What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
Turbulent Skies: A bomb on a plane.
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A man says he has a bomb on a commercial aircraft. We have seen it in movies for decades, but where did it all start. We take a deep dive into the lore of DB Cooper and the implementation of the 'DB Cooper device'. We then explore the audacious copycat hijackings, leading to a broader discourse on the evolution of airport security. Intrigue peaks as we examine a new theory about Cooper's possible identity—a theory that could rewrite the history books. This episode promises to leave you with a profound understanding of the complexities of societal challenges and criminal exploits that have reshaped our world.
D.B. Cooper Hijacking — FBI
D.B. Cooper: Biography, Plane Hijacker, Suspects
Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B Cooper- Geoffrey Gray
Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com
Background music by Michael Shuller Music
Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the Shadows.
Speaker 2A father, daughter, true kind podcast.
Speaker 1My name is Jameson Keyes.
Speaker 2I'm Caroline. Hello, good morning.
Speaker 1Good morning. How are you, caroline?
Speaker 2I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Today I wanted to discuss two incidents that have happened over the years, one really recent and one fairly recent, just a few years ago, in two different countries, but with the same underlying hatred causing them, which is transphobia. So transphobia, just to define it for anyone who may not know is hatred or abuse or even just thoughts of trans people being less than simply because they are transgender or gender non-conforming. So it's about gender identity, not about gay, sexual orientation, lesbianism it's not related to that, although sometimes people do feel more open to being that. So I think sometimes there's overlap, but it's about gender expression. So two cases that have happened in recent years One was Breonna Jai, which was actually supposed to be our second recording, but I just needed to gather my thoughts on it. I wanted to give it some time and wait and see about the sentencing for the two murderers, who were also children, which is crazy. Both of these cases are about transgender youth that were murdered by classmates.
Speaker 1It's doubly tragic. It's ridiculous yeah not just the death of the person, but also the fact that young people actually committed these crimes.
Speaker 2It's disgusting. Breonna Jai her case was finished sentencing about a few weeks ago, I believe, and then one that recently happened a few weeks ago was next Benedict, a young child in Oklahoma. Breonna Jai was in the UK. I'll be discussing that in the next episode, so watch out for that.
Speaker 1You know what this is, something that is a much lighter note than that.
Speaker 2Trigger warnings for today are domestic terrorism and bomb threat All right, Caroline.
Speaker 1So this is actually, although it sounds on the face of it like it's going to be a much worse kind of an episode, but it really isn't. Have you ever heard the name? I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, really.
Speaker 2It's far in view of between in these crime spaces.
Speaker 1That's exactly right. Have you ever heard the name DB Cooper?
Speaker 2No, Okay, I was talking about Debbie Cooper. From what's that one show? Oh my goodness. River, riverton or River High? Was that the?
Speaker 1reworking of Archie Comics.
Speaker 2Debbie Cooper was the mom, also married to a serial killer.
Speaker 1Lovely, that's lovely.
Speaker 2Anyway, so not related to that. Debbie Cooper, yeah.
Speaker 1And the comic books really weren't related to that story arc either. Anyways, so no, DB Cooper is totally different. So on a cloudy afternoon in November of 1971, so when I was eight years old, oh my God, you were alive. Just kidding. So a well dressed, middle-aged man boarded a Northwest flight flight number 305, leaving Portland, Oregon, and soon after the plane took off, the man calmly alerted the flight attendant that he had a bomb wired inside of his briefcase. He also he also communicated the ransom demand.
Speaker 2Can I ask a question, sure, before 9-11, did they literally not even check your bags?
Speaker 1You know that's an interesting point. This very case triggered a lot of this them really looking through your case.
Speaker 2But before that they literally didn't even check your bags. You know I don't like.
Speaker 1I didn't. I wasn't traveling in 1971, so I didn't know exactly what the protocol was, what the fuck. By the time I started flying, you know in the 80s, late 80s, yeah, you went through metal detectors and they checked your bags and all that kind of X-ray scan. But at this point in time I do not believe that that was the case.
Speaker 2So what's the difference between the 80s, when you were like traveling, you were really traveling, you were flight attendant.
Speaker 1I was a flight attendant. Yes, I was. Was it 80s or 90s?
Speaker 2I was a flight attendant Late 80s through the mid 90s, so during that time, compared to 9-11, what changed Like? Because, if you said, there were already like metal detectors back then and they were looking through bags.
Speaker 1So at this point in time, during the period with this happen, like from 1969 to 1970, call it three or four there were literally hundreds of hijackings. And that's what this was. This Dan Cooper boarded the plane and eventually ended up with over $200,000 in cash from the police and literally hundreds of these things happened. It was almost commonplace. That's insane. Well, and the thing was, the difference between that and something as really tremendously upping the scale was the fact that most of the cases work at inconvenience for the passengers, but ordinarily involve them landing somewhere, then bringing a sum of money on board and then the hijacker requesting that. And it could have been that, or it could have been the person actually robbed a bank or something, got on a commercial plane and pulled a gun, or you said he had a bomb and made them fly to Mexico where there wasn't really good extradition. It was a way of getting-. That is insane. It truly is insane. What?
Speaker 1And the fact that a lot of people were like just come, oh shit, and weren't terrified because this person had a gun or a bomb or whatever, and a lot of times they didn't actually have anything, but they're just the claim of it, the police kind of.
Speaker 1At that point in time this is pre-911, pre-terrorist wars and all that kind of stuff there is a much more kind of a genteel time in terms of, well, if he says he had a bomb, we're not gonna risk the fact that he may have a bomb. Now, what also happened was I think it was in the late 80s that Pan Am flight I believe it was blew up over a locker in Scotland that had a bomb in a suitcase that was in the bottom of the plane and killed a whole lot of people. But this was much less you know, much less scary really. The man who used the name Dan Cooper boarded the plane and, like I said, he ended up with about 200 grand in cash from the police After requesting that the crew take off again, and when they brought the cash on board, right, he had them fly the plane at a certain.
Speaker 2I like how you say request, as if it was like would you mind if you just?
Speaker 1Well, that's just it. Apparently, according to a lot of the flight attendants and some of the people that were dealing with this guy, he came on board and he was dressed. He was debonair. He was actually in a nice suit and had a white shirt and a black tie and a little tie clip on it and so on. Came on with a nice pair of sunglasses on. The flight attendant actually said he looked more like James Bond than you know, kind of a you wouldn't ever expect. This is a guy that's gonna cause trouble.
Speaker 1So, I can't assume that's exactly right. So he did have them take off again right, and they flew for a while and then something really unexpected happened. So anyways, here are a few interesting facts about that. Okay, the incident remains the sole unsolved case of air piracy involving a commercial airliner in the United States. So witnesses described the man as having jumped out of the airplane after the second takeoff and disappearing without a trace. Numerous theories surround the identity and you know the proposed hijacker. Some say that he was Richard Floyd McCoy and you know he was responsible for that crime.
Speaker 2So did he jump out with a parachute? He did Okay.
Speaker 1When he made the request of the cash, he also requested four parachutes be brought on board. Now, that should have told someone something right. But they brought the cash, they took off, he had the parachutes and so on. And so in 1972, this man, McCoy hijacked commercial airline, once again demanded half a million dollars in ransom and before parachuting out of the plane, a very reminiscent of DB Cooper McCoy was apprehended later and killed after escaping from prison. He was never definitively linked to the Cooper case, although it sounds really familiar, and that left the FBI with lingering doubts. Other suspects included Kenneth Christensen, identified by his brother as Cooper.
Speaker 2That's a good identifier.
The DB Cooper Hijacking Mystery
Speaker 1Due to a striking resemblance to the FBI's composite sketch, jack Cauffield, who claimed to be Cooper, after sustaining a leg injury in Portland during that time period. Despite numerous leads, no suspect has been conclusively proven as DB Cooper. That is so weird. In 2016, the FBI officially suspended the case. Like you said before, how did someone walk on and do that? Was he some sort of a raving madman or something like that? He was not. His description sounded like I said, more like James Bond. Part of the sensation around DB Cooper and the hijacking is because it sounded so smooth. The official FBI bulletin was released to describe him as a white male in his mid-40s with oil of skin, appearing to be well-spoken, intelligent in his demeanor, wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a black tie, carrying a briefcase that they didn't check, obviously, what the fuck and sometimes wearing sunglasses. According to one witness and that was the flight attendant for Schaefer Cooper was calm and even ordered two bourbons during the flight, cooper even paid his bill for the bourbon and wanted Schaefer to keep the change. That is so weird. He also calmly explained his plans to the pilots. He needed them to follow his instructions so that he could jump safely from the plane To complete the roundout of James Bond appeal and appearance, cooper ended up hijacking the plane and then jumping out of the back. Now let me explain how that happened. As you said, I was a flight attendant at one point in time and we were still flying the same plane that this guy was flying at that time it was called a 727. Your grandfather actually used to fly that plane. One of the interesting features of the plane was you've come through the doors on the front end of a plane in there and even there's two or two to four overwing exits as well, and then sometimes in the back of the plane there are exits back there too. This plane was kind of supposed to be revolutionary when they built it in that it didn't need necessarily a jetway Because back between the engines, in the very back of the plane, where the tail cone is, you could open that and then lower the stairs. Okay, so you could board the plane on places that didn't have a formal jetway. And it's a pretty good size plane Probably held 140, 150 people. So.
Speaker 1But I do remember during training of that that there was something that actually changed the way people fly. They called it the DB Cooper device. Oh my God. And what it did was it made it so you could not, in flight, open the back stairway. So that's exactly what this guy did. He had them fly at about 10,000 feet, okay. Then they lowered the back staircase and, of course, at that point in time, 10,000 feet he got on board the flight at four.
Speaker 1After all the circling around, and, by the way, when they landed the plane the first time and bought the money on board, they evacuated the other passengers, telling them there was a mechanical problem with the plane. They didn't even know. They didn't even know that they were potentially, you know, if their life was in danger and so on. And because this guy was so calm and the police didn't come rushing in, because it looked very much like he had a bomb and I can't remember if there actually was dynamite in this case or if there wasn't, but if it just looked that way, the police weren't taking any chances.
Speaker 1So they take up the second time. They get up to 10,000 feet. They told him to fly towards Mexico and that's where their flight plane was. But a few minutes after that, cooper lowered the back stairways and jumped out of the plane. Now, at that point in time, it's 830 in the evening. Not only that, but it's November. It was a thunderstorm in that area at that point in time and they were flying over a forested area. So this guy had four parachutes. He chose one. He took the on by 30 or 40 pounds of bills, wrapped him and tied it around his chest and physically just jumped out of the plane.
Speaker 2And they never found him.
Speaker 1No, they really.
Speaker 2they never found him he probably died, because typically, with the what do you call it? Parachute, parachute. Typically, when you parachute you have to land in like a, like a place that's flat and void of trees.
Speaker 1So that led a lot of speculation in terms of who this guy was, and they brought four different types of parachutes. Some were modern, some are not Right. The one he chose if you ever seen the movies where they had these two little cords on the side of the parachute so you can kind of steer the parachute he chose one that didn't have the guides on it. Okay, so people some people thought or assumed that that was because he had no idea what he was doing Right and he just picked one shoot and jumped out of the plane. Other people have thought this guy was an experienced paramilitary jumper and that's what you jump with out of a plane. You don't steer those if you're jumping off of a ring. So no one knows exactly which one it is Right. Was he a fool? And when he jumped out into that thunderstorm over the really, really rugged part of the Washington forest there did he fall to his death?
Speaker 2Yes, I think he did.
Speaker 1Or he did?
Speaker 2He probably did, Because I don't know. I think like we, especially like Americans, like I think in general, like people love to entertain the idea of like a overly intelligent, like criminal, and it's like that's not really all that common, Like most of the time, these criminals are really stupid, Like they really are, just like doing whatever, just trying to get like the ends to a means. Then you know what I mean. And so I don't know to assume that he had military background, this, that whatever, like I don't know I just how likely is that?
Speaker 1Well so. So where he jumped out, it was in a dense forest near Mount St Helens, which years later would blow up, but in Washington. And this one gentleman, who was an experienced paramilitary rigor, claimed that there's no way, jumping out of a plane at that speed in pitch darkness, that this guy possibly landed it.
Speaker 2Yeah, see, that's what I mean. It's just like cause. When you see, I'm not an experienced, I've never been parachuting and I'm not like I don't research this kind of thing, but what I've seen is they typically land in like a flat environment, like a field, and I just can't imagine that going well with like a bunch of like what 20, 40 foot evergreen Like it. Just you know what I mean Like you're going to get stuck in those trees.
Speaker 1Well, so here's another thing, really interesting thing. Although there are multiple planes tailing the 727 when it was flying right, yeah, no one saw him leave the plane.
Speaker 2What do you mean? No one saw him jump. No one saw him jump, but it was dark.
Speaker 1It was dark, you know, or it was getting dark, right so, but no one actually saw him jump. So some people say he hit somewhere on the plane and they just walked out of the airport and so on, but that's probably the least likely.
Speaker 2What the?
Speaker 1hell. But people over the years have come up, you know, and claimed to be DB Cooper or claimed that they, you know, knew someone, that knew someone who actually knows. And the interesting thing is, a few years later I think it was 1980, a young boy was walking near a riverbed, and this was in February of 1980. An eight year old boy was on vacation near Vancouver, washington, and I'm going to cover some of the bills that were actually from that heist.
Speaker 2How, where was it?
Speaker 1He was walking along kind of the sandy portion of a beach on a riverbank and he saw something in there and he started kicking it around and he noticed that it was actually money.
Speaker 2And it was where. Just near a riverbank On a beach, oh, on a riverbank and kind of partially buried.
Speaker 1So that led people to you know, speculate that that he had perished and it just blew away.
Speaker 2I think so.
Speaker 1But it also had some people speculate that he did, was able to somehow land this thing, buried some of the money there.
Speaker 2Was it just buried? Because like time, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1Like was it buried under? Like that would have been nine years later.
Speaker 2Okay, so it could have been buried for that reason. You know, yeah, like just layers of dirt.
DB Cooper
Speaker 1And this guy didn't have like a backpack or anything that he put the money in. They brought him in this bags of money which he tied around him and dove out of the plane, oh my God. So the kid actually recovered. The kid actually recovered, I don't know like, if they were, I don't know, $100 bill stacks oh my gosh, containing 90 bills. He actually resold the money in 2008 in an auction and made $37,000 on it. That's awesome, but it, you know, this inspired like 15 different copycats, right, and some of the interesting ones. I thought you know there was one guy that tried to hijack another plane. This is another hijacker.
Speaker 2Like I said, this was happening all the time.
Speaker 1This was in like 1979, I think right, okay, or in the late 70s, and his name was Frederick Haunermann and he hijacked a plane and departed from Allentown, pennsylvania, and demanded that the flight fly to Dulles International Airport in DC to be fulfilled with his ransom requirements $303,000 in cash, cigarettes, food, parachutes, knives, fuel and a crash helmet.
Speaker 2And what did he think that helmet was gonna do?
Speaker 1Okay, that's a great point. But once his conditions were met, haunermann allowed the passenger to get off the plane almost all of them except for the flight crew. Then he ordered the captain take off. However, soon after he changed his mind because they had given him all $100 bills and they seemed to be sequential. So he asked them to go back down and change the denominations of the money, and so they weren't sequential and maybe weren't tracked and that sort of thing. Once he had that, they took off again and then this gentleman had them fly to Honduras.
Speaker 2And they he.
Speaker 1they landed in Honduras so they flew to Honduras, and before they actually got there, haunterman jumped out of the plane. Oh my god and in the dead of night he landed in the jungle, deep you know, away from the plane, right, my god, clutching his heart and ransom. For weeks he evaded capture, but eventually he turned himself into the US embassy in Honduras.
Speaker 2Yeah, literally I just that's what I, that's my point. Like he really thought he was gonna be able to get along in Honduras without speaking in a Spanish right right.
Speaker 1So after the Cooper hijacking in the subsequent hop copycat hijackings, aviation's authority in the FBI realized that they had really far too relaxed security in America on domestic flights definitely so if this was a Thing that kept happening hundreds of times.
Speaker 1The first step to prevent the hijackings was introducing Full baggage security checks for the first time. This might seem unbelievable in 2024, but the issue had been, you know, passed through the US courts in 1973 and American passengers thought that searches were violations of their rights. But eventually it was deemed necessary to protect those on board and it became mandatory for all those To be, you know, the bags to be scanned and for the cockpit door to be locked.
Speaker 1Yeah, definitely that, jesus so the copycats are kind of interesting, I think. So one of the common themes in all the different copycats and all the different theories about who actually did you be, cooper, was they all start with one of the flight attendants saying, when asked to describe this person, mm-hmm, it was a middle-aged white man. Mm-hmm, but what if it wasn't?
Speaker 2okay.
Speaker 1So there's one theory Barbara Dayton had undergone gender reassignment surgery in 1969. Apparently, at some point she confided in someone on her deathbed that she Was actually DB Cooper. Oh my god. So how you might say. Well, the surgery happened in 1969, this happened in 1971.
Speaker 1What if this woman by the name of Barbara Dayton was masquerading as a man was masquerading as a man Before the surgery, she would have had some recollection of how to carry themselves and how that would be different in that sort of thing and what to look like and dress like and so on. The thing about this is just a second, because they always say very debonair, slender, right, right, slender and Sophisticated looking and so on and so forth. What if it was?
Speaker 2a trans woman a trans woman. Wow, that would be interesting. And she Admitted to this on her deathbed. It was a deathbed of confession.
Speaker 1So there's a gentleman named Gregory Gray, jeffrey Gray, and he did a thing called Skyjack DB Cooper Story, and it includes a story about Barbara, the aviation enthusiast, world War two veteran Merchant, marine and wait for it parachutist, who died in 2002, maybe the first person to undergo gender surgery resummon surgery. In 1969, dayton purportedly made a bold confession to her friend, ron Foreman and Ron Foreman's wife, claiming that two years after, under growing gender reassignment surgery, dayton boarded a plane and, while presenting as a male, altered her voice Carried out the greatest unsolved aviation heist ever. Dayton, who'd been denied a commercial pilots license, allegedly sought revenge on the airline in the industry oh my god With the act and proclaimed to have hidden and stolen the money and assisted in Woodburn, washington, oregon, and gone back and gotten it later.
Speaker 2That's wild. Okay, but why did someone else find the money, perhaps?
Speaker 1a little bit got loose. Perhaps she hid some of it just for the purpose of Throwing people off. She hid five thousand or fifty six hundred dollars, which in today's money is, you know, much more than that. But compared to two hundred thousand dollars, what's five thousand dollars? Wow, what if she buried it on a bank, partly covered, and hope someone to fight and say, look, he died where he fell here. Wow, so that's, that's a, that's a theory. That's, that's a theory. That is really theory. That's a wild theory.
Speaker 1So, but anyways, you know, we'll never know. There's even a fact that one of the gentlemen we mentioned earlier, rick McCoy, said that his dad, richard McCoy, you know, who had done other skyjackings before, oh my god, was actually. He cooperated with his wife, who was near the point of, or he would have landed and had an automobile or something like that picked him up, so they were able to get away that way, right, and he said that he had told his son that that's what had happened, but he didn't say anything. The son didn't say anything until now, he claims, because he didn't want his mom to be implicated as someone in the heist as well. So she died in December of 2020. Wow, yes, so we may never know exactly what happened to DB Cooper.
Speaker 2I wonder why the child came forward at all.
Speaker 1Well, that's just it. I mean, the child came forward. Why? Because he found the money. And you know, I don't know. My dad always said you know if I found money.
Speaker 2No, not that child. I'm talking about the child who said that their dad did it, who is now an adult.
Speaker 1I know, but what if you knew one of the biggest secrets of all time, right, and you knew what happened right? This is a huge secret. It's never been solved. The FBI the only aviation case that's never been solved throughout their hands.
Speaker 2It's not even like it's not a murder or a sexual assault. Like it's literally just oh, maybe I could see that. Actually, that makes sense.
Speaker 1Because DB Cooper spawned a lot of different things. I mean, there've been so many movie plots and books and everything written about, or the character jumps out of a plane with all the money and so on, even though physically that would be a real crap shoot. You know, my thought is it's none of these things and this person jumped into 100 mile an hour winds coming out of the back of a plane and probably fell to their death. The parachute never opened and that's what you found.
Speaker 2the money, not the parachute, never opened. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1Well, I mean the thing about a parachute you're relying on the fact that it captures that envelope of air. But if you're in a thunderstorm or something like that, and it's a, it was icy, it was cold, the wind was blowing you know, very likely that a person jumping out, especially one that didn't have a steerable parachute, would fall to their death, Wow. So maybe that happened and maybe we'll never know.
Speaker 2I think we will probably never know and people just keep trying to jump on the bandwidth. Oh my gosh, literally so cheesy, I know I can.
Speaker 1But anyways, that Caroline is the story of DB Cooper.
Speaker 2Not Debbie Cooper, Maybe? Ha ha ha. Follow the show on whatever streaming site you're listening on.
Speaker 1And remember. All of the source material will be available in the show notes.
Speaker 2And follow us on Instagram at what we lose in the shadows and let us know if you want to hear a specific case.
Speaker 1Or if you just want to give us some feedback.
Speaker 2OK, join us in the shadows next Tuesday. Bye.
