Chapter 9

WHAT HAPPENED?

FBI artist’s rendering of hijacker Dan Cooper. (FBI.gov)

On November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. Once airborne, he passed the flight attendant a ransom note and showed her what he said was a bomb in his briefcase. He demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. When the plane landed in Seattle, the hijacker collected the ransom and released the passengers and part of the crew. He instructed the remaining crew to fly him to Reno, but while the plane was somewhere between the towns of Woodland and Ariel, Washington, Cooper strapped on the parachutes, gathered his money, lowered the rear airstairs, and jumped out of the plane, never to be seen again.

BACKGROUND

The Rise and Fall of the Boeing Empire

Seattle was headquarters for the Boeing Company, which was by far the largest employer in the region. The market for commercial jet airliners, which had been booming since the late 1950s, drove huge growth at Boeing. During the 1960s, people in the area either worked for Boeing or knew someone who did.

Go, Godzilla! Go!

In 1963, President Kennedy introduced the National Supersonic Transport Program wherein the government would help fund the design and development of a supersonic passenger aircraft as the centerpiece of a major upgrade to American civil air travel. Boeing prevailed in a heated bidding war for the government contract and began designing the new plane. The supersonic project turbocharged Boeing’s already breathtaking growth trajectory.

Losing Financial Altitude

Publicly, 1968 was a triumphant year for Boeing as the first 747 rolled out of its Everett assembly plant, which was, at the time, the largest building in the world. Yet, behind the scenes, executives at the aviation giant were beginning to worry—and with good reason. Costs associated with the development of the 747 were much higher than anticipated, putting a serious damper on profits. Meanwhile, the market for passenger aircraft was facing significant saturation issues, and orders for new planes were dropping.

To make matters worse, the supersonic program was bogging down. Cost overruns and design problems, which had plagued the project from the very start, were showing up on the bottom line. By 1969, the project was two years behind schedule. Both the Soviets and a UK/French cooperative had already rolled out their own supersonic passenger planes and had them in the air while Boeing was still mired in a failing development effort.

When it came to revenue, the Sexy Sixties were giving way to the Saggy Seventies.

The Death Spiral

While the magnitude of Boeing’s financial tailspin first became apparent in 1970, the death knell came in early 1971 when Congress cut all funding for the supersonic project, and the program was canceled outright. Boeing had been running from debacle after debacle for years, but by 1972, they were maxed out on credit from borrowing a billion dollars to cover the 747 cost overruns, and there was nowhere left to hide.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

While Boeing staved off bankruptcy with a whip and a chair, the deadly claws of the layoff monster dug into every corner of the company, tearing the workforce apart. Sixty thousand employees were eventually laid off, leaving Seattle’s unemployment rate almost three times the national average.

For victims of the layoff carnage at Boeing, there was a greater chance of being abducted by aliens than finding a new job in Seattle. The unemployment crisis morphed into a mass exodus from King County as laid-off workers left the area in search of jobs. The resulting glut of inventory led to a collapse of the area’s housing market. A billboard near Sea-Tac Airport read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle — Turn out the lights.”

It was into this dismal economic landscape of a town decimated by the poster child for everything wrong with corporate America that Dan Cooper hijacked a plane and literally disappeared into thin air with $200,000. While he never made any pretense of robbing the rich to support the poor, a significant slice of the public suffering through the disastrous repercussions of the Boeing Bust perceived Dan Cooper as a symbol of their clan, and to that extent, he became a Robin Hood figure.

Chapter 10

THE HIJACKING

The plane ticket the hijacker bought under the name of Dan Cooper. (FBI.gov)

That’s Not a Love Note

Once seated on the airplane, the passenger known as Dan Cooper handed one of the flight attendants on the short hop a note. (The name D. B. Cooper was misreported in a newspaper as the name given by the hijacker.)

In an era when female flight attendants were used by the air travel industry as the 1970s equivalent of clickbait, “stewardesses” were hit on more often than the backboard at the NBA finals. Since the airlines did nothing to help them, they learned to fend for themselves while still doing their jobs. Thinking that the man with the note was just one more passenger propositioning her, the flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, took the piece of paper and pocketed it without reading it. Shortly after, the passenger known as Dan Cooper stopped her and said, “Miss, you better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

Handwritten notes/dictation taken by the flight attendant. (DBCooperHijack.com)

Take a Letter, Miss Hathaway

Apparently not having thought to bring paper and a pen for his fifteen pages of epistles to the pilots, the hijacker dictated his demands to flight attendant Schaffner, who wrote them on pieces of paper from her purse. Cooper demanded $200,000 in “negotiable American currency” in a knapsack, two chest parachutes, and two back parachutes. The loot was to be delivered to him before 5:00 p.m. when the plane landed in Seattle. He wanted a fuel truck standing by to refuel the Boeing 727 051. To preserve calm, Cooper instructed the crew to advise the passengers the plane was experiencing minor mechanical problems and promised, if his demands for money and parachutes were met, he would release the passengers after the plane was refueled.

Evelyn Wood Microfilming Dynamics

The president of Northwest Orient Airlines authorized the payment of the ransom from company funds. In the more common version of the story, the cash was gathered as quickly as possible from Seattle-area banks and microfilmed by the FBI before the plane landed. This was no mean feat since the ransom involved 10,000 twenty-dollar bills that had to be microfilmed with 1970s-era technology.

In another telling of the story, the money was obtained from a single bank, Seattle First National Bank. SeaFirst reportedly maintained an emergency stash of cash for just such a circumstance, the serial numbers of which had already been recorded ahead of time.

A memo on page 101 of Part 67 of the FBI vault of the Cooper case documents describes a film canister containing “the microfilm on which was recorded the serial numbers of all the bills given to the hijacker of Northwest Airline Flight #305, which was hijacked out of Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971. The film canister was obtained from Seattle First National Bank, Main Branch, Seattle, Washington, on November 25, 1971.” Since the memo clearly states that the film was obtained from SeaFirst and contained the numbers of all the bills, I think it’s fair to say that all the ransom money came from that one single source—Seattle First National Bank. The multiple bank reports are probably inaccurate.

Hijackers Can Be Choosers

Originally, the parachutes to be supplied to Cooper were military rigs provided by McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington. When word reached Cooper during the flight that military-style parachutes would be waiting for him, he refused them and demanded what were called free-fall rigs used in civilian or sport skydiving.

There is considerable controversy regarding the source of the free-fall parachutes and how they arrived at the airport. In one version, the manager of the Sea-Tac airport called his friend skydiver Earl Cossey about supplying the free-fall rigs. Variations on the theme include a version where Cossey called his office in Issaquah, Washington, and had a person staying there gather the equipment, which police retrieved and rushed from Issaquah to Sea-Tac International. Other versions say that the chutes were transported by taxi and private car. In yet another telling, the chutes were taken from Cossey’s home.

The Mountain News reported in 2013 that federal documents revealed the chutes were actually owned by a man named Norman Hayden.

In a tragic turn of events, Earl Cossey was murdered Tuesday, April 23, 2013, in his home in Woodinville, Washington. He died of blunt force trauma to the head. A few days later, an envelope addressed to the decedent was forwarded to his son, Wayland Cossey. The envelope had no return address and contained Earl Cossey’s driver’s license, bank cards, and casino gaming card. As far as I can tell from the public record, the crime was never solved.

Coffee, Tea, or Two Hundred Grand?

Upon Flight 305’s arrival in Seattle, Cooper instructed flight attendant Tina Mucklow to exit the plane, retrieve the money, and deliver it to him. He then demanded she make multiple trips out of the plane to retrieve the parachutes. The poor woman schlepped all of Cooper’s ill-gotten gains up a flight of airstairs wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes while he sat comfortably in his seat, drinking bourbon and smoking filtered Raleighs. When she finished, the plane was refueled, and Cooper released the passengers and two of the flight attendants. But he didn’t release Tina Mucklow. She was forced to stay on board for the duration of the hijacking.

Airport Meets Sister Act

Ms. Mucklow reported praying throughout the flight. I think I would have spent the time planning for my application to beauty college, but not Ms. Mucklow. Not only did she suck it up during the hijacking, but she bravely continued with her career as a flight attendant until her retirement in 1981, when she became a nun and entered the Maria Regina Convent, a Catholic nunnery outside Eugene, Oregon. She left the order after twelve years as a Carmelite nun.

Flying Down to Reno

After the passengers and flight attendants were released, the remaining crew were long-suffering flight attendant, Tina Mucklow, pilot, Captain William Scott, first officer, William Rataczak, and second officer, Harold Anderson. Cooper directed the pilots to fly a route that passed over Portland and Medford in Oregon, and Red Bluff, California, before landing in Reno, Nevada, to refuel. After the refueling stop in Reno, Cooper stated that the plane would be heading to Mexico City. The hijacker demanded that the aircraft remain below 10,000 feet, fly at a minimal airspeed not exceeding 200 mph, and keep flaps and landing gear lowered.

After the plane took off for Reno, Cooper ordered Ms. Mucklow to move into the first-class section of the jet and close the dividing curtain. Our gal Tina was no fool. Once she got behind that curtain, she raced into the cockpit and locked the door behind her, leaving Cooper alone in the back of the plane with the handset normally used to connect the flight attendants with the pilots.

Help! The Airstairs Are Stuck, and I Can’t Get Out

Via that intercom, Cooper requested help from the crew when he was unable to lower the tail airstairs. The pilots leaped at the opportunity to get Cooper off their airplane and happily reduced their speed even more. That apparently did the trick because the crew felt and heard a bump, which they construed to be the airstairs bouncing into place for Cooper’s exit.

Location where D.B. Cooper was originally thought to have landed and where some of the ransom money was later found. (FBI.gov)

Bye Bye Birdie!

The pilots marked their screens at that time to indicate the location where they believed Cooper parachuted from the plane. Flight recorder data indicated that Cooper likely jumped when the plane was between the towns of Woodland and Ariel in southwest Washington. While no one actually saw the hijacker make his jump, Cooper was nowhere to be found when the plane landed in Reno, and the cockpit indicator showed the airstairs were lowered at the time of the last intercom communication with Cooper.

To be continued…

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