"D. B. Cooper D. B. Cooper is a media epithet popularly used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the northwest United States, in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on the afternoon of Wednesday, He extorted $200,000 in ransom () and parachuted to an uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and protracted FBI investigation, the perpetrator has never been located or identified. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history. Available evidence and a preponderance of expert opinion suggested from the beginning that Cooper probably did"
"The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper is a 1981 American crime thriller film about infamous aircraft hijacker D. B. Cooper, who escaped with $200,000 after leaping from the back of a Boeing 727 airliner on November 24, 1971. The bulk of the film fictionalizes Cooper's escape after he landed on the ground. In 1971, the hijacker, identified as ""D.B. Cooper"", jumps from an airliner by using the rear exit. He jumps on a clear day, parachuting into a forest in Washington State. The man is later identified as Jim Meade, an ex-Army man with"
"A young boy discovered a small cache of ransom bills along the banks of the Columbia River in February 1980. The find triggered renewed interest but ultimately only deepened the mystery, and the great majority of the ransom remains unrecovered. The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case in July 2016, but the agency continues to request that any physical evidence that might emerge related to the parachutes or the ransom money be submitted for analysis. On Thanksgiving eve, November 24, 1971, a middle-aged man carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines at"
"Richard McCoy Jr. Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. (December 7, 1942 – November 9, 1974) was an American aircraft hijacker. McCoy hijacked a United Airlines passenger jet for ransom in 1972. Due to a similar ""modus operandi"", law enforcement officials named McCoy as a suspect for the still-unidentified ""D. B. Cooper,"" who committed his unsolved crime four-and-a-half months before McCoy. McCoy was born December 7, 1942, in the town of Kinston, North Carolina, and grew up in nearby Cove City. In 1962 McCoy moved to Provo, Utah, and enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) before dropping out to serve a two-year"
"taught Mormon Sunday school and studied law enforcement at BYU. His purported dream was to become an FBI or CIA agent. On April 7, 1972, McCoy boarded United Airlines Flight 855 under the alias ""James Johnson"" during a stopover in Denver, Colorado. The aircraft was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs (the same equipment used in the D. B. Cooper incident), via which McCoy escaped in mid-flight by parachute after giving the crew similar instructions as Cooper had. McCoy had obtained a $500,000 cash ransom, and carried a novelty hand-grenade and an empty pistol. Police began investigating McCoy following a"
"Frederick Hahneman Frederick William Hahneman (July 5, 1922 – December 17, 1991) was a Honduras-born US citizen convicted of hijacking Eastern Airlines Flight 175 from Allentown, Pennsylvania to Miami, Florida, on May 5, 1972. Hahneman parachuted from the plane over his native Honduras after extorting $303,000 from Eastern Airlines. Evading a manhunt by the FBI and Honduran police and with a $25,000 bounty on his head, Hahneman went on the run for 28 days before finally surrendering to the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for aircraft hijacking, kidnapping and extortion, serving 12 years. Speculation still"
"standing with their compatriots within Black Liberation Army. On January 27, 1972, the Black Liberation Army assassinated police officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie at the corner of 174 Avenue B in New York City. After the killings, a note sent to authorities portrayed the murders as a retaliation for the prisoner deaths during 1971 Attica prison riot. To date no arrests have been made. On July 31, 1972, five armed individuals hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841 en route from Detroit to Miami, eventually collecting a ransom of $1 million and diverting the plane, after passengers were released, to"
"$20,000. Taylor was ordered to pay her $100,000. The two authors' settlements are confidential. Notes Further reading Richard McCoy Jr. Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. (December 7, 1942 – November 9, 1974) was an American aircraft hijacker. McCoy hijacked a United Airlines passenger jet for ransom in 1972. Due to a similar ""modus operandi"", law enforcement officials named McCoy as a suspect for the still-unidentified ""D. B. Cooper,"" who committed his unsolved crime four-and-a-half months before McCoy. McCoy was born December 7, 1942, in the town of Kinston, North Carolina, and grew up in nearby Cove City. In 1962 McCoy moved"
"in mid-air with a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B fighter over southern California near Duarte, killing all except the radar intercept officer of the F-4. Two months after the celebrated hijacking by D. B. Cooper of Northwest Orient flight 305, Hughes Airwest was the target of a copycat hijacker in early 1972. After boarding Flight 800 at McCarran airport in Las Vegas in late morning on Thursday, January 20, 23-year-old Richard Charles LaPoint claimed he had a bomb while the plane was on the taxiway and demanded $50,000 cash, two parachutes, and a helmet. When these demands were met, 51 Reno-bound"
"sole survivor, the Mafia don Vincent Asaro. Lufthansa heist The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated $5.875 million ($ million today) was stolen, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time. In popular culture, it is the main subject of two well-known television films—""The 10 Million Dollar Getaway"" (1991) and ""The Big Heist"" (2001)—and is a key plot element in the film ""Goodfellas"" (1990). The heist's magnitude made it one of the longest-investigated crimes in"
"Lufthansa heist The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated $5.875 million ($ million today) was stolen, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time. In popular culture, it is the main subject of two well-known television films—""The 10 Million Dollar Getaway"" (1991) and ""The Big Heist"" (2001)—and is a key plot element in the film ""Goodfellas"" (1990). The heist's magnitude made it one of the longest-investigated crimes in the United States; the latest arrest associated"
"""NewsRadio"", ""Leverage S5 Ep 6 from August 26, 2012 titled The D.B. Cooper Job"" and ""Numb3rs"", the 2004 film ""Without a Paddle"", and a book titled ""The Vesuvius Prophecy"", based on ""The 4400"" TV series. D. B. Cooper D. B. Cooper is a media epithet popularly used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the northwest United States, in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on the afternoon of Wednesday, He extorted $200,000 in ransom () and parachuted to an uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and protracted FBI investigation, the perpetrator"
"of hijackings dropped dramatically. There were no further notable Cooper imitators until July 11, 1980, when Glenn K. Tripp seized Northwest flight 608 at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, demanding $600,000 ($100,000 by an independent account), two parachutes, and the assassination of his boss. However, a quick-thinking flight attendant had secretly drugged Tripp's alcoholic beverage with Valium. After a 10-hour standoff, during which Tripp reduced his demands to three cheeseburgers and a head-start on getting away, he was apprehended. But on January 21, 1983—while still on probation—he hijacked the same Northwest flight, this time en route, and demanded to be flown to Afghanistan."
"7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called ""copycat"" hijackings (see below). He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading. Later, a handwriting expert compared the note"
"TWA Flight 358 Trans World Airlines Flight 358 (TWA Flight 358) was a domestic flight traveling from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On June 11, 1971, a ticketless man named Gregory White boarded the Boeing 727 aircraft using force and demanded a machine gun, $75,000, and to be flown to North Vietnam. After murdering a passenger, White was soon apprehended at the John F. Kennedy International Airport by FBI agents, wounded, and arrested. It was the first attempted hijacking in the United States that resulted in a passenger fatality. On June 11,"
"as a result of the gold heist and awaiting trial, Leishman, assisted by some accomplices, managed to escape from Headingley Jail in September, 1966, and stole an aircraft from Steinbach, Manitoba, reinforcing his reputation as the ""Flying Bandit."" Leishman and his accomplices were arrested after a shootout in Gary, Indiana. In 1975, after his release from prison, Leishman moved to Red Lake, Ontario to manage Tomahawk Airlines. He was a ""model citizen"", even being nominated as a candidate for Reeve of the community. Leishman disappeared while on a mercy flight in 1979 and was declared officially dead in 1980. Leishman's"
"as a fugitive in Cuba. In October 2009, he voluntarily returned to the United States and surrendered to federal authorities. He pleaded guilty to the hijacking on March 18, 2010. On January 4, 2011 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, without the possibility of parole. Alejandro Figueroa, a woman charged as a co-conspirator in the case, was acquitted in 1969. Pan Am Flight 281 Pan Am Flight 281 was a regularly scheduled Pan American World Airways flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was hijacked on November 24, 1968, by four men from JFK International Airport, New York"
"as ""the crime of the century"". All 11 members of the gang were later arrested, and all were paroled and released by 1971, except for Joseph ""Big Joe"" McGinnis, the originator of the heist, who died in prison. Despite ongoing efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local authorities, only $58,000 of the initial $2.7 million stolen was ever recovered. On October 20, 1981, members of the Weather Underground Organization and Black Liberation Army attempted an armed robbery of a Brink's armored car in Nanuet, New York. The robbery resulted in a shootout that left two police officers, Edward"
"Joey Coyle Joseph William ""Joey"" Coyle (February 26, 1953 – August 15, 1993) was an unemployed longshoreman in Philadelphia who, in February 1981, found $1.2 million in the street, after it had fallen out of the back of an armored car, and kept it. His story was made into the 1993 film ""Money for Nothing"", starring John Cusack, as well as a 2002 book by Mark Bowden, """". Coyle passed out some of the money, in $100 bills, to friends and neighbors. He was arrested later in 1981 at JFK Airport while trying to check into a flight to Acapulco;"
"released again without having been charged with any criminal offenses, likely in exchange for $1 million of the ransom. Thus, the perpetrators could never be reliably identified. West German news magazine ""Der Spiegel"" speculated that the remainder of the ransom had been used by the PFLP to fund the Japanese attackers responsible for the Lod Airport massacre, which took place on 30 May 1972. The hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 649 marked the first such event in the history of the airline and the beginning of a series of Palestinian acts of violence involving West Germany during 1972, most notably the"
"a St. Louis-Tulsa American Airlines Flight on June 23, 1972 and demanded $502,500 before jumping out of a Boeing 727 over Peru, Indiana. Barklage died in a helicopter crash on September 19, 1998, succumbing to his wounds on September 25, and McNally was paroled on January 27, 2010. On December 21, 1978 Robin Oswald, the 17-year-old child of Barbara Ann Oswald, hijacked TWA Flight 541 and demanded that Trapnell be freed or she would detonate dynamite that was strapped to her body. Robin Oswald was remembered by the hostages aboard the flight as a ""beautiful girl"" with a serious demeanor,"
"$160 million. Camarena Salazar, who had been working undercover in Mexico, was said to be responsible for leading the authorities to the ranch. This allegedly prompted Caro Quintero and other high-ranking members of the Guadalajara Cartel to seek revenge against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Camarena. In retribution, Camarena and his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar were allegedly kidnapped in Guadalajara on 7 February 1985 and brutally tortured and murdered. He then left Mexico on 9 March 1985 with his associates and his girlfriend Sara Cristina Cosío Gaona. Former Mexican Judicial Police chief Armando Pavón Reyes reportedly allowed Caro Quintero"
"and Rocco Laurie in New York City. After the killings, a note sent to authorities portrayed the murders as a retaliation for the prisoner deaths during 1971 Attica prison riot. To date no arrests have been made. In the same year, MOVE was founded and engaged in demonstrations for environmentalism and black power. On July 31, five armed BLA members hijacked Delta Air Lines Flight 841, eventually collecting a ransom of $1 million and diverting the plane, after passengers were released, to Algeria. The authorities there seized the ransom but allowed the group to flee. Four were eventually caught by"
"Airlines Flight 119 while in flight from St. Louis to Tulsa. After receiving a ransom of $502,500 he jumped out of the back of the Boeing 727 in what was the ninth copycat hijacking in the style of D. B. Cooper. The entire ransom as well as a weapon were found near Peru. A fingerprint led to his arrest. The money was found in a sealed canvas mail bag by local farmer Lowell Elliott while he was working in his soybean field. Another farmer, Ronald Miller, discovered a Spitfire submachine gun in his corn field when a blade hit it"
"Delta Air Lines Flight 821 On March 25, 1969, Luis Antonio Frese hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight 821 (DC-8) from Dallas, Texas to Havana, Cuba. Frese was indicted in Texas but never returned to the United States to face prosecution. He reportedly died in Cuba in 1975. The plane was en route from Newark to Los Angeles with stop overs in Atlanta, Dallas and San Diego. There were 114 people on board: seven crew and 107 passengers, which included 26 Marine recruits en route to San Diego and additional military personnel. This was the 14th hijacking of a US"
"Non-Fiction"". The book is about the 1978 robbery of the Lufthansa Airline cargo building at Kennedy Airport. Henry Hill, immortalized in Martin Scorsese's blockbuster film, ""Goodfellas"", was one of the organizers of the famous caper. This robbery stands as the largest ""unrecovered cash theft"" in history. And this is how it all began. In 1967, Hill conspired with an Air France cargo foreman to burglarize the Air France high-value vault. Hill cleverly eluded the authorities and drove out of Kennedy Airport with $480,000 in cash and jewels. (in 1967 $480,000 equated to approximately $5,000,000 at present value). Later that evening,"
"When the plane landed in Portland, he was shot and killed by FBI agents. The Cooper hijacking marked the beginning of the end for unfettered and unscrutinized commercial airline travel. Despite the initiation of the federal Sky Marshal Program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972; 19 of them were for the specific purpose of extorting money and most of the rest were attempts to reach Cuba. In 15 of the extortion cases the hijackers also demanded parachutes. In early 1973 the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple"
"to Algeria where they were granted political asylum. The Algerian government confiscated and returned $488,000 of the ransom money to US officials. On January 25, 1975, the two hijackers, carrying passports under the names Leavy Forte and Janice Ann Forte, were arrested on illegal entry charges by French police. On April 15, 1975, a French court refused a US extradition request for the pair on grounds the hijacking was a political act. In July 1986, French authorities moved to deport Holder to the US after he completed his sentence for 1984 assault charges. Kerkow went missing, was never extradited, and"
"was never discovered, although a possibility could have been faults with the instrument landing system. On 21 June 1985, the 737-200 LN-SUG ""Harald Gille"" Flight 139, with 121 passengers en route from Trondheim to Oslo, was hijacked by the 24-year-old Stein Arvid Huseby. He had threatened a flight attendant with an air gun. He demanded to talk to Prime Minister Kåre Willoch and Minister of Justice Mona Røkke and a press conference to make a political statement. Those demands were not met, and he surrendered after 4.5 hours after he demanded and got a few beers. This was the first"
"Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 710 Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 710 was a Boeing 737-200 flight from Sacramento, California, to Los Angeles that was hijacked by Dimitr Alexiev and Michael Azmanoff, two Bulgarian immigrants, on July 5, 1972, shortly after take-off from Sacramento Airport. The hijackers demanded $800,000, two parachutes and to be taken to the Soviet Union. The hijacking ended on the runway at San Francisco International Airport when agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation stormed the plane killing both hijackers. Passenger E. H. Stanley Carter, a sixty-six-year-old retired railroad conductor from Montreal, was also killed; passengers Leo R."
"“inappropriate” to comment about specific suspects. Cooper was not the first to attempt air piracy for personal gain. In early November 1971, for example, a Canadian man named Paul Joseph Cini hijacked an Air Canada DC-8 over Montana, but was overpowered by the crew when he put down his shotgun to strap on the parachute he had brought with him. Cooper's apparent success inspired a flurry of imitators, mostly during 1972. Some notable examples: In all, 15 hijackings similar to Cooper's—all unsuccessful—were attempted in 1972. With the advent of universal luggage searches in 1973 (see Airport security), the general incidence"
"apparent ringleader as a black man, about 30, wearing a black mohair suit which others described as a clerical outfit. The pilot of the hijacked Detroit-Miami flight, Captain William Harold May, then 41 and a 20-year Delta employee, said Wright was the group's leader. The hijackers, allegedly members of the Black Liberation Army, seized the plane as it approached Miami, where they demanded that FBI agents (dressed only in bathing suits) deliver $1 million ransom to the plane; the FBI complied. The hijackers allowed the 86 hostage passengers to leave the plane in Miami, but kept the flight crew. They"
"Brink's robbery (1981) The Brink's robbery of 1981 was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, which were carried out by six Black Liberation Army members: Jeral Wayne Williams (Mutulu Shakur), Donald Weems (Kuwasi Balagoon), Samuel Brown (Solomon Bouines), Samuel Smith, Edward Joseph, and Cecilio ""Chui"" Ferguson; and four former members of the Weather Underground, now belonging to the May 19th Communist Organization, consisting of David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck. They stole $1.6 million in cash from a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York, killing"