One of the most enduring mysteries in US criminal history is closer to being solved: who was DB Cooper, the man who hijacked an airplane before parachuting out into the night with $200,000 cash?
A citizen sleuth has named the infamous skyjacker as Richard Floyd McCoy II, a highly decorated former Green Beret who died three years after the audacious 1971 crime – and said a planned DNA test on his remains would close the case for good.
YouTuber Dan Gryder said the FBI was analyzing a parachute and other finds from McCoy’s former home, and that agents were seeking to exhume the Vietnam veteran’s grave to obtain a genetic sample.
The goal, Gryder said, was to compare it to DNA left on the tie that Cooper, or even McCoy, wore during the hijack of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 and removed before making his daring escape.
The FBI told the Daily Mail that it had ‘nothing further to provide beyond our 2016 statement’, when the bureau mothballed its investigation after decades of inconclusive searching.
At that time, the agency said it would reopen the closed case only if investigators received ‘specific physical evidence’ from the skyjacking, namely the parachutes used in the jump or the stolen money.
McCoy’s children are weighing up whether to grant the FBI access.
Gryder said that Chanté and Rick McCoy III were keen to end the speculation but also wary of ‘disrespecting’ their father’s resting place on the family farm.
‘I just want the truth out there. I want to explain what truly happened,’ Gryder told the Daily Mail.
Dan Gryder beside McCoy’s grave and headstone, which lists his distinguished military decorations, including the Purple Heart
DB Cooper, whose real identity remains a mystery, hijacked a Boeing 727 at Seattle-Tacoma airport on November 24, 1971 and held its crew and passengers hostage with a bomb threat
‘I understand who the guy was, and why he did what he did. I can’t validate the fact that he hijacked an aircraft — it’s illegal. But I can empathize, and I can see how it happened.’
An exhumation of the grave would mark the most significant development in the Cooper case in years.
The mild-mannered mystery hijacker commandeered a Boeing 727 bound for Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971, and held its crew and passengers hostage with a bomb threat.
Said to be in his 40s and dressed in a suit and loafers, the man demanded $200,000 in cash — the equivalent of $1.2 million today — in exchange for keeping the 42 people onboard alive.
Once the ransom and four parachutes were delivered after landing in Seattle, he allowed the hostages to leave, ordered the pilots to take off, and leapt out from 10,000 feet above the dense woods of southwest Washington state.
From there, he vanished without a trace.
Many believe that Cooper did not survive the jump. No trace of him was found and the money was never spent. Though, in 1980, some $5,800 of the cash was recovered along the Columbia River.
One of the few tangible clues in the case is DNA found on a JC Penny black clip-on tie left on the plane.
It is the only unsolved hijacking in US history, despite FBI investigators vetting more than 800 suspects. Numerous confessions were made, though many of these were deemed to be fame-seekers or people on their deathbeds.
McCoy, an avid skydiver and Vietnam Green Beret veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart among other distinguished military decorations, has long been considered as a strong Cooper candidate by the FBI.
Richard McCoy Jr. (pictured centre) was convicted of an eerily similar hijacking just a few months after the Cooper case
The case has long stumped investigators, however, YouTube sleuth Dan Gryder revealed that the FBI had been looking at his newest discoveries that point to McCoy
Once his demands were met and transferred onto the plane, Cooper had the pilots take off before he jumped out at 10,000 feet
Cooper was wearing a black J.C. Penney tie (pictured), which he removed before jumping, which investigators say has DNA on it
That’s in part because on April 7, 1972, he similarly commandeered United Airlines Flight 855, another Boeing 727, en route from Newark to Los Angeles.
He demanded $500,000 in cash and parachuted out as soon as he had the money.
McCoy was later arrested after the FBI received a tip from a concerned citizen, and sentenced to 45 years. He escaped from a maximum-security prison with three other inmates in 1974 and was shot dead by agents in his Virginia Beach home.
The FBI never had enough evidence to prove McCoy also carried out the 1971 job but that could now change.
McCoy’s children reached out to Gryder in 2020 after the death of their mother, Karen, who had hoarded their father’s belongings at the family farm in North Carolina.
They agree that their father might have been Cooper but hadn’t wanted to come forward earlier, believing their mother knew about the crimes and kept them hidden.
Gryder, in a series of YouTube videos, showed how he had found a modified military surplus bailout rig in storage at the farm that he believes Cooper used in the hijacking.
The modifications were identical to those requested by Cooper in 1971, making ‘that particular parachute one in a million’, Gryder said.
He also uncovered logbooks tracking a series of practice jumps made by McCoy in the months leading up to both hijackings.
The rig and logs and are now at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Gryder said, where agents had deemed them ‘not fake’.
‘It’s legitimate. It’s definitely authentic to the crime,’ he said.
Gryder discovered what he believes to be the Cooper parachute in the storage house on the McCoy family property in North Carolina
Another crucial piece of evidence is a logbook that aligned with Cooper’s hijacking over Oregon as well as the Utah hijacking McCoy was convicted of
Gryder said FBI agents contacted him after watching his videos about discovering the rig, and then searched the McCoy family’s North Carolina property
‘We have asked to have the material returned to us, and they said they would very much prefer to keep it.’
A genetic comparison using the DNA of McCoy’s son Rick in 2023 reportedly produced inconclusive results. But the FBI had asked to exhume McCoy’s grave in an effort to test DNA directly from his remains against traces left on the tie, Gryder said.
‘We’re in the middle of a family debate on whether the children will allow the exhumation of their father’s body.
‘I believe it will probably happen at some point in the future.’
Still, the children are said to be reluctant to ‘disrespect’ their father by allowing agents to disturb the grave – especially given the manner of his death.
‘Their father died at the hands of an FBI agent who shot him point-blank,’ said Gryder.
The FBI has not confirmed any plans for exhumation. Gryder believes that a botched investigation and the FBI’s failure to identify the skyjacker for more than half a century have been an embarrassment for the bureau.
‘The agency doesn’t want to spend any more time or money or manpower on this thing,’ he said.
‘They would love to conclude it so that their phone never rings about DB Cooper again.’
Not everyone agrees with Gryder’s theory.
Other Cooper sleuths argue that McCoy’s appearance does not match the witness descriptions and sketches of the mystery skyjacker.
‘It’s absurd how much this McCoy hoax keeps being repeated,’ posted one member of an online group of researchers.
‘Even looking at the sketches drawn by the FBI, you know it’s not him. It’s ridiculous.’
Gryder says the parachute, modeled here in one of the YouTuber’s videos, has the unique alterations requested by DB Cooper during the hijacking
Cooper also asked for four parachutes. Pictured: the canvas bag that contained one of them
Cooper demanded $200,000 cash – the equivalent of $1.2 million today – however, the money was never spent
Another Cooper investigator, Eric Ulis, is focusing on tiny traces of rare metals that were found on the tie, and said they could unlock Cooper’s identity.
In a recent podcast, Ulis said the uranium, thorium and other elements suggested a link to someone who worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee – a nuclear research site active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
