SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: SYSK Live: The DB Cooper Heist

26:18So, Northwest Orient's president at the time, Donald Niropp. Any Niropps in the house? No? He would have been in Minnesota. Oh, okay. Yeah. But I'm convinced that someone in here is going to be related to someone in this story. Oh, I am too. Yeah, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for somebody to stand up and be like, that's a lie. Or for someone to stand up and say, I am D.B. Cooper. Oh, yeah. That would be amazing. We'd have to come up with a different show tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Or just bring him along. Sure. And here he is, everybody. Yeah. So Donald Niropp, the president of Northwest Orient, he's like, yeah, sure.

26:58Sure, we'll totally pay that. We have a huge insurance policy on this kind of thing. Apparently, Northwest had to pay like 20 grand, and their insurance company paid out 180 grand. And they tapped Seafirst Bank, which had a downtown branch. And in this downtown branch, they had a really great idea. They had stacks of$20 bills in varying amounts so that it looked like a nervous teller ran into the back and put some 20s together in the event of a bank robbery, right? and then would come out and be like, here you go, bank robber, you're getting off scot-free. But it turns out that every serial number on every one of those 20s had been recorded.

27:37So it worked for bank robberies, worked just as well for skyjackings as well. So they had the money, no problems. The parachutes were just very difficult. Yeah, that was actually the harder part. Yeah. Back in 1971, the big recreational skydiving craze had not yet taken hold. It happened here and there. But the manager at SeaTac said, I got a guy. Don't you worry. He's got an operation called Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah. Anybody from Issaquah? Shout out to Issaquah. Why do you call it Seattle Sky Sports? Do they mooch off of Seattle? Off of the teat of Seattle. He's like a gotta guy. His name is Earl Cossey.

28:23And he agreed to help. A little side note. Earl Cossie was actually murdered three years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Chuck likes to bring the room down. I know. We're all having too much fun. He got killed by a blow to the head in his garage, but apparently, you know, some Cooperists that are still active today on the internet, you know, these conspiracy dudes. That's how they type. That is. Everyone did it. I love that. Everybody. See, you can all be conspiracy theorists. get out your tinfoil hat although women can't be because they're too smart it's always guys did you know so Earl Cossey was killed but they think it has nothing to do with it even though Cooperists are like are you sure they're trying to silence a man exactly so Cossey that was pretty great very well timed So Kasi called his operation And to the dude working there And said hey can you get together These parachutes I need two fronts and two backs And the guy said sure bruh And in his haste He packs three regular chutes Well not three regular He packs one military chute Two regular chutes And one thing that I still don't understand Called a dummy chute that doesn't open.

29:54No. So, like, if you were working at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, you would get really, really sick of having to fold up the whole parachute every time somebody was training throwing out the pilot chute, which is just the little chute that comes out first and pulls the bigger chute out, right? If all you're trying to do is throw that part out, you don't need the bigger chute. So, if you're an employee at Seattle Sky Sports in Issaquah, you may have the idea that you should just sew the bigger part shut. There should be no parachute that has the most important part sewn shut, right? I think we can all agree on that.

30:32That is our rule. Every parachute should open. Right. But this is the thing, and they're called dummy chutes. The thing is, everybody's like, oh, we got it covered. Let's put a big X on it, and everybody will know it's a dummy chute. So one of these dummy chutes made it into the four chutes that were delivered to D.B. Cooper. So the money and the chutes go in the cop car, and he does a donut skidding out like in front of the plane and gets out and stands outside and waits for the plane to land, I should say. So when they get everything together, they let flight 305 know that they've come and get it, basically.

31:09And they prepare to land. And D.B. Cooper does something very smart. Yeah, he said, you know what, I bet you there's going to be snipers on the ground because I've seen a movie or two. I've seen Black Sunday. Anyone? No? Didn't that come out like five or six years later? Maybe. Uh-huh. Actually, I'll have to look that up. I think that was 76. You know this? Sure. All right. He said, I have a dream about a movie one day that would be called Black Sunday. And there's going to be snipers at that airport. So have everybody put the shades down. On the windows, they're all drunk. They don't care. They won't ask any questions.

31:54And so they did so, which turned out to be a pretty good move because there were, in fact, snipers. Right, exactly. So the plane lands, and no one's allowed to get off yet. Cooper says, hey, Tina, do me a solid. Go out and get the money in the chutes and come back with them, okay? Then we can let the passengers off. And Mucklau leaves the plane. And at this point, and this is one of the first reasons why Tina Mucklau is one of our heroes. Once she's off the plane, she could have been like, so long, chumps. See you in hell. Which may have been a little harsh had she said that with an earshot of somebody in this hostage situation.

32:31She could have thought it. Her actions could have said as much. She didn't. She got the chutes. She got the money. And she essentially traded herself for the hostages and went back on the plane. I would have been so out of there. That's metal. Chuck would have said out loud, see you in hell. Yeah. Flight 305. I would have walked straight to baggage claim or the ground transportation and said, take me to Cousin Ike's. I need some loose leaf tea. Good luck with the skyjacking. Right. Yeah. But she came back, which is amazing. She did come back. So she traded herself for these hostages. And the hostages were allowed to leave.

33:08And so, too, were Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner. The rest of the crew is basically like, there's no reason for you to stay here. So go. So it was down to Schaffner and Cooper, and then in the cockpit, Radizak and Scott, right? And Scott and Radizak repaid Tina Mucklow by staying themselves. There was a rope ladder, actually, that they could have climbed out of. They had almost no interaction whatsoever with D.B. Cooper. They could have, at their leisure, they could have put on bathing suits and climbed out this rope ladder and laid on the tarmac for a while. and then gone to the safety of the FBI barricade.

33:47And they didn't. They stuck around and they were like, we're going to see this hijacking through. Yeah, in my comedic mind's eye, I see them getting out on the rope swing or rope ladder. That's different. Rope swing. That would be amazing. It's like a tire swing in front of the plane. They get off on the rope ladder. Tina Mucklaw never comes back and D.B. Cooper's just sitting on the plane by himself. He's like, oh, it happened again Is he typing? No, he's going like this I didn't know they had a rope ladder That's crazy What's that for? Skyjacking? Every airplane has a rope ladder in the car Wake up, man It's fashioned out of old sheets So the FAA Actually had a their chief psychiatrist on the ground and this dude does a quick analysis you know like let me do one of those movie readings of who this guy is and what's going to happen and he says you know what's going to happen is you're going to give this guy the money and the parachutes you're going to go up there in the plane he's going to jump out and blow up the plane and just let everyone know that right tell the pilot and co-pilot but this is what's coming.

35:10Right, he's going to force Mucklau to jump with him and then blow up the plane afterward, right? But yeah, make sure the cockpit knows. And then he added, and he probably has some sort of fixation on longer than usual nipples, so make sure he's not exposed to those because he has some sort of fetish based on his experience with his mother.

35:37because it's a 1971 psychoanalyst for the FAA. Hey, if I had done that in a German accent, it would have sunk in even faster.

35:51Did you tell them that? Make sure you tell them that, guys. Is that all right? I'm going to go ahead and say now what I'm going to say in like an hour backstage alright that was amazing was it? thank you I thought that's not what you were going to say actually I didn't see that one coming

36:16you got me when you yeah I had no idea where you were going literally you said longer than usual nipples. And I went, in my head, I went, am I, is this happening? You're like Josh. Josh. Am I still in Atlanta? Is the trip, am I asleep?

36:40Pure gold, buddy. Thank you.

36:54Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Edmund Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen.

37:29I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:07Where are we? I am so thrown. So we said Cooper was cool, right? Yes. The cool head. He was so cool, he ordered food for the crew during the refueling process. Yeah, he's a nice guy. Yeah. you want to know who else is cool is Tina Mucklaw. Because once they released the passengers and they got the money on board, she sat back down and he offered her a couple of the stacks of money. And she said, well, you go ahead and say it. No tipping allowed. Smooth. Again, had it been me, well, first of all, I would have been an Uncle Ike's by then. But if I was dumb enough to get back on, I would be like, yeah, pay it forward.

38:52Yeah, just two stacks of bills? What gives, jerk? I want half She's amazing So the plane's being refueled He passed along a request A very specific request for what's to happen When they go to take off He said, I want to take off with that aft staircase That I know is back there Down in the jump off the plane position And they said You can't take off with the plane You can't take off with the door down And he said, well, can you check on that? Are you sure? And they said, no, you can't do that And he said, are you super sure? And they said, no, you can't do that. He said, all right. And they said, oh, but once you're up there, you can totally lower it and jump out.

39:32And he said, well, why didn't we just start there? Because that's really the only thing that matters. He's like, fine, fine. And then the pilot's like, well, where do you want to go? And Dan Cooper says, Mexico City, let's say. And the pilot goes, well, that's kind of far. We're going to have to refuel. Is Reno okay? and Dan Cooper goes, I don't know how I can get this across anymore clearly. I'm jumping out of the plane the next time we go up. Fly wherever you want. Just fly southward. So they refuel the plane and the only time Dan Cooper gets a little ruffled is when it takes a little long for his liking and he says, it shouldn't take this long.

40:15Let's get the show on the road. Right. He picked up, for one of the few times, he picked up the cockpit or the cabin and cockpit phone and said, let's get this show on the road. I would have screamed it and hit the phone and then hit myself in the head with it and then just started crying and been like, it's never going to work. This is never going to work. I think it's well established we'd be the worst skyjackers ever. And hostages. Yeah, just get, no, I don't want any part of it. He also gives some instructions on how to fly the plane, which is getting really specific. He said, don't go any higher than 10 ,000 feet.

40:48Set your wing flaps at 15 degrees, which apparently we learned is an angle that only the 727-100 could position those wing flaps. Which everyone in this room knows, because it's a Boeing. Sure. And he said, don't go any faster than 190 miles per hour, 200 knots. So that means they're going to be flying slow and low, like you're cooking ribs. Or jumping off a plane. Because that means the cabin isn't pressurized, and that means when you open that door, You're not just going to suck everything out. It's still skydivable. Yeah? No, that's the terminology. Okay. So Cooper had some problems, right?

41:31He had specifically asked for a knapsack, and the feds had given him the 200 grand in a bank bag, which, as we all know, is a very unwieldy, clumsy bag, right? It's like a canvas bag. There's nothing to it. What do you, like, tuck it under your arm? What are you supposed to do with that, right? So he's like, well, I need to make a handle for this thing. I'll harvest one of these parachutes for its rigging. And he chose the pink one, which the pink one was actually the best one of all of them. Yeah, because it was the dummy chute, the military chute, and then... The so-so chute. Is that what we're going to call it?

42:06Yeah. The medium chute? Yeah. And then the pink one, which, like Josh said, is the best one. So he cuts the stuff loose. He makes a handle for it. Things are happening at this point. they move to the rear of the plane he and Tina Mucklaw and he says I think I need help lowering the staircase so she goes back there with him she's a little freaked out at this point she was calm and cool but it's go time and she thinks she's going to get sucked out rightfully so because she didn't understand the physics of the plane being that low and that slow she was like to hell with physics I am still freaked out we're about to lower a staircase at 10 ,000 feet.

42:47Why did I mention physics? Exactly. So she gets back there and he said, she said, can I at least have some of that rope so I can tie myself to the interior of this plane? Like that's how helpful she was. She's like, just let me lash myself to the plane and I'll help you. Right. I just spit like all the way across that table. I spit earlier. It's fine. Okay, good. We should learn to sync those up. Like in Vegas. That's what I was just thinking Man we are in sync I know my god Except well never mind So she asked for some rope to lash herself in And he goes at this point You know what never mind He literally like this is the quote He goes never mind He said you know what you just go back up to the cockpit And you see that first class curtain Just don't come any further back I got it from there He turns back around and looks and then he turns back around to where she was and he just sees like a pile of dust to where she was just standing.

43:49She was like in the cockpit all of a sudden. And so it's go time. In the cockpit, 7.42 p.m. The little light comes on that says door ajar, I guess.

44:05And they said, the pilots were like, Tina, like, let's call back one more time. She's like, no, you can't call them. And they were like, no, really, we should call him. That's why we can totally call him. Like the FAA shrink said, like, he might blow us up. He said some other weird stuff, too, but he said, like, he's going to blow us up. We should really butter this guy up. And we could have left on that rope swing, and we stayed because of you. Rope ladder. So they call. They do call, and the pilot is like, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Oh, am I Cooper? Yes. Ring, ring. You let it ring a couple of times.

44:42Ring, ring. Ring, ring. Dan Cooper, hijacker. Mr. Cooper, we want to make sure your flight is as comfortable as possible. Is there anything we can do to help you back there to make your hijacking more successful, sir? No. Click. I know, it's kind of rude. He said no, hung up, and then at 8, 12 p.m., the crew felt the plane kind of jiggle a little bit as if someone had jumped off the rear of it. And they said, Tina, go check. We're flying the plane. She's like, wait a minute, only one of you is flying. No, it takes both of us. You don't know. And that's it. So from the moment that Tina Mucklaw left, shut that first-class curtain, nobody, to anyone's knowledge, ever saw Dan Cooper again.

45:36Yeah. But that's not the end of the show. No, it's not. So there was a manhunt, right? So Dan Cooper had pretty clearly signaled his intentions that he was going to jump off the back of the 727. And the FBI was like, we need to scramble some jets. Let's get some fighter jets that are in the area. We're going to scramble them to go follow the 727. What is the scrambling? I never get that. It's like, go. I know, but it just sounds chaotic. Like, they're scrambling jets. I think that's the point. Like people are supposed to run around and bump into each other and fall out and then get up and get in their jets and fly off.

46:14But that's scrambling. That's classic scrambling. I would have renamed it. It would be like activate the jets. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Scramble the jets. Sounds desperate. You're right. Activate the jets. So, however the jets were brought into this picture, there was a problem with them in that they were way too fast for the 727, which is putzing along at 190 miles an hour. And all of a sudden, there's a jet that goes... And then the next one comes... And they're like, what are we going to do? Well, we'll stick a helicopter on them. This is like Goldilocks. The helicopter was too slow.

47:02727 is just putzing along. People are going, and trying to catch up. Nothing happening. They should have scrambled a 727 and just followed right behind them. That makes sense as a matter of fact. With the headlights on.

47:19Right? So they're scrambling. The point is, nobody saw Dan Cooper jump when he jumped. That's right. They used that 8, 12 p.m. oscillation to kind of figure out where they should start looking. And they zeroed in on a place called Ariel, Washington near the Lewis River. Anybody from Ariel? Good, because we got Ariel jokes. Nobody from Ariel. Anyone ever heard of the Lewis River? Okay. So they get this manhunt going. They're scrambling and combing. Those are the two things you do if you're in the FBI. It was a massive manhunt, too. There's like a thousand troops and cops coming this area. Yeah, no one from Seattle PD, of course.

48:02They were just sitting around stoned. Hanging out in Nyssaquah. Waiting for Rambo. Here's another fun fact. There was a millionaire, a local millionaire who we don't know. Do you know the name? No, I've looked. If anybody knows, please tell us. Just stand up and say it with dignity. It was on the news, so this local millionaire says, you know what? That's near Lake Merwin, and I'm going to rent a submarine because I'm a millionaire. And that's, you know, we're... That's what I do. Yeah. I don't work. I'm a millionaire. He got a submarine, and he trolled the depths of Lake Merwin. He said he rented a small submarine because he's not an extravagant local millionaire.

48:52He's a thrifty one. The 25 seems ostentatious. The hydraulics on it, who needs that in a submarine? Does it have a metal detector? Which would not have helped because it was cash bills. Exactly. See, you'd make a great local millionaire. I would. If only. The other weird thing that happened was the CIA got involved, which is a little bit strange. Yeah. And they scrambled the SR-71 Blackbird, right? They scrambled it several times. Yeah, it was almost over easy.

49:34Terrible. Whoever said woo, you should be ashamed of that. It doesn't even make sense. Because once you scramble it, it can't be over easy. Terrible joke, Chuck. That's what I say. It's all right. Rebound, rebound. Is this really happening? Did you talk about long nipples? All right. The SR-71 Blackbird was at the time super secret. We all know about it now, but at the time it was very secret. And it was kind of a big deal to get this thing up in the air. Especially multiple times. Like one time it's like your dad is the head of CIA and you're the head of Seattle PD. So you can make it happen maybe once, right?

50:18Multiple times, that's weird that the SR-71 was scrambled, right? The FBI is very studious and likes to do a lot of obvious stuff. So they interviewed everybody in the area with the last name of Cooper. Which there's like a square one. Sure. This is like square negative five. Yeah, yeah, sure. No, it's negative five. I looked it up. Okay. So you look up all the Coopers in the area, and at this point they have a press conference. And if you've noticed, we've been calling this dude Dan Cooper the whole time. Yeah. Because up until this time, he was just Dan Cooper. So they have a press conference, and there's sort of, I don't think we know who messed it up, right?

51:01It's either a reporter or a cop. Either a file clerk or a cop who's talking in front of a reporter. Gotcha. Either UPI or AP, depending on who you ask. And they were saying, like, what Cooper could have done something like this? Right. And somebody said, well, there's a Dan Cooper who's a cat burglar in the area. That's a terrible suggestion. Cat burglar does not go to hijacker, you know? And this reporter was like, what a scoop. And hit the wire with cops looking for D.B. Cooper. Yeah, he said D.B. Cooper. Did I say Dan Cooper? Yeah, that's all right. The little part of my brain was like, you just said Dan.

51:42Let's start over. So a cop was talking in front of an AP reporter. And they said, what Cooper do you know could have done this? And the cop said, well, there's this D.B. Cooper. What did you just say? Did you just say A.D. Cooper? I said, there's a D.B. Cooper. I got it that time. He's a cat burglar. And the reporter said, this is hitting the wire. And he reported that the cops were looking for a D.B. Cooper. And it just changed from that point on. Yeah, I mean, he was never D.B. Cooper. It was literally a mistake. So that's why we all know him as D.B. Cooper today. And the FBI actually, a little smart, believe it or not, and they said, you know what, let's keep it that way.

52:28That way we'll know if any tips come in on a Dan Cooper, we'll know it's a hot lead. So it actually ended up kind of working in their favor. Yeah, and any time a tip like that came in, like the office prankster would come in with the facts and be like, hot lead, hot lead. It was like a joke around the Portland office.

52:50Everybody loved Richard. And this will come up later, too, when it comes time to solve the crime. Later on, the FBI learned that there was a comic book in the 1950s about a Dan Cooper who was a Canadian jet pilot, and it was a Belgian comic, which is a little weird, but there was literally a Dan Cooper who jumped out of planes in comic book form. Right, exactly. So it could be a clue, maybe. And that's a niche comic, right? I would say so. So it's printed in Belgium, in the French, about a Canadian fighter pilot. In the French? All they had to do was find the ten people who knew of that comic and be like, what'd you do?

53:32We know it was one of you. So the FBI had a pretty clear belief, a very openly stated belief, that D.B. Cooper died in the jump. It was just the line that they took right off the bat. They're like, there's no way this guy survived. And he wasn't the lead agent on the case, but he became the most famous agent, Ralph Himmelsbach. Any Himmelsbachs in the house? No? You're a liar, sir. Yeah, you're a liar. So Himmelsbach, like I said, he wasn't the lead agent, but he was out of the Seattle office, and he became the most famous agent associated with it. And he actually gave the case its official name, Norjack, which is stupid.

54:16Northwest Jack, Sky Jack Right, but remove the C Just call it the D.B. Cooper case Or heist, even better So he self-published a book in 1986 About the case And Himmelsbach said He thinks that D.B. Cooper Didn't even get his chute open That he plunged to his death And hit the forest floor With such impact That he basically was buried immediately With the parachutes still attached And maybe even the money and that was Himmel's box take. It was, excuse me. You gonna get that? I realized it wasn't a twist off. And then I realized I had my lighter from the loose leaf tea place. Nice.

54:59Nice going. You just saw the sum of Chuck's college education.

55:15So, Cooper had jumped from the plane. Did he live? Did he not? The odds are against him in a lot of ways. Outside the temperature that night was 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. Hey, we're in America, man. Just say 20 degrees. Yeah, you're right. 20 degrees. USA. USA. At 10 ,000 feet, it was negative 7 degrees. Yeah. And he was going 190 miles an hour. There was freezing rain. There was like a quarter crescent, or not a quarter crescent, a crescent moon. Yeah. Those are two different things. Sure. Crescent moon in the sky, but it was cloudy and rainy, so there probably was zero light. Right. It's freezing.

55:56He's 10 ,000 feet. He's not dressed for the occasion. No, he's wearing loafers. He's wearing an overcoat. He doesn't have this knapsack, so he's fashioned this weird kind of knapsack with this pink rope. Plus, the area he's jumping out into, and he's flying at 10 ,000 feet over the Cascades. Some of the Cascades, as you guys know, are higher than 10 ,000 feet. Very dangerous jump. And there's a lot of pointy trees. I mean, the pointiest. Am I right, Seattle? The pointiest trees are out.

56:29Plus, despite what the FAA guy said, the FAA psychiatrist, he did not leave the bomb to be detonated after he jumped off. He took it with him. Bank bag, bomb, overcoat, loafers, parachute. That was my DB Cooper jump impression. And by the way, the FBI later on, they interviewed Mucklock. Who was the one who saw that? Schaffner. Yeah, Schaffner saw the bomb like you just did. And she said, yeah, you have these red sticks taped together. And they went, that wasn't dynamite. Dynamite isn't red. You've seen too many cartoons. Dynamite is tan. Road flares are red. So it was more than likely a fake bomb with an alarm clock and road flares.

57:15Plus, D.B. Cooper did not help his cause by his choice of parachutes, right? So he chose a military chute as his main chute. It was not a great chute. The ripcord wasn't as easily accessed as the recreational chutes, and once it deployed, you can't steer it very well. It was not the best choice. Even worse was his choice of the dummy chute for his front reserve chute. He took the best chute and gutted it to make a handle for the bank bag, left the second best chute, and chose the two worst chutes to jump out with, right? So... I didn't know you couldn't steer a military chute, but it makes total sense.

57:53Oh, yeah. They're just like, go for it, pal. Yeah. Because if I was in the military I would steer I would be like Well how don't we go over here instead Right I see a lot of guns down there Yeah Let's take it this way Right So they just drop you apparently Yeah Man I guess they know what they're doing though So some other theories Because it's Washington Believe it or not Some people actually posited That he was eaten by Sasquatch Yeah with a straight face i mean let's be honest how many of you in here were thinking the same thing some other people say well he was clearly burned up by the jet exhaust because when you come down the stairs of a 727 the rear jet engine's right in front of you and it would have been seven eight hundred degrees right there um but the fbi conducted a test uh right afterward where they took a 727 up and they took a 200-pound sled.

58:57A 200-pound prison victim. Right. Prison victim? He was condemned. Don't worry about it. It's fine. And they said, and threw it off, and they found that the 200-pound sled, that's a euphemism, I guess, now, went straight down. So it didn't come in contact in any way with the jet exhaust. So it kind of did away with this idea that he burned up. Well, it was kind of good news, bad news, though, because what it did do, at least, was it mimicked that same oscillation. So they're like, oh, you know what? It was the exact same thing happened when you were in the air. So that 8, 12 p.m. jump time, like it was probably right on the money.

59:38So we know probably where he might have landed. Right. So there's a lot of questions remaining. Right. And there were some clues left behind. The thing that really kind of confounded the FBI at first was that they combed the area where they were looking for him with like a thousand people just combing this area. The SR-71 Blackbird circling around looking. They didn't find anything. He had left a couple of things on board the plane, right? He left his clip-on tie, which was his second biggest secret that night. Well, that's what you do before you jump out. Sure. You take it off and you throw it.

1:00:17It was a clip-on all along. You unbutton that button and you're like, I'm out of here. He left eight cigarette butts of his Raleigh brand cigarettes. He'd smoked eight over five hours. And all eight butts have since been lost, right? They found a hair on the headrest. The thing is, the FBI traded in fingerprints. That was their big thing at the time. And Dan Cooper had been very smart to not leave a single print on any of the cigarette butts. Yeah, true. But there was fingerprints on the in-flight, I guess, SkyMall magazine. R.I.P. SkyMall. What do you mean? It's not around. What? Yeah, SkyMall's gone.

1:01:02Did you guys not know this? No way. Yeah. That's why I said R.I.P. SkyMall. I know, but I just, I don't know. Where am I going to get my putting green that doubles as a cat feeder? My friend, you can just go to Frontgate, because Frontgate has everything everyone needs. What's that? Frontgate, they advertised in SkyMall. But they have stores, too. I don't even know where I am right now. That's Uncle Ike's. What year is it? No. So, it would be seven years before any trace of the hijacking, any real clue turned up. And it was in 1978. There were some hunters in Oregon hunting animals, I guess.

1:01:55Right? Unless it was the most dangerous game. Right. You don't know. It's Oregon. You never know. There are less civilized people than we have here. They found a plastic instruction placard showing how to lower the aft staircase in the woods. So this is like a really good clue. It was, but it didn't lead to anything new. Well, no, it was definitely from Flight 305, which I guess I'm saying was cool. It was cool. Like if you were the hunter, you'd be like, I'm keeping this. Sure. But it was on the flight path, so it didn't generate any new leads. But it generated a lot of renewed interest in the case.

1:02:35because believe it or not, the D.B. Cooper case had kind of fallen to the wayside in the last like seven years. People just didn't think much about it anymore. Oh, it's a gold nature skyjacking. Right, exactly. So it was like a dime a dozen. But all of a sudden everybody's like, we got to make a movie. Who's the biggest movie star we've got? Treat Williams. Make him as D.B. Cooper. And that's what they did. Has anyone ever seen The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper? No, that's right. Nobody? That's right, everybody. God bless you, Seattle. Smart town, Chuck. I figured here, like somebody, because it was a local thing, 1981, very, very bad movie was made.

1:03:16Several. Starring Treat Williams and Robert Duvall, right? Whose mom needed surgery at the time to lay off. So here's what you... Well, first of all, if you want to know how big a piece of garbage this movie is, it had three directors. And if you know anything about filmmaking If you have more than one director It's probably a really bad movie For one reason or another If it has three then it's guaranteed to be bad But all you need to do is go home tonight When you get back to your To your houseboat In Issaquah Does anyone here live in a houseboat? No? Because I was going to ask if I could come stay over Because those things are awesome That was just Sleepless in Seattle You've seen that Too many times Oh no They exist Because I tried To stay in an Airbnb Actually before I came here On a houseboat?

1:04:12Yeah I totally did Nice And I ended up In some stupid hotel Downtown Go home to your YouTubes Type in Pursuit of D.B. Cooper And watch The first Three minutes Because this movie Literally starts With the point from where D.B. Cooper jumps out of the back of the plane. It starts from the point where we know nothing else that happened. It's literally fictional from that point forward. The slogan on the movie poster is Fax Max.

1:04:48So it starts with the pursuit of D.B. Cooper and has Robert Duvall, the names all come up and all that and it's got a Jews heart playing. It's like boing boing boing boing boing boing And Treat Williams, it's a terrible voiceover recording. You just hear, yeah! And he jumps off the thing because that's what you do when you jump off a plane and you're skyjacking. He parachutes down in the night and the night and he crashes through some trees and lands and then there's this really little sad, yahoo!

1:05:21Everything was sad about that. And Treat Williams gets on the ground and he takes out a cigar. And he takes out a lighter, because that's what you do, too, when you've successfully landed after skyjacking. He doesn't light the lighter, though. He rips open the money bag, and he takes out a$100 bill, and he lights that. And then he uses that to light a cigar. And that is how that movie opens. And it goes downhill from there. And Robert Duvall, you can tell. He starts every scene going like this. Let's do it. It's so bad, but I do encourage you. It was, I mean, when I was a kid and it came out, it was like we got HBO on my street, and it was a really big deal when we got cable and HBO.

1:06:06So I would literally watch any movie that came out. It was like Krull. That's on. I'll watch Krull. Hey, hey, hey. Krull was okay, man. War Games, great movie. Sure. Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, why not? I was not exposed to that. Yeah. I think my mother shielded me from that movie. Good for you, Mom. Yeah. Watch the first two minutes on YouTube.

1:06:53fault, I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product, run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us.

1:07:27I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07:51so um the we're still talking about the placard weren't we no no all right we'll go to 1980 was the first real good clue turns up in 1980 right and this is a big clue big clue so there's a young lad named Brian Ingram. He was eight, I think, at the time. And his family was camping on Tina Bar. Are you guys familiar with Tina Bar? Do you guys know what that is? The Columbia River? Columbia River? Yeah. So are we correct in understanding that you would just call it an island, not a bar? Okay. All right. So Tina Island, everywhere else, the Ingram family was camping and Brian Ingram was fashioning a fire pit for his family.

1:08:29Oh, father's going to love this fire pit. He'll be proud of me yet. Oh, Father, won't you love me? And as he's going like this to the sand, poor little eight-year-old, he turns up a stack of bills, several stacks of bills, actually, three. And these stacks of$20 bills total$5 ,880. And he's like, Father, and father takes those and starts looking at them and he's like we should probably call the police so they go and call the police again they call the Seattle police which evidently all they do is forward calls to the FBI at this point they're like Seattle PD please hold

1:09:19so the FBI is like read us a serial number and he reads one and they're like read us another reads another and they're like, that's D.B. Cooper money. And Ingram's father's like, what did you say? And they're like, nothing.

1:09:35So the FBI gets their hands on it. And actually, we should say, it turns out they let little Brian Ingram take some of the money. $3 ,000 of this money actually. Yeah, this is later on. They returned a little, not bad, right? Right. And you want to know what's even better? In 2008, little Brian Ingram sold that money on eBay for$37 ,000. right yeah take that father so the thing is this money showed up in a place where it should not have been um it showed up 20 miles south of aerial washington in another river so they were looking here in the lewis river right everybody knows lewis river aerial washington here tina bars down here, just a little south of Vancouver.

1:10:23Is my geography, my air geography, right? Of Vancouver, Washington, everybody. Vancouver, Washington. Is that, is it like this? That's even more amazing. This is what I suspected. And I looked it up on Google Maps and they're like, what do you mean Tina Barr, Josh? So I wasn't able to conclusively find it, but I did have this idea that it somehow ended up above it. And an FBI hydrologist looked at this money, said... The FBI has a hydrologist. I'm a retainer. Himmelsbach got a hold of him. And the guy was like, so this stuff's only been exposed to the elements for a year, even though it was found, what, nine years after the robbery, right?

1:11:06Yeah. And it got here one of two ways, the guy said. So the Columbia River flooded in 1974? Yes. And it was also dredged in 1977. So one of those two probably got this year, but no one's ever said conclusively how it ended up where it was. Yeah, there you go. I got it. It would be another 28 years before any more clues turned up. So that's a very long wait. In 2008, just eight short years ago, some kids were playing on their own land in Amboy, a little south of Ariel. Anyone from Amboy? No. I suspected not. Are we in Washington? Okay. Yeah, but nobody's from Amboy. We got more response in Birmingham.

1:11:52No. About Amboy? Yeah. They're like, we like the sound of that. So these kids were playing in the woods on their property, and they said, oh, look at there. There's a parachute. And they start pulling out this parachute for like an hour. It's like a magic trick. and they finally get to the end of the parachute and they run and show Pa and they say, Pa, I found a parachute in the woods. What should we do? And Pa recognized that this was the most exciting thing that ever happened in Amboy, Washington. Called the cops who called the Seattle police who called the FBI. And the FBI did something smart.

1:12:39They're like, well, you know who would know if this was D.B. Cooper's parachute, good old Earl Cossie. That's right. He's not dead yet. Not dead yet. Oh. Too soon? That's a good. He's not dead yet. That's a celebratory. None of us are dead yet. Right? That's a good way of looking at it, Chuck. Good save. Way to find the silver lining. So Earl Cossie looked at this thing and he was like, no. Yeah. He said, I'm sorry. He said, Cooper's chute was nylon. That's clearly silk. Good try. Yeah, he said, this is, I know whose chute this is, actually. Yeah. It turns out that back in 1945, a jet pilot named Floyd Walling bailed out of his Corsair jet that was going down and parachuted out in the woods around Amboy, Washington, right?

1:13:33Which isn't too far from Ariel. And it wasn't Cooper's chute. You guys all remember when they found that parachute, right? Like 2008, it wasn't that long ago. It was a big deal. And it wasn't his chute, but it did suggest that possibly he could have made it because Floyd Walling had, and he walked out of the woods in terrible weather just like D.B. Cooper would have had to. So it kind of shined a light on the whole thing again. Yeah, it kind of kicked some interest up. So over the years, there have been many, many, many, many suspects. like we're talking over a thousand the FBI won't even say how many suspects they've had or weirdly people confessing to be D.B.

1:14:14Cooper it's one of those strange things that people do right where they claim to be something that will send you to prison well a lot of them are already in prison but they're in worse prison and hoping to go to good prison no it's true apparently state prisoners will try to confess to federal crimes because the cinnamon buns are better in federal prison? I was thinking cinnamon buns. Were you really? Yep. That's because there's cinnamon buns in our green room. Yeah. Well, no, we mentioned that in the prisons. That's like a commodity in prison, right? Cinnamon buns? Yeah, it's like currency. Yeah, yeah.

1:14:46Yeah, yeah. Cinnamon buns and cigarettes. We know.

1:14:55So, there's a very famous sketch. If you go home, before you get on YouTube and look at the first three minutes of that terrible movie, which you definitely need to do. Just Google, get on the Googles and type in D.B. Cooper sketch. There's a very singular, famous sketch of D.B. Cooper. It looks like Kevin Spacey. It looks a lot like Kevin Spacey. Yeah, or Don Draper. Again. As Kevin Spacey. It would be Kevin Spacey as Don Draper. Yeah, sure. So if you go home and look at that, it's got this kind of short-haired guy. Looks like he's sort of from the 50s or 60s. He's got the hair. He's got the sunglasses on and the tie, the skinny tie.

1:15:36And that's the only sketch that they have of D.B. Cooper that they got from the flight attendants, specifically Tina Mucklaw, because she spent like five hours right next to the dude. She, incidentally, was really messed up after this, understandably. And she went to be a nun in Oregon in the 1980s, which is a little weird. I didn't know they had convents in Oregon. Sure. Convents everywhere There's a convent right over in the alley There's a convent behind us right now But even worse than that The mother superior in an article I read At the convent said She never really fit in here You're not supposed to say that If you're a mother superior That's a mother inferior if you ask me Good one

1:16:25Sorry you go ahead Alright if you look at some of the behavior that Cooper displayed. You're going to turn up some clues, and that's what the FBI does. They kind of examine what happened. He chose a military chute, which could mean one of two things. Either he was former military, which could narrow it down, or it could mean he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to jumping out of a plane. Right, and the choice of that dummy chute would definitely suggest that, because even recreational skydivers say, like, even if you're just a military parachutist, you're going to see a huge X on a parachute and instinctively shy away from that parachute, you know?

1:17:00I thought it stood for extreme. Right. Mountain Dew extreme. So a lot of people say, I think he probably is ex-military, had some like parachuting experience, probably a paratrooper or something like that. Yeah. A lot of people point to the idea that he knew a lot about the plane. He knew about the wing flap degree that it could go to. He knew about altitude. A lot of the witnesses later on said that he clearly was very much aware of what was going on in the cabin. He just knew the plane very much. So a lot of other people say this guy was probably an airline employee, maybe even a pilot actually, based on the altitude and stuff that he gave them to fly.

1:17:45Yeah, and one of the weird things that he knew was that the 727-100 had an aft staircase that you could lower and jump out of because this wasn't common knowledge at the time. Apparently, a small group of people knew this. You were either an employee of Boeing or you may have been in the CIA because in the Vietnam War, we actually used the 727 over Cambodia, which is where we were not supposed to be, and they lowered that aft staircase of the 727 to drop supplies. He said, go. You can't steer, but go. Well, and then there's the whole thing with the SR-71 Blackbird. So a lot of Cooperists still say that he might have been secretly a member of the CIA.

1:18:26Right. Because he knew about the AFTER case. He knew about the Blackbird was scrambled. So they had, like, some skin in the game. Right. So a lot of suspects have come and gone and come back and stayed over the years. The FBI says about it. Well, they won't say, but a lot of people say about 1 ,000, like Chuck said. But one of the first ones to emerge was a dude named Richard McCoy. And in February of 1972, I think four months after the D.B. Cooper heist, Richard McCoy hijacked a 727-100 flight. And he asked for$500 ,000 in cash, and he parachuted successfully out the back over Utah, right? Yeah.

1:19:07So a lot of people say, it's pretty similar. Yeah. Maybe that was D.B. Cooper. Well, and 500 grand, to me, that makes sense. Like, 200 grand worked out fine. Right. I should have asked for more to begin with. Right. So let me try it again. Let's try it again. It turns out that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam, so that sort of fits with the whole profile. He looked a little bit like the sketch of Dan Cooper. A little bit? Yeah. He was 29 years old, so he was much younger than Cooper, but he didn't look 29. I'll say that. He looked much older than that. True. He looked more like Don Draper than Charles Manson.

1:19:44That's true. I'll say that. Absolutely. So this guy gets caught actually after pulling off this heist initially and he goes to prison and he makes a fake gun out of dental plaster from the dentist in the prison and he takes the truck by force and literally crashes through the front gate of the prison and escapes and is later killed in a shootout by cops. Which is to say, Richard McCoy knew how to live. He did.

1:20:14And die. And his family would later go on to say, actually, he was at home in Thanksgiving 1971. So it probably wasn't him. Right. Good suspect, though. Suspect number two is named Dwayne Weber. Is this your guy? No, this isn't your guy. No, this isn't my guy. I like this guy. He's fine, but I don't like him. You know what I mean? Yeah. So Dwayne Weber was a career criminal. And the definition of a career criminal is one where you and your alias have both done time in prison. Yeah. And he and his alias had done a combined 16 years. Right. So he was on his deathbed and his wife, Joe, came around and said, how are you doing?

1:20:55It's like, well, I'm still dying. I have a confession for you. I'd like you to hear. I am Dan Cooper. And Joe's like, I don't know who that is. And Dwayne blows up. They have a fight on his deathbed. Never speak of it again. And he dies nine days later. So Joe starts poking around after that. She's like, who is this Dan Cooper? Which is a legitimate question after an experience like that that she went through. I would say so. And she finds out via internet. This is 1995 that Dan Cooper was D.B. Cooper. And she said, you know what? I think that he was telling the truth. I think he was D.B. Cooper.

1:21:38Because you know what? I remember in 1979, we were on a vacation. We were on a car trip. We were kind of right around the area where the hijacking, or I'm sorry, where the landing supposedly took place. And my husband stopped the car and just pointed and said, you know what? That's where D.B. Cooper walked out of the woods. Which is a weird thing to say on vacation. Very weird thing to say. It's even weirder that she didn't say, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah. Agreed. There's another story. Later on, they were on another vacation. No, this is the same vacation. Oh, it was the same one?

1:22:15Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll just call this the communication vacation. The non-communication vacation, because they clearly didn't talk to one another. Because he stopped over the Columbia River on a bridge, literally stops on a bridge, gets out of the car, goes to the back, opens the trunk, and is just gone for like 10 minutes. Gets back in the car, and they just drive on. Yeah. And she doesn't say anything. She's just sitting there like this.

1:22:42I know Yumi. Yumi would have been like, why did you take your foot off the gas? Yeah, you know Emily. The moment I started to break. There would have been, Emily would have had 300 questions on why we stopped on a bridge and I opened the trunk. Yeah. Not Joe. Not Joe. Yeah. So a lot of people still like Dwayne Weber, but he's actually, the FBI said, no, that's not the guy. We ruled him out with DNA, right? Yes. The next guy is my guy, Kenny Christensen, Chuckers. That's right. He was a pretty well-liked suspect for a while. He, keeping with the series of family members outing their family as D.B.

1:23:22Cooper. Yeah, which actually supports the family motto that I was brought up with. Never trust family. It's a proud Clark tradition. So his brother Lyle actually, this gets a little weird. He outed him as a suspect in an effort to get the screenwriter Nora Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle, right? Yeah. It's all coming for us in full circle. Didn't even see that coming. He tried to get Nora Ephron to write a movie about D.B. Cooper via his brother being the main suspect. and he weirdly, I guess he didn't have an agent, he hired a private investigator to get him in touch with Nora Ephron. Right. Very strange.

1:24:03But he championed his own brother as the main suspect. Or outed him, that's another way to put it for sure. Sure. And a guy named Jeffrey Gray wrote a really great article in New York Magazine, if you guys are interested, about this particular guy. But there's a lot of similarities between D.B. Cooper and Kenny Christensen. For one, he looks a lot like him right off the bat. He was a purser for Northwest Orient Airlines. That's a big deal. Former paratrooper. He was quiet. He smoked cigarettes. He drank bourbon. Lived in the area where the hijacking took place, which is to say around here. And in, I think, 2011, Geoffrey Gray, the guy who wrote that New York Magazine article, got in touch with Florence Schaffner and said, what about this guy?

1:24:50And Florence Schaffner said, I think you may be on to something here. Yeah. And like Dwayne Weber, Kenny Christensen on his deathbed tried to make a confession to his brother Lyle. He said, I have something really important to tell you, but I'm not sure if I can say this. And Lyle said, no, no, no, I don't want to hear it. Did you guys know that you can not hear a deathbed confession? Well not only that But I want nothing more than to hear a deathbed confession I would be dying I would be like oh my god Yes what do you have to say But he was like no no no I don't want to hear what you got to say Just go ahead and die And then he laid on top of him Until he stopped squirming Here this pillow will make you comfortable Shh You sleep now brother What is going on with these people Did you just do the Buffalo Bill voice No.

1:25:48Oh, okay. That was coincidental. Who else do we have? L.D. Cooper. Yeah. Little on the nose. Dad. With the name. He lived in the area, too. Yeah, and he was also outed by a family member, keeping with the Clark family tradition. Right. This time it was his niece. And she said, you know what? I remember. This was in 2011. This was not too long ago. She said, you know what? I remember back in Thanksgiving 1971, just like it was yesterday. And Uncle LD showed up bruised and bleeding for dinner, but he was euphoric, which was weird. And I'm just now mentioning this. Right. And what she said, by the way, she had a book coming out simultaneously.

1:26:33She's telling everybody this. What did she say that she overheard? Because this is where she loses Chuck and me. Well, yeah, she said he went to talk to, he was my uncle, and he went to talk to my dad. And I overheard them in the hallway say, We did it Our money problems are over We hijacked the plane

1:26:54The book by Simon & Schuster On sale now At your local airport But there were a few things It wasn't totally out of the blue He was an engineer at Boeing No, his brother was Yeah, but they were in on it together Because we hijacked the plane He's a silent partner and weirdly he remember those Dan Cooper comic books he was one of the 10 people on the planet that was a fan of the Dan Cooper comic books that's a little weird it's pretty good the weird thing is is he didn't have any experience skydiving which a lot of people say well it's just too insane to think that somebody who never skydived before did their first skydive during a heist out of a 727 but the people who knew L.D.

1:27:39Cooper say no he was just crazy enough to do something like that. And you can make a case that that actually explains the choice of the dummy shoot, to tell you the truth. That's right. And the military shoot, even. Yeah. All right. So the legacy of D.B. Cooper, to this day, the heist remains the only unsolved airline hijacking in the history of the world. In America. In America. Really? Are there other ones? Yeah. I'm only standing behind America. Oh, okay. I got you. Yeah, right? Every year, if you go to the Ariel Store and Tavern in Ariel, Washington, you can go to the D.B. Cooper Days Festival.

1:28:22Yeah, has anyone ever been to that? We should all totally go. Well, go, let's go right now. We're going to meet up this Thanksgiving. You can win a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest. If you look like Kevin Spacey. Yes, or Charles Manson or Don Draper, which none of us do. well I'm talking about you and me I look like Justin Bieber

1:28:53I look like I ate Justin Bieber

1:29:00I just spit out my tooth that's how I lost it I broke it on Justin Bieber's bones Justin Bieber's bones they're pliable though You can go to that and win the contest. There have been songs over the years. It was that terrible movie. There have been countless TV reenactments and dramatizations. Unsolved Mysteries, am I right? Yeah. Everybody see that one? You can watch that on the YouTube, too. Yeah. And there are many, many Cooperist websites, most notably one called Dropzone.com. And Dropzone actually used to be a recreational skydiving site until it got mostly taken over by D.B. Cooper aficionados.

1:29:38They hijacked the website. They did, as a matter of fact. And this site is like so hot for Cooper Sleuths that a guy named Secret started posting on it. And he seemed to have a lot of information about the D.B. Cooper case that people didn't know about. And it turned out that these Cooper Sleuths were so good, they unmasked the Secret guy as the new agent in charge of the D.B. Cooper case, Larry Carr, who was posting secretly as Secret on the drop zone boards. that's how good these people are he's like no I'm not yes you are no I'm not yes you are yes you are he's like okay I am you can go on YouTube boy you got a lot of YouTube and designite people you can go on YouTube as well and look up Larry Carr and for many many years they kept all this evidence sort of under wraps and you can look up videos now Larry Carr said you know what we should do the modern age is here we have the YouTubes and we can let everyone see this evidence even though I think it's kind of funny that the FBI's official thing is like, no, he totally died.

1:30:39No one told Larry Carr that. No. You know? Because he's like, let's make a YouTube video. Let's show everyone the skinny tie. All the kids are into it now. He shows the clip-on tie. You can see the money, the clip-on tie, all this evidence, hoping for a lead. And he oversaw DNA evidence actually being removed from the tie. They found three people's profiles. They also found, we don't even know, but pure titanium and impatience pollen. Hopefully that will eventually crack the case, but it made everybody just be like, what? We thought we had a handle on this. Impatience pollen, where did that come from?

1:31:20Bring us home, my friend. Thank you. The Cooper heist, it changed America forever, right? D.B. Cooper is the reason we all started walking through metal detectors shortly afterward. He's the reason, seriously, he's the reason that the airlines were given the right to search your bags before you get on one of their planes. And they apparently reinstituted the death penalty for hijacking. I don't know when they took it off. Was it like sea ships being hijacked and then? I have no idea. I don't either. But I think the coolest outcome of this whole thing was if you look at a Boeing 727, they still make them, airplane.

1:31:59If you look at that aft staircase in the back, there's a white paddle that holds the stairs closed. Pretty smart. You can't open the aft staircase mid-flight because you have to go outside and pull the paddle down, and then the aft staircase will open. And it's a pretty smart, easy solution to a pretty complex case, and they call that little white paddle a Cooper vane. That's right. And that is the story of D.B. Cooper, and that is our show.

1:32:33good night Seattle good night everyone thank you

1:32:54for more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com

1:33:08Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.

1:33:42Guaranteed human.