D.B. Cooper Mystery - Video on Youtube Recounts Hijacking Details and Speculates on Identity

By: Shane Lambert

The 50th anniversary of the D.B. Cooper mystery came and went in November of 2021. One of the great "whodunit" mysteries from the last century is from a plane highjacking in 1971.

The FBI has yet to solve the case and they don't seem to be too active in cracking this case at this point. D.B. Cooper, as the individual who highjacked the plane was called, remains the only person to highjack an airplane in the United States of America and not get caught.

Presumed likeness to D.B. Cooper.

If you asked me, the sketch of D.B. Cooper looks a lot like a man who used to be on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted list, a man known as Bradford Bishop. But besides likeness and similar ages, there's nothing else to go on, except that Bradford Bishop certainly had the nerve to commit a felony.

Bradford Bishop. Still wanted by the FBI at the time of writing for five counts of first-degree murder.

Don't get too excited about the remote possibility of Bishop being Cooper. From what I read, Bishop was in Italy in 1971. Also, the case of D.B. Cooper reminds me of the case of Jack the Ripper: there are so many people that have been named as potentially being the unknown criminal that's it's hard to take any one of them seriously without something really convincing being laid out first.

A couple thoughts I've had on the D.B. Cooper case have to do with the point in space where Cooper jumped from the plane and the ransom money that was recovered. Regarding the jumping point, I wondered if it was hard to determine because the plane was relatively empty.

Cooper was on a flight from Seattle to Reno when he jumped out of the back of the plane. If you are flying from Seattle to Reno with a full load of passengers then you probably will get different flight times compared to flying with a plane-load of passengers. I wonder if the plane that Cooper highjacked, which had only him and four crew members, flew a lot faster than a plane that would otherwise have had full occupancy. It only stands to reason that it would and I wondered if this made the point where he jumped harder to pinpoint since flight times along the same route might not have been trustworthy for measuring times.

Also, I don't think that Cooper would have parted with his ransom money without one hell of a fight. That he lost $5880, arguably during his fall, could be taken to mean that he was in great duress while he attempted to negotiate a safe parachuting landing against gravity, the darkness of night, and the uncertainty of the elements.

With 50 years now gone since that night when he highjacked the plane, perhaps this is a crime that will become more for the historian than someone interested in injustice. If he survived the fall, he could easily be dead from old age now. 

There's a pretty good half-hour upload on Youtube that deals with this mystery embedded below. I watched it tonight and felt like there wasn't much 'fluff' in the program. It comes from LEMMiNO and it was an informative and inquisitive recounting of the events surrounding the highjacking, complete with guesses as to who D.B. Cooper might have been. At the time of writing, the video had over 11 million views and nearly 500 "likes" attesting to decent quality. The video is embedded below and it is recommended viewing for anyone interested in this "true crime" event.