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John Hollenhorst reporting The FBI is trying to breathe new life into an old mystery, one that's become a legend in the history of crime. In a press release today, the bureau asked the public's help in identifying "D.B. Cooper," the mysterious hijacker who disappeared in mid-air in 1971. It also cast more doubt on an old Utah angle to the case.
Cooper made himself famous on Thanksgiving Eve 1971, and we still don't know who he was. "D.B. Cooper" skyjacked a plane, demanded four parachutes and $200,000 cash, and bailed out somewhere over the Pacific Northwest.
The FBI today re-issued a map from the original investigation and photos: one of the parachutes, a parachute pack, a necktie he discarded on the plane, and some of the cash found along the banks of the Columbia River.
The bureau also tried to shoot down an old theory that "D.B. Cooper" was BYU student Richard McCoy. He was arrested in Provo a few months later following a similar skyjacking in San Francisco.
In a book two decades ago, a former FBI agent and former probation officer claimed McCoy did both skyjackings. "Yes, we're very confident that Richard McCoy is ‘D.B. Cooper,'" former probation officer Bernie Rhodes said in 1991.
Former FBI agent Russell Calame added, "There's just too many similarities. There's too many things that are the same."
On the ground in San Francisco, McCoy ordered his hijacked plane to fly eastward toward Utah. He gave pilots a list of towns in Utah to fly over, and then he bailed out somewhere over Utah Lake. He landed in a field south of Provo and walked to a nearby drive-in and hitched a ride home.
Calame still believes today McCoy and Cooper were the same person. "I do. I feel about the same. I don't have any reason to feel otherwise, yet," he said.
The FBI press release says McCoy didn't match Cooper's description. "The descriptions varied a lot, and that's not unusual," Calame said.
The FBI release says McCoy couldn't have been Cooper because he was home for Thanksgiving dinner in 1971. "I think we proved pretty conclusively that he wasn't here, that he lied about Thanksgiving dinner," Calame said.
The debate persists long after McCoy died. He was killed in a shootout with the FBI in 1974.
The whole purpose of today's news release was to generate new leads. If you have any, contact the FBI.
