Dan Cooper Research Paper

Dan Cooper Mystery Title “It took a lot of thought, planning and nerve, and I think he got away with it. I think he’s a hero, and I’d hate to find out that he was dead,” Mr. Steinwachs, a welder in the Ariel, Washington area, stated of the infamous hijacker Dan Cooper, who was believed to have parachuted down from the plane he commandeered to somewhere in the local area in 1971. Many others like Mr. Steinwachs still hold on to the hope that this anti-hero survived the landing and made it off with the money, however impossible it may seem. After all, nobody has ever found his body, and many people, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have meticulously searched for him for years. However, if one looks at the totality of the facts we know, the most likely conclusion is that Dan Cooper died that night in the woods of Washington with the $200,000 dollars he stole, newly rich and all alone. On Thanksgiving Eve in 1971, an inconspicuous suited man carrying a black briefcase purchased a one-way ticket for a flight from Portland to Seattle, identifying …show more content…
His demands were soon accepted and the FBI collected the ransom on the ground while the plane flew circles overhead. Under the guise of a delay due to a “minor mechanical difficulty”, the staff attempted to keep the passengers calm, though the plane ended up circling the Seattle-Tacoma Airport for a total of two hours before they were finally able to land. After Cooper had been handed the cash ransom and the parachutes, he let all of the passengers and some of the staff off of the plane and demanded that it be refueled and set on a new course. He directed to the cockpit crew that the plane must travel southeast from their current location towards Mexico City and to fly at a slower-than-average speed at a lower-than-average altitude while leaving the cabin