DB Cooper may have been French Canadian or have served overseas in Belgium with the elusive skyjacker’s name and criminal scheme appearing to have been inspired by a foreign 1960s comic book series, the ex-lead agent on the case says.
On November 24, 1971, a smartly dressed man identifying himself as Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Airlines Flight 305 above the skies of Portland and parachuted out of the plane at 10,000 feet with $200,000 strapped to his waist, never to be seen again.
The identity of Cooper and whether or not he survived his daring jump from the Boeing 727 remains a mystery more than 52 years on.
But retired FBI agent Larry Carr, who spearheaded the Cooper probe between 2007 and 2010, believes a key to unmasking the infamous crook may lie in a 1960s-era, French-language comic book that Cooper appeared to have taken inspiration from.
The comic followed the adventures of a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot and space traveler named Dan Cooper. (The real Cooper would later become known as DB Cooper after a reporter misspelled his name in an early news article and the nickname stuck.)
On the cover of one issue of the comic, created by Belgian cartoonist Albert Weinberg — which was sold only in Europe and French Canada shortly before Cooper hijacked Flight 305 — the Canadian action hero is shown parachuting from an aircraft.
Additionally, in another perceived parallel, one of the comics includes a storyline about a ransom being delivered in a knapsack – again mirroring the real-life hijacking.
The Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English and were never sold in America.
Carr believes the hijacker may have been inspired by the Dan Cooper series and chosen his alias as a nod to the fictional character.
The agent worked with the theory that Cooper was either French Canadian or possibly lived or served overseas in Belgium with the US Air Force.
He was first alerted to the perceived parallels between the heist and comic series by a Canadian prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in The Hague who used to collect Dan Cooper comics as a child in Vancouver.
“It was so interesting that, in the tens of thousands of agents and analysts who looked at this case, none of them ever found the comic book connection,” Carr told The U.S. Sun.
“I kind of ran with the idea he may be French Canadian and/or have lived or served overseas in Belgium.
“All types of coincidences occur in cases like these, some that you can’t believe can even happen, so yes it may be merely a coincidence.
“But it could also be a strong lead. It could just as easily be the case that it’s linked and it’s a strong clue to help identify who this man was.”
Cooper’s hostages did not report hearing the hijacker speak with any kind of distinctive accent.
But a strange phrase used by Cooper while demanding his ransom has long suggested to investigators that he was perhaps not a US native.
Cooper requested his $200,000 sum in “negotiable American currency,” a phrase deemed non-typical of American English.
In 2011, a Cooper research task force that had access to the FBI’s files noted: “The Dan Cooper comic was only published in French, making Cooper’s unusual request very interesting.
“Since no American citizen would use those terms (‘negotiable American currency’), it suggests that Cooper was not originally from this country.”
And if indeed he was from another country, they added, “His lack of accent points to French Canada as one of the few places in the world where (a French speaker) could hail from and not have an accent.
“Franco-Manitobans, the Franco-Albertans, and possibly the Franco-Ontarians are most likely to have both a good command of French and no discernible accent when speaking English, since French Canadians living outside of Quebec live in a predominantly anglophone environment.”
AMATURE SKYDIVER?
Contrary to popular belief, wherever Cooper hailed from, Carr says he believes the crook had very limited – if any – prior skydiving experience and had no special military training.
He also believes Cooper died on the night of the jump and pointed to a series of glaring mistakes he made in the planning and execution of the hijacking as evidence of his likely demise.
Among Cooper’s apparent mistakes, Carr pointed out that he failed to specify the kind of parachutes he wanted from authorities, failed to dictate a specific flight path he wanted the pilots to take before leaping from the aircraft, and didn’t have appropriate clothing or equipment to protect him during the daring jump.
Additionally, there was a strong storm in the Pacific Northwest on the night of the heist, and Carr believes anyone with prior military experience would’ve scrubbed the mission and waited for a safer window.
“Reading the investigative files, the picture I got of Cooper was that he was highly motivated but lacked the skill to effectively accomplish the mission he set out to do,” said Carr, who retired from the Bureau in 2022.
“Going back to the beginning, if you have military paratroopers and their mission is to jump behind enemy lines on this date, and it happens it’s a night jump, and there’s a storm blowing through, then that mission is going to be scrubbed because it’s unsafe.
“So if Cooper knew about what he was getting himself into, he would’ve scrubbed the mission. He would’ve waited for a better window.
“That tells me he didn’t have military experiences or experience as a jumper otherwise he’d have scrubbed the mission for a better day.”
It was so interesting that, in the tens of thousands of agents and analysts who looked at this case, none of them ever found the comic book connection.
Larry Carr
To emphasize his point, Carr pointed to DB Cooper copycat Richard McCoy, a Vietnam veteran who hijacked a United Airlines flight in 1972 for $500,000 ransom, as an example of someone with “knowledge and skill” who properly prepared.
McCoy, who for years was believed to be Cooper, “brought his own equipment he needed to be successful”, Carr said.
“McCoy gave the pilot specific flight information that would take him over where he wanted to bail out,” said the ex-agent.
“He said, ‘I want you to follow this airway. I want you to fly in this configuration at this speed.’ And then furthermore, McCoy asked for updates from the cockpit where they were, what their speed was – he was constantly getting information because he needed that specific information to jump into his proposed drop zone – and Cooper did not have that.”
NO TRAIL, NO PULSE
Cooper hijacked Northwestern Fight 305 during a short passage between Portland and Seattle, handing a note to a stewardess warning her he had a bomb in his briefcase and a strict set of demands he needed her and the cockpit to follow.
In exchange for the lives of everyone on board, Cooper demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes to be hand-delivered to him upon arrival in Seattle.
After the exchange was made, Cooper ordered the flight to refuel and this time head in the direction of Mexico City.
The cockpit told Cooper they didn’t have enough fuel to reach Mexico, so the hijacker compromised and settled on flying towards Reno.
It’s long been believed Cooper had ties to the aerospace industry or prior military training because of his near-constant use of aviation jargon during the heist and his seemingly intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the aircraft, a Boeing 727.
While compromising on the end destination, the hijacker was very specific about how he wanted the plane to be flown: gear down, wing flaps at 15 degrees, and flying no higher than 10,000 feet with a de-pressured passenger cabin.
He also lowered the rear staircase of the aircraft himself, before parachuting out of the plane somewhere over southwest Washington, leaving nothing behind but a clip-on tie and a handful of cigarette butts.
Very few traces of Cooper were found in the years following.
In November 1978, a deer hunter in Castle Rock, Washington, found a Boeing 727 instructions placard for lowering the aircraft’s rear staircase that was believed to belong to Flight 305.
Two years later, $5,800 of Cooper’s ransom was found by a young boy digging along the banks of the Columbia River in Tena Bar.
The discovery reignited interest in the case but failed to garner any concrete leads. The remaining $194,200 remains unaccounted for.
No further traces of Cooper have been found since.
Carr believes Cooper’s trail went cold after leaping from the plane because he did not survive.
The agent said Cooper chose the wrong parachute to skydive with and jumped into an unlit drop zone that was dense with forest.
At the time of his descent, there were clouds at 5,000 feet that would have obscured the ground during his jump, in addition to high winds and heavy rainfall.
Carr said if Cooper survived, there’s no doubt in his mind the FBI would’ve caught him.
“When you look at the breadth of the FBI’s investigation, every field office in the US had leads on this case. It was a full-court press by the FBI to get it solved for years,” said Carr.
“If he’d have survived the jump we would’ve found him. The trail goes cold after he left the plane because he died. We’d have caught him, just like we caught everyone else.
“It’s the same investigation. You ask questions and get the answers. And you follow up those answers with other questions. And when those questions lead you to someone else, you just do that.
“And we enlisted thousands of people to ask those questions and follow up those leads. And so I firmly believe, just like any other crime when you have thousands of people asking questions and following potential suspects, you will always find something unless the person is no longer with us.”
STUNNING DEVELOPMENT
The FBI officially closed its case on Cooper in 2016, rendering the hijacking of Flight 305 the only unsolved crime of its kind in US history.
Carr believes the case will be incredibly difficult to solve today unless there are significant advancements in DNA technology.
The clip-on tie left behind by Cooper has long been seen as the key to cracking the case.
When it was tested by the FBI for DNA two decades ago, investigators were able to glean a partial DNA profile but the sample was inconclusive and could only be used to discredit potential matches, rather than identify the culprit, Carr said.
However, hoping to utilize more modern DNA technology to finally solve the case is independent investigator Eric Ulis, who last year sued the FBI for access to the tie to conduct his own tests.
The case was thrown out in December, but Ulis exclusively revealed to The U.S. Sun this week that he has managed to obtain a sample of Cooper’s DNA from a scientist who tested the tie in 2011.
Ulis is planning to send the sample to a state-of-the-art lab to conduct metagenomic DNA analysis, an advanced kind of analysis that enables scientists to separate individual strands of DNA.
Once all of the DNA strands from the tie are separated, Kaye and Ulis will be able to build a genetic profile of Cooper to compare with outstanding suspects and also use it for forensic genealogy.
Ulis called metagenomic DNA analysis the “holy grail” for the DB Cooper case and voiced confidence the bomb-wielding thief’s days of anonymity are numbered.
Carr, meanwhile, said if he was still overseeing the case he’d urge the FBI to conduct one last “full court press” and retest all the evidence they have left to see if they can solve the mystery.
He said, “I think DNA is the last chance we have to solve it.
“The FBI does want to solve this case, but they of course have other priorities.
“I’d do one last full-court press and take everything that could possibly contain DNA – the parachute we have, the tie, Cooper’s ticket – and just see what we can come up with.
“And if the FBI wouldn’t do it, I know there are private labs that have volunteered to do it in the past.”
Having overseen the case, Carr said he – like the legions of sleuths online attempting to solve the Cooper mystery themselves – desperately wants answers.
“I am no different than everybody else,” laughed Carr.
“The whole book has been written all these characters have been thrown in over the years, and no one knows what the final chapter is. I want to know what that final chapter is just like everybody else.
“I don’t care who solves it, I just want to know who it was.”