On July 15, 2016, the FBI announced that it would stop investigating the Cooper hijacking, which has been investigated for 45 years and has become the most difficult and puzzling case in the history of American aviation. How hard is this Cooper hijacking?What's so mysterious?
The mysterious note leads to a shocking hijacking
Back on November 24, 1971, a flight attendant named Florence Schaffner of Northwest Airlines was serving the passengers on the plane as usual, and as she passed by a male passenger, the male passenger stopped her and handed her a note. Schaffner was accustomed to this kind of pick-up trick, so she habitually took it and stuffed it into her pocket, knowing that it was boring without having to read it.
Miss waiter, you'd better open the note now, or this plane will happen**. The male passenger got up and walked over to Schaffner and whispered in his ear. Speaking of which, you may wonder how this person dared to hijack such a plane so blatantlyIt should be mentioned here that in the United States in the sixties and seventies of the last century, known as the "era of hijackings," there were more than 200 hijackings between the United States and Cuba in the 12 years from 1960 to 1972 alone. This was mainly due to the fact that the security measures at the airport and on the plane were not sound at that time, so hijackings often occurred.
After hearing the words of the male passenger, Schaffner's face was shocked, and he did not dare to slack off and opened the note in his pocket, only to see that the note read, "I have a bomb in my briefcase that is enough to blow up the entire plane, and now I am going to hijack the plane, you need to cooperate with me." First of all, I need you to give me 200,000 dollars and four parachutes, and these 200,000 dollars are 20 dollar bills without serial numbers. The money and parachutes had to be ready for me before the plane arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, or I'd be deflated. ”
Shafner was stupid after reading the note, although she knew that hijacking was not new, but the first time she encountered this situation still made her frightened. At this time, the male passenger pointed to the briefcase in his hand and showed it to Schaffner, who nodded, then got up and walked to the cab, where she was going to report the situation to the captain.
The captain immediately reported the situation to Seattle Air Traffic Control, which also reported it to Donner Nairop, then president of Northwest Airlines, and also to the FBI. Donner Nerope asks the captain and Schaffner to cooperate in the hijacking.
At this point, the male passenger made a new request, he asked that the plane not be allowed to land until the two hundred thousand dollars and four parachutes were ready, and the captain had to stay in the air as he requested. On the other side, Northwest Airlines began preparing parachutes and two hundred thousand dollars in cash. In order to catch the hijacking, the FBI recorded the number of each of the $200,000 bills demanded by the hijackers.
After everything was ready, the plane landed smoothly at Seattle Airport, and after the hijackers received 200,000 US dollars and four parachutes, they released the passengers and several crew members of the plane, left the crew and captain of the passenger plane, and asked the captain to fly the plane to Mexico.
The FBI people had already set up a net at the Seattle airport at that time, and they originally thought that after the hijacker got the money, he would immediately get off the plane and escape, and then they could catch the hijacker, but they did not expect the plane to take off again. In desperation, the FBI had no choice but to accede to the hijacker's request and allow the captain to cooperate with the hijacker's request. After the plane took off again, it was flying to an altitude of 1,500 meters in Washington State when it encountered a storm and the plane began to shake violently. The hijacker calmly put the two parachutes on his back, and then opened the back door of the cabin, and the crew of the passenger plane watched as he jumped down from the back door of the cabin with a large bag worth $200,000 and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
The hijacker jumped off the plane and never showed up again, and a half-century-long investigation began
After locating the location where the hijacker had jumped, the FBI immediately conducted a careful search of the surrounding area. However, after a week of searching, the search area expanded from a radius of 5 kilometers to 10 kilometers, and nothing was found.
The hijacker jumped from a height of 1,500 meters, still holding a large bag in his hand, and it was still raining in the sky at that time, even if he carried two parachutes on his back, even if he landed successfully, it was completely impossible to escape in a short time. But the FBI searched for a long time, and the hijacker was alive and dead. After the hijacking occurred, people from all walks of life in the United States speculated that the hijacker must have fallen to his death, and it happened to be eaten by nearby wolves and bears. It was also said that the hijackers must have hidden their cars in advance at the place where they were located and fled in their cars. All in all, there has been a lot of speculation about this, but there has never been a reasonable explanation.
As we said earlier, the hijacking was a crime that often occurred in American society at that time, so the FBI did not think that the hijacking case was difficult to solve at first, and the American people were very concerned at that time, and the FBI wanted to solve the case as soon as possible. As everyone knows, this hijacking case has been investigated for nearly half a century.
There are many opinions, but there is no plausible explanation
Interestingly, five months after this bizarre hijacking, a similar hijacking occurred, and the man named Richard McCoy also escaped from a high altitude after receiving half a million dollars. However, the FBI soon captured Richard McCoy. At the time, it was believed that Richard McCoy was Cooper himself, as the modus operandi was similar. But the FBI soon denied this claim, because they investigated that Richard McCoy was having dinner at home on the day of the 1971 hijacking, and had no time to commit the crime.
In February 1980, an eight-year-old boy in Washington State was playing by the river when he picked up a bag full of money with a face value of twenty dollars. The boy handed the bag to the policeman's uncle, and the dollar in the bag was later identified as part of the $200,000 demanded by the hijackers. When the FBI obtained this new evidence, it felt that there should be hope for finding the hijackers.
With the advent and application of DNA technology, the FBI took DNA from the tie, bag and a parachute left behind by the hijacker and identified the hijacker, a man named Cooper. Speaking of which, you may be asking, since you found Cooper's DNA, it should be easy to find him, right?
Here is a knowledge of popular science, DNA technology was first applied to criminal identification in 1984, at this time 13 years have passed since the incident, and DNA technology at that time was not as developed as it is now, and it can only provide some reference for the investigation of the case.
So with Cooper's DNA, and those discarded dollars, after all these years, the FBI really didn't find any trace of Cooper?Besides, the flight attendants, captains and passengers on the plane had all seen Cooper's appearance, so why was it so hard to find?
Truth be told, it's hard to find. According to a document on the official website of the FBI, during the investigation, the FBI investigated more than 1,000 people, but none of them were identified as Cooper himself.
In the 21st century, the Cooper hijacking is still the talk of the town
Since the beginning of the new century, the discussion about the Cooper hijacking case has not stopped, and the FBI has also received many clues during this period. For example, in 2000, a woman in Florida said that her husband was Cooper, but the FBI investigated and found that the woman's husband was not Cooper. In 2007, New York Magazine published an article saying that Cooper was actually Kenneth Peterchristiansen, the former chief of affairs of Northwest Airlines. The evidence is that only the staff of Northwest Airlines knew that the back door of the cabin was in ** and how to open, which involved professional knowledge, and Cooper instructed the captain at that time how to fly to an altitude of 1,500 meters to maintain the stability of the aircraft. All of this shows that Cooper is definitely a master flyer, and the former Northwest Airlines chief of affairs Kenneth Peter Christiansen is a master of flying and parachuting. For a time, the article caused a heated sensation in American society, and the FBI also conducted an in-depth investigation of Kenneth Peter Christiansen for several months, but finally announced that he was not Cooper.
As the Cooper hijacking case became more and more famous, Cooper's image was also put on the big screen, and the first episode of the TV series "Loki" produced by Marvel in 2021 reproduced the scene of Cooper jumping off the plane, and this Cooper was actually pretended by Loki, and the reason why Cooper disappeared inexplicably was because Cooper was an alien who escaped from Earth through a time tunnel.
Although the FBI stopped its investigation in 2016, the impact of the Cooper hijacking did not stop, and Cooper became the only criminal in the history of American crime who was not caught and punished.