Konformist Book Club: Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

Geoffrey Gray

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Editorial Reviews

"Here is writing and storytelling that is vivid and fresh—a delectable adventure from a talented new author."
-Gay Talese

“With verve and assurance worthy of his protagonist, Geoffrey Gray pulls readers along on a kaleidoscopic chase through the cult of Cooper. Both a masterful re-creation of the paranoid 1970s, and an exhilarating firsthand account of an erosive obsession, Skyjack takes us down the rabbit hole with Gray—and what a journey it is.”
–James Swanson, author of Manhunt and Bloody Crimes

"Who was D.B. Cooper? In Skyjack, Geoffrey Gray lures in the reader with this iconic unsolved mystery, and for the next 290 pages explores a story as attention-grabbing as a bag of hot money. D.B. Cooper emerges as the great McGuffin of 1970s America, a prism through which Gray exploits to the fullest with his propulsive writing style, mad commitment to detail, and explores everything from the early years of gender reassignment surgery to the birth of airline security culture to the ghostly legends of the Pacific Northwest's Dark Divide."
—Evan Wright, New York Times bestselling author of Generation Kill

“Skyjack tells the legendary story of D.B. Cooper in a way that’s as inventive and as engaging as the subject itself. Only a writer as talented as Geoffrey Gray could knit together the many strands of this mystery and the extraordinary characters who have dedicated, and in some cases destroyed, their lives in pursuit of the truth. Just as Gray finds himself sucked into the tale, readers will leap into the void alongside him, landing on their feet and smiling at the shared adventure.”
—Mitchell Zuckoff, author of Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the
Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II

“Easily one of the most delightful books I’ve read in a long, long time. ...

Product Description

“I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”

That was the note handed to a stewardess by a mild-mannered passenger on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was the start of one of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of American true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline, then parachuted into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and into oblivion. D. B. Cooper’s case has become the stuff of legend and obsessed and cursed his pursuers with everything from bankruptcy to suicidal despair. Now with Skyjack, journalist Geoffrey Gray delves into this unsolved mystery uncovering new leads in the infamous case.

Starting with a tip from a private investigator into a promising suspect (a Cooper lookalike, Northwest employee, and trained paratrooper), Gray is propelled into the murky depths of a decades-old mystery, conducting new interviews and obtaining a first-ever look at Cooper’s FBI file. Beginning with a heartstopping and unprecedented recreation of the crime itself, from cabin to cockpit to tower, and uncanny portraits of characters who either chased Cooper or might have committed the crime, including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk hero who supposedly shafted the system…Karl Fleming, a respected reporter whose career was destroyed by a Cooper scoop that was a scam…and Barbara (nee Bobby) Dayton, a transgendered pilot who insisted she was Cooper herself.

With explosive new information and exclusive access to FBI files and forensic evidence, Skyjack reopens one of the great cold cases of the 20th century.

GEOFFREY GRAY writes about crime, politics, sports, travel and food. He is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, covered boxing for The New York Times and for programs like This American Life, writes for other newspapers and magazines, and once drove an ice-cream truck. SKYJACK is his first book.

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 1271 KB
Print Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Crown (August 9, 2011)
Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B003E8AIDE

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D.B. Cooper, a uniquely American hero

The FBI claims to have found a lead in the famous hijacker's case. An expert explains why we're still captivated
Mandy Van Deven
Tuesday, Aug 2, 2011
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/08/02/d_b_cooper_interview/index.html

The legend of D.B. Cooper is a curiously enduring one. On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a plane in Portland, Ore., and after a drink and a cigarette, slipped a note to the flight attendant saying he had a bomb and was hijacking the plane. Within a few hours, he parachuted out of a Boeing 727 with $200,000 of ransom money and was never heard from again.

Even after 40 years, the FBI hasn't been able to pinpoint his real identity -- until, possibly, this week. The FBI claims to have a new lead in the case: A retired police officer suggesting the real D.B. Cooper died in a car crash in the Pacific Northwest 10 years ago. (So far an attempt to match the man's fingerprints, obtained from an old guitar strap, to Cooper's has proved unsuccessful.)

It's no small feat to hijack a plane and elude capture for decades, but what's more astounding is the iconic status D.B. Cooper has gained ever since. Perhaps it's because, as a nation of rugged individualists (or so we like to think), Americans are drawn to stories of rebels who stick it to the man. Or perhaps we just like a good mystery.

In the wake of this week's news, Salon spoke to journalist Geoffrey Gray, whose new book, "Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper," is out on Aug. 9.

How do you think people will react if this latest news is true?

The news doesn't give a lot in the way of proof. All they have is a secondhand story, a guitar strap and a hunch. The Cooper case is littered with those. There are literally many feet of files full of those kinds of claims. So, before they release any information, I think the FBI needs to be sure they can prove the identity of the hijacker conclusively. I'm not sure a partial fingerprint or a partial strand of DNA is enough to get rid of the doubt that exists.

So either the hijacker got away with it for 30 years or he's still out there getting away with it. Regardless, the myth continues.

For this case, these kinds of leads have happened so often. What is different this time is that the FBI appeared to take it seriously by passing it along for testing and telling the public about it. One of the theories out there is that most of what the FBI has done has only taken them farther away from finding the hijacker. Five days after the hijacking, they released the Cooper sketch because they were desperate for clues in the case. But what happened next was that they were bombarded with information from all over the country because everybody saw somebody they knew in that sketch. So, they couldn't do any investigative work because there were too many leads to follow.

As it turns out, there were a tremendous number of hijackings in the early '70s. What was going on?

The story of a hijacking never starts in the plane. It actually starts on the ground. The United States in 1971 was a country at war with itself, and it was a time of tremendous upheaval. There was a recession happening in 1971 that coupled with a lot of counterculture stuff. The number of bomb threats and explosions in government buildings was at an all-time high. Inner cities were becoming ghettos. We were losing the Vietnam War and soldiers were coming home addicted to heroin. The overwhelming idea was that there was no control. The country was unhinged and there was a state of national paranoia.

What about this particular hijacking? Why were people so quick to get behind D.B. Cooper?

Seattle was a company town, and Boeing had laid off a lot of its workforce. Some of the best aeronautic engineers in the country had to mow lawns because there were just no jobs available. The Pacific Northwest is a unique part of the country that has a real outlaw, flannel, corned-beef-and-hash spirit. Because of the recession, the government started collecting back taxes, which forced a lot of people to sell their homes. Then the government bungled giving out emergency food rations to unemployed people by making it so bureaucratic that the food spoiled before they could get it out the door.

At the same time, these jumbo jets were coming off the line, and all these big planes were freaking people out. There was already resentment and fear against the government and the big and complex technology. The early 1970s is when big machines were coming into vogue, and anyone who was working with their hands or had a concept of what it meant to put in an honest day's work were disenchanted by the efficiency of the modern corporation. Then along comes Dan Cooper, a man who paid $20 in cash that day to buy a ticket from Portland to Seattle on a Boeing 727.

Was he immediately seen as a hero?

Almost immediately. I call him a transcendental hero because, through one tremendous act of courage, he was able to convince the good guys to root for the bad guy. He changed the moral compass of the moment. He had the FBI agents and law enforcement officials who were trudging through the woods in search of him -- but actually did not want to find him and hoped he would escape. They wanted him to get away with the jump because he executed all the romantic elements of the perfect crime: no harm done, no victims, skillful execution. It was hard not to be in awe of this one act.

Why does this myth captivate the American imagination?

In the cult of Cooper, people see who they want to see. At the time, people wanted to see this man as a hero who could do something that defied the government. It was a way to rid themselves of their own feelings of helplessness. D.B. Cooper was able to seize control and become the director of a great drama. After their houses had been taken from them because of money they owed to the government, followers of Cooper wished they could do that. Who's going to miss $200,000, especially when insurance is paying for it?

It's not like these people were slackers. They were hardworking people. The system and society at the time was becoming so unfair and mechanized, and this guy was able to turn that all upside down. In an airline town, he was able to defeat the airlines. He was able to defeat the government and law enforcement. What his real motives were is an entirely different question that we may never know the answer to, but that's not the story that lingers in legend. Any time you have a legend, you have a hero who serves a purpose. To this day, Cooper serves a purpose.

How so?

There is a rebel in all of us, some more than others. This guy was able to strike that chord. He was able to show us what something bold truly is, and we love that.

Is this why we still hang onto news about possible breaks in the case?

The frenzy surrounding news of this case is strikingly similar to what happened on Nov. 25, 1971. Once people learn that a man had boarded a plane just like everyone else does, was able to convince the FBI to give him four parachutes and a small fortune, then disappeared into thin air over the remote mountains of the Pacific Northwest, it's impossible not to be interested in the story, and it's very easy to become obsessed with it. In an environment where the mystery lingers, there is only the pursuit for the facts. In this case, the hunt for Cooper is a really bumpy, infuriating and life-changing road. People have devoted their whole lives to solving this case.

At this point, even if conclusive evidence existed, people would probably come up with reasons not to believe it.

If we think about what is going on in this country at this moment -- the debt ceiling, the recession, high unemployment, failed wars, the increased reliance on technology -- there are some strains of similarity. In approaching the 40th anniversary of this event, maybe we are just in a similar moment where this story is the kind people want to hear about. Maybe this is simply a ripple effect from the history of one man jumping out of a plane in such epic fashion.

"D.B. Cooper Was My Uncle"

Glenn Pew, Contributing Editor, Video Editor
August 3, 2011
http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/db_cooper_hijack_niece_book_uncle_205170-1.html

An Oklahoma woman who was eight years old when the man popularly known as D.B. Cooper made his famous 1971 hijacking has come forward to say she is the man's niece, that he was really L.D. Cooper, and he's been dead since 1999. D.B. Cooper is the name that has stuck with a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper when he hijacked a Boeing 727 on Thanksgiving-eve, 40 years ago. He ultimately left the aircraft with $200,000 in cash and a parachute after opening the rear airstair. At the time, the aircraft was flying at night through weather en route from Seattle for Reno at approximately 10,000 feet as directed by the hijacker. He was never found. Marla Cooper says she's working on a book on the subject and her memories have come rushing back over the past few years.

Marla Cooper says her family lost touch with her uncle L.D. in 1972 one year after the famous hijacking. She says she recently remembered her family planning something prior to the hijacking, seeing her uncle (badly injured) shortly after the hijacking and being told by her father never to talk about the event. She says she called the FBI two years ago and has since passed a lengthy lie detector test, which may suggest that she believes what she's saying. The niece supplied an old guitar strap worn by her uncle to the FBI for DNA testing. She told CNN Wednesday that, to her knowledge, the FBI had been unable to retrieve any relevant evidence from the strap. For the FBI's part, they have not yet been able to rule out the possibility that L.D. Cooper was D.B. Cooper or if he was completely unconnected to the event.

FBI: 'Credible lead' surfaces in D.B. Cooper case

Associated Press
MONDAY Aug 01, 2011
http://www.salon.com/wires/us/2011/07/31/D9OR35M01_db_cooper/index.html

The FBI says it has a "credible" lead in the D.B. Cooper case involving the 1971 hijacking of a passenger jet over Washington state and the suspect's legendary parachute escape.

The fate and identity of the hijacker dubbed "D.B. Cooper" has remained a mystery in the 40 years since a man jumped from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 flight with $200,000 in ransom.

The recent tip provided to the FBI came from a law enforcement member who directed investigators to a person who might have helpful information on the suspect, FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich told The Seattle Times on Sunday. She called the new information the "most promising lead we have right now," but cautioned that investigators were not on the verge of breaking the case.

"With any lead our first step is to assess how credible it is," Sandalo Dietrich told the Seattle Post Intelligencer on Saturday. "Having this come through another law enforcement (agency), having looked it over when we got it - it seems pretty interesting."

Dietrich says an item belonging to the man was sent to a lab in Quantico, Va., for forensic testing. She did not provide specifics about the item or the man's identity.

Federal investigators have checked more than 1,000 leads since the suspect bailed out on Nov. 24, 1971, over the Pacific Northwest. The man who jumped gave his name as Dan Cooper and claimed shortly after takeoff in Portland, Ore., that he had a bomb, leading the flight crew to land the plane in Seattle, where passengers were exchanged for parachutes and ransom money.

The flight then took off for Mexico with the suspect and flight crew on board before the man parachuted from the plane.

The FBI's recent tip in the case was first reported by The Telegraph newspaper in London.

D.B. Cooper's parachute possibly found

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_re_us/db_cooper

D.B. Cooper's parachute possibly found
By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
3-26-8

The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday.

Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors.

The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery — and they urged their dad to call the agency.

"When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we were hoping for."

A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.

Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found.

Carr spoke with the children's father, whom he declined to identify, early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as Cooper's.

And when Carr overlaid the family's address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper's most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains.

Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other remains from the parachute, but the children weren't home, and the father wasn't sure exactly where they found it.

There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether it's the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy, Carr said. He's hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it's the right kind before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.

"We've got to be pretty darn sure we're not wasting time and money here," he said.

If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.

"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole theory is out the window."

FBI Makes New Bid to Find 1971 Skyjacker

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/fbi-makes-new-bid-to-find-1971-skyjacker/20080101141209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

FBI Makes New Bid to Find 1971 Skyjacker

PORTLAND, Ore. (Jan. 1) - The FBI is making a new stab at identifying mysterious skyjacker Dan Cooper, who bailed out of an airliner in 1971 and vanished, releasing new details that it hopes will jog someone's memory.

The man calling himself Dan Cooper, also known as D.B. Cooper, boarded a Northwest flight in Portland for a flight to Seattle on the night of Nov, 24, 1971, and commandeered the plane, claiming he had dynamite.

In Seattle, he demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes and demanded to be flown to Mexico. Somewhere over southwestern Washington, he jumped out the plane's tail exit with two of the chutes.

On Monday, the FBI released drawings that it said probably are close to what Cooper looked like, along with a map of areas where Cooper might have landed.

"Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? We're providing new information and pictures and asking for your help in solving the case," the FBI said in a statement.

The FBI said that while Cooper was originally thought to have been an experienced jumper, it has since concluded that was wrong and that he almost certainly didn't survive the jump in the dark and rain. He hadn't specified a route for the plane to fly and had no way of knowing where he was when he went out the exit.

"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open," Seattle-based agent Larry Carr said.

He also didn't notice that his reserve chute was intended only for training and had been sewn shut.

Several people have claimed to be Cooper over the years but were dismissed on the basis of physical descriptions, parachuting experience and, later, by DNA evidence recovered in 2001 from the cheap tie the skyjacker left on the plane.

In 1980, a boy walking near the Columbia River found $5,800 of the stolen money, in tattered $20 bills.

"Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream," Carr said. "Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle."