My Father Was D B Cooper

Around Thanksgiving (2010) my wife Robin and I were sitting on the sofa watching the 11:00pm late news when they announced it was once again the anniversary of the "D.B. Cooper skyjacking event. On television, they always talk about it...this time they showed the original film footage of the airliner, taken during a stormy night in Seattle around 40 years earlier. In addition, they also displayed the composite sketch of the skyjacker, drawn from the memories of the few passengers and crew members to have observed him on the night of the skyjacking. "Look", I told my wife, "That guy was my father. I swear to God, he's the one who did it." She was astonished. I went on to tell her my Dad's brother, Bud, was in on it also. That he was a jet captain for the very airline, Northwest Orient, that was hijacked! Now, outside of conversations with my mother, I'd not mentioned a word of all this to anybody in over 40 years! The newscast went on to say that the FBI had discovered additional new evidence in the case, (In the form of DNA) again they asked for the public's help in finally solving the case. I not only decided to tell my wife, I told her of my decision to contact the authorities including the FBI as soon as possible to reveal what I knew. I was excited that evening, I began to tell my wife more about the story. Before the newscast on television was over, I walked her to our living room wall, pointing to a portrait of my father and his brother Bud standing next to each other in front of an airplane, (front cover photo on book). "Robin, I took this photograph just over 3 weeks before the skyjacking. Dad, on the left, is "Cooper"...I wasn't quite 15 years old when I took the picture. I'll never forget the day. It was Saturday, October 30th 1971. I was outside on the Edmonds ferry dock selling newspapers. Next, Dad and Bud show up and basically kidnap me with an offer to buy me lunch. I was already starved, so I climbed into the back of my uncle's car. Despite my protests my uncle Bud, with Dad to his right, drives me out to Snohomish airport, where we took off, with my uncle Bud at the controls, (Dad co-pilot), and I in the back in the rear cargo section. Immediately after taking off, and climbing, uncle Bud banks sharply to the right, flies out over Puget Sound, and begins circling. This goes on for quite some time. We seemed to be flying from Everett to Seattle, passing Edmonds, and sharp circles back to Everett. Dad and him were going over calculating and discussing about things, I, in the back, starving and wondering what they were up to! "Uncle Bud, Dad! What are you guys doing? Why are we flying circles? I'm starving, when are we gonna eat? You said you'd buy me lunch, Uncle Bud!" Finally, Uncle Bud turns and says "Don't worry Bradley, were going to land, we'll get you lunch soon... After we landed at Renton Municipal Airport, we entered the café, and only I had lunch, they had eaten earlier. After lunch, we walked out to the plane where I took the famous front cover photo. We took off, and landed back at Snohomish. The main reason I enjoy telling this part of the story and sharing the photograph with people is because it's all tells the story: What Dad and Bud really did that day was take me along with them during the "Final dress rehearsal" of what my dad did just over 3 weeks later. Complete with flying circles of Puget Sound and landing our small plane at Renton, only 3 miles from Sea-Tac Airport, where Dad had the Boeing -727 jet landing on the night of the skyjacking.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The true, unsolved story of D. B. Cooper’s 1971 airplane hijacking, one of the greatest cold cases of the twentieth century, by an author featured in D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!, now streaming on Netflix “Here is writing and storytelling that is vivid and fresh—a delectable adventure.”—Gay Talese “I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.” That was the note handed to flight attendant Florence Schaffner by a mild-mannered passenger now known as D. B. Cooper on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was also the start of one of the most astonishing aviation whodunits in the history of American true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline before parachuting into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again. The case of D. B. Cooper is a modern legend that has obsessed and cursed his pursuers for generations with everything from bankruptcy to suicidal despair. Now, with Skyjack, Geoffrey Gray obtains a first-ever look at the FBI’s confidential Cooper file, uncovering new leads in the infamous case. Starting with a crack tip from a private investigator, Gray plunges into the murky depths of the decades-old mystery to chase down new clues and explore secrets of the case’s most prominent suspects, including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk hero; Karl Fleming, a respected reporter whose career was destroyed by a D. B. Cooper scoop that was a scam; and Barbara Dayton, a transgender pilot who insisted she was Cooper herself. With explosive new information, Skyjack reopens one of the great cold cases of the twentieth century.

The 3rd Edition of DB Cooper and the FBI - A Case Study of America's Only Unsolved Skyjacking

From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).

D. B. Cooper, the infamous sky jacker, has been called "a Northwest folk hero", "Jesse James" and "Billy the Kid". But until now, he hasn't been called a she. This devoted exploration by close friends with the help of family is a story that will leave you wondering. Was Bobby/Barbara Dayton D. B. Cooper?

D.B. Cooper is wild and conservative, smart and stupid, careful and courageous. He has imagination, determination, and an adjustable conscience. You've got to like him and despise him. He is a pirate, a friend, a schemer, a drug dealer, a nurturer, a murderer, a family man. And now--a writer? It’s an intriguing tale. But D.B. Cooper is not a story character, he is real. He planned and schemed and prepared to hijack a plane, then did it and got away with it. Look it up--it was in all the papers, on television, in conversations around the country, around the world. People will say D.B. Cooper, Where are You is fiction, it is some writer's fanciful account of what may have happened Could be. You know what they say about becoming a writer. Write about what you know. Seems like Walter Grant knows way too much about skyjacking and growing pot. Sort of like D.B. Cooper.

Author Carl Laurin presents his first-person evidence to build a case that his best friend Walt was the skyjacker D.B. Cooper.