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SALT LAKE CITY -- A French-Canadian comic book hero is providing new insights into one of the FBI's greatest unsolved mysteries: the D.B. Cooper case.
In 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a plane from Portland to Seattle, demanded parachutes and $200,000 in cash and then jumped into the night with the money, never to be seen again.
Did he survive the jump? That is the subject of great debate.
But as it turns out, a certain Dan Cooper is very much alive on the pages of a French comic book series that was popular when the hijacking occurred.
In one episode, published near the date of the hijacking, the cover illustration shows him parachuting. Special Agent Larry Carr believes it's possible the hijacker took his name from the comic book. That's important because the books were never translated into English, which means the hijacker likely spent time overseas.
This fits with Carr's theory that Cooper had been in the Air Force.
