On November 24, 1971, a man in dark glasses and a neatly pressed suit boarded a Northwest Orient airplane with a bomb in his briefcase. The man, known today only as D.B. Cooper, demanded $200,000 in “negotiable American currency” and four parachutes—or else he’d blow up the plane. The ransom was paid, the passengers were let go, and D.B. Cooper leaped out the back of the plane and parachuted into the darkness and disappeared.
The identity of D.B. Cooper remains a mystery to this day. It is the only unsolved case of its kind in history, and after 45 years, we still don’t know who did it. Some names, though, have come up more than once—and one of them just might be the real D.B. Cooper.