D B Cooper Case Study

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Pages: 6

Neil Armstrong once said, “Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand”. This quote explains the mindset of many federal law enforcement agents whose only goal was to discover the mystery of the disappearance of D.B. Cooper. In 1971, a man known by the name of D.B. Cooper hijacked a passenger aircraft and vanished with $200,000 worth of ransom money. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this case has been “one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations” in the bureau’s history. It also remains as the only unsolved skyjacking in the United States. Many agents and sleuths have pondered over this particular case for years and years, but have yet to find who is D.B. Cooper and how did he vanish. …show more content…
Cooper, who D.B. Cooper was, and how did he get away. A popular theory was that D.B. Cooper died during the jump from the plane. According to the website io9, Cheryl Eddy reported that FBI special agent Larry Carr told reporters that, “We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper. We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped into the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat.” Agent Carr later said, “Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open.” Many people believed that Cooper indeed died during the escape, but there many questions unanswered such as what happened to the money and why his body was never recovered. Another popular theory was that D.B. Cooper was believed to be Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. On April 7, 1972, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. pulled the exact same heist as D.B. Cooper. The only difference between McCoy’s heist and D.B. Coopers heist is that D.B. Cooper’s weapon of choice was a fake bomb while McCoy’s was an actual handgun and an alleged hidden explosive device. According to FBI reports, McCoy was ruled out as being D.B. Cooper due to him not matching the physical descriptions provided by the two stewardesses. The …show more content…
The first theory is that D.B. Cooper has a form of military background. FBI agent Carr said it best that they believed he could have been a paratrooper. Although Carr said that no experience parachutist would jump at night during the rain, he left out the possibility that Cooper could have been an active Navy SEAL or ex-SEAL. SEALs were created in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and most of the nation had little knowledge of them during this time period. SEALs are trained to jump at night with heavy pounds of equipment, so investigators could imagine that jump with only a parachute and ransom money was a walk in the park. Another indicator that Cooper had a military background was the particles of cerium, strontium sulfide, and pure titanium on the tie. Many sleuths didn’t bother to think that those combinations come from a military aircraft. One military aircraft that has these three elements is the Boeing 707, also known as Air Force One which is responsible for transporting the President of United States of America. The plane is rarely guarded by SEALs, the United States was at war during the year of 1971 which promoted SEALs to act as secret service agents with suit and ties. The next theory is that D.B. Cooper was indeed a fake name. It was smart to use the name D.B. Cooper because investigators would spend months trying to decrypt the name and not follow the correct