Who is D.B. Cooper? New Evidence May Crack One Of America’s Greatest Mysteries

This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow, how new evidence could possibly identify the real D.B. Cooper and solve America's only unsolved hijacking more than a half century later.

More than five decades ago, a mild-mannered passenger in a business suit boarded a Seattle-bound flight in Oregon under the name Dan Cooper on Nov. 24, 1971. He ordered a bourbon and soda, and once in the air, handed a stewardess a handwritten note demanding $200,000 in cash and four parachutes under the threat of what appeared to be a bomb in his ratty briefcase.

The plane landed in Seattle, and authorities complied with the hijacker’s demand. After refueling, the airliner took off again. 

Somewhere between takeoff and Portland, the mysterious man jumped out of the plane and into the dark sky, attempting to hold onto the freshly acquired satchel of cash. 

He was never seen or heard from again, nor was the money ever found except for $5,800 in $20 bills that washed up on the banks of the Columbia River years later.

The only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history would lead to one of the most exhaustive investigations in FBI history as the agency vetted more than 800 suspects in one of the country’s most puzzling unsolved mysteries.

Learning the identity of the notorious hijacker who some consider a folk hero further inspired a cult-like following of hundreds of amateur detectives, all clamoring to ID the culprit while generating dozens of books, movies and even a 2022 Netflix series.

In 2016, after turning over every credible lead and suspect, the FBI seemingly threw up its hands and declared in a statement that it was rerouting resources to other investigative priorities pending any new information, particularly physical evidence such as parachutes or money.

Now the agency might have gotten a new break in the case for the first time in decades.

The Real McCoy

Retired pilot, skydiver and YouTuber, Dan Gryder told Cowboy State Daily that he may have found the missing link after uncovering the modified military surplus bailout rig he believes was used by D.B. Cooper in the heist. It belonged to Richard Floyd McCoy II, and was carefully stored in his deceased mother’s storage stash until very recently.

McCoy has long been one of the FBI’s leading suspects after successfully pulling off an identical, but better-executed, hijacking in Utah just five months later.

“That rig is literally one in a billion,” Gryder said of the distinct parachute.

McCoy’s children, Chanté and Richard III, or “Rick,” agree with Gryder that they believe their father was D.B. Cooper, a secret that shrouded the family but wasn’t overtly discussed.

For years, they said, the family stayed mum out of fear of implicating their mother, Karen, whom they believe was complicit in both hijackings. Upon her death in 2020, they broke their silence to Gryder after being contacted by him off and on for years.

Gryder, who has been researching the case for more than 20 years, documented his investigation in a lengthy two-part series on his YouTube channel, “Probable Cause,” in 2021 and 2022, where he connects the dots and shows actual footage of him finding the parachute in an outbuilding on the McCoy family property in North Carolina in July 2022.

On Monday, Gryder released a third video, “D.B. Cooper: Deep FBI Update,” where he announced the FBI’s new and very recent efforts in his discoveries.

After watching his first two videos, Gryder said FBI agents contacted Rick and Gryder to see the parachute.

It was the first investigative move by the agency since issuing the 2016 public statement, declaring the case closed pending new evidence.

Seizing Evidence

Gryder and Rick McCoy traveled to Richmond, Virginia, in September 2023, where they met with FBI agents, who took the harness and parachute into evidence along with a skydiving logbook found by Chanté that aligned with the timeline for both hijackings, providing another vital piece in the puzzle, Gryder said.

Also present at the meeting was Gryder’s friend, Laura Savino, a retired commercial airline pilot and award-winning author of “Jet Boss: A Female Pilot on Taking Risks and Flying High.”

Savino said the agents were “professional and stoic."

“Considering they had requested the meeting, it was clear they were taking it seriously,” she said. 

Crucial to the discovery are the unique alterations of the parachute that have been well documented by Earl Cossey, a veteran skydiver, who owned and provided the parachutes in the 1971 hijacking. Gryder and McCoy’s children feel it’s those small details that provide definitive evidence that tie Richard McCoy to the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

During the meeting, Gryder said the agents called it a first step. If the evidence proved fruitless, they would have promptly returned the skydiving rig, he said, but that didn’t happen.

Instead, an FBI agent called Rick a month later to ask to search the family property in Cove City, North Carolina, which McCoy’s mother owned and where Gryder had found the parachute and canopy.

Rick McCoy was on site for the search while Gryder and Savino watched from afar, documenting the agency’s efforts on video and camera, completely unknown to both the FBI and Rick at that time.

Both said they watched at least seven vehicles descend on the property with more than a dozen agents who scoured the property for about four hours. 

According to Rick, FBI agents with the help of local authorities thoroughly searched “every nook and cranny.”

“It’s a good sign that they’re taking this seriously,” Rick said.

The FBI has yet to provide an update to the family about where the case currently stands.

Rick said he has provided a DNA sample and was told by the FBI agents that the next step might be exhuming his father’s body, but no formal terms and conditions for that process have been established thus far, he said.

Chanté, who lives in southwestern Wyoming, also agreed to provide DNA, but said the FBI has yet to follow up on that request.

Agency Mum

The FBI would not confirm or deny that it is actively re-investigating the Cooper case nor would the agency provide an update on the status of the parachute or other evidence agents acquired from the McCoys related to this case, instead directing Cowboy State Daily to the 2016 status update that declared the case inactive.

The FBI historian dedicated to the D.B. Cooper case, John F. Fox Jr., likewise did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, Fox has ruled out McCoy as a viable candidate in television interviews. 

Cowboy State Daily, however, was provided with proof of the signed document between Rick McCoy and the FBI agent in charge who signed for the harness and canopy and was also shown raw video footage of agents searching the McCoy’s property in North Carolina by Gryder.

So far, the agency has provided no updates, but many in the D.B. Cooper vortex may be surprised to learn McCoy might be the man after all.

Prime Suspect

Richard McCoy II is not a new name in D.B. Cooper circles, and in fact has long been a favorite suspect of the FBI, who have yet to rule him out based on partial DNA retrieved from the clip-on tie left behind by the hijacker.

At the time of the hijacking, Richard McCoy was a criminal justice student at Brigham Young University after serving two tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a highly decorated Green Beret, demolition expert and helicopter pilot. He was also an active member of the Utah National Guard.

McCoy first caught the agency’s attention after pulling off a near copycat hijacking of the D.B. Cooper jump five months later. In April 1972, McCoy leapt out of a United Airlines flight above Provo, Utah, after demanding $500,000 in cash and four parachutes, and threatening the crew with an inert hand grenade and empty gun while disguised in a wig, fake moustache and mirrored sunglasses.

Though he pulled off the hijacking, McCoy was nabbed by the FBI within 72 hours based on matching fingerprints left at the scene along with a handwritten note, as well as eyewitness testimony from an employee at a roadside hamburger stand who recalled selling McCoy a milkshake late on the night of the crime just after the hijacking.

McCoy maintained his innocence, while the FBI raided McCoy’s home without a proper search warrant, according to news reports, which Gryder believes ultimately kept them from legally pinning the “D.B. Cooper” hijacking on McCoy because they feared the case would be thrown out of court. 

The lack of the appropriate warrant, however, did not stop the prosecution of McCoy for the Utah hijacking. He was ultimately sentenced to 45 years in prison, but later broke out of a maximum-security federal prison in Pennsylvania with three other inmates.

Two of those escapees were caught within days, while McCoy was killed by FBI agents in a shootout in 1974 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, three months later.

Others Agree

Gryder is not the only one who believes McCoy is the culprit in both hijackings.

His conclusions echoed those reached in the book “D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy,” written by former FBI agent in charge of the Salt Lake City office, Russell Calame, and Bernie Rhodes, who was McCoy’s parole officer.

The publication of the book in 1991 enraged McCoy’s widow Karen, who sued to stop the printing of it because it claimed she had been complicit in the hijackings. She alleged it contained other potentially libelous information as well. 

The publisher settled a lawsuit with Karen McCoy, and the book went out of print. During a tearful hearing in the lawsuit, Karen ultimately admitted to helping her husband with the Utah incident, claiming she’d been a victim of severe physical and sexual abuse as a child. She denied that she or her husband had any part in the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

Along with Calame, retired FBI agent Nick O’Hara, who fired the fatal bullet killing McCoy, agreed with Gryder that Richard McCoy II was D.B. Cooper during an interview that aired in Gryder’s second video in the series, “Deep FBI Secrets.”

“We dropped the ball,” O’Hara said of Ralph Himmelsbach, lead FBI investigator on the D.B. Cooper case and of the bureau as a whole, admitting to Gryder that he thinks the case is finally solved.

Not Everyone On Board

Not everyone agrees with Gryder’s findings, including retired FBI Special Agent, Larry Carr, who briefly took over the case in 2007.

Carr, for one, finds it highly unlikely that the hijacker survived the jump. He suspects that the culprit had likely worked as a cargo loader on planes. 

In a February 2024 interview with the Oregonian/OregonLive, Carr told the news outlet that he wasn’t aware of any new FBI involvement in the Cooper case and said he was sure “… it’s just more of the same with people wanting their 15 minutes [of fame].”

The FBI, however, has never ruled McCoy out, stating in a 2006 statement that he was “still a favorite suspect among many.”

Naysayers point to the 10 witnesses who said that Cooper was not McCoy, according to Gryder, and who identified a man they believed to be in his mid-40s, much older than the then 27-year-old McCoy.

Gryder, however, noted that the passengers interviewed weren’t shown the sketch of Cooper until seven months after the hijacking and that McCoy had likely been wearing a disguise.

He pointed out the folly in the FBI’s assertion that McCoy was too young to be D.B. Cooper and that, unlike the hijacker, McCoy, a devout Mormon, did not drink or smoke. 

Of course, the hijacker would likely use a fake identity when booking the ticket, Gryder noted, and might attempt to throw investigators off by engaging in uncharacteristic vices.

As to Carr’s belief that the jump would not be survivable, Gryder disproved that theory in 2021 when he replicated DB Cooper’s jump over the Columbia River in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the hijacking in a video on his YouTube channel.

Gryder also questioned Himmelsbach’s recollection that the hijacking and jump occurred on a stormy evening, referencing weather reports that showed it had been mild weather that night. McCoy, a former Green Beret, would have had no problem landing. 

Not only did he prove the jump was survivable, but he also demonstrated that it would be impossible to hold on to the cash during the jump. Within seconds of diving out of the plane, the rucksack filled with 22 pounds of sand — roughly the weight of the cash — flew out of his hands.

This would have given the hijacker an incentive to attempt a heist a second time, this time over Utah, Gryder argued, giving the suspect an opportunity to make up for the money he had lost over Oregon.

The real proof, however, could be in the items that Gryder and Rick handed over to the FBI last fall.

“This will definitely prove it was McCoy,” Gryder said.

This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow, how new evidence could possibly identify the real D.B. Cooper and solve America's only unsolved hijacking more than a half century later.

Contact Jen Kocher at jen@cowboystatedaily.com

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.