A D.B. Cooper Update

[Music] Back in 2017, we spoke about DB Cooper, a man who jumped out of a plane and into history. Nice. For four details, we're going to give some background, but if you want the four background and the four story, you want to listen to episode 16 of this podcast. We have linked it in the show notes, but let's do that recap. On November 24, 1971, a man hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft after boarding under the false name, Dan Cooper. The flight was a short one for an Portland, Oregon, up to Seattle, Washington. Cooper sat in the back of a plane and after ordering a drink, he handed a flight attendant named Florence Schaffner a note. At first, she didn't read the note, assuming the man was coming onto her, but he told her that he had a bomb in his suitcase. When he opened the case, she saw what she believed to be just that. Several sticks of dynamite wired to a battery. Schaffner took Cooper's demands, wrote them on a note and took them to the captain. He requested $200,000, which is about one and a half million today. It's a lot of money, Mike. He also demanded two parachutes and that the plane be refueled upon landing. The airline approved the ransom and the flight landed in Seattle and Cooper's demands were met, including a bag of $10,000 unmarked $20 bills. Those bills have been photographed by the FBI before handing over. It's like, yeah, we're not going to mock them. Yeah, we're going to know what they are. We know. All about them. We named them all individually. Cooper then allowed the passengers to exit the plane along with all but one of the flight attendants. The crew was directed to fly south toward Mexico City. The remaining flight attendant, a woman named Tina Muclao, was instructed to lower the rear staircase of the plane, but she refused out of fear and then Cooper sent her to the front of the plane before opening the stairs himself. There have been issues refueling the plane in Seattle, so that it was going to be a stop in Reno, Nevada. The crew radioed to the back of the plane to tow Cooper. They needed to raise the stairs before landing, but he didn't respond. Once on the ground, it was clear that he had parachuteed out of the rear of the plane, probably at about 8.13 pm when the crew noted the tail of the plane pitching upward for a moment. Yeah, that's, that's what he jumped, but we're going to get into that and what happened after the jump after this break. This episode of "Ungeniused" is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website. You can engage with the audience and you can sell anything, products, services, and even content, because Squarespace has everything you need, all in one place, all on your terms. 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As you can imagine, there was a massive search for the hijacker, but no significant evidence was found and it's possible the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens destroyed any uncovered evidence. Conspiracies. That's what we're talking about today. We've got the Cooper Responsible for the eruption conspiracy here on it. No, the FBI closed the case in 2016 despite some of the ransom money turning up in places over the years. They had talked to thousands of suspects in the meantime, but didn't get any good results. And this is where we pick things up today. This is where the update comes in. Richard McCoy Jr. was one of those suspects that Mike mentioned. He was a Vietnam more veteran and a recreational skydiver. I knew what he was doing. In April of 1972, he hijacked a plane out of Denver, Colorado in a very similar fashion to DB Cooper. But he was arrested just two days later. He parachuted out over Utah and the FBI found him pretty quickly after a tip from the public and almost all of his $500,000 ransom was found in his home. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison, but McCoy obviously escaped in 1977. He made obviously, right? Look at this guy. Obviously escaped in 1973, but was killed in a shootout with FBI agents three months later. In 1991, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and a former FBI agent named Russell Kalame. Kalame. Kalame. Sure. Wrote a book titled DB Cooper, the real McCoy, in which they say McCoy was DB Cooper. You'd have to write that book. You got to pun like that. You got to do it. You got your, you're beholden to humankind. Yeah. The FBI didn't seriously consider McCoy a suspect back in the day because he didn't match the age or description given by witnesses of that original DB Cooper hijacking. And he was reportedly in Las Vegas the day of the crime. McCoy's widow Karen sued the authors and publishers of the book as well as her former attorney to have the book pulled from the shelves as she claimed it misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking. It came out and caught that she had been deeply involved, but the book was allowed to stay on sale. However, writes for the book to be sold to a film studio were blocked and Karen was awarded a settlement. That all got settled in 1994, but the story still lives on today. In 2020, it was revealed that McCoy actually had been a suspect as recently as 2006. It was a little unclear how interested the FBI was in this guy. Oh, interesting. So that brings us to today. It's here that we meet Dan Greider, a retired pilot who's investigated the case over the course of the last two decades. Greider has published a series of YouTube videos on the subject over the years. He showed the world a video of a parachute that was found on McCoy's property. He said it was a quote one in a billion find as the parachute had modifications made to it that matched alterations made to the one supplied by D.V. Cooper 50 years earlier. So how does one modify a parachute? Well, these changes included the moving of the record handle from the left side to the right side as well as cutting some straps and adding D ring attachments and enlarging the pack tray to hold a larger shoot. All this was done with hand done stitching according to Greider and all these changes showed up on this parachute that was supposedly found on the McCoy's land. Greider believes that McCoy's trip to Las Vegas was a lie told to Karen to throw off the FBI, but the validity of that claim is unclear. Potentially very sketchy stuff here. McCoy's own children have gone on the record saying they believe their father was D.V. Cooper and it's reported that the FBI has reopened the case, but of course the government can either confirm nor deny. You really seem to like to talk about this guy. You trying to throw them off the scent, Steve, any U.D.B. Cooper? I mean, it happened like 15 years before I was born, but I'll never tell. How can we tell? We do say you're old a lot. Maybe that's why. Maybe that's that's actually all like really old. Would you parachute out of a plane? No. It's one of these things that I don't see why I should do that. You know what I mean? Like that's one of these things I'm like, no, I'm okay. Same as like bungee jumping. It's like, no, I'm fine. Like I'm not going to do that. I'll live without that. It's totally fine. I'm not afraid of heights, but I'm not gonna jump out of an airplane either. I've told the story before. I have been in a parachuting jumping situation, but I was filming for a project and I stayed in the plane. I did not. I did not know what it is that like a "Parishoot" jumping situation. I don't know. The parachute was happening. I wasn't involved. I was I was safely buckled into a seat in the airplane, but flying in a plane with the door open, very strange. Yeah. Mike, we have an announcement to make here at the end of the episode. We do. So my wife and I are expecting a baby in the new year, so our first child. And because of that, I'm deciding that it's time to make some changes to the amount and frequency of projects that I'm doing. So you're jumping out of an airplane with a bucket full of cash? Correct. No, first of all, deepest congratulations and love to you and Dina. But one of those changes does concern this show. Ungenius is going to be going on hiatus after this episode. Again. Again, that's right. Yeah, this is a hard decision. This show was the first podcast that the two of us have worked on. It was about 13 years ago or something. But before we founded Relay Together and then we stopped doing this show. We did others. And then one of the time we board it back. Yeah. When we started Relay, we told each other that we would bring back the show when we both quit our jobs to work for ourselves. And we were able to do that. But for now, it's time to put the show aside again. But season three could be out there somewhere. And we retroactively put this show into season's analysis. Yeah. Well, season one. So those episodes, 13 years ago, which are not on the internet because they're terrible. That season won. Terrible so bad. You don't want them. Yeah. This has been season two, 224 episodes. And you know, season three is out there in the future somewhere. Yeah. I'm confident that the show will come back at some point in some form in the future. But we're not going to make any promises on that for right now. That's right. So for now, thank you for listening and supporting our podcast here for so long. Until next time, we pass a flight attended a note mic. Say goodbye. (humming)