IN SEARCH OF D.B. COOPER

IN SEARCH OF D.B. COOPER

New Developments in the Unsolved Case
03/17/09

Did the famous hijacker take his name from a popular comic book hero? © Dan Cooper – Albert Weinberg – Le Lombard (Dargaud-Lombard s.a.) – 2009.

Electron microscopes, dollar bills on a fishing pole, and a French Canadian comic book hero are providing tantalizing new insights into one of our greatest unsolved mysteries—the D.B. Cooper case.

We’ve told the story here before—how in 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a plane from Portland to Seattle, demanded parachutes and $200,000 in cash, then jumped into the night with the money, never to be seen again.

Did he survive the jump? That is the subject of great debate. But as it turns out, a certain Dan Cooper is very much alive—on the pages of a French comic book series that was popular when the hijacking occurred. In the fictional series, Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot Dan Cooper takes part in adventures in outer space and real events of that era. In one episode, published near the date of the hijacking, the cover illustration shows him parachuting.

Citizen sleuth Tom Kaye and his team are applying new scientific techniques to the D.B. Cooper case. Watch the video.

Seattle Special Agent Larry Carr, who took over the Cooper case two years ago, believes it’s possible the hijacker took his name from the comic book (the enduring “D.B.â€