The world of temporary and one-shot celebrity has a few lingering mysteries. One such is the actual fate of the 1971 airline highjacker who called himself D.B. Cooper.
His criminal feat was to highjack a Northwest Orient airliner at the Seattle-Takoma Airport and demand $200,000 and four parachutes from that company ere he blow up the plane.
When the company complied, he released the plane's 36 passengers and two of the crew members and then ordered the captain to take off for Mexico. The extortionist/highjacker jumped with his loot from the plane at 10,000 feet into wet,frigid weather in a wildnerness area north of Portland, Oregon.
Some think he escaped with the loot. Others think he died of exposure. No one is certain what happened to the man, and no one is sure of his actual identity.
In 1995, an antiques dealer in Pensacola,Florida, on his death bed, claimed that he was D.B. Cooper. This man, Duane Weber, had a shady past and at one time had been known as John C. Collins. According to his surviving wife, Weber's physical description matched that of the mysterious Cooper. She apparently had been unaware that Weber had served multiple stretches in prison for such offenses as burglary and forgery.
Others think that Cooper's actual name was Richard Floyd McCoy. McCoy was a Vietnam veteran and a Mormon who in 1972 died in a shootout with authorities in Virginia Beach, VA.
In 1980, a young man found $5,800 near the Columbia River. Some believe that this money was part of the Cooper ransom. But again, no one is sure.
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