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The children of the DB Cooper suspect have given the FBI new evidence because they think their father is responsible.
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A long-hidden parachute on a family property in North Carolina is said to be the same type used in the only unsolved mass shooting in US history.
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The suspect in question was arrested for a similar incident a few months after the DB Cooper event.
The children of convicted space shuttle pilot Richard McCoy II believe their dear old dad may have been DB Cooper, the infamous (and unknown) man at the center of the unsolved 1971 robbery. It is the only one in the history of the United States, in fact, that has no answer—until, perhaps, now.
A few months after the Cooper incident, McCoy was convicted of a similar skydiving that involved parachuting. His children, Chanté and Richard III (Rick), have long thought that the clues are connected.
Now they may have evidence to back up their allegations.
Chanté and Rick were silent out of concern for their mother, Karen, who they believed was involved in both crimes. But since both parents have died, there was an opportunity for the siblings to express their suspicions. And, most importantly, they appear to have solid evidence: a modified parachute that they (and DB Cooper’s apprentice sleuth Dan Gryder) believe was used in the daring escape.
“That factor is one part in a billion,” Gryder said Cowboy State Daily after releasing a series on YouTube about his allegations. It was that YouTube series, Gryder said, that brought the FBI back to the case.
According to Gryder, the FBI now has a parachute and harness that were once kept in the family’s storage shed in North Carolina, as well as a harness and sky logbook named Chanté showing DB Cooper’s movements near Oregon and Utah (the locations of the two skyjacking events). This is the first real move from the FBI in the case since the bureau closed in 2016—even though former employees say it has remained open in secret.
After receiving new evidence, the FBI followed the family and searched the area where the parachute was kept for four hours with more than a dozen agents, according to Gryder. Unique changes in the parachute may hold the key to the value of new evidence in a 50-year-old case. The FBI knows that the first parachutes were modified by Earl Cossey, a veteran astronaut who worked with the FBI until he was killed in his home in 2013. the real DB Cooper.
The DB Cooper case has taken on the quality of fringe fiction, with many theories being put forth by novice sleuths online, in books, and in documentaries. One book from the 1990s-DB Cooper: The Real McCoy—he even claimed that McCoy was to blame, but the book was pulled from print after Karen sued, claiming it was libel.
On November 24, 1971, DB Cooper—he called himself Dan, but the media misspelled the name DB—paid $18.52 for a one-way ticket to Portland, and boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 without providing any identification (due to the lack of regulations at the time ).
Carrying a briefcase and a paper sack, Cooper passed a note to a flight attendant sitting behind him during the flight and told him to look at the paper as he was carrying a bomb. Cooper opened his briefcase to reveal what appeared to be a bomb, then relayed his demands for $200,000, more parachutes, and a fuel truck waiting in Seattle to take off again, bound for Mexico City.
After Cooper’s demands were met, the planned 30-minute flight was extended to a two-hour loop over Puget Sound while the ground crew prepared. Cooper released the plane’s 35 passengers and some crew members, then called out the flight path and flight plan to the remaining crew—requiring specific speeds, flap angles, and more. With these negotiations over, Cooper and the remaining four members left again.
Somewhere still over Washington, Cooper then opened the back stairs and parachuted from the plane, but the exact location and time of that jump is unknown. A quick search turned up no evidence, and over the years, experts have not been able to determine the exact search location due to the many variables involved in night diving.
The only real evidence Cooper left behind was a $1.49 clip-on tie from JCPenney, which is in the possession of the FBI. The associations sued the government for finding DNA and particles left on the tie, but to no avail.
Having a real parachute can increase the evidence in a case enormously.
McCoy is an intriguing suspect—who was eventually passed over because many FBI agents believed the real DB Cooper was dead by the time McCoy emerged as a possibility. And McCoy didn’t quite fit the physical description, as he was much younger—27 years old at the time—than Cooper’s average mid-40s.
McCoy would have the chops to make a famous crime, though. He proved that in April of 1972, when he successfully hijacked a United Airlines flight after demanding $500,000. He boarded the plane in Denver, and was able to divert it to San Francisco, his demands were met, and he forced the plane back into the air. McCoy then jumped out of a plane over Utah and was arrested by the FBI within three days, thanks to an anonymous tip. That tip then led the FBI to a waiter who recalled giving him a milkshake at a hamburger stand the night of the shooting, and a teenager who said McCoy paid him $5 to give him a ride from the stand to a nearby town. Eventually, they were able to match his fingerprints left in the search warrant.
McCoy was arrested after the FBI raided his home. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, but was eventually released from a maximum security prison and evaded arrest for three months until he was shot by police in Virginia in 1974.
The parachute provides the best opportunity for evidence to link McCoy to Cooper. “This,” Gryder said, “will prove it was McCoy.”
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