The FBI may finally know DB Cooper’s identity

In 1971, a man named Dan Cooper hijacked a plane, took $200,000 and two parachutes and disappeared into the night sky somewhere over Washington state never to be seen or heard from again. Armchair investigators have long theorized where he might have gone, and the FBI believes he may have never landed from his jumpbut new evidence suggests he may have gotten away with it all – only to be caught doing it again just five months later.

The new evidence comes in the form of a unique parachute, a provided to the FBI by the children of Richard McCoy II – a skyjacker caught and convicted after stealing $500,000 in 1972. McCoy has long been a favorite suspect among Cooper mystery enthusiasts given the similarities in approach between his hijacking and the Cooper escape just months earlier, but the FBI never considered the physical descriptions of two matched well enough to put McCoy behind bars. Now according to Popular Mechanicshis children believe the parachute is enough evidence to close the Cooper case for good.

McCoy’s children, Rick and Chanté, provided the FBI with a modified parachute and a logbook showing McCoy’s jumps—reportedly including jumps in Utah and Oregon that matched both McCoy’s robbery and the Cooper jump. The parachute modifications are significant as the chutes supplied to Cooper in his hijacking were modified by an FBI parachutist. If the McCoy parachute matches the Cooper modifications, the case may finally be closed.

Rick and Chanté seem to have known about the chute for some time, but kept it a secret until the deaths of both their parents. Believing McCoy’s wife Karen to be complicit in both crimes, the couple kept the secret until she was no longer in danger. Now the children can freely reveal what they think is the truth: That their father is the most famous skyjacker in history.