By Davina Willett
Court TV

Whatever Happened to D.B. Cooper?

On the night before Thanksgiving 1971, a rather nondescript, middle-aged, olive-skinned man boarded North West Airlines Flight 305 at around 4:15 p.m. at the Portland International Airport. He paid $20 cash for his ticket. En route to Seattle, the man, who has come to be known as D.B. Cooper, handed airline attendant Flo Schaffner a handwritten note.

About four hours later D.B. Cooper pulled off the only successful major skyjacking in U.S. history.

D.B. Cooper reclaimed the note he handed to Schaffner, so its exact wording is lost in history. But according to Max Gunther, author of D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened, Schaffner, and the colleague to whom she showed the letter, distinctly remember it. It explained that the man had a bomb in his case and that he wanted $200,000 in $20 bills; that he demanded four parachutes, along with the money, delivered to him when the plane landed in Seattle; and he said that if his demands were not met, he would detonate the bomb and blow up the plane.

D.B. Cooper parachuted out of Northwest Airlines jet with a $200,000 ransom.

When the plane landed in Seattle, the airline had the money (serial numbers already recorded by the FBI) and the parachutes waiting. D.B. Cooper released everyone except one steward, Tina Mucklow Larson, and both pilots.

He ordered the plane to be refueled and flown to Mexico at no more than 10,000 feet, agreeing to another refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. He demanded the wing flaps be down and the rear stairs lowered. All measures to keep the plane at a safe speed and easy access for jumping out of the rear stairs.

The pilots reported that the plane's gauges recorded a slight bump in pressure at 8:13 p.m., as they flew over Southwest Washington. This is when the pilots and the FBI figure Cooper jumped, as they presume that his jumping caused the stairwell to snap shut then open again affecting the plane's pressure guage. The money, two parachutes and D.B. Cooper were missing when the plane landed for refueling in Reno.

Soldiers, police, volunteers and FBI agents searched the area — which is some of the densest forest in the U.S. — for 18 days by foot, planes, boats and helicopters. But not until 1980 was any trace of Cooper found.

A little over five thousand dollars of Cooper's spoils were discovered by a boy picnicking with his family along the banks of the Columbia River in southwestern Washington state, on Feb. 10, 1980. Then, in 1995, a woman named Jo Weber claimed that her husband, Duane Weber, confessed to being D.B. Cooper on his deathbed after 17 years of marriage.

Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent assigned to the case, remains steadfast in his belief that Cooper would not have survived — whether he was killed by the cold, the powerful turbulence on the way down, or died from a lack of food or survival gear in the forest.

Himmelsbach may refer to him as "a dirty, rotten crook," but D.B. Cooper has achieved almost cult status. And just in case he ever does show up, air-piracy charges await him in U.S. District Court.