It is one of the biggest mysteries in US criminal history: just what happened to DB Cooper, the man who hijacked an airplane before leaping out in mid-air with $200,000 in cash?
Now, more than 50 years later, the infamous crime may have been solved, after a pair of siblings came forward to claim they had found the parachute used in the hijacking, in their mother’s shed, and that Cooper was their father.
Chanté and Rick McCoy III say their father, Richard McCoy Jr, was the man who identified himself as Dan Cooper when he boarded a Northwest Orient Airlines jetliner from Portland to Seattle in November 1971.
Cooper, or perhaps McCoy, proceeded to order a bourbon and soda before handing a note to a flight attendant that said he had a bomb in his briefcase.
When the plane arrived in Seattle, Cooper collected $200,000 in ransom money, along with four parachutes, and released the passengers. He then ordered the flight crew to head for Mexico City, via Reno, Nevada, but 30 minutes after takeoff, Cooper jumped out of the airplane somewhere over south-west Washington.