In 1971, a man going by the name Dan Cooper hijacked a plane, took $200,000 and two parachutes, and vanished into the night sky somewhere over the state of Washington never to be seen or heard from again. Armchair investigators have long theorized where he might have gone, and the FBI thinks he may have never landed from his jump, but new evidence suggests he may have gotten away with it all — only to be caught doing the same thing over again just five months later.
That new evidence comes in the form of a unique parachute, one supplied to the FBI by the children of Richard McCoy II — a skyjacker caught and convicted after stealing $500,000 in 1972. McCoy has long been a favorite suspect among Cooper mystery enthusiasts, given the similarities in approach between his hijacking and the Cooper escape just months earlier, but the FBI never thought the physical descriptions of the two matched well enough to put McCoy behind bars. Now, according to Popular Mechanics, his children think the parachute is sufficient evidence to close the Cooper case forever.
McCoy’s children, Rick and Chanté, supplied the FBI with a modified parachute and a logbook showing McCoy’s jumps — reportedly including jumps in Utah and Oregon, matching both McCoy’s heist and the Cooper jump. The parachute’s modifications are important, given that the chutes supplied to Cooper in his hijacking were modified by an FBI skydiver. If the McCoy parachute matches the Cooper modifications, the case may finally be shut.
Rick and Chanté appear to have known about the chute for some time, but kept it a secret until the deaths of both their parents. The pair believed that McCoy’s wife Karen was complicit in both crimes, and kept the secret until she was no longer at risk. Now, the kids are free to reveal what they believe to be the truth: That their father is the most famous skyjacker in history.