More than five decades on from the legendary ‘skyjacking’, the identity of DB Cooper still remains a mystery.

But bombshell new evidence could finally shed some light on the cold case which has baffled investigators since 1971, according to an amateur sleuth.

Dan Gryder claims that he got his hands on the parachute which the elusive hijacker used to pull off his elaborate escape from the Boeing 727 aircraft a whopping 53 years ago.

Despite a Netflix documentary being created about the notorious case, DNA breakthroughs and countless experts weighing in on it, the identity of DB Cooper still hasn’t been uncovered.

The unknown individual boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 on 24 November, 1971, from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington.

The ‘nondescript’ man called himself Dan Cooper while purchasing his one-way ticket with cash at the ticket desk.

During the journey, he informed a flight attendant that he was carrying a bomb before demanding $200,000 (which is equivalent to over £1 million in today’s money) and four parachutes.

DB Cooper dived out of a plane in November 1971 and has never been found (FBI)

After receiving the ransom and allowing the passengers to deplane in Seattle, he ordered staff to refuel the plane and fire up the engines once again.

Around 30 minutes after taking off for a second time, the mystery man opened the door of the aircraft and parachuted out into the night somewhere over southwestern Washington.

Only one clue pointing to his identity was left behind at the scene; a tie from the US retail chain JCPenney.

It meant investigators were left to mainly work with the testimony of those who had been onboard the Northwest Orient Airlines flight.

However, the true identity and subsequent fate of DB Cooper have still never been determined. But according to Gryder, that could all be about to change.

The content creator, who has been looking into the cold case ‘off and on’ for the last two decades, claimed that the children of one of the only suspects presented him with DB Cooper’s parachute.

Siblings Chanté and Richard III ‘Rick’ McCoy claim that their late father, Richard Floyd McCoy II, is the bloke who pulled off the hijacking.

Dan Gryder said the parachute was a ‘one in a billion’ find (YouTube/Dan Gryder)

He was considered as a ‘serious suspect’ in the case by the FBI after carrying out an almost identical hijacking in April 1972.

McCoy hopped on a flight in Denver, Colorado, before pulling out a weapon and ordering airline staff to secure him four parachutes and $500,000 (£396,738).

Like DB Cooper, he also exited the aircraft using a parachute. McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents in 1974 after he escaped from prison.

Chanté and Richard say they got in touch with Gryder following the death of their mother as they feared she might have become implicated in the investigation.

According to the YouTuber, the brother and sister found the modified military surplus bailout rig in their parents storage.

And he’s pretty certain that it could hold the key to the more than 50-year cold case.

“That rig is literally one in a billion,” Gryder told Cowboy State Daily.

Both the children also believe that McCoy was the hijacker.

One of the unused parachutes Cooper requested but never used (FBI)

The parachute has now been given to the FBI, although there has been no official updates on the DB Cooper case online.

But sleuths hope that this development could give detectives the push to take another look at the hijacking and hopefully get to the bottom of it once and for all.

Gryder shared a YouTube video on Monday (25 November) discussing the update, while adding that the FBI had been exploring the latest discovery.

“This is the rig he used… we just solved it,” he said.

The FBI’s last update on the DB Cooper case came in July 2016, when it was announced that officials would no longer be ‘actively’ investigating the hijacking.

However, it did state that the emergence of ‘specific physical evidence, related specifically to the parachutes or the money taken by the hijacker’ should be immediately reported to the authorities.

Gryder believes that the next natural step would be to exhume the body of McCoy to carry out DNA testing.

Here’s everything known about the mysterious case of DB Cooper, after the latest rare find in the search for the mystery aeroplane hijacker has been revealed.

It’s been over 50 years since the bizarre event took place on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, and the situation has come back under media scrutiny after some new evidence surfaced.

Yet, authorities, including the FBI, still aren’t sure of the man’s identity.

But there looks to be a breakthrough on the cold case, according to YouTuber and investigator Dan Gryder.

He claimed that he got hold of the parachute that Cooper used to escape from the Boeing 727, as even an in-depth Netflix documentary about the case couldn’t shed a definitive light on his identity.

The YouTuber thinks he has found some new evidence (YouTube/Dan Gryder)

What did DB Cooper do?

Back on 24 November 1971, a man that identified himself as Dan Cooper bought a ticket in cash from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington in the USA.

While in the air, he told a flight attendant that he was carrying a bomb, demanding $200,000 in cash (worth £1 million today) and four parachutes.

After receiving this and allowing passengers to disembark in Seattle, he ordered staff to get him back in the air, where he parachuted out in the night in the southwestern Washington region.

Fresh DB Cooper suspect claims

The only piece of evidence left behind was a black JCPenney clip-on tie, which was taken off before he jumped, giving authorities a DNA sample.

But now, Gryder claims that the children of one of the main suspects gave him DB Cooper’s parachute, as siblings Chanté and Richard III ‘Rick’ McCoy claim that their late father, Richard Floyd McCoy II, was DB Cooper.

A ‘serious suspect’ according to the FBI, he also carried out a hijacking in April 1972, pulling out a weapon and ordering airline staff to secure him four parachutes and $500,000 (£396,738) on a flight in Denver, Colorado, before being killed by FBI agents in a shootout.

The siblings are convinced that he was Cooper, as they handed over the parachute to the FBI, though there have been no updates since.

DB Cooper has not knowingly been seen since 24 November, 1971 (FBI)

How did DB Cooper carry out the hijacking?

So, here’s everything we know about the suspect.

Cooper’s plane ticket said that his first name was Dan, and he held everyone ransom after the flight took off and made its way to Washington.

Cooper ordered a bourbon and 7Up, eventually making his move when he passed flight attendant Florence Shaffner a note that said ‘Miss – I have a bomb and I want you to sit by me’.

Initially putting it in her pocket, he whispered in her ear: “Miss, you better look at that note. I have a bomb.”

Seeing what she believed was a bomb, she made her way to the cockpit to pass the man’s demand on for a lump sum in cash.

A flight attendant’s brave actions

As Shaffner stayed in the cockpit, another attendant, Tina Mucklow, calmly spoke to the hijacker while sitting next to him, despite angering him when asking where he was from.

Captain of flight 305, William A Scott, communicated Cooper’s ransom demands to Northwest Flight operations, stating: “(Cooper) requests $200,000 in a knapsack by 5:00pm.

“He wants two front parachutes, two back parachutes.

“He wants the money in negotiable American currency.”

The flight attendant then asked him why he targeted this flight, to which he grossly joked: “It’s not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it’s just because I have a grudge.”

Landing at Sea-Tac Airport, Northwest’s Seattle operations manager, Al Lee passed the money over, after which Cooper let passengers leave the plane.

Mucklow joked about giving her some money as he inspected it, though she refused when he seriously offered it to her.

One of the parachutes requested by Cooper that was not used (FBI)

Second flight and getaway

He then asked flight attendant Alice Hancock and Shaffner to leave, requesting that Tina, Captain Scott, First Officer William J. Rataczak and Flight Engineer Harold E. Anderson stay onboard.

They then made their way to Mexico City, when he asked the crew to leave the cabin unpressurised, telling them to lower the lower the aft staircase.

Mucklow was the last known person to see him alive, asking him not to lower the staircase, though she was made to go to the cockpit, seeing a warning light appear, indicating that it had been lowered.

He then presumably jumped out with his parachute, as the plane landed safely at 11pm at Reno–Tahoe International Airport, with the crew unharmed and onboard.

The question ‘who is DB Cooper’ is plain and simple for one man: it’s his dad. Although private investigators are dubious about the whole situation.

Ever since 24 November, 1971, the FBI has been scratching its metaphorical head over the identity of the man who hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305.

The flight, journeying from Oregon and Washington in the USA, was taken over by a man booking a ticket in the name of Dan Cooper.

FBI

The press nicknamed him DB Cooper after his escape with $200,000 (£158,604); roughly $1.54 million (£1.22 million) in modern cash. His threat if he didn’t get the cash was to blow up the plane.

Cooper also demanded four parachutes, with him skydiving into the night sky with his bundles of cash.

In the 53 years since the incident, the FBI chased countless leads including the idea that Cooper could have been a woman.

One lead was Richard McCoy Jr, a US Army veteran who toured Vietnam twice.

After his career in the armed forces, he became obsessed with recreational skydiving. The thing that stuck out with McCoy was that he was the man caught in a copycat hijacking the year after DB Cooper’s escape.

In April 1972, he boarded a plane with what appeared to be a hand grenade (it was a paperweight) and demanded $500,000. He also wanted four parachutes as Cooper had requested.

McCoy had used handwritten notes to put forward his demands; just as Cooper had done. In bad news for him, he left behind the note and a magazine which contained a good chunk of fingerprints to ID him through. He was caught two days later and sentenced to 45 years in prison. In prison, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame claimed that McCoy was Cooper.

FBI

Apart from the similarities in the heists, they referenced claims from McCoy’s family that a tie and clip left behind on the Cooper raid belonged to him, and McCoy’s continued refusal to admit or deny he was Cooper.

But the FBI threw the claim out. This was mainly due to him having an alibi for when the Cooper hijacking took place, with him at home having Thanksgiving dinner in Utah with family.

McCoy died in 1974 during a shootout with police after escaping prison. Annoyingly for the FBI, he was one of the few leading DB Cooper suspects the FBI didn’t have DNA for.

For McCoy’s son, Richard McCoy III, DB Cooper has to be his dad. So much so he has provided the FBI with his own DNA to try and bring the case to a close.

He told The US Sun: “The overall theme of what she [his mum] told us was that my mother was involved in everything and to keep our mouths shut. There were lots of secrets and a lot of stuff I’d hear was conversations between adults and things like that but it was beaten into us not to talk about it.

“But she would say, ‘Your dad would be upset that he didn’t get the credit [for DB Cooper]. The credit that he deserved,’ and all that type of stuff. She told us she was involved in both of the hijackings, and helped him plan them, but she always made it seem – and I’ll call BS on this – that he forced her into doing it. And trust me, nobody was forcing my mother to do anything.”

For private investigators Eric Ulis and Tom Kaye, it’s just not believable.

FBI

Kaye said: “If you had a link on the DNA between the Cooper case and a particular person, that knocks the case out of the park and you’d hear about it right away. I find no reason for the FBI to keep information like that secret, especially if they were looking to solve a cold case after 50-plus years.”

And Ulis added: “The fact it’s been six months [since McCoy handed out his DNA] indicates there was no match. The family hasn’t been contacted by the FBI, the FBI has not held a news conference, and if there was a hit this would be case closed.

“The big question is, where does the FBI go from here? Does their search end now they’ve got McCoy’s DNA or are they going to be more proactive and entertain new suspects that may or may not have hit their radar screens before?”

Watch part of LADbible’s interview with Ulis here:

It comes just days after bosses at a museum in possession of one of DB Cooper’s parachutes shut down rumours it had denied access to the item.

Tom Kaye had claimed a test to take DNA samples from the parachute was axed at the last minute. The parachute, which is in the possession of the Washington State History Museum, was reportedly meant to be swabbed by Kaye after having been arranged by fellow Cooper investigator, Pat Boland.

In a statement sent to LADbible, a museum spokesperson said: “The Washington State Historical Society receives many research requests related to the parachute provided to Dan “D.B.” Cooper during the hijacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971. The parachute, a part of the WSHS collection, is not currently available to the public for research.

“Under the care of our collections team, the parachute is secured in environmentally controlled archival storage when not on display. Public access to the parachute has never been offered. In 2013, the WSHS consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation in preparation for a D.B. Cooper exhibition at the Washington State History Museum that included this parachute. The FBI has not requested to research or test this item.

FBI

“As this item could be considered evidence in the Cooper case, the WSHS would cooperate in full with requests from the FBI, should they occur.

“The WSHS accommodates scholarly research requests for a majority of the items in our collection by appointment. Research appointments occur at the WSHS Research Center in Tacoma under the guidance and supervision of our collections team. Pieces from the collection remain on-site during the appointment.

An independent investigator trying to finally uncover the identity of the phantom plane hijacker known as DB Cooper says he has been denied access to one of the parachutes touched by the criminal mastermind.

The case has plagued the FBI for more than 50 years, ever since Northwest Orient Flight 305 was skyjacked by the man dubbed as DB.

The name DB Cooper was given to the anonymous criminal by the press after he infamously threatened to blow up a Boeing aircraft mid-flight on 24 November, 1971.

FBI

Cooper demanded £200,000 (£158,604) – worth around $1.54 million (£1.22 million) in 2024 – and four parachutes so he could skydive in to the night sky with his illegal takings.

Authorities handed over the cash to Cooper and off he went in to the night sky, jumping out the plane while it was flying through the air between Oregon and Washington in the United States.

The case has become incredibly well known and the mystery has seen it become the focus of countless TV shows and true crime documentaries.

Despite the FBI officially closing the case on finding out who Cooper is back in 2016, The Sun reports that the security service is quietly looking back in to the crime as new methods of securing DNA evidence are mooted.

It comes after Larry Carr, a retired FBI agent, said it is a ‘conceivable possibility’ that items left behind at the scene of the crime by DB Cooper – including a very famous tie – are being re-investigated once again.

FBI

But Tom Kaye, a scientist investigating the case independently of the FBI, says a scheduled test to take DNA samples from one of the parachutes left behind by Cooper was shut down at the last minute by those in possession of it.

The parachute, owned by the Washington State History Museum, was meant to be swabbed by Kaye having been arranged by fellow Cooper investigator, Pat Boland.

The belief is that Cooper may well have put his hand inside one of its pouches to retrieve a packing card.

But access to the parachute was denied last October when the museum U-turned on the scheme without public reason. LADbible has approached the museum for comment.

Kaye is of the belief that the FBI could well be behind the blocking of the planned tests. He said: “I was quite surprised. I’ve been in museums around the world and I’ve asked to see multi-million dollar specimens, and getting access with my credentials has never been a problem.

FBI

“But the curator pulled the plug on it suddenly for unknown reasons… sometimes curators have their own reasons for doing things, like if they’re studying the subject matter themselves, but we know that’s not the case here.

“So it was all kind of a mystery. I don’t have any knowledge of why they would close off access to that [parachute].

“But it’s interesting that in the last year, we’ve brought up the subject of DNA publicly, and how to go about getting Cooper’s DNA, and trying to get access to the tie he left behind, etcetera.

“The FBI has continuously said the case is closed, and now we find out the case was open or opened back up and they’re working on the DNA again. It’s an interesting coincidence, for sure. We don’t have any evidence but it’s very coincidental.”

It comes as another amateur detective and associate of Kaye, Eric Ulis, says he is ‘100% confident’ he’ll have the DNA of the real DB Cooper by the end of 2024.

Watch his interview with LADbible below:

In 2023, Ulis failed in his attempts to sue the FBI to gain access to the tie left behind by DB Cooper on the hijacked plane.

He told LADbible earlier this year: “There’s a very specific part of the tie – a metal spindle that’s part of the clip on tie – and I’m determined there may be an uncontaminated profile for DB Cooper within this spindle that’s well protected.

“A judge ruled the FBI cannot be compelled to turn over the tie for me to analyse. So it’s been a matter of some frustration because I think the answers to solving this riddle are right there, in the possession of the FBI.”

Ulis says that he will finally find out the identity of Cooper when combining samples from Kaye with new a DNA technology called metagenomics; an advanced scientific analysis that enables professionals to separate individual strands of DNA.