'The Mystery of DB Cooper': Who was Dan Cooper? How did hijacker vanish after surviving jump from airplane
The tale of DB Cooper is one of the greatest Ameican legends. Cooper was a mysterious hijacker who had allegedly escaped from an airplane with a sum of $200,000 and was never seen again. But this tale comes with a lot of questions, such as, who was Cooper and did he really survive the jump from the airplane? The enthralling 'The Hijacker Who Vanished', a Storyville (BBC 4) documentary, will try to find answers to all these questions. The passengers on board had claimed that they knew the plans and heard confessions or saw the documents that point the finger at Cooper.
In the afternoon of November 24, 1971, Cooper highjacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in United States airspace between Portland and Seattle. The man allegedly had brought the ticket using his alias, Dan Cooper, but due to miscommunication, he started to be known as DB Cooper.
Just after the flight took off, Cooper handed a note to the flight attendant Florence Schaffner. Schaffner didn't see the note as she thought that he just passed on his number. Cooper sneakingly told her, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb." He even showed her "eight red cylinders" which looked like a bomb to her. He then demanded $200,000 in "negotiable American currency" and four parachutes along with a fuel truck at the Seattle airport. The 35 other passengers were given misinformation about the delay in their arrival. They were told that the flight would land a little late due to "minor mechanical difficulty".
The 'Storyville' (a documentary strand presented by the BBC featuring international documentaries which started airing in 2005) film, directed by John Dower, interrogates Cooper's friends, family and acquaintances. "He wasn't nervous. He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time. He ordered a second bourbon and soda, paid his drink tab (and attempted to give air hostess Tina Mucklow the change) and offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle," Mucklow told investigators.
The case was shut in 2016 as a lot of crucial evidence were lost by the Department of Police in the early days. But the documentary showcases interviews of Mucklow, the stewardess who sat with Cooper as he revealed the bomb in his case, and co-pilot William Rataczak.
Now, even after 49 years, it is still unknown who Cooper actually was, and how exactly did he vanish.