Dan Cooper hijacked the plane, got the ransom, jumped into the vacuum and disappeared forever.

In the United States on the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971, a forty-year-old man by the name of Dan Cooper approached the airport counter and purchased a one-way ticket for a short flight from Portland to Seattle.

Hours later, a $ 200,000 recovery bag – worth about $ 1.3 million today – was tied to his body and parachuted from the plane. They never found it.

Fifty years after he jumped into what is known as the DP Cooper Case – a nickname created by the media – is the only unsolved plane hijacking in American history.

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence (FBI) described him as “a quiet man in his 40s who appeared in business attire with a black tie and white shirt.”

He ordered bourbon and soda inside the plane while he waited for departure.

His plan is very simple. After the flight departed, Cooper gave the flight attendant a note. Since she did not respond immediately, she walked over and said, “Miss, you better see that note. I have a bomb.

After seeing the weights of the cables in his briefcase, the flight attendant wrote down his request – four parachutes and $ 200,000 – as instructed by the captain.

When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper allowed 36 passengers to return with the money and parachutes the FBI had brought aboard.

He took the crew hostage for safety and demanded that the plane take off again and fly down, this time heading to Mexico City.

But somewhere between Seattle and Renault, Nevada, Cooper jumped out the back door of a Boeing 727 and got lost on a cold winter night.

Human hunting

The FBI launched an extensive investigation, but after weeks of searching in the dense and rugged jungles of northwestern America, investigators found nothing.

More than five years later, after 800 interviews with suspects, there is still no sign of the kidnapper or his parachute.

Did he jump and survive? Will their clothes and accessories last long in the freezer?

These and other questions remain unanswered.

“James Bond”

“He’s a guy who introduced himself in the style of James Bond,” said investigator Eric Ulis, whose own quest to solve the Cooper mystery was the subject of a History Channel documentary.

Ulis, a historian who has been researching and writing about this case for almost 14 years, also organized a conference called CooperCon for other activists on the mystery of the hijackings.

Mary Jean Fryer, the FBI’s special agent in the 2000s, worked on the investigation.

Cooper became the “hero of a folk tale” in the United States after his height robbery.

He describes the current wave of interest surrounding the case as a “cult” and is triggered by the fact that the kidnapper has not been found.

Theories, some incredible, were developed over the years, and dozens of people, sometimes on their deathbed, said DP Cooper.

FBI investigators examined a number of intriguing profiles, including Barbara Dayton, an amateur pilot and transgender woman who allegedly confessed to her friends; Lynn Doyle Cooper, at a Thanksgiving party that year, announced that his niece had confirmed her participation after she was shown bleeding and injured; And Sheridan Patterson, interviewed by WWII player Fryar.

The FBI finally closed the case in 2016 “to focus on other investigative priorities.”

Despite some “significant errors,” Ulysses said the federal police generally did a “very good job.”

In his view, the FBI was wrong on the runway, so DB Cooper would have landed miles away from the vast search area.

But the light of mystery surrounding this matter continues to fascinate Americans.

DP Cooper devices are available for sale online: Fans can choose from coffee mugs, T-shirts, car stickers and socks, until it closed, there was even a DP Cooper Strip Club in the state from Texas.