esias - The Book of Eli 2010 - Getting Gotti 1994 - The Hi-Jackers 1963 - Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 2006 - Unsolved Mysteries TV - Vanishings: The Only Successful Hijacking? TV - Florence Schaffner - FBI Files: Escape From Justice TV - Unsolved History: The Great Plane Robbery TV - Brad Meltzer TV - Ralph Himmelsbach - The Pursuit of D B Cooper 1981 - Victory at Entebbe 1976 - Days That Shook the World TV - Roadblock 1951 - D B Cooper: Case Closed? TV - Bus 174 2002 - Hijacked: Terror in the Sky TV - Peter Taylor TV - The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 1974 - 9/11: Zero Hour TV - 9/11: The Final Minutes of Flight 93 TV - Storyville: The Hijacker Who Vanished: The Mystery of D B Cooper TV - Mystery of the Disappearing Skyjacker TV - In Search of … TV - History’s Greatest Mysteries TV - The UnXplained with William Shatner TV - Betty Ong & Flight Control - Hijacked: Flight 73 TV -
Come, listen to the ballad of D B Cooper
Pre-dates the sickness of Abba’s Super Trouper,
Flare-wing shirts, British sports cars and glam-rock bands,
The sky-jacker D B Cooper descends to land –
Lowers aft steps – oh what a rush – leaps from the plane,
With parachute and sack of ill-gotten gains:
The only skyjacker to escape the Fuzz,
A beeline into headlines – a worldwide buzz.
And did this cool cat survive to tell the tale
By leaping in the dark, fog and force-nine gale?
Or did he land with a thunderous ker-splat:
Brains like blancmange, eye-balls bounce, rib-cage squashed flat?
On Thanksgiving Eve 1971
A man enters the airport of Oregon,
Black suit neatly pressed, glasses and clip-on tie,
As sharp as a pearl pin this super-fly guy
Strides smartly to the counter of NOA,
Pays cash for a ticket Seattle one-way:
Aisle seat 18-C Boeing flight 305
A third full: the last passenger to arrive
Settles in the back and lights a cigarette,
With scotch and soda rides into the sunset.
From his black briefcase pulls a handwritten note,
Tugs at the hem of the stewardess’s coat:
－ ‘Excuse me, miss, but I think you’ll want to read
About the bomb in the case between my knees,
Come, sit beside me and I’ll give you a flash:
I simply ask for two hundred grand in cash,
Four parachutes, I’m not planning to stay,
And a fuel truck on the Seattle runway.’ －
The stewardess badly shaken but not stirred
Heads to the captain to impart the good word.
The airline’s president orders the payment
And full cooperation with the claimant
Described as smiling, well-spoken and polite,
Order drinks for the house and meals on the flight,
－ ‘Cheers!’ ‘Here’s to your good health!’ ‘Miss, please keep the change’ －
－ ‘Sir, your demands are met, the cash is arranged －’
An hour after sunset the partying roamers
Touch terra firma at Seattle-Tacoma,
The captain taxis to an apron outcrop,
A puff of relief, the plane gratefully stops.
Now the cool cat Cooper springs into action –
Staggers down the aisle to speak to the captain:
Together they espy a lone wary chap
Approach with parachutes and cash-filled knapsack
Safely delivered, Cooper evacuates
The stewardesses and partying inmates.
During refuelling, Cooper outlines the plot:
Fly slowly without stalling at one-hundred knots,
The landing gear deployed in take-off position
Fly southeast towards Mexico your mission,
Lower the wingflaps, cabin unpressurise,
Aft exit door open to spring a surprise.
At 7.40 with five people aboard –
The cabin crew thunderstruck, Cooper with hoard,
Head south-east into the Stygian abyss,
The cabin crew notice with Cooper amiss
On the panel a red warning bulb flashing
Suggests Cooper the aft airstairs unlashing,
But of the five spy-planes following the tail
Not one of them notice the skyjacker bail –
One giant leap into immortality
But was this a crime sans a fatality?
With each new moon the search-party of troopers
Find not a cent of the flyaway Cooper.
The experts argue could it be possible
For a besuited man to survive the fall?
But all are agreed with the temerity
Of Cooper passing to immortality.
Each Thanksgiving Eve to thee I propose
With champagne, chocolates and late-bloom red rose:
My love, Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly today
And midair sing the ballad of the one crazy cat skyjacker who got away. esias, The Ballard of D B Cooper 2019
You can smell hijackers a mile off. The Book of Eli 2010 starring Denzel Washington & Gary Oldman & Mila Kunis & Ray Stevenson & Jennifer Beals & Tom Waits et al, directors Hughes brothers, Eli to gang
But I’d say at least 40% is hijacking. Getting Gotti 1994 starring Lorraine Bracco & Anthony Denison & August Schellenberg & Kathleen Lanskey & Kenneth Welsh & Jeremy Ratchford & Ron Gabriel & Ellen Burstyn et al, director Roger Young, district attorney to new district attorney
He had a perishing woman in the lorry with ’im. The Hi-Jackers 1963 starring Anthony Booth & Jacqueline Ellis & Derek Francis & Glynn Edwards & Harold Goodwin & Marianne Stone & Patrick Cargill & David Gregory & Ronald Hines & Arthur English & Anthony Wager & Michael Beint & Terence Bayler et al, director Jim O’Connolly, Bluey on bike
It’s all there, lads. Twelve thousand pounds’ worth. ibid. gang with booty
Forget about it, Jack. Everyone knows you’re as straight as a die. ibid. Bluey
If I give you all the three hundred in one go ... ibid. boss
One night in 1971 D B Cooper vanished near Aerial, Washington, with $200,000 (£110,000) in ransom money after hijacking a jet. Since 1974 the town has held an annual D B Cooper party to celebrate his claim to fame. As many as 500 fans gather to remember someone they never knew. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 2006
Thanksgiving Eve 1971: a man who identified himself as D B Cooper walks into the airport at Portland, Oregon. D B Cooper buys a one-way ticket to Seattle. His only luggage a briefcase. He’s the last person to board the plane. Unsolved Mysteries, NBC 1988
And so begins one of the most infamous crimes in US history. To this day no-one knows the true identity of the man who called himself D B Cooper or if he survived his daring parachute leap from 10,000 feet. This case remains the only unsolved skyjacking in the world. ibid.
Four parachutes were delivered. Both the flight crew and the FBI were worried that Cooper would use the extra chutes to take hostages with him. ibid.
Cooper ordered the pilot to fly from Seattle all the way to Mexico City, at a height of only 10,000 feet, and a speed of only two hundred miles per hour ... Somewhere over the forests of Washington State Cooper jumped. He hasn’t been seen since. ibid.
Seven years later a hunter deep in the Washington forest discovered a plastic sign from a 727. It had been ripped form the lower stairwell of Flight 305. ibid.
February 10th 1980: a family was preparing a barbecue on the shore of the Columbia River. It was twenty miles south-west of Cooper’s supposed jump point. They planned on digging a fire pit, but dug up something else. The bills totalling $5,880 were waterlogged and deteriorated. Many believe that D B Cooper survived and some think he may have struck again. Only five months after Cooper’s flight, a half a million dollars was extorted in another hijack: he was a former green beret and his name was Richard McCoy. He was sentenced to forty-five years for air-piracy but he escaped, and he was killed in a gun battle with the FBI. ibid.
Who was D B Cooper? ibid.
On the evening of the 24th November 1971 a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 took off from Seattle en route for Reno, Nevada. It had been hijacked by a man claiming to have a bomb on board. About twenty minutes into the flight while flying over the Cascade Mountains the pilot saw a light indicating that the rear door was open. Moments later with the plane at an altitude of 10,000 feet the crew realised that the hijacker had parachuted out into the chilly night. Tied securely around his waist was a rucksack containing the money he demanded in return for not blowing up the plane. With $200,000 in $20 bills he vanished without a trace. Vanishings: The Only Successful Hijacking?
Cooper received wide news coverage. He was the only person in the States to have hijacked a plane and got clean away with the ransom money. Some saw him as a kind of folk hero. ibid.
Eight-year-old Brian Ingram came across three packets of waterlogged $20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver Washington. ibid.
He handed me a note and he kept looking at me and I just ignored him at first. He looked at me and said, I want you to read the note. It was printed: Miss, I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you to sit beside me. Florence Schaffner, flight attendant
April 7th 1972 United Airlines Flight 855 en route from Newark to Los Angeles ... The note revealed a terrifying threat to all on board ... While FBI agents in San Francisco focused their attention on the plane, their colleagues in Colorado tried to learn everything they could about Mr Johnson in seat 20D ... Neither Federal agents nor the United Airlines crew knew enough to determine whether this was indeed the famed D B Cooper at work or a masterful copy-cat. FBI Files: Flight from Justice, Discovery 2005