A secret parachute in possession of the FBI may have finally cleared up DB Cooper’s identity

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• The children of a DB Cooper suspect turned over new evidence to the FBI because they believe their father was the perpetrator.

• A parachute long hidden on the family property in North Carolina is believed to be the same type used in the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.

• The suspect in question was arrested for a similar skyjacking just months after the DB Cooper incident.

The children of convicted skyjacker Richard McCoy II believed their dear old father might have been DB Cooper, the infamous (and notoriously unknown) central figure in the unsolved 1971 skyjacking. It is, in fact, the only question in United States history to which there is no answer – perhaps until now.

Just months after the Cooper incident, McCoy was convicted of an incredibly similar skyjacking that included a skydive. His children Chanté and Richard III (Rick) have long assumed that the clues were correct.

They may now have evidence to support their suspicions.

Chanté and Rick had remained silent out of respect for their mother, Karen, who they believed may have been involved in both crimes. But since both parents have now died, the siblings had the opportunity to express their suspicions. And most importantly, they seem to have solid evidence: a modified parachute that they (and amateur DB Cooper detective Dan Gryder) believe was used in the daring escape.

“This facility is literally one in a billion,” Gryder said Cowboy State Daily after posting a series on YouTube about his suspicions. It was this YouTube series, Gryder said, that got the FBI involved in the case again.

According to Gryder, the FBI now has the parachute and harness that were once stored in a storage shed on the family property in North Carolina, as well as a harness and skydiving logbook that Chanté claims records DB Cooper’s movements in near Oregon and Utah (the locations of the two skyjacking events). This is the FBI’s first real move on the case since the FBI closed the case in 2016 – although some former employees claimed the case was secretly left open.

After receiving the new evidence, the FBI contacted the family and searched the property where the parachute was stored for four hours with more than a dozen agents, according to Gryder. The unique changes to the parachute could be key to the value of the new evidence in the more than 50-year-old case. The FBI knows that the original parachutes were modified by Earl Cossey, an experienced skydiver who worked with the FBI until his murder in his home in 2013. If the new find matches what they already know, it could advance the search for the real DB Cooper.

The DB Cooper case has taken on an almost mythical quality, with countless theories put forward by amateur sleuths online, in books and in documentaries. A book from the 1990s –DB Cooper: The Real McCoy –even claimed that McCoy was the culprit, but the book was pulled from print after Karen filed a libel lawsuit.

On November 24, 1971, DB Cooper – he called himself Dan, but the media incorrectly gave the name as DB – paid $18.52 in cash for a one-way ticket to Portland and boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 , without presenting any ID (because of a… as there were no regulations at that time).

Holding a briefcase and a paper bag, Cooper handed a piece of paper to a flight attendant sitting behind him mid-flight and whispered that she should take a better look at the piece of paper because it had a bomb on it. Opening his briefcase and revealing what looked like a bomb, Cooper conveyed his demands for $200,000, several parachutes, and a fuel truck waiting in Seattle so he could take off again, bound for Mexico City.

After Cooper’s demands were met, the planned 30-minute flight was expanded into a two-hour loop over Puget Sound while ground crews prepared. Cooper released the airliner’s 35 passengers and some crew members, then dictated the flight path and aircraft configuration to the remaining crew – demanding specific speeds, flap angles and more. After these negotiations were concluded, Cooper and the four remaining crew members set off again.

Somewhere above Washington, Cooper then opened the back stairs and parachuted out of the plane, but the exact location and time of this jump is unknown. Immediate searches turned up no evidence, and over the years experts have been unable to determine an exact search area due to the numerous variables involved in the night jump.

One of the only real pieces of evidence Cooper left behind was a $1.49 clip-on tie from JCPenney, which is in the possession of the FBI. Detectives have sued the government for access to the DNA and particles left on the tie, but to no avail.

Possession of the actual parachute would expand the evidence in the case many times over.

McCoy is an intriguing suspect – one who was later passed over because many FBI employees became convinced that the real DB Cooper had died in the jump when McCoy emerged as a possibility. And McCoy didn’t exactly match the physical description, as he was much younger – 27 at the time – when Cooper was originally estimated to be in his mid-40s.

However, McCoy would have had what it takes to commit the famous crime. He proved it in April 1972 when he successfully skyjacked a United Airlines flight after demanding $500,000. He boarded the plane in Denver and was able to reroute it to San Francisco, fulfill his demands and force the plane back into the air. McCoy then jumped out of the plane over Utah and was arrested by the FBI within three days thanks to an anonymous tip. That tip then led the FBI to a waitress who remembered serving him a milkshake at a roadside hamburger stand the night of the skyjacking, and to a teenager who said McCoy paid him $5 to take him away I could drive to a nearby town. Eventually they managed to compare his fingerprints with those left on the payment note.

McCoy was arrested after the FBI searched his home. He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, but eventually escaped from a maximum security prison and evaded capture for three months until he was shot dead by police in Virginia in 1974.

The parachute offers the best chance of finding evidence that could potentially link McCoy to Cooper. “This,” said Gryder, “will definitely prove that it was McCoy.”

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