Did DB Cooper Get Away With It Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Did DB Cooper Get Away With It - Research Paper Example This research will begin with the statement that on the day before Thanksgiving 1971, one of the most famous airplane hijackings in US history took place in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. In the over forty years since, the â€Å"DB Cooper† case has continued to rivet the nation’s, if not the world’s, attention. Since no corpse was ever found, the question remains. Wednesday, November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought an airline ticket from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington and soon boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305. The man was generally described by witnesses as a normal looking fellow, possibly early forties, and wearing a black raincoat over a dark business suit. The aircraft was a Boeing 727 and the flight was a normally uneventful half-hour trip. According to retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach, the lead investigator on the case, in his book Norjak: The Investigation of D.B. Cooper, shortly after takeoff, just before 3:00 PM, Cooper passed a note to the flight attendant, stating he had a bomb and the plane was being hijacked. Although frightened, she asked to see his bomb and he showed her his briefcase which was full of some odd red cylinders with a cylindrical battery that she assumed might have been sticks of dynamite. The stewardess then told their conversation and showed the note to the cabin crew, who dutifully relayed the information to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials in Seattle.