> 00:02:38,326 are convinced that you are the infamous D.B. Cooper. 42 00:02:38,409 --> 00:02:41,621 Infamous or famous? I thought it was famous. 43 00:02:41,704 --> 00:02:42,663 Okay. 44 00:03:33,756 --> 00:03:36,676 This ten-year journey is the longest I've been on a case. 45 00:03:37,593 --> 00:03:40,513 I just want to share a question I always get, 46 00:03:40,596 --> 00:03:42,098 and that is, "Why?" 47 00:03:43,474 --> 00:03:46,644 Why am I tackling, and my wife too, 48 00:03:46,727 --> 00:03:49,772 why we tackled a 50-year-old case? 49 00:03:54,151 --> 00:03:56,779 It's affected my family members. 50 00:03:57,863 --> 00:04:00,533 I watched my wife and I have frustration. 51 00:04:02,493 --> 00:04:04,287 I watched my children grow up. 52 00:04:04,870 --> 00:04:08,582 And we spent a lot of our own money through the whole thing. 53 00:04:10,167 --> 00:04:12,503 But everyone agreed in our family to stick with it, 54 00:04:12,586 --> 00:04:15,339 because they all believed we had the truth. 55 00:04:26,434 --> 00:04:29,812 What Cooper was able to pull off was really, really difficult, 56 00:04:29,895 --> 00:04:32,398 and he orchestrated it perfectly. 57 00:04:32,481 --> 00:04:36,152 Especially when you consider this was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. 58 00:04:36,986 --> 00:04:39,238 One of the busiest travel days of the year. 59 00:04:46,078 --> 00:04:50,374 Fifty years ago, I was a sophomore at University of Oregon. 60 00:04:51,917 --> 00:04:53,336 I had called my parents 61 00:04:53,419 --> 00:04:57,631 and said, "I got this 37-minute flight from Portland to Seattle." 62 00:04:59,717 --> 00:05:02,261 The sun was out, but it was cloudy. 63 00:05:03,679 --> 00:05:07,350 Walked up the back steps, sat in the back on the left. 64 00:05:07,850 --> 00:05:11,187 And I didn't notice anybody around me 65 00:05:11,937 --> 00:05:13,689 until we took off. 66 00:05:18,986 --> 00:05:21,822 I noticed the guy sitting next to me… 67 00:05:22,573 --> 00:05:24,283 had sunglasses on. 68 00:05:24,367 --> 00:05:26,911 And I thought, "That's kind of different." 69 00:05:28,204 --> 00:05:29,538 "Who does he think he is?" 70 00:05:32,666 --> 00:05:35,544 The flight from Portland to Seattle is a puddle jump. 71 00:05:35,628 --> 00:05:37,922 There's barely even time to have a drink on the plane. 72 00:05:44,553 --> 00:05:46,097 After the plane takes off… 73 00:05:46,931 --> 00:05:50,351 this strange-looking man passes a note to the stewardess. 74 00:05:50,976 --> 00:05:52,478 I just ignored him. 75 00:05:53,062 --> 00:05:54,605 Then he said, 76 00:05:56,023 --> 00:05:57,858 "I want you to read the note." 77 00:05:59,944 --> 00:06:01,070 It was printed, 78 00:06:01,153 --> 00:06:04,281 "Miss, I have a bomb in my briefcase." 79 00:06:04,365 --> 00:06:06,158 "I want you to sit beside me." 80 00:06:06,659 --> 00:06:09,954 This is the beginning of the extraordinary drama of D.B. Cooper. 81 00:06:15,584 --> 00:06:17,628 I can remember her talking, 82 00:06:17,711 --> 00:06:20,339 and then she'd get up and go to the phone. 83 00:06:20,840 --> 00:06:24,427 But had no clue what was going on. 84 00:06:25,594 --> 00:06:30,724 He asks for $200,000 in American currency and four parachutes. 85 00:06:32,393 --> 00:06:34,478 It's one thing to ask for money, 86 00:06:34,562 --> 00:06:35,563 but parachutes? 87 00:06:35,646 --> 00:06:37,606 Why does this man want parachutes? 88 00:06:38,858 --> 00:06:41,610 He was very smart. He didn't order one or two. 89 00:06:41,694 --> 00:06:42,778 He ordered four. 90 00:06:42,862 --> 00:06:46,031 He thought they were gonna dummy up a parachute on him, 91 00:06:46,115 --> 00:06:47,283 so he'd die. 92 00:06:47,366 --> 00:06:48,742 But if he's ordering four, 93 00:06:48,826 --> 00:06:51,287 "He's taking a hostage. We can't dummy him up." 94 00:06:51,370 --> 00:06:52,872 Very smart, brilliant. 95 00:06:57,209 --> 00:07:00,713 The pilot comes on and says, "We have engine trouble, 96 00:07:00,796 --> 00:07:02,756 and we're going to run out the fuel." 97 00:07:04,717 --> 00:07:07,511 "Everybody can move up to the front of the plane." 98 00:07:08,929 --> 00:07:11,932 During that incident, I didn't know what's going on. 99 00:07:12,725 --> 00:07:15,686 We're still flying, so there was nothing to worry about. 100 00:07:16,937 --> 00:07:20,399 Cooper did not want the jet to land in Seattle until all the stuff 101 00:07:20,483 --> 00:07:24,195 was properly staged at the airport, so the jet had to circle around. 102 00:07:32,203 --> 00:07:33,537 It's now getting dark. 103 00:07:34,205 --> 00:07:36,832 This is turning into a dark and stormy night. 104 00:07:38,751 --> 00:07:42,046 And once the hijacker knows that his demands have been met, 105 00:07:42,129 --> 00:07:43,964 $200,000 in cash, 106 00:07:44,048 --> 00:07:46,383 about $1,000,000 in today's currency, 107 00:07:46,467 --> 00:07:49,094 and the parachutes he wants waiting for him… 108 00:07:50,179 --> 00:07:53,098 the plane comes down for a landing in Seattle. 109 00:07:53,849 --> 00:07:55,976 Snipers are watching the plane. 110 00:07:56,060 --> 00:07:58,896 Cooper asks the stewardess to shut the windows. 111 00:07:58,979 --> 00:08:00,356 The plane goes dark. 112 00:08:02,399 --> 00:08:06,195 One stewardess comes out, a detective hands her the big money bag. 113 00:08:06,695 --> 00:08:11,075 She then goes out for the parachutes, and all the passengers come off. 114 00:08:12,326 --> 00:08:14,119 We're a mile away from the terminal, 115 00:08:14,203 --> 00:08:16,747 so a bus comes and we get on a bus 116 00:08:17,331 --> 00:08:19,250 and ride back to the airport. 117 00:08:20,584 --> 00:08:23,671 Thirty-six passengers got off the jetliner in Seattle last night, 118 00:08:23,754 --> 00:08:26,757 left aboard, four crew members and the hijacker. 119 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:31,220 And there's probably a hundred news people out there. 120 00:08:31,804 --> 00:08:34,557 FBI agents there who are interviewing everybody. 121 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:38,727 Said, "Yeah, you were hijacked." And so that's the first I'd heard of it. 122 00:08:39,562 --> 00:08:42,189 The crew kept us ignorant of what was taking place, 123 00:08:42,273 --> 00:08:43,983 I guess to avoid a panic. 124 00:08:44,775 --> 00:08:46,735 And so we really didn't know what was taking place. 125 00:08:46,819 --> 00:08:49,071 We cruised around for two and a half hours up there. 126 00:08:49,154 --> 00:08:51,198 Nobody knew anything was happening. 127 00:08:51,282 --> 00:08:53,284 -When did you find out? -After we landed. 128 00:08:53,367 --> 00:08:54,743 When they brought the money aboard. 129 00:08:55,828 --> 00:08:57,913 The hijacker, dressed in a business suit, 130 00:08:57,997 --> 00:08:59,665 demanding $200,000 131 00:08:59,748 --> 00:09:03,961 and carrying a plain briefcase which he told the crew held explosives. 132 00:09:04,587 --> 00:09:07,881 I saw a big battery with six dynamite sticks 133 00:09:07,965 --> 00:09:09,216 wrapped around the battery. 134 00:09:09,967 --> 00:09:16,807 And he said to me, "All I have to do is attach this wire to this gadget here, 135 00:09:17,474 --> 00:09:18,851 and we'll all be dead." 136 00:09:21,604 --> 00:09:24,607 I got home, and it started catching up to me. 137 00:09:25,316 --> 00:09:31,071 The fact that, yeah, you know, I was sitting next to a bomb. 138 00:09:40,956 --> 00:09:45,294 In the fall of 1971, when this hijacking took place, 139 00:09:46,629 --> 00:09:51,300 the experience of airline travel was vastly different than it is now. 140 00:09:51,383 --> 00:09:54,970 Walking into an airport back then was like walking into a supermarket. 141 00:10:01,185 --> 00:10:02,353 -Hi. -Hi. 142 00:10:02,436 --> 00:10:05,856 -Destination? -Let's just say, "Where the action is." 143 00:10:09,443 --> 00:10:13,405 I love when people ask about airport security back in the 1970s, 144 00:10:13,489 --> 00:10:15,991 because the answer, at least in my memory, was, 145 00:10:16,909 --> 00:10:19,411 "What airport security?" I don't remember any at all. 146 00:10:26,627 --> 00:10:28,837 You didn't need metal detectors. 147 00:10:28,921 --> 00:10:31,757 You didn't have to take off your shoes. You didn't have dogs smelling you. 148 00:10:31,840 --> 00:10:35,678 Certainly nobody searched you, or wanded you, or anything like that. 149 00:10:39,932 --> 00:10:42,184 You just walked in, put down 20 bucks, 150 00:10:42,267 --> 00:10:43,644 and got a flight to Dallas. 151 00:10:44,395 --> 00:10:45,354 That was pretty much it. 152 00:10:46,563 --> 00:10:48,482 And that is what Cooper did. 153 00:10:48,565 --> 00:10:51,735 He went and bought a ticket that day. It was very, very casual. 154 00:10:58,283 --> 00:11:02,121 Remember, this was the beginning of the boom of mass air travel. 155 00:11:04,665 --> 00:11:07,292 They wanted to make the experience a fun, good time. 156 00:11:07,376 --> 00:11:09,211 What kind of flying is that? 157 00:11:09,712 --> 00:11:11,088 A champagne flight. 158 00:11:11,797 --> 00:11:16,301 But unfortunately, at the time, the stewardesses became fetishized. 159 00:11:21,056 --> 00:11:24,309 When a Braniff International hostess meets you on the airplane… 160 00:11:26,145 --> 00:11:27,688 she'll be dressed like this. 161 00:11:28,188 --> 00:11:33,152 In the early '70s, flight attendants have a really hard time. 162 00:11:33,235 --> 00:11:35,446 They're sexually harassed constantly. 163 00:11:35,529 --> 00:11:39,158 They're not paid as much as the men that they work with. 164 00:11:39,241 --> 00:11:40,743 They have an impossible schedule. 165 00:11:40,826 --> 00:11:45,372 They're held to really rigorous and unfair standards about their looks. 166 00:11:45,456 --> 00:11:48,333 She's not just pretty. She's pretty smart. 167 00:11:50,252 --> 00:11:53,172 When D.B. Cooper passed the stewardess the note, 168 00:11:53,756 --> 00:11:56,884 he was probably the, like, tenth person that day to pass her a note. 169 00:11:58,510 --> 00:12:00,763 At that time, being a stewardess is difficult, 170 00:12:00,846 --> 00:12:04,224 and it quickly evolved into the realm of the dangerous. 171 00:12:06,185 --> 00:12:10,022 Guerrilla hijack teams struck four airlines almost simultaneously. 172 00:12:10,105 --> 00:12:14,234 One ticket agent in Houston, Texas, is dead, another agent is wounded. 173 00:12:14,318 --> 00:12:17,196 Aerial piracy is not exactly a new phenomenon. 174 00:12:21,283 --> 00:12:22,868 I was in the CIA. 175 00:12:23,786 --> 00:12:26,038 We would get these reports of hijackings. 176 00:12:26,622 --> 00:12:29,750 And maybe there'd be a report every month. 177 00:12:29,833 --> 00:12:32,961 And then it just kept growing and it kept growing and it kept growing. 178 00:12:33,629 --> 00:12:35,756 Fifteen Japanese radical students 179 00:12:35,839 --> 00:12:37,341 armed with samurai swords, 180 00:12:37,424 --> 00:12:41,720 pistols, and homemade bombs, hijacked a Japan Airlines jetliner. 181 00:12:42,179 --> 00:12:45,474 And, of course, those hijackings, they all had a political goal. 182 00:12:45,557 --> 00:12:48,268 They were punishing a country, they were punishing a group. 183 00:12:48,352 --> 00:12:53,357 They were making themselves bigger and badder than they actually were. 184 00:12:53,857 --> 00:12:55,776 What made you think he had a gun? 185 00:12:55,859 --> 00:12:58,403 He confronted me with something hard in my back. 186 00:12:58,487 --> 00:13:02,241 He said, "We're going to Havana, Cuba. Take me to the cockpit." 187 00:13:03,617 --> 00:13:06,495 There were only two reasons that you hijacked a plane. 188 00:13:06,578 --> 00:13:09,581 You either did it to threaten to kill people and get money, 189 00:13:09,665 --> 00:13:11,792 or you wanted to get someplace, typically Cuba. 190 00:13:11,875 --> 00:13:14,586 The Cuban ones were almost all young radicals 191 00:13:14,670 --> 00:13:16,463 who needed to get out of town. 192 00:13:17,047 --> 00:13:18,590 What did it turn out to be? 193 00:13:18,674 --> 00:13:23,053 It turned out to be a metal comb with a pen on top wrapped with a sweater. 194 00:13:30,435 --> 00:13:33,522 One of the things about crime, like any art form, it evolves. 195 00:13:34,231 --> 00:13:37,317 And so with hijackings, the art form evolved, 196 00:13:37,401 --> 00:13:40,946 and the greatest artist of them all was D.B. Cooper. 197 00:13:43,156 --> 00:13:45,659 With the full ransom, collected from Seattle banks, 198 00:13:45,742 --> 00:13:48,579 and four parachutes aboard, the plane headed for Reno. 199 00:13:51,164 --> 00:13:53,792 Cooper looks into the money bag, he's happy. 200 00:13:53,876 --> 00:13:55,085 And he has instructions. 201 00:13:57,629 --> 00:14:02,217 He's asking to fly at 250 miles an hour, which is slow for a jet, 202 00:14:02,301 --> 00:14:06,179 with the flaps down, at minimum height. 203 00:14:07,264 --> 00:14:08,640 Even the pilots didn't know 204 00:14:08,724 --> 00:14:12,269 the aircraft was capable of flying that slow and that low. 205 00:14:12,352 --> 00:14:15,063 And he said, "It can be done, do it." 206 00:14:17,649 --> 00:14:21,069 They head south over this area called "the dark divide." 207 00:14:22,237 --> 00:14:25,824 Tina Mucklow was alone with him sitting in the last row. 208 00:14:26,533 --> 00:14:29,620 He was not nervous. He seemed rather nice, and… 209 00:14:30,329 --> 00:14:33,540 other than he wanted certain things to be done. 210 00:14:35,250 --> 00:14:38,337 At that point, Cooper sent Tina Mucklow to the cockpit 211 00:14:38,420 --> 00:14:40,130 and told her not to come out. 212 00:14:40,213 --> 00:14:42,674 He was in the back all by himself. 213 00:14:45,052 --> 00:14:49,973 Around 8:12, there was a popping sensation in the ears of the pilots. 214 00:14:50,766 --> 00:14:52,851 The pressure in the cabin has changed. 215 00:14:53,352 --> 00:14:55,938 The aft stairs have gone down. 216 00:14:56,521 --> 00:15:00,233 I told the air traffic controllers that our friend just took leave of us. 217 00:15:03,779 --> 00:15:06,239 To truly appreciate what Cooper did… 218 00:15:07,491 --> 00:15:12,079 close your eyes and take a step, and imagine walking down those aft stairs. 219 00:15:13,914 --> 00:15:15,999 It's late at night, there's a lot of rain. 220 00:15:16,708 --> 00:15:19,419 You're hearing the engines of this jet in your ear. 221 00:15:20,420 --> 00:15:23,882 Imagine looking out in the middle of the darkness… 222 00:15:24,967 --> 00:15:28,720 and then walking down another step and another step… 223 00:15:30,263 --> 00:15:33,016 and just looking out, asking yourself the question… 224 00:15:33,684 --> 00:15:34,935 "When's the time to jump?" 225 00:15:54,579 --> 00:15:55,831 Well, he either got away 226 00:15:55,914 --> 00:15:58,041 or else he sure made a big hole in the ground out there. 227 00:15:59,668 --> 00:16:02,129 And if he made a hole in the ground, he's gonna be hard to find. 228 00:16:03,422 --> 00:16:06,216 By "hole in the ground," you mean slammed into a mountainside? 229 00:16:06,299 --> 00:16:08,885 Right. It's possible that if his chute didn't open, 230 00:16:08,969 --> 00:16:10,637 he's taking somewhat of a chance, I'm sure. 231 00:16:10,721 --> 00:16:12,681 And if his chute didn't open, why, 232 00:16:12,764 --> 00:16:15,434 he's going to probably be pretty hard to find. 233 00:16:16,018 --> 00:16:19,271 Suppose his chute did open, you think he landed safely 234 00:16:19,354 --> 00:16:20,731 and just made a clean getaway? 235 00:16:22,315 --> 00:16:25,777 Well, at this point, he doesn't appear to be hung up in any trees. 236 00:16:25,861 --> 00:16:28,030 At least this is what we're looking for from the air. 237 00:16:29,823 --> 00:16:33,660 And so if he did bail out there and did make a successful landing, 238 00:16:33,744 --> 00:16:36,997 it's possible that he has succeeded in hiding his parachute 239 00:16:37,080 --> 00:16:38,081 and did get away. 240 00:16:39,124 --> 00:16:41,460 Hundreds of troops combed the woods near Woodland, 241 00:16:41,543 --> 00:16:42,919 and east to the town of Ariel, 242 00:16:43,003 --> 00:16:47,716 but nobody knew where he bailed out, where he landed, or even if he survived. 243 00:16:49,342 --> 00:16:52,471 The main problem that the FBI faced initially 244 00:16:52,554 --> 00:16:55,474 is they didn't know exactly where that plane was 245 00:16:55,557 --> 00:16:57,225 when he exited the plane. 246 00:16:58,560 --> 00:17:01,688 There were all these variables. What about the wind? 247 00:17:01,772 --> 00:17:03,899 "Maybe the wind had you a little off-course." 248 00:17:04,483 --> 00:17:08,570 So the terrain that they're searching would be rather huge. 249 00:17:08,653 --> 00:17:10,030 Right at this point, 250 00:17:10,113 --> 00:17:14,076 probably a slim chance of actually finding him in this area. 251 00:17:14,159 --> 00:17:17,829 But at least we may develop information that'll give us leads on where to go next. 252 00:17:18,580 --> 00:17:22,125 It was from these steps, the rear of the 727, 253 00:17:22,209 --> 00:17:25,504 that the FBI believes the skyjacker used his parachute 254 00:17:25,587 --> 00:17:28,799 to bail out somewhere between Seattle and Portland. 255 00:17:28,882 --> 00:17:33,512 Earlier, it was felt that he perhaps bailed out somewhere nearer to Reno, 256 00:17:33,595 --> 00:17:36,431 but all search efforts in this area now have been discontinued. 257 00:17:37,265 --> 00:17:38,600 On Thanksgiving Day, 258 00:17:38,683 --> 00:17:41,603 people all around the world got wind of the story. 259 00:17:42,562 --> 00:17:44,147 The man had disappeared. 260 00:17:46,900 --> 00:17:51,238 The case went from being a truly phenomenal act of air piracy… 261 00:17:51,738 --> 00:17:53,573 into an American folk legend. 262 00:18:00,122 --> 00:18:03,125 When he got on a plane last night, he was just another passenger. 263 00:18:03,208 --> 00:18:06,419 But today, after hijacking a Northwest Airlines jet, 264 00:18:06,503 --> 00:18:08,755 ransoming the passengers in Seattle, 265 00:18:08,839 --> 00:18:12,968 then making a getaway by parachute somewhere between there and Reno, 266 00:18:13,051 --> 00:18:16,429 the description on one wire service: master criminal. 267 00:18:16,513 --> 00:18:19,516 Man, don't you know what that is? That's Jesse James come back. 268 00:18:19,599 --> 00:18:21,393 It was a hundred years ago. Just think it over. 269 00:18:21,476 --> 00:18:25,814 They kill Lincoln a hundred years ago, and Kennedy, it's all going back. 270 00:18:25,897 --> 00:18:27,732 -Do you think he's a hero? -Oh, sure. 271 00:18:27,816 --> 00:18:28,900 Why? 272 00:18:28,984 --> 00:18:33,738 'Cause the guy, evidently, really took a lot of time to plan the whole thing out. 273 00:18:34,406 --> 00:18:39,619 And I respect a man who takes his time to do a job well done. 274 00:18:40,203 --> 00:18:43,832 He's one of the slickest cats to ever walk on the face of the Earth. 275 00:18:45,125 --> 00:18:48,753 The riches in the case, the details that you just can't make up, 276 00:18:48,837 --> 00:18:51,047 started with the hijacker's alias. 277 00:18:51,131 --> 00:18:53,967 D.B. Cooper was not the hijacker. 278 00:18:55,343 --> 00:18:59,681 In Portland, he gave the name Dan Cooper to the ticket agent. 279 00:18:59,764 --> 00:19:01,892 So D.B. Cooper really is Dan Cooper. 280 00:19:01,975 --> 00:19:03,310 What happened, though, 281 00:19:03,393 --> 00:19:06,730 is there's an enormous amount of media attention focused 282 00:19:06,813 --> 00:19:09,941 on this thing, and somebody made a mistake. 283 00:19:11,359 --> 00:19:14,362 The authorities were going down some log they had, 284 00:19:14,446 --> 00:19:17,073 and a reporter overheard it as "D.B. Cooper." 285 00:19:17,157 --> 00:19:19,492 Dan Cooper became D.B. Cooper 286 00:19:19,576 --> 00:19:22,495 because of a couple of sloppy reporters. 287 00:19:22,579 --> 00:19:24,915 Everybody pretty quickly realized within a day or so, that, 288 00:19:24,998 --> 00:19:27,542 "No, it's not D.B. Cooper, it's Dan Cooper." 289 00:19:27,626 --> 00:19:31,338 But, frankly, D.B. Cooper is a more bad-ass name than Dan Cooper, 290 00:19:31,421 --> 00:19:32,964 so D.B. Cooper stuck. 291 00:19:33,048 --> 00:19:35,967 Thus begins the D.B. Cooper branding, you know, 292 00:19:36,051 --> 00:19:38,595 because every folk hero needs a good brand. 293 00:19:38,678 --> 00:19:39,804 D.B. Cooper. Oh. 294 00:19:40,347 --> 00:19:42,182 "Oh, D.B. Who is that?" 295 00:19:42,265 --> 00:19:45,894 And so D.B. Cooper the skyjacker dropped out of the air, 296 00:19:45,977 --> 00:19:48,355 and he landed on Earth as a hero. 297 00:19:48,438 --> 00:19:51,233 In the Pacific Northwest, you might even say 298 00:19:52,484 --> 00:19:54,027 he was a kind of a god. 299 00:19:54,110 --> 00:19:55,987 The man's beat the system, so to speak. 300 00:19:56,071 --> 00:19:58,657 I just think that any time that a fella's got this much nerve, 301 00:19:58,740 --> 00:20:01,076 and is successful this far, that everybody's rooting for him. 302 00:20:05,038 --> 00:20:07,499 People wrote songs, sold T-shirts, 303 00:20:07,582 --> 00:20:12,545 all in honor of the first and only man to get away with hijacking a US plane. 304 00:20:12,629 --> 00:20:17,092 I do think that D.B. Cooper will live on, because they never have found him. 305 00:20:17,759 --> 00:20:19,427 This case is so American. 306 00:20:19,511 --> 00:20:22,847 You have the underdog hero sticking it to the man. 307 00:20:22,931 --> 00:20:25,642 Cooper resurrected this cultural anthem, 308 00:20:26,393 --> 00:20:29,354 almost going back to the heroes like Billy the Kid. 309 00:20:31,147 --> 00:20:33,984 And all the famous bandits and bank robbers. 310 00:20:34,067 --> 00:20:35,860 George "Machine Gun" Kelly, 311 00:20:36,444 --> 00:20:37,904 "Baby Face" Nelson, 312 00:20:38,571 --> 00:20:39,739 and John Dillinger. 313 00:20:40,448 --> 00:20:41,950 We prize the outlaw. 314 00:20:42,033 --> 00:20:44,828 We are fascinated with those who break the rules 315 00:20:44,911 --> 00:20:47,205 because 95% of us don't. 316 00:20:54,087 --> 00:20:56,589 Everybody wants to know who D.B. Cooper was. 317 00:20:56,673 --> 00:20:59,175 And as time has gone by, 318 00:20:59,259 --> 00:21:01,636 it's become this ever-larger mystery. 319 00:21:03,471 --> 00:21:06,725 The evidence suggests that Cooper must have had military experience 320 00:21:06,808 --> 00:21:09,769 to be able to plan and successfully execute such a crime. 321 00:21:09,853 --> 00:21:12,939 When we return, we'll reveal an important new clue 322 00:21:13,023 --> 00:21:15,442 to the identity of D.B. Cooper. 323 00:21:15,525 --> 00:21:19,404 At this point, so many people have played the role of D.B. Cooper. 324 00:21:19,487 --> 00:21:21,656 There's a lot of different reasons why 325 00:21:21,740 --> 00:21:24,743 D.B. Cooper has remained so prevalent 326 00:21:24,826 --> 00:21:26,995 in so many different types of popular culture. 327 00:21:27,537 --> 00:21:29,164 You know, like Amelia Earhart, 328 00:21:29,247 --> 00:21:32,167 we know so little about what actually happened. 329 00:21:34,961 --> 00:21:37,797 The Western world has to have an answer to every question. 330 00:21:40,008 --> 00:21:43,219 And it's really frustrating to them when a story doesn't have an ending. 331 00:21:43,303 --> 00:21:45,096 Doesn't have to be a happy ending, 332 00:21:45,180 --> 00:21:47,515 but it needs a period at the end of the sentence. 333 00:21:47,599 --> 00:21:50,018 The D.B. Cooper case is a prime example 334 00:21:50,101 --> 00:21:52,979 of a sentence that's been left uncompleted. 335 00:21:55,565 --> 00:21:58,568 At this point, there have been something north of a thousand suspects 336 00:21:58,651 --> 00:22:00,362 that the FBI has looked at. 337 00:22:01,196 --> 00:22:04,908 And some of those suspects have actually been really compelling. 338 00:22:06,117 --> 00:22:09,037 Richard Floyd McCoy was an outstanding suspect. 339 00:22:11,164 --> 00:22:13,917 He was in Vietnam. He was an expert parachutist. 340 00:22:14,501 --> 00:22:17,921 McCoy skyjacked another 727 and jumped out 341 00:22:18,922 --> 00:22:21,508 five or six months after D.B. Cooper. 342 00:22:24,719 --> 00:22:26,971 But there's one very big problem. 343 00:22:27,055 --> 00:22:30,475 All the witnesses that saw D.B. Cooper looked at Richard Floyd McCoy 344 00:22:30,558 --> 00:22:31,935 and said, "He ain't the guy." 345 00:22:34,896 --> 00:22:36,898 Duane Weber had a deathbed confession 346 00:22:37,607 --> 00:22:39,275 and looked like the second sketch. 347 00:22:39,359 --> 00:22:41,027 And he was living a double life. 348 00:22:41,778 --> 00:22:43,863 One as a charming insurance salesman, 349 00:22:43,947 --> 00:22:46,574 the other as a career criminal. 350 00:22:47,867 --> 00:22:50,412 He was arrested, I think, 16 times, 351 00:22:51,037 --> 00:22:53,873 but there's absolutely no proof that he had any parachute training. 352 00:22:53,957 --> 00:22:57,377 And he was a criminal that had a hard time staying out of jail. 353 00:22:57,460 --> 00:22:59,796 And then there is Barb Dayton. 354 00:23:01,172 --> 00:23:03,842 She confessed to being D.B. Cooper. 355 00:23:04,592 --> 00:23:07,470 She had the first sex change operation in Washington state. 356 00:23:08,763 --> 00:23:10,265 She used to be Bobby. 357 00:23:10,348 --> 00:23:12,684 And Bobby was a tough guy, a brawler. 358 00:23:12,767 --> 00:23:15,603 And Barb was a librarian and sweet. 359 00:23:17,730 --> 00:23:19,607 It was the ultimate disguise. 360 00:23:19,691 --> 00:23:23,236 As a man, Bob Dayton was a guy with a grudge. 361 00:23:23,319 --> 00:23:26,239 Merchant Marine, he could jump out of airplanes. 362 00:23:26,948 --> 00:23:28,074 But the problem is, 363 00:23:28,158 --> 00:23:32,704 there's absolutely no concrete evidence that ties Barb Dayton 364 00:23:32,787 --> 00:23:35,248 in with the D.B. Cooper case whatsoever. 365 00:23:36,666 --> 00:23:38,877 Some people thought it was Ken Christiansen. 366 00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:40,962 He worked for Northwest Orient Airlines. 367 00:23:42,297 --> 00:23:44,716 Other people thought it was Sheridan Peterson. 368 00:23:44,799 --> 00:23:46,593 Peterson worked at Boeing. 369 00:23:46,676 --> 00:23:48,970 But for a bunch of technical reasons, 370 00:23:49,053 --> 00:23:50,638 both of them have been ruled out. 371 00:23:52,432 --> 00:23:54,476 Even though we still don't know who Cooper was, 372 00:23:55,226 --> 00:23:56,686 to me, what's remarkable is actually 373 00:23:56,769 --> 00:23:59,606 how much people identify with Cooper 50 years later. 374 00:24:00,315 --> 00:24:02,984 We're in Vancouver, Washington, at Victor-23. 375 00:24:03,067 --> 00:24:05,278 This is a D.B. Cooper-themed bar. 376 00:24:05,361 --> 00:24:08,364 We've got our pilsner Schaffner here, 377 00:24:08,448 --> 00:24:10,700 our Flight 305 amber here, 378 00:24:10,783 --> 00:24:14,496 our Skyjacker IPA, our Headless Hijacker, 379 00:24:14,579 --> 00:24:16,206 and our Jet Fuel IPA. 380 00:24:16,748 --> 00:24:22,378 And also why people still look to embed him into film and culture. 381 00:24:28,551 --> 00:24:29,719 You'd better be ready. 382 00:24:32,305 --> 00:24:34,182 The far more interesting story 383 00:24:34,265 --> 00:24:37,936 than just some guy who jumped out of a plane and disappeared, 384 00:24:38,019 --> 00:24:39,562 is the fascination with it. 385 00:24:40,146 --> 00:24:42,815 Check out this map. He pinpointed D.B.'s landing. 386 00:24:43,608 --> 00:24:44,859 That's crazy. 387 00:24:44,943 --> 00:24:47,862 With respect to D.B. Cooper over the last 50 years, 388 00:24:47,946 --> 00:24:52,534 arguably, we are no closer to knowing who D.B. Cooper was. 389 00:24:53,159 --> 00:24:54,244 Oh, look at you. 390 00:24:54,827 --> 00:24:57,497 Should I call the FBI and tell 'em I found D.B. Cooper? 391 00:24:58,581 --> 00:24:59,582 Joking. 392 00:24:59,666 --> 00:25:04,045 Everybody wants to solve a mystery that's been unsolved 393 00:25:04,128 --> 00:25:08,258 by some of the brightest minds and the best agencies in the country. 394 00:25:09,509 --> 00:25:11,010 After 50 years, 395 00:25:11,094 --> 00:25:16,015 the Cooper case is almost a holy grail of cold cases to solve. 396 00:25:19,060 --> 00:25:21,563 Good morning, everyone. I'm Tom Colbert. 397 00:25:23,565 --> 00:25:26,859 I'm the person, with my wife, Dawna Kay, at the machine in the corner. 398 00:25:27,527 --> 00:25:29,404 We're the ones that brought the case forward. 399 00:25:29,487 --> 00:25:30,697 We received the tip. 400 00:25:33,741 --> 00:25:36,995 For me, the whole thing started when a friend of mine 401 00:25:37,078 --> 00:25:39,038 named Rich Kashanksi called me. 402 00:25:39,122 --> 00:25:43,376 I've known Rich for 25 years. I drop everything when Rich calls. 403 00:25:44,836 --> 00:25:48,131 I was in the middle of another project and I said, "Rich, what's up?" 404 00:25:51,217 --> 00:25:55,054 I was in Vegas. I was shooting a series of infomercials. 405 00:25:55,138 --> 00:25:56,639 And a friend of a friend 406 00:25:56,723 --> 00:26:00,435 told me they knew some gambler who knew who D.B. Cooper was. 407 00:26:01,936 --> 00:26:04,772 I rolled my eyes, and he said, "No, Tom, you need to listen." 408 00:26:04,856 --> 00:26:06,316 "I have a guy on camera." 409 00:26:06,399 --> 00:26:08,901 I told him, "This guy seems credible 410 00:26:09,485 --> 00:26:12,447 and he's willing to have lie detector tests." 411 00:26:12,530 --> 00:26:14,449 "It's the only way that you're gonna believe me, 412 00:26:14,532 --> 00:26:16,326 and I'm much willing to do that." 413 00:26:17,201 --> 00:26:19,579 I realized if this tip checked out, 414 00:26:19,662 --> 00:26:22,457 we would be solving one of the most high-profile cases 415 00:26:22,540 --> 00:26:23,791 in cold-case history. 416 00:26:24,500 --> 00:26:28,212 What I found on Ron Carlson's tape was a game-changer. 417 00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:43,186 The story started with Ron Carlson 418 00:26:43,269 --> 00:26:45,897 running drugs up and down the coast with his fast car. 419 00:26:52,528 --> 00:26:57,867 I'm here to tell a story that I truly believe is factual 420 00:26:58,701 --> 00:27:02,205 and it concerns D.B. Cooper. 421 00:27:02,288 --> 00:27:04,916 I did not meet D.B. Cooper 422 00:27:04,999 --> 00:27:06,709 until 1978. 423 00:27:07,335 --> 00:27:09,962 And I met him… 424 00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:12,298 quite frankly, 425 00:27:12,382 --> 00:27:14,884 he was my cocaine supplier. 426 00:27:17,553 --> 00:27:19,180 A guy, name of Dick Briggs. 427 00:27:22,058 --> 00:27:23,976 Almost from the time we met… 428 00:27:24,686 --> 00:27:27,855 he was telling us that he was, in fact, D.B. Cooper. 429 00:27:27,939 --> 00:27:30,233 And he kept saying, "You don't believe me, do you? 430 00:27:30,316 --> 00:27:32,902 And we ended up being at a party in 1980. 431 00:27:33,653 --> 00:27:39,242 And he says, "I'm gonna tell you something that will prove to you who I am." 432 00:27:39,325 --> 00:27:42,286 He said, "That couple over there." We said, "Yeah?" 433 00:27:42,370 --> 00:27:47,083 He says, "They and their son…" They were a hippie-looking couple. 434 00:27:47,166 --> 00:27:49,961 "…are the ones that are going to find my money." 435 00:27:52,046 --> 00:27:55,216 Dick Briggs says, "On that north shore, in three days, 436 00:27:55,717 --> 00:27:57,343 they're gonna find some of my money." 437 00:27:57,427 --> 00:27:58,678 Meaning Cooper's money. 438 00:27:59,512 --> 00:28:01,431 And that's when I knew, "Whoa." 439 00:28:03,433 --> 00:28:04,976 The money was found here, 440 00:28:05,059 --> 00:28:07,770 just a few yards from the shoreline of the Columbia river. 441 00:28:07,854 --> 00:28:11,357 I was gonna build a fire, and I had some wood in my arm. 442 00:28:11,441 --> 00:28:15,027 I got ready to set it down, and my son ran up and said, "Wait, Daddy." 443 00:28:15,111 --> 00:28:18,281 So he raked a place in the sand there, and there it was. 444 00:28:18,364 --> 00:28:19,991 It kind of tumbled up on the top. 445 00:28:20,074 --> 00:28:23,202 A child has led the FBI to the start of a trail 446 00:28:23,286 --> 00:28:26,622 it hopes will help them solve the eight-and-a-half-year-old mystery 447 00:28:26,706 --> 00:28:28,791 of skyjacker D.B. Cooper. 448 00:28:29,792 --> 00:28:31,586 A few days after that party, 449 00:28:31,669 --> 00:28:33,421 all of a sudden this news alert come by. 450 00:28:34,422 --> 00:28:39,135 And it said that they had found, I believe it was like $6,000 451 00:28:39,218 --> 00:28:40,970 of D.B. Cooper's money. 452 00:28:41,053 --> 00:28:44,348 And when they showed the people who found the money, 453 00:28:44,432 --> 00:28:46,684 it was that same couple that was at the party. 454 00:28:48,186 --> 00:28:51,105 In my years of knowing Brian Ingram and his family, 455 00:28:51,189 --> 00:28:55,401 I've seen nothing that would indicate they had any nefarious connection 456 00:28:55,485 --> 00:28:56,319 to the money. 457 00:28:56,402 --> 00:28:59,322 So I believe Brian Ingram is an innocent bystander, 458 00:28:59,405 --> 00:29:01,824 along with his family, in the Cooper case. 459 00:29:01,908 --> 00:29:04,827 Though these are the first pieces of this complex puzzle 460 00:29:04,911 --> 00:29:09,165 to surface in all these years, they are not falling into place easily. 461 00:29:09,248 --> 00:29:11,626 Suddenly, 40 years later, we have a guy 462 00:29:11,709 --> 00:29:15,087 who claims, basically, that Dick Briggs planted the money on the beach, 463 00:29:15,171 --> 00:29:18,466 showing that it was set up, and that Cooper could be alive. 464 00:29:18,549 --> 00:29:22,553 And that's when I turned to my wife and I said, "I think we got a wild one." 465 00:29:28,559 --> 00:29:30,853 Dick Briggs was perfectly capable 466 00:29:30,937 --> 00:29:33,773 of doing what it took to hijack this airplane. 467 00:29:33,856 --> 00:29:34,982 According to him, 468 00:29:35,066 --> 00:29:38,069 he'd been a Special Forces soldier during the Vietnam War. 469 00:29:39,070 --> 00:29:41,447 I mean, he was an accomplished parachutist. 470 00:29:41,531 --> 00:29:44,408 He was familiar with the area. I'm sure he'd planned it out. 471 00:29:45,576 --> 00:29:48,162 I mean, he had the physical and mental abilities. 472 00:29:48,246 --> 00:29:49,664 Very, very intelligent man. 473 00:29:50,206 --> 00:29:52,583 But he was kind of out of control. 474 00:29:53,918 --> 00:29:58,130 One of his buddies from college told me that Dick lost his temper a lot. 475 00:29:58,214 --> 00:29:59,674 He felt he was bipolar. 476 00:29:59,757 --> 00:30:01,425 He would get angry after a few beers 477 00:30:01,509 --> 00:30:03,719 and throw trash cans through windows at bars. 478 00:30:03,803 --> 00:30:05,388 A lot of people feared him. 479 00:30:05,471 --> 00:30:08,808 He was a weightlifter, bench-pressed 425 pounds. 480 00:30:09,892 --> 00:30:13,229 You know, they called him Bugsy because he was a little squirrelly. 481 00:30:14,146 --> 00:30:16,440 The first time I met Dick Briggs, 482 00:30:16,524 --> 00:30:19,193 my husband offers him a cocktail. 483 00:30:19,277 --> 00:30:22,196 Dick does a straight shot of bourbon 484 00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,074 and immediately proceeds to eat the glass. 485 00:30:25,658 --> 00:30:28,411 Blood is dripping down his face. He's chewing the glass. 486 00:30:30,037 --> 00:30:33,708 According to his family, Dick Briggs did lots of parlor tricks. 487 00:30:33,791 --> 00:30:37,420 He could take a woman's hat pin, stick it all the way through his forearm, 488 00:30:37,503 --> 00:30:38,921 pull it out, draw no blood. 489 00:30:40,715 --> 00:30:43,175 One time, we'd gone up to a little town 490 00:30:43,259 --> 00:30:46,888 that, every year, held an annual D.B. Cooper festival. 491 00:30:49,056 --> 00:30:52,518 All he'd keep saying is, "I just want to tell these people who I am." 492 00:30:52,602 --> 00:30:54,312 And "They're here for me." 493 00:30:54,395 --> 00:30:55,938 He had that kind of ego 494 00:30:56,022 --> 00:30:58,524 that was necessary to be D.B. Cooper. 495 00:30:58,608 --> 00:31:01,736 I think D.B. is, like, the coolest guy in America. 496 00:31:16,125 --> 00:31:17,376 -Is it on? -Yeah. 497 00:31:17,460 --> 00:31:19,462 -Let me get focused. -Perfect. 498 00:31:20,379 --> 00:31:23,049 When I realized Dick Briggs could be Cooper, 499 00:31:23,132 --> 00:31:25,384 I started to document the investigation, 500 00:31:25,468 --> 00:31:28,346 so that I could eventually sell it as a documentary. 501 00:31:30,097 --> 00:31:33,434 When Rich brought me this drug trafficker, Ron Carlson, 502 00:31:33,517 --> 00:31:37,521 I did due diligence to make sure he's telling the truth about Dick Briggs. 503 00:31:37,605 --> 00:31:41,400 We interviewed Ron Carlson three times, once under a lie detector. 504 00:31:42,109 --> 00:31:43,986 Okay, I'm gonna turn the chair. 505 00:31:44,070 --> 00:31:47,365 We had FBI agent Jack Trimarco do the test. 506 00:31:47,448 --> 00:31:49,533 I went to polygraph school 507 00:31:49,617 --> 00:31:52,328 at the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute 508 00:31:52,411 --> 00:31:54,914 at Fort McClellan, Alabama. 509 00:31:54,997 --> 00:31:59,043 Jack Trimarco is the best of the best when it comes to polygraph. 510 00:31:59,126 --> 00:32:02,463 He has administered over 3,500 polygraphs. 511 00:32:02,546 --> 00:32:04,590 I'll ask you to lean forward in the chair 512 00:32:04,674 --> 00:32:07,259 and put your arms out in front like you're gonna dive into a pool. 513 00:32:07,343 --> 00:32:09,261 That's it. This'll go around your midsection. 514 00:32:10,012 --> 00:32:12,807 Anything that's going on that's physiological, 515 00:32:12,890 --> 00:32:16,060 that's an anomaly, is gonna come through loud and clear to me. 516 00:32:16,143 --> 00:32:19,814 Meaning how the body changes for those few precious seconds… 517 00:32:20,356 --> 00:32:23,484 when a person knows that they're telling a lie. 518 00:32:24,151 --> 00:32:25,778 The test is about to begin. 519 00:32:29,115 --> 00:32:31,951 Did Dick Briggs ever tell you that he was D.B. Cooper? 520 00:32:32,576 --> 00:32:33,411 Yes. 521 00:32:35,454 --> 00:32:36,622 For the question, 522 00:32:36,706 --> 00:32:39,875 "Were you told by Dick Briggs that he was D.B. Cooper?" 523 00:32:39,959 --> 00:32:42,169 he did very well on that issue. 524 00:32:44,046 --> 00:32:46,549 Have you ever lied to an authority figure? 525 00:32:47,133 --> 00:32:47,967 No. 526 00:32:48,926 --> 00:32:51,721 After the lie detector test, I told Rich, 527 00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:54,056 "I think he's telling the truth." 528 00:32:54,724 --> 00:33:00,271 So then we started doing the research to see if Dick Briggs was D.B. Cooper. 529 00:33:00,354 --> 00:33:03,983 D.B. Cooper was a Walter Mitty kind of man. 530 00:33:04,066 --> 00:33:07,903 Ever since boyhood, he had bolstered his self-confidence 531 00:33:07,987 --> 00:33:13,909 by fantasizing wild adventures in which he, of course, was the hero. 532 00:33:18,789 --> 00:33:22,752 One day, we found out that Dick Briggs died mysteriously. 533 00:33:23,252 --> 00:33:25,129 His friends think he was murdered. 534 00:33:25,212 --> 00:33:28,257 It was a one-car accident in the middle of nowhere in Portland. 535 00:33:31,218 --> 00:33:33,929 Before this, he talked about Vietnam. 536 00:33:35,347 --> 00:33:38,225 But that's where his story had a real problem. 537 00:33:39,143 --> 00:33:41,437 I spent eight months on that thread. 538 00:33:42,730 --> 00:33:44,440 I actually believed he was Cooper. 539 00:33:45,566 --> 00:33:49,695 But then I find out he's never been to Vietnam, can't parachute. 540 00:33:49,779 --> 00:33:53,365 He was a part-time weekend warrior for the Air Force, 541 00:33:53,449 --> 00:33:54,992 so he didn't have to go to Vietnam. 542 00:33:55,868 --> 00:33:56,869 Right at that point, 543 00:33:56,952 --> 00:34:00,289 I'm looking at this man and thinking, "I got the wrong guy." 544 00:34:00,372 --> 00:34:02,625 Here are the facts as we know them. 545 00:34:02,708 --> 00:34:05,127 Cooper was a tall, dark man. 546 00:34:05,628 --> 00:34:12,301 Dick Briggs was a short, stocky, just gigantic, muscular man. 547 00:34:13,636 --> 00:34:15,096 Briggs wasn't the guy. 548 00:34:15,930 --> 00:34:20,101 He was just some braggart saying, "I'm D.B. Cooper," you know? 549 00:34:20,768 --> 00:34:23,395 We were thinking, "Hey, this is over." 550 00:34:25,064 --> 00:34:26,649 Ron Carlson felt terrible, 551 00:34:27,441 --> 00:34:30,152 'cause for 40 years, he was told this man was Cooper. 552 00:34:30,236 --> 00:34:31,362 Didn't even look like him, 553 00:34:31,445 --> 00:34:33,447 but he believed him because he had the money found. 554 00:34:34,406 --> 00:34:37,535 You know, the twists and turns of this whole thing has, uh, 555 00:34:37,618 --> 00:34:40,162 changed my opinion about almost everything. 556 00:34:40,746 --> 00:34:43,124 So, I guess nothing will surprise me. 557 00:34:47,920 --> 00:34:52,091 All who look for Cooper experience something called the Cooper curse. 558 00:34:52,591 --> 00:34:56,303 We don't know who he is or was, where he came from or where he went. 559 00:34:58,222 --> 00:35:00,015 This case is booby-trapped. 560 00:35:00,099 --> 00:35:03,519 Just as you get close to really thinking you know who the hijacker is, 561 00:35:03,602 --> 00:35:06,897 something comes along the way and shows you that it's wrong. 562 00:35:06,981 --> 00:35:11,193 This one is not solved, and we're still after D.B. Cooper. 563 00:35:11,902 --> 00:35:15,573 We may never know what happened to D.B. Cooper or who he is, 564 00:35:15,656 --> 00:35:18,617 but the allure of the unsolved mystery endures. 565 00:35:18,701 --> 00:35:21,537 When I started the case, I thought I could solve it too. 566 00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:22,997 I thought I could solve this case. 567 00:35:29,003 --> 00:35:33,132 At the time, I was working as a reporter and writer in southern Manhattan. 568 00:35:33,841 --> 00:35:35,134 I was covering crime. 569 00:35:36,886 --> 00:35:39,763 One of the things I love about being an investigative reporter 570 00:35:39,847 --> 00:35:41,807 is taking on the hard cases. 571 00:35:41,891 --> 00:35:44,143 You know, the stuff that is just impossible to solve. 572 00:35:44,768 --> 00:35:47,855 And when I first got a tip about D.B. Cooper, 573 00:35:47,938 --> 00:35:49,231 I knew that he was mine. 574 00:35:51,275 --> 00:35:52,359 I had to go after him. 575 00:35:53,527 --> 00:35:56,238 I wrote a book about the case, my first book. 576 00:35:56,322 --> 00:35:58,324 I thought, "If I solve the case, oh, 577 00:35:58,407 --> 00:36:02,077 the Pulitzer Prizes and all the rewards that would come in." 578 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:10,878 Random House Audio presents The Hunt for D.B. Cooper 579 00:36:11,503 --> 00:36:12,546 by Geoffrey Gray. 580 00:36:13,422 --> 00:36:14,840 This is Geoffrey Gray. 581 00:36:15,424 --> 00:36:16,967 It took me over four years, 582 00:36:17,051 --> 00:36:18,802 and I'm here to tell you the curse is real. 583 00:36:21,180 --> 00:36:22,848 Over the decades, 584 00:36:22,932 --> 00:36:26,894 some suspects disappeared, some suspects faked their own deaths. 585 00:36:26,977 --> 00:36:29,480 One man nearly died in a custom-built submarine, 586 00:36:29,563 --> 00:36:31,732 scanning the bottom of a lake for the hijacker's ransom. 587 00:36:33,567 --> 00:36:36,695 One renowned reporter attempted suicide after his suspect 588 00:36:36,779 --> 00:36:38,364 was proven to be a fraud. 589 00:36:42,701 --> 00:36:45,371 Only a steady program of electroshock treatment 590 00:36:45,454 --> 00:36:47,373 jolted him back into coherency. 591 00:36:48,207 --> 00:36:49,375 I started to see 592 00:36:49,458 --> 00:36:51,460 that the Cooper case was not about Cooper himself, 593 00:36:51,543 --> 00:36:53,045 but about the people chasing Cooper. 594 00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,051 People like Tom Colbert and others, and people like me. 595 00:36:59,635 --> 00:37:00,970 Can't help but admire this guy. 596 00:37:02,388 --> 00:37:06,058 Psychologically, this case takes you into the dark divide. 597 00:37:07,184 --> 00:37:10,604 This is a case that questions who you are and what you believe, 598 00:37:10,688 --> 00:37:13,107 what you want to believe, and what really happened. 599 00:37:15,276 --> 00:37:17,987 The only one more famous in the world than D.B. Cooper 600 00:37:18,070 --> 00:37:19,405 is the person who finds him. 601 00:37:22,157 --> 00:37:24,827 I came to a point where I had four suspects, 602 00:37:24,910 --> 00:37:27,246 and I actually thought that they were all D.B. Cooper. 603 00:37:27,913 --> 00:37:30,499 I pulled myself back, and I was like, "Why have I gone to this point 604 00:37:30,582 --> 00:37:32,626 where I believe that four people are the same guy?" 605 00:37:33,544 --> 00:37:36,547 That's the thing, you know, it's gold fever, in a way. 606 00:37:36,630 --> 00:37:39,758 You so want to prove that your suspect is the one 607 00:37:39,842 --> 00:37:42,928 that your belief systems take over your logic. 608 00:37:43,012 --> 00:37:46,557 Four people can't be him, and some things just can't be true. 609 00:37:53,897 --> 00:37:55,357 Okay, we're back here. 610 00:37:56,275 --> 00:37:57,735 Wait a minute, we got the train again. 611 00:37:58,402 --> 00:37:59,278 Hang on. Sorry. 612 00:38:01,030 --> 00:38:04,408 When we finally figured out Dick Briggs was not D.B. Cooper, 613 00:38:04,491 --> 00:38:06,827 I said, "Could he have had a partner?" 614 00:38:06,910 --> 00:38:10,331 Tom's tenacity is amazing. I mean, he just won't give up. 615 00:38:10,414 --> 00:38:13,292 You know, when he sees a dead end, I'm going, "Okay, that's it," 616 00:38:13,375 --> 00:38:14,793 he just keeps on going. 617 00:38:16,545 --> 00:38:17,880 I make a decision. 618 00:38:17,963 --> 00:38:19,965 I'm going to call the police department in Portland, 619 00:38:20,049 --> 00:38:22,051 and I'm gonna find some old narcs. 620 00:38:22,718 --> 00:38:26,513 And so I call and I said, "You got a narc that remembers a guy named Dick Briggs?" 621 00:38:27,556 --> 00:38:28,807 And sure enough, a week later, 622 00:38:28,891 --> 00:38:31,393 I get an 80-some-odd-year-old guy who's still alive. 623 00:38:31,977 --> 00:38:36,106 They give me a half-dozen to a dozen neighborhood friends of Dick Briggs. 624 00:38:36,690 --> 00:38:39,485 I started peeling them back, going one by one, 625 00:38:39,568 --> 00:38:41,111 and hearing stories about him. 626 00:38:41,195 --> 00:38:44,448 And the last guy I decide to call is the one that scares me… 627 00:38:45,199 --> 00:38:46,992 by the name of Pudgy Hunt. 628 00:38:47,076 --> 00:38:48,744 I've watched too many cowboy movies 629 00:38:48,827 --> 00:38:50,954 with a guy named Pudgy, pulls out a sawed-off shotgun. 630 00:38:54,375 --> 00:38:56,168 Why do they call you Pudgy? 631 00:38:56,251 --> 00:38:57,753 When I was nine months old, 632 00:38:57,836 --> 00:39:01,048 I weighed 36 pounds, I believe. 633 00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:04,510 Tell us about Briggs' friend. 634 00:39:05,094 --> 00:39:08,305 One time, Dick Briggs introduced a friend of his. 635 00:39:08,389 --> 00:39:13,519 And this guy pulled out some clippings from the local newspapers… 636 00:39:15,062 --> 00:39:19,817 talking about him being a Green Beret and a medal winner in the service. 637 00:39:21,318 --> 00:39:23,362 That's when I found out Dick Briggs' partner 638 00:39:23,445 --> 00:39:25,322 was a guy named Robert Rackstraw. 639 00:39:26,365 --> 00:39:28,075 And that changed everything. 640 00:39:33,622 --> 00:39:36,291 We compared a picture of Rackstraw at that age 641 00:39:36,375 --> 00:39:38,919 with the police drawing of D.B. Cooper. 642 00:39:41,171 --> 00:39:44,550 And Rackstraw's picture was almost identical. 643 00:39:47,845 --> 00:39:50,389 You have parachute training, as you mentioned yourself. 644 00:39:50,472 --> 00:39:54,810 Your background suggests that you could have been D.B. Cooper. 645 00:39:55,394 --> 00:39:57,771 Could have been. Could have been. 646 00:39:59,773 --> 00:40:02,109 This man has the skill set. 647 00:40:02,192 --> 00:40:05,112 At that point, I knew we had D.B. Cooper. 648 00:40:06,405 --> 00:40:08,157 And I said, "Thank you, Jesus." 649 00:40:09,074 --> 00:40:13,704 With Rackstraw, I believe we have cracked a 50-year-old case. 650 00:40:13,787 --> 00:40:16,832 I mean, there's a lot of little God miracles going on here, 651 00:40:16,915 --> 00:40:19,710 where I'm whacked on the head, "Oh my God, how did I find that?" 652 00:40:19,793 --> 00:40:21,837 Are you willing to state one way or the other 653 00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:23,797 whether or not you're D.B. Cooper? 654 00:40:24,339 --> 00:40:25,507 With a story like that, 655 00:40:25,591 --> 00:40:27,301 should it be fiction or should it be fact? 656 00:40:28,469 --> 00:40:32,097 Primarily up to the American people someday how that comes out. 657 00:40:33,307 --> 00:40:36,101 Once my team began researching Rackstraw, 658 00:40:36,185 --> 00:40:40,230 they started to find out what he was doing when he wasn't jumping from a plane. 659 00:40:44,985 --> 00:40:48,447 He had all these fake identities, multiple criminal titles. 660 00:40:49,114 --> 00:40:50,657 The guy is off the scale. 661 00:40:51,366 --> 00:40:53,577 You won't believe how crazy it gets. 662 00:40:53,660 --> 00:40:55,287 Are you D.B. Cooper? 663 00:40:55,370 --> 00:40:57,498 I can't talk about things like that. 664 00:40:58,081 --> 00:41:00,042 I can't talk about any of that sort of thing.