A Secret Parachute in the FBI’s Possession May Have Finally Solved D.B. Cooper’s Identity
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The children of a D.B. Cooper suspect handed over new evidence to the FBI because they think their dad was the culprit.
A parachute long hidden on family property in North Carolina is said to match the type used in the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.
The suspect in question was arrested for a similar skyjacking just months following the D.B. Cooper event.
The children of convicted skyjacker Richard McCoy II believed their dear old dad may have been D.B. Cooper, the notorious (and notoriously unidentified) central figure in 1971’s unsolved skyjacking. It’s the only one in United States history, in fact, without an answer—until, perhaps, now.
Just months after the Cooper incident, McCoy was convicted of an incredibly similar skyjacking that also included a parachute jump. His children, Chanté and Richard III (Rick), have long thought the clues added up.
They may now have evidence to back up their suspicions.
Chanté and Rick had kept quiet out of consideration for their mother, Karen, who they believed was potentially complicit in both crimes. But as both parents are now deceased, the opportunity arose for the siblings to come forward with their suspicions. And, crucially, they seem to have hard evidence: a modified parachute that they (and amateur D.B. Cooper sleuth Dan Gryder) believe was used in the daring escape.
“That rig is literally one in a billion,” Gryder told Cowboy State Daily after releasing a series on YouTube about his suspicions. It was that YouTube series, Gryder said, that drew the FBI back into the case.
According to Gryder, the FBI now has the parachute and harness that were once tucked away in a storage shed on family property in North Carolina, along with a harness and a skydiving logbook that Chanté claims show D.B. Cooper’s movements near Oregon and Utah (the locations of the two skyjacking events). This is the first real movement from the FBI on the case since the bureau closed it in 2016—even if some former personnel claimed it remained secretly open.
After receiving the new evidence, the FBI followed up with the family and searched the property where the parachute was stored for four hours with more than a dozen agents, according to Gryder. The unique alterations to the parachute may hold the key to the new evidence’s value in the 50-plus-year-old case. The FBI knows the original parachutes were altered by Earl Cossey, a veteran skydiver, who was working with the FBI until his murder in his home in 2013. If the new find matches what they already know, it could provide a boost in the search for the real D.B. Cooper.
The D.B. Cooper case has taken on a borderline mythical quality, with countless theories posed by amateur sleuths online, in books, and in documentaries. One 1990s book—D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy—even claimed McCoy was the culprit, but the book was pulled from print after Karen sued, claiming libel.
On November 24, 1971, D.B. Cooper—he called himself Dan, but the media misreported the name as D.B.—paid $18.52 in cash for a one-way ticket to Portland, and boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 without offering any identification (due to a lack of regulations at the time).
Holding a briefcase and a paper sack, Cooper passed a note to a flight attendant seated behind him halfway through the flight and whispered that she better look at the note since he had a bomb. Cooper opened his briefcase to reveal what appeared to be a bomb, and relayed his demands for $200,000, multiple parachutes, and a refueling truck waiting in Seattle so he could take off again, bound for Mexico City.
After Cooper’s demands were met, the scheduled 30-minute flight extended into a two-hour loop over the Puget Sound while ground crews prepared. Cooper released the airliner’s 35 passengers and some crew members, then dictated the flight path and aircraft configuration to the remaining crew—demanding specific speeds, flap angles, and more. With these negotiations complete, Cooper and the four remaining crew members took off again.
Somewhere still over Washington, Cooper then opened the rear staircase and parachuted from the plane, but the exact location and timing of that jump is unknown. Immediate searches yielded no evidence, and over the years, experts have been unable to determine an exact search area due to the multiple variables involved in the night jump.
One of the only real pieces of evidence left by Cooper was a $1.49 clip-on tie from JCPenney, which the FBI holds. Sleuths have sued the government for access to the DNA and the particles left on the tie, but to no avail.
Having the actual parachute would expand the evidence in the case by vast amounts.
McCoy is an intriguing suspect—one who was later passed over because many FBI personnel had come to believe that the real D.B. Cooper died in the jump by the time McCoy surfaced as a possibility. And McCoy didn’t exactly match the physical description, as he was much younger—27 years old at the time—than the original estimation of Cooper’s mid-40s age.
McCoy would have had the have the chops to commit the famous crime, though. He proved it in April of 1972, when he successfully pulled off the skyjacking of a United Airlines flight after demanding $500,000. He boarded the plane in Denver, and was able to get it diverted to San Francisco, have his demands met, and force the plane back into the air. McCoy then jumped from the plane over Utah and was arrested by the FBI within three days, thanks to an anonymous tip. That tip then led the FBI to a waitress who remembered serving him a milkshake at a roadside hamburger stand the night of the skyjacking, and a teenager who said McCoy paid him $5 to give him a ride from the stand into a nearby town. Eventually, they were able to match his fingerprints ones left on the demand note.
McCoy was arrested after the FBI raided his home. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, but eventually broke out of a maximum-security prison and evaded capture for three months until he was shot by police in Virginia in 1974.
The parachute offers the best chance at evidence that could potentially link McCoy to Cooper. “This,” Gryder said, “will definitely prove it was McCoy.”
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