FBI agents are looking into a discovery that could shed new light on the 1971 hijack case of D.B. Cooper in Washington state. The 36 year old mystery began when a man boarded a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. He claimed to have a bomb and demanded a $200,000 ransom.
The passengers were released unharmed and the plane took off again with Cooper still on board. He ordered the pilots to head for Mexico. The hijacker, wearing a white parachute, exited the plane via the back stairs and parachuted with briefcase in hand. Investigators believe he landed in extremely rough terrain in Clark County, Washington.
Investigators combed the rural areas in search of Cooper. His story became one of folklore with much speculation about his brazen crime and escape. In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper’s money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. The FBI has determined that the location could not have been where Cooper’s parachute would have dropped him. One theory is that the money may have washed down to the beach via the Washougal River.
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, FBI agent Larry Carr said Tuesday. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute’s ropes with scissors. Their father called the agency because he had seen a recent TV show detailing the 36 year old unsolved mystery.
When FBI agents overlaid the family’s address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, they learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper’s most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains. Whether agents plan to further excavate the property is yet to be determined. Undoubtedly, scientific analysis of the parachute fabric will be undertaken.
If it turns out to be D.B. Coopers parachute, it still leaves open the rest of the story. With 21 pounds of $20 bills strapped to his body, he launched himself from a commercial aircraft. Where did he go from there and where is he now? Agents don’t believe he survived the jump. They have a partial DNA profile from the necktie that he left behind on the plane.
FBI agents released a good deal of information in 2007 in an attempt to get the public thinking about the case they have long ago dubbed ‘Norjak’. Apparently that move paid off. It was that TV broadcast that caused the family that unearthed the potential new clue to notify the FBI.
Check out two photos of the parachute after the jump – note that one has distinctive markings.