Richard McCoy Jr.’s children claim he is DB Cooper after finding hidden parachute

On By Littum

Is he the real McCoy?

A pair of siblings in North Carolina are claiming their late father is the ever-elusive Boeing hijacker DB Cooper after allegedly finding his parachute hidden in their home, according to a new report.

Chanté and Rick McCoy III claim their father, Richard McCoy Jr., was the infamous fugitive who disappeared when he jumped out of a Boeing plane with $200,000 in cash after taking passengers and crew hostage in 1971, Cowboy State Daily writes that.

The siblings said they waited until their mother’s death in 2020 to come forward, fearing she might be implicated when the parachute believed to belong to Cooper was found in her storage room outside the house.

Aviation YouTuber Dan Gryder claimed that the parachute found by the McCoy siblings matches the one used by fugitive DB Cooper. Dan Gryder/YouTube
A sketch of DB Cooper, the man who hijacked a Boeing plane in 1971 and made off with a parachute and $200,000. AP

After her death, siblings met up aviation YouTuber Dan Gryderwho has seen the parachute and believes that it is precisely the one Cooper used in 1971.

“That rig is literally one in a billion,” Gryder told the local outlet of the unique parachute he saw.

Gryder claimed that the parachute in the McCoys’ home matched the modified parachute prepared by veteran skydiver Earl Cossey for police as part of Cooper’s claim before he disappeared somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada.

DB Cooper’s scouts have raised the possibility that Richard Jr. was the fugitive for years given his own criminal past.

Sluths have previously claimed that Richard McCoy Jr., a planejacker who died in a police shootout, is DB Cooper. Dan Gryder/YouTube

Five months after Cooper pulled off his famous caper, Richard Jr. caught carrying out a similar hijacking in Utah. The thief eventually broke out of prison and died in a subsequent shootout with the police.

The McCoy siblings told Gryder they’ve known the truth for years, but talking about it remained taboo in their family over concerns that law enforcement would implicate their mother, Karen, in both hijackings.

Gryder released his latest theory and photos of the parachute, with the FBI allegedly reaching out to the McCoys to see the evidence for themselves.

Bills linked to the DB Copper caper were located in Oregon in 1980. ASSOCIATED PRESS

The McCoys told the Daily that the FBI scoured the North Carolina compound for additional leads and took possession of the parachute in 2023, with Rick also providing investigators with a DNA sample.

The agents reportedly informed him that the next step could be to exhume his father’s body, but no such request has yet been made.

The FBI has not made any public statements about the investigation or acknowledged that it was actively investigating the DB Cooper case.

The FBI was flagged in 2008 after a family claimed to have found DB Cooper’s parachute near their home in Oregon. AP

The agency has said the case was officially closed in 2016 due to a lack of leads.

Whether Cooper survived the jump across a rugged, wooded landscape somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nev., has never been confirmed.

Among the few clues to the hijacker’s identity were his recovered black tie and a crumbling wad of $20 bills that matched the serial numbers of the ransom notes, unearthed by a young boy from a sandbar along the Columbia River in 1980.