D.B. Cooper And The Money He Took
Seattlest readers driving south this holiday weekend might wanna swing by the Ariel Store and Tavern on State Highway 503, 10 miles east of the I-5 Woodland exit, about 140 miles south of Seattle. Why? Every November, the tavern hosts "D.B. Cooper Days" to commemorate Thanksgiving Eve, 1971 -- the night the notorious skyjacker parachuted from a jetliner over southwest Washington with $200,000 in ransom money, never to be heard from again.
Details vary from source to source, but here's the basic story: On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a man dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, black tie, and sunglasses boarded Northwest Airlines flight 305, bound from Portland to Seattle. After the 727 took off, the man casually slipped a stewardess a handwritten note -- "You are being hijacked" -- and opened his briefcase to display what appeared to be a bomb. The man, traveling under the name Dan Cooper, demanded four parachutes and $200,000 cash, which he received upon landing at Sea-Tac. The other 35 passengers disembarked and the plane took off again, with only Cooper and four crewmembers aboard. He then demanded they fly to Mexico, but the crew informed him the plane would need refueling to get that far. Cooper agreed to pit stop in Reno, only if the plane fly no faster than 170 mph nor climb above 10,000 feet. A stewardess helped him open the plane's rear door, and then he ordered the whole crew to stay in the cockpit, leaving him alone in the passenger compartment. At 8:11 p.m., somewhere over Ariel (about 30 miles north of Portland), the crew felt the plane make a slight "bump." Cooper, with his ransom, had bailed out into the darkness.
An intensive manhunt followed, wanted posters circulated, and due to some misunderstanding, "Dan" became forever known as "D.B." Nothing turned up until 1980, when $5,800 in cash -- which the FBI traced back to Cooper -- was found on the banks of the Columbia River, near Vancouver. Otherwise, there has never been any conclusive evidence as to Cooper's fate.
Assuming he survived, Cooper theoretically "got away" with his stunt. He became somewhat of an absentee folk hero, inspiring a spate of books, a bad Hollywood movie, and endless speculation -- some believe a disguised D.B. occasionally drops by the Ariel for a drink, and to check out "Cooper's Corner," the tavern's display of Cooper-related clippings.
