The FBI always gets its man. Wait, wasn’t that Dudley Do-Right and the Mounties? No matter, for the FBI is hot on the trail of its only unsolved skyjacking case. They have left no stone unturned in their now 40 year quest to find the culprit who embarrassed the entire department, leading J. Edgar Hoover to say, “That bastard, I will see that he roasts in hell.”
Well, J. Edgar didn’t really say that. But I’m sure he would have.
Suffice it to say that D.B. Cooper has been a black stain on the FBI’s white panties (which would have gone smashingly with J. Edgar’s black pumps by the way), since Thanksgiving Day, 1971.
And for a moment, they thought they had found the guy. Going off a full fingerprint of a guy who’s been dead 10 years now, and a 40 year old partial fingerprint lifted from a clip on JC Penney tie D.B. wore onto the plane and left behind, the FBI was all pumped up with their “gotcha” in the media.
If it had truly been him I would have been thrilled. I have long said D.B. Cooper made it out of the plane that night and landed safely. I don’t have to base it on conjecture or wishful thinking.
In 1971, I was hanging out at the Issaquah Parachute Center when it happened. That is where the two reserve chutes came from that D.B. had demanded. The main chutes were from the military, McChord Air Force Base.
This is where the truth separates from fiction. There’s been a lot made about the reserve chute that was sewn shut. It wasn’t. In fact, I used it some years later when I trained to make my first jump. It was only 12′ in diameter and you used it to practice emergencies while hung from the ceiling. It was intentionally small so that it was easier to put it back into the pack after practice.
D.B. had left it behind. No matter what anyone else tells you, it eventually made its way back to the center. We called it the D.B., in fact, as in, “ready for the D.B.?”
My brother at the time said it was obvious D.B. knew it was a practice reserve. It looked different. A real reserve was packed in very tight into a very, very small container. The sides of the pack would bulge. The practice pack didn’t.
How would D.B. know this? Back then, a couple of the jumpmasters thought they had recognized the guy in the police sketch. They seemed to remember a guy like that who had taken a few introductory lessons at the center. I don’t think the FBI ever wanted to make this known, since after D.B.’s adventure, everyone would be wanting to take a few “lessons.”
Instead, the FBI wanted us to think the guy had never jumped before. My fellow skydivers dismissed it. His requests for chutes was too specific. Military chutes were more reliable than the professional rigs they were using at the time. It’s also what all civilian students trained on. And if you were a civilian who had a few lessons, you’d go with what you knew. But you’d want the military rigs because they were packed by professional riggers, not 20-something skydivers who were doing drugs and going on all night drinking binges, then packing your chute in the morning.
My brother knew he wasn’t an amateur either because he gave the pilot very specific instructions about speed, flaps, etc. Running down the back stairway of a 727 isn’t that hard, even jumping out into the night. It was the only plane with a built in stairway like that. But you didn’t want to go out of it if the plane was going too fast; you would be swept off it long before you safely reached the bottom.
Now, let’s look at the issue of jumping in the dark. No biggy. Skydivers do it all the time. In a rainstorm? Not optimal. But any paratrooper will tell you they’ve done it and at a lot lower altitude.
How did D.B. know when to open his chute? Another easy one. If you jump from 7,500 feet you get 30 seconds of freefall time. Count to 30 and pull… you’ll be at about 2,000 feet. At 12,500 feet, count to 60. Same result. All you need to know is your approximate altitude and hope a mountain isn’t below you that’s 2,000 feet high. Again, any idiot could figure this all at if they knew basic math.
After the heist, the black suits were all over the parachute center. I still remember them. They interviewed everyone who possibly knew anything about skydiving. To a man they all said he would have made it, even if he had only jumped a couple times. It’s not hard to jump out of a plane and pull a ripcord.
It is, however, hard to land. That’s how I sprained my ankle if you recall. As the story unfolds, it seems the now dismissed suspect had reported being in a non-existent car accident in November 1971. Had some leg injuries. If you hit the ground in the dark, you will pop or break something, as it’s impossible to tell where the ground is. You would also probably have an injury if you landed in a tree, which was a good chance for old D.B., knowing where he jumped.
I was very excited when I heard that the FBI had finally fingered their man (wait, that sounds dirty). It would have showed that my skydiver friends were right all those years ago.
As for the rest of the story, my brother Jon couldn’t resist having fun with the whole idea. Right after this all happened, he drove down to the small towns surrounding the supposed site of the jump. He went in with in a stocking cap pulled down, sunglasses and a briefcase. He would announce he was buying a round for the bar, putting the briefcase, with bills bursting from its edges, up on the bar. It always got him a lot of free drinks wherever he went.
Out on the Treasure Coast, wondering if the chute will open before I hit the ground, eight floors below,
– Robb