The real D.B. Cooper's identity may have finally been unmasked after a pair of siblings believe their late father may have been living a secret double life.
D.B. Cooper, also known as Dan Cooper, is a man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, on November 24, 1971.
The flight had been midway from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, when Cooper told a flight attendant that he had a bomb and demanded $200,000 (roughly $1.5million in today's money) in ransom, as well as four parachutes after landing in Seattle.
He allowed the passengers to leave the flight in Seattle, before instructing the flight crew to refuel the aircraft and fly toward Mexico City, stopping off to refuel in Reno, Nevada.
Around 30 minutes after taking off from Seattle, Cooper opened the aircraft's aft door, deployed the staircase, and parachuted out into the sky over Washington.
His real identity as well as his whereabouts - and whether or not he survived the jump - have never been conclusively determined.
A small amount of the ransom money was recovered on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington, in 1980 but the rest has never been found.
The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation, and the FBI had long speculated that Cooper may not have survived the jump due to the inclement weather, lack of proper skydiving equipment, the forest terrain and lack of detailed knowledge of the landing area, as well as the remaining ransom money having disappeared and never been spent.
Now, a pair of siblings in North Carolina believe they have evidence to show their late father may have been Cooper after allegedly finding his parachute hidden in their home.
Chanté and Rick McCoy III claim their father, Richard McCoy Jr., may have been the infamous hijacker, the Cowboy State Daily reports.
The pair waited until their mother's death in 2020 to come forward with their theory, amid fears she could be implicated in the crime after finding the parachute that allegedly belonged to Cooper in her storage stash outside the house.
When she died, the siblings met with aviation YouTuber Dan Gryder, who examined the parachute and believes it could be the one Cooper used in 1971.
Gryder told the outlet: "That rig is literally one in a billion."
He claimed the parachute the McCoys found matched the modified chute made by veteran skydiver Earl Cossey for the police as part of Cooper’s demands.
People also speculated whether Richard Jr. may have been the elusive fugitive because of his own criminal past.
Five months after the hijacking, Richard Jr. was caught during a similar highjacking in Utah, and eventually died after a shootout with police when he broke out of prison.
The McCoys told Gryder that they had been aware of the truth for several years but had feared going public in case their mother was implicated in both hijackings as a result.
Since Gryder published images of the parachute, the FBI has allegedly reached out to the McCoys to see the evidence.
The siblings told the outlet that the FBI had searched the North Carolina complex for additional clues and had taken possession of the parachute in 2023, with Rick also having provided a DNA sample for investigators.
He claims he was told that the next step may be to exhume his father's body, but the request has yet to be made. The FBI has not year addressed the claims or the case publicly.
The case was officially closed in 2016, 45 years after the crime took place, due to a lack of leads.
.jpg_j2kd62?tr=h-184)
