D.B. Cooper

compiled by Columbian staff in 1989

Part man but mostly myth, D.B. Cooper put Clark County on the international map. The middle-age hijacker who bailed out of a jetliner over Southwest Washington nearly 18 years ago with $200,000 in cash is still heralded as one of the nation's great enigmas. D.B. Cooper wasn't even his supposed name. Here is a drawing believed to be the mystery man who jumped from an airplane with $200,000 over Southwest Washington to become the first American skyjacker.

These facts are known. A man who identified himself as Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Airlines passenger jet in Portland on Thanksgiving eve, Nov. 24, 1971. Before the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper handed a stewardess a note which said he was hijacking the aircraft. He ordered her to relay instructions to officials on the ground that he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes delivered to him when the plane landed. He displayed what appeared to be a bomb.

After the plane was refueled and the money and parachutes delivered, the plane took off again with three crewmen, one stewardess and the hijacker. Shortly thereafter, Cooper leaped from the plane. It was presumed at the time that the jump occurred over the forested area of northern Clark County or southern Cowlitz County. No trace of him has ever been found.

The whole saga was heavily covered by the media that night and at one point some news accounts incorrectly referred to the hijacker as D.B. Cooper. Corrections were noted, but the "D.B." name stuck.

The incident sparked the greatest manhunt in the history of the county and drew worldwide attention. Treasure-hunters, psychics to try to solve the mystery, but all have failed.

The only tangible clue to Cooper's fate came in February 1980 when a Vancouver boy, Brian Ingram, then 8, found $5,800 in decayed D.B. Cooper money on a Columbia River beach about five miles downstream from the city. However, no other trace of the hijacker or the missing money has ever been found.

Although his skeleton might be disintegrating deep in a forest thicket or beneath the waters of the Columbia, the legend of D.B. Cooper lives on.

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