The parachute that the infamous hijacker DB Cooper used to make his getaway out of a plane with $200,000 may have finally been found.
The enigma behind DB Cooper, the man who jumped out of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 with thousands in cash after handing a stewardess a note demanding the ransom, has long stumped the FBI.
Nearly a decade later, the FBI has begun unofficially looking back into the case after the children of Richard Floyd McCoy II contacted YouTuber Dan Gryder in 2020 with possible evidence.
After Chanté and Richard III ‘Rick’ McCoy’s mother died, they got in contact with Gryder – who had bothered them on and off for years while doing his own investigation – inviting him to the family’s North Carolina property in July 2022.
Inside McCoy’s mother’s storage was a modified military surplus bailout rig Gryder believes Cooper used in the heist, he told Cowboy State Daily.
‘That rig is literally one in a billion,’ he told the outlet.
McCoy’s children also agree that their father may have been Cooper, but they refrained from coming forward with their speculation until their mother died, as they believed she was complicit in her husband’s crime.
On Monday, Gryder released a video on his YouTube channel, where he announced the FBI had been looking into their newest discoveries.
The amateur investigator said FBI agents contacted him after watching his first two videos, one of which shows him discovering the parachute in the storage house on the family’s property.
It was the first time the FBI had made a move in the DB Cooper case since they had tabled it in 2016, pending any new evidence.
The flight instructor claimed FBI agents met with him and Rick to take the harness and parachute into evidence,
They also were interested in a logbook Chanté found that aligned with Cooper’s hijacking over Oregon as well as a Utah hijacking McCoy was convicted of that took placed months after the Cooper case.
Gryder’s friend Laura Savino, a retired airline pilot, also attended the meeting and recalled to Cowboy State Daily that the agents were ‘professional and stoic.’
‘Considering they had requested the meeting, it was clear they were taking it seriously,’ she said.
Gryder and McCoy children said the parachute has the unique alterations the chutes had in the Utah hijacking that have been well documented by Earl Cossey, who owned and provided them before the 1971 crime.
The FBI has yet to return the evidence, leading Gryder to believe their speculations that the parachute was used in the Cooper hijacking.
A month later, an FBI agent contacted Rick to asked to search the family property. Dozens of agents descended on the Southern property and searched ‘every nook and cranny,’ according to Rick.
From afar, Gryder and Savino watched and documented the search that lasted around four hours, according to Cowboy State Daily.
Rick has also provided DNA samples to the FBI, but the agency has yet to update the McCoy family of any developments in the case.
McCoy’s name has been thrown around among sleuths for years and many believe the late man – who died after escaping prison – is the famed hijacker.
Many believe this is due to the near identical heist McCoy pulled off in Utah just months five month after the Cooper heist.
In April 1972, McCoy jumped from a United Airlines flight flying over Utah after demanding $500,000.
Within 72 hours, the FBI arrested him after matching fingerprints left on the note and an witness who worked a roadside restaurant recalled selling McCoy a milkshake shortly after the heist.
The FBI raided his home without a warrant, which more than likely didn’t allow them to pin him for the Cooper heist.
He was convicted to 45 years in prison for the Utah heist, but later broke out of the maximum security with three other prisoners.
Two were caught within days, while McCoy evaded arrested for three months. He was later shot by police in 1974 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Although it is widely believe McCoy is the culprit of the Oregon heist, but not everyone agrees with the assessment.
Retired FBI Special Agent, Larry Carr, who took over the case briefly in 2007, doesn’t believe the hijacker could have possibly survived the fall – even through Gryder has done it in the past himself.
Other naysayers say that McCoy was too young to match the profile of the man believed to be in his mid-40s who completed the heist.
Gryder writes those off as McCoy simply wearing a disguise to hide his identity.
Besides, Gryder is sure the parachute and rig will prove its their guy.
‘This will definitely prove it was McCoy,’ he told Cowboy State Daily.
Despite having the evidence, the FBI has not announced any new changes to the case, but did previously deny true crime investigator Eric Ulis’ FOIA request, according to a June report by The US Sun.
He requested the DNA profiles after Rick provided the FBI with a sample.
The FBI had tested a clip-on tie that was left behind by Cooper in 1971, but the hidden spindle built into the knot has yet to be tested.
Ulis sued the FBI, saying Cooper’s DNA could still be on the spindle, but his efforts were unsuccessful.
A judge threw out his first FOIA request for the spindle, and he filed a second requesting the DNA records, saying: ‘We know the FBI obviously pursued retesting last year by reaching out to Richard Floyd McCoy’s son, so they’ve clearly reactivated the case.
‘So based on this recent testing in 2023 and the other tests they did in 2001, the partial DNA they have documented is either in a series of lines or a sequence of numbers – and that’s clearly agency record.
‘When you look at the other documents released in this case under FOIA, they contained social security numbers, so there shouldn’t be an excuse that this DNA data is personal information.
‘I’ve done a lot of heavy lifting in this case over the last several years […] and the only way to solve this matter definitively is through DNA testing,’ he concluded.
His request was rejected over the summer, according to The Sun.
Ulis believes the mystery hijacker is engineer Vince Petersen from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Petersen worked as a Boeing subcontractor at a titanium plant and fits the evidence left behind by the infamous hijacker, the DB enthusiast told The Sun. He would have been 52 at the time of the crime and has been long dead.
Ulis – who was five when the plane-jacking occurred – first landed on Petersen’s name after analyzing microscopic evidence left on the clip-on black tie DB left before he parachuted out of the plane.
Several of the particles found were consistent with specialty metals used in the aerospace sector, such as titanium, high-grade stainless steel and aluminum, Ulis explained.
The sleuth claims he found ‘three particles of a very rare alloy of titanium and antimony that have a very specific balance, a very specific blend.’
Ulis then paired the alloy with a US patent given to the Boeing subcontractor in Pittsburg.
