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On the night before Thanksgiving, November 24th, 1971, a man in a dark suit and a sensible tie took seat 18C on Northwest Orient Flight 305—a short hop from Portland to Seattle aboard a Boeing 727. He ordered bourbon and soda, smoked his Raleighs, and handed a folded note to the flight attendant. It wasn’t a phone number. It was a promise. Inside the briefcase, he said, was a bomb. What followed would become the only unsolved hijacking in American aviation history: a case file swollen with false confessions, river drags, suspect sketches, and a handful of decaying bills that surfaced years later like a message from a ghost.
In this true crime deep dive, we unravel the legendary 1971 hijacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305 by the man calling himself Dan Cooper—mistakenly immortalized as D.B. Cooper. Calm, well-dressed, and carrying what he said was a bomb, Cooper demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes, then jumped out of a Boeing 727 mid-flight over Washington State… and was never seen again.
In this episode, we break down the full timeline of the hijacking, how the FBI launched NORJAK (Northwest Hijacking), why the 727’s aft airstair mattered, the discovery of ransom money on the Columbia River years later, and the leading suspects who’ve been tied to the case—none of whom were ever charged. More than 50 years later, the D.B. Cooper case remains the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.
You’ll hear:
- Who D.B. (Dan) Cooper might really have been
- How he controlled the crew and escaped in the air
- The 1970s hijacking era and airline response
- Why the FBI never closed in on a suspect
- Theories on whether Cooper survived the jump
true crime podcast, D.B. Cooper, Dan Cooper, 1971 hijacking, Northwest Orient Flight 305, unsolved hijacking, FBI NORJAK, skyjacking mystery, Columbia River money find, Pacific Northwest true crime, aviation mystery
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1 hr and 4 mins