Do you think D.B. Cooper got away safely with the money?

Author: Castin

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There was always something transfixing about this. A man calmly hijacks a commercial plane, expertly uses his leverage to collect $200,000 dollars, parachutes from the plane and is never seen again.

His relaxation and politeness remained curious throughout. He paid for his drinks, told the flight crew that if they were hungry he could include meals in his demands, and released all passengers the moment he got the money. The crew all described him as a gentleman. It's like something out of a movie, not reality.

He was very specific in his flight instructions. He told the pilots to fly at 115 mph, maintain an altitude of no more than 10,000 ft, to lower the wing flaps by 15 degrees, to keep the landing gear deployed, and to let the cabin remain unpressurized. He understood refueling needs and planned refueling stops. All that aside, he did jump out of a plane at night wearing only loafers and a suit in the middle of a rainstorm and cold conditions.

7 days later

Wylted
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He survived. Too well planned not to. I wish the FBI would drop the case and this guy would get a free pass, so hopefully we can get the rest of the story, but the government is a bunch of pieces of shits so we never will be able to get the full story.
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@Wylted
He'd be quite old now, if he lived. The Feds said he died in the jump but I never entirely agreed with their statement.

"No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky."

"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his 'chute open."
"Without a plan"? This was Mr. Plan. You can't tell me he prepared for every stage of his heist except for the jump and landing.

The biggest thing for me though is he leapt into −70 °F wind chill. The rain would've meant his clothes were soaked. He should've been hypothermic from the moment he landed, even if he landed safely. Without the means to start a fire and find shelter immediately, he would surely have died.

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@Castin
A lot of special forces people doing similar jumps at that period of time, claimed he could stuck the landing and survive. Plus wasn't some of the money discovered buried somewgere at some point. Proving it was touched by human hands and hidden at some point.
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@Wylted
It washed up on a riverbank, where a kid who was raking the sand discovered it.
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@Castin
Why would he do all that meticulous planning, just to fuck up at the end. He would not have jumped, if he was not 100% certain he would survive. It sucks that he was not able to recover all of the money and some kid recovered some.


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@Wylted
If it was me, I'd want to have a hideout or a stash of supplies waiting for me on the ground the moment I landed. But the thing is, that requires extremely precise aim. What good is preparing a cache if you land nine miles away from it, and can't find your way through the wilderness in the dark and the rain?