NOVEMBER 24th - The DB Cooper Conclusion



On this day in 1971, Dan Cooper jumped out of a Northwest Airlines 727 with $200,000 of airline’s money. A man boarded the plane as “Dan Cooper,” or DB as the media mistakenly reported, and slipped a flight attendant a note saying that he had a bomb. He successfully hijacked the plane and made his demands -- 200K, four parachutes, a refuel, and food for the crew. Cooper let the passengers go when they touched down in Seattle, received all his demands, and instructed the pilot to head for Mexico. They took off again, and then he jumped out the damned plane. And was never heard from again. Now there are a lot of different theories as to what happened to DB Cooper. And the flames are stoked every few years by some new piece of evidence or some person claiming to be related to DB. There have been multiple suspects, as late as 2011, and the case remains the only hijacking in US history that has never been solved. So it makes sense that it captures the imagination--there is no finite ending. There is conjecture and theory and romanticized visions of what DB did with his money. When there is no conclusion, people get swept up in might have happened. It’s why the ending of The Soprano’s was so damned brilliant. People may not have been satisfied, but it left them something to argue and dispute about. If Tony was shown being shot that’s it. Not much to argue about. And what is this country if not one that loves to argue and dispute. Now I’m not saying that you should start lopping of the ending of every story you tell, as that could get annoying, but a little air of mystery never hurt. There are other issues at play here to. Freedom, the romanticism of the outlaw, and I’m sure a plethora of other psychological reasons as to why DB Cooper is still relevant forty years after his disappeared into thin air. Really I’m just saying that the tale of DB Cooper could teach us all to…

Yeah, that's annoying.

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