The FBI has finally admitted that it’s never going to get to the bottom of the legendary DB Cooper plane hijacking mystery and it’s shutting the investigation down after 45 years of searching, local Portland station KIRO reports.
“Following one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in our history, on July 8, 2016, the FBI redirected resources allocated to the DB Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities,” the agency said in a press release from its Seattle office.
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In 1971, a guy calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a Northwest Airlines flight in Portland, Oregon, and told a flight attendant that he had a bomb on board. He asked her to pass a note to the cockpit, demanding four parachutes and $200,000. Cooper released the passengers in exchange for the money when the plane touched down in Seattle, then directed the flight crew to head toward Mexico City. While in the air, Cooper leapt from the plane with a parachute and the bags of cash. He was never heard from again.
The FBI interviewed more than 800 suspects throughout the decades, but the only real clues they ever discovered were a few disintegrated $20 dollar bills near the Colombia River that investigators confirmed were from the ransom pool.
At this point, we’ll probably never know who the real DB Cooper was or what happened to him—especially now that we know for sure he wasn’t actually Don Draper.
