I believe D.B. Cooper is Howard Hughes, the aviator. First of all he had a very eccentric personality. Wouldn’t put it past him. Also, at the time of the hijacking he was in hideing, and for a time his whereabouts were unknown. His last known whereabouts before the hijacking were in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now this is not far from Oregon where the hijacking began. And if he survived the jump over Washington state, he wouldn’t have had to travel far to get back to Las Vegas. Now the question is why? One plausible reason would be that he had suffered from post traumatic stress due to his surviving a number of airplane crashes. This would also explain the mental illness he acquired later in life at the time of the hijacking in 1971. The flight attendant who actually had close contact with Cooper said he was middle aged. This ruled out a lot of other suspects. Howard Hughes was 64 at time of the hijacking, and fits the middle aged discription. Howard Hughes was familiar with everything related to air travel, including sky diving! Not sure how many jumps he took though. And finally, I believe Howard Hughes actually owned an airline that was in direct competition with the airline Cooper chose. With all of this being said, I would like to hear from someone who knows for a fact if Hughes was ever a person of interest to FBI, and any details as to how the FBI ruled him out as a suspect.
By all descriptions, D.B. Cooper looked nothing like Hughes. Hughes was pretty well feeble and nearly bedridden by the time of the skyjacking. Even though Hughes was officially out of the public eye, his whereabouts and physical condition are well known, so there’s the connection is not possible.
Check any biography on Hughes. Here’s one cite:
That doesn’t sound like a man who would hijack a plane and skydive (presumably to his death).
Yeah, he was a mess at that time by all accounts. I seriously doubt the ‘middle aged’ description given by a stewardess at the time would have matched him. You might think it’s the kind of thing a crazy aviator like Hughes would do, but this is a guy who set air speed records, built an aircraft company, built the Spruce Goose and an airline. The skyjacking would be a low-grade antic for a rich eccentric like him.
I’m not finding any column specifically about D.B. Cooper in the archives, just a couple of mentions about jumping out of commercial airliner with a parachute.
I’m going ahead and reporting this thread for a forum change, and I apologize if there is an article after all … but I’m just not finding it.
ETA: Welcome to the SDMB, **Michael Varn ** … I mean no offense but you’ll get far better replies to your statements in other forums. Is there a specific article that The Master wrote that spawned this thread? If so, it is customary to post a link to that article so all of us can be on the same page.
I think D.B. Cooper was really Amelia Earhart. It all fits.
I think you’re glossing over a rather obvious Elvis Presley connection. It’s just the sort of caper “The King” would have enjoyed.
Wow. Great disguise.
I hear Rick Baker was involved.
Which of Cecil’s columns is this in regard to? I can’t find one on him, but he is mentioned in this one.
The FBI has officially dropped the case now. I also read the perp named himself as Dan Cooper when buying his plane ticket, and the FBI claims the “DB” moniker was a media invention.
So the media was in on it. Maybe his name is Kenneth and he knew what the frequency was.
I’d like to point out that nobody is sure of where the OP was when the skyjacking happened. Could he be trying to throw us off the trail?
Where were you? Maybe you’re trying to avert suspicion.
Now that the FBI has closed the case, I can safely reveal that I was D.B. Cooper.
No, I’m DB Cooper!
You know, funny thing, D.B. Cooper’s identity is not a mystery at all. It was (probably) some petty criminal named Richard McCoy Jr.
Couldn’t be proven, but he’s s very, very strong suspect.
It’s not a sexy answer- reality is so much more boring than a good mystery, but it is what it is.
He would have appreciated it lending a whole new meaning to “Elvis has left the building”.
The case is closed but the FBI have also stated that they will re-open it should any compelling new evidence arise.
You’re bust! 
I’m D.B. Cooper, and so is my wife!
It’s not in the WP entry and I can’t find it in my DBC archives, but there was one very strong piece of counter-evidence against McCoy being Cooper. It might have been that he was placed somewhere else during the original skyjacking. IIRC, there were several attempted copycats in the years immediately after Cooper, and many had the same “everyman” look as the original.
I was going to join in but it’s gone on too long so I’m just going to bail.
Amateur Barbarian, the wikipedia page on D.B.Cooper discusses him along with several other suspects that were dismissed.
There were several copycat hijacks, a couple of them successful in jumping but were caught within days. The FBI considers McCoy a copycat.
There are stronger candidates, including William Gossett, who looked a lot more like the sketches, and claimed to be D.B. Cooper. But the FBI has found no direct evidence to connect him, and can’t reliably place him in the Pacific Northwest. However, that doesn’t list any evidence to actually dismiss him, although his experience with parachuting seems higher than evident by D.B. Cooper.
Duane Weber made a deathbed confession to his wife, “I am Dan Cooper.” She had to research to learn what that meant. The FBI didn’t match his fingerprints to any found in the plane. Also, his DNA didn’t match DNA found on D.B. Cooper’s tie, but the FBI can’t say with certainty the samples from the tie were the hijackers’.
Lynn Doyle (L. D. Cooper) has a lot of circumstantial evidence. His DNA didn’t match the tie samples, either.