IT HAS BEEN more than 36 years since a hijacker who identified himself as “D.B. Cooper” jumped into the dark out of an airliner flying over the wilderness of Washington state. He took with him $200,000 in cash and two parachutes — one of which was sewn shut. He has never been found, dead or alive.
Now the FBI is looking for Cooper again.
It may be the spate of cold-case shows on television or just law-enforcement nostalgia, but the FBI has decided to take a new look at the evidence in the case and to ask the public once again to search its memory. The hope is that someone, somewhere, knows who Cooper is. Or was.
Is Cooper still alive? Probably not. Some FBI agents are convinced that he died in the jump and that his bones are strewn through the forest near the Columbia River. Even if he survived the jump, the odds of his being alive today are slim. In 1971, Cooper was thought to be in his mid-40s. That would put him over 80 now. If he is still on the run, he cannot be moving very fast.
Here’s hoping the FBI has more luck in its revived search for Cooper than it did when it dug up a horse farm two years ago, looking for the body of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. No body was found. Hoffa, who disappeared four years after Cooper, is undoubtedly dead and was almost certainly murdered. The FBI, which does not like unsolvable mysteries or loose ends in case files, would still like to know how he died, who killed him and what was done with the body.
That same combination of human curiosity and obsessive neatness seems to be behind the agency’s renewed interest in D.B. Cooper. It’s understandable. The odds are slim that the new effort will produce any results, but the odds will not get better as time passes. In a few years, it will be a certainty that Cooper is dead. A few decades after that, anyone who knew him will be gone, too.
By the time that happens, trying to discover the identity of D.B. Cooper will be like trying to put a name and face to Jack the Ripper.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor
Wasp (anonymous) says...
Sounds like another bureaucratic waste of money to me.
January 12, 2008 at 6:55 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
slipandslide (anonymous) says...
the fbi has better things to do with their time
January 12, 2008 at 8:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
emporian (anonymous) says...
I believe that should read
The FBI should have better things to do with their time.
January 12, 2008 at 9:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
EDGYTEXAN (anonymous) says...
Ah! I see the FBI is now is recruiting You and me in crowd sourcing their work just like Amazon's MTurk program did to help find Steve Fossett.
January 12, 2008 at 9:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
create (anonymous) says...
Yet another rational use of our tax dollars since we don't have any current crimes to solve.
January 13, 2008 at 10:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )