D.B. Cooper is claimed to be the author of a 1983 rare book, entitled “HA-HA-HA”, featuring a drawing of a man in a suit holding a briefcase while parachuting from a commercial jet on its cover.
FBI has checked hundreds of leads since the man dubbed D.B. Cooper parachuted from a flight with $200,000 dollars in ransom in 1971.
If the author of a newly-unearthed memoir is to be believed, D.B. Cooper has come forward to reveal himself as the man who has gone down in American folklore for pulling off the nation’s only unsolved hijacking.
As The Sideshow reports, Pacific Northwest author Matt Love recently purchased the 1983 book from a Jefferson, Oregon publisher called Signum Books Ltd. Originally sold for $3.95, a recent search by the outlet found only three copies for sale to date – each for around $30.
The back cover features a graphic of a certificate announcing a contest called “Your Big Score”.
The certificate’s first sentence reads: “It’s true. In this book are seven clues. By reading it carefully and discovering the clues, one could receive as much as $200,000 in twenty dollar bills.”
Within its 330 pages, the author recounts his life prior to the hijacking, as a failed real-estate developer, heavy drinker and petty thief.
The author explains how he pulled off the heist on November 24, 1971 – in part by having rented a house and a gassed car nearby where he landed near Pyramid Lake – and says he invested his ransom money in Boeing and silver, becoming very wealthy as a result.
As Matt Love notes, the mystery author also offers a series of clues that offer the location of D. B. Cooper’s ransom to the lucky reader clever enough to piece the puzzle together.
After nearly 40 years of chasing exhausted leads, investigators still now very litter about the man who boarded a Boeing 727 at Portland International Airport under the name Dan Cooper.
The gentleman, believed to be his mid-forties and wearing dark sunglasses, took seat 18F, ordered a bourbon and water.
Then he handed a flight attendant a note: “Miss, I’ve got a bomb, come sit next to me — you’re being hijacked.”
D. B. Cooper opened a briefcase that appeared to contain explosives and demanded $200,000 and parachutes.
Officials met his demands when the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where passengers and two flight attendants were released.
The man in 18F then ordered the flight crew to take the plane back into the air, insisting that it fly at an altitude of no more than 10,000 feet on its way to Mexico through Reno, Nevada.
About 40 minutes after take-off, a signal light in the cockpit showed that the plane’s rear stairway had been extended. When the jet landed in Reno, the stairs were down and two parachutes, the money and D. B. Cooper were gone.
A few years ago, the FBI renewed its push to solve the case, releasing photos and new case details in the hopes of jogging memories or prompting someone to come forward.
Experts estimated D. B. Cooper would have landed near Ariel, Washington. Residents there have a party every fall to commemorate the unsolved hijacking.There have been more than 1,000 suspects over the past four decades.
And, over the years, agents have unceasingly voiced suspicions that the hijacker, who was later dubbed D.B. Cooper, may have died following the 10,000 leap.
Conditions that night were poor and the mountainous terrain near the Oregon border is notoriously rough.
5,800 dollars worth of decomposed $20 bills, identified as part of the ransom money, which were recovered in 1980 by a child digging on the banks of the Columbia River, also point to an untimely death.
But no body has ever been found and few other signs of D.B. Cooper fate have been discovered.
