On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon. He paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle, wore a business suit, and carried a briefcase. Forty-two minutes later, he handed a note to a flight attendant claiming the case contained a bomb. “I don’t have a grudge against your airline, Miss,” he told her calmly. “I just have a grudge.” What followed remains the only unresolved skyjacking in US history. Cooper demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes. When the plane landed in Seattle, the ransom was delivered and passengers were released. Cooper then ordered the crew to refuel and fly toward Mexico at low altitude. Roughly 30 minutes after take-off, at around 10,000 feet over southwest Washington, he lowered the aircraft’s rear staircase and parachuted into the night with the money strapped to his waist. He was never seen again.
Image: Youtube screengrab/FBI
The FBI pursued the case for decades before formally closing it in 2016, having failed to identify Cooper or even confirm whether he survived the jump. This Thanksgiving marks 54 years since his disappearance.
A name that never existed
One enduring misconception is even Cooper’s identity. The hijacker called himself Dan Cooper. The now-famous name “DB Cooper” was the result of a reporter’s error that was repeated until it stuck. The mistake became permanent, transforming an alias into a legend.Retired FBI agent Larry Carr, who led the investigation between 2006 and 2010, believes the choice of name may still matter. Carr has suggested Cooper could have been inspired by a Franco-Belgian comic-book hero named Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot whose adventures were published in Europe during the 1950s. The comics were never translated into English or sold in the US, leading Carr to theorise Cooper may have been French Canadian or lived or served in Belgium with the US Air Force. Rollins believes Lakich may have encountered the comics during his overseas military service, though he acknowledges there is no definitive proof.
The tie that refuses to give up its secrets
For Rollins, the idea of motive alone was never enough. Grief and anger might explain why someone would attempt such a crime, but they could not explain how it was carried out, or why Cooper left behind so few mistakes. What pulled him deeper into the theory were the physical and forensic details that, in his view, narrowed the field far more sharply than psychology ever could, and began to point repeatedly toward one name.One of such few physical clues Cooper left behind was a black clip-on tie, abandoned on his seat. Decades later, it became the center of renewed forensic interest.
During the hijacking, Cooper was wearing this black JC Penney tie, which he removed before jumping; it later provided us with a DNA sample/FBI
A group of volunteer scientists known as the Citizen Sleuths examined the tie under an electron microscope and identified titanium, stainless steel and palladium particles, materials used only in a limited number of specialist industries during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The FBI also extracted a partial DNA profile, but no match has ever been made. Many investigators believe the particles indicate Cooper worked in metal processing or advanced electronics. That belief sits at the heart of one of the most compelling, and contested, modern theories.
The case for Joe Lakich
In 2017, inventor and licensed pilot Bill Rollins put forward a detailed argument identifying Joe Lakich, a retired Army major and engineer from Nashville, as DB Cooper. Lakich served in the US Army infantry during World War II, receiving the Bronze Star for heroism, and later served in Germany, Korea and Italy. After leaving the Army in 1961, he worked at Nashville Electronics, a capacitor factory that used several of the same metals found on Cooper’s tie. A company patent from the period shows it produced a component containing a rare form of titanium consistent with forensic findings. Rollins argues Lakich also matched eyewitness descriptions of Cooper: a polite, soft-spoken man in his forties with an olive complexion. Lakich would have been in his late 40s at the time of the hijacking. Rollins has produced a composite image blending half of Lakich’s face with half of the FBI sketch, which he says shows a close match.
Lakich’s face is seen above spliced with one of the sketches of DB Cooper. Rollins sees a strong resemblance between the pair/ image: Bill Rollins via Dailymail
For all the technical arguments, Rollins says the theory only makes sense when motive is taken seriously.
A grudge born weeks earlier
Rollins believes Cooper’s “grudge” stemmed from a family tragedy just 51 days before the hijacking. In the early hours of October 4, 1971, Lakich’s 25-year-old daughter Susan Lakich was abducted in Nashville by her estranged husband, George Giffe. Claiming he was a doctor transporting a patient, Giffe hijacked a private plane at gunpoint and ordered the pilot, Brant Downs, to fly to the Bahamas. When the plane stopped in Jacksonville for fuel, FBI agents refused to negotiate. They shot out two tires and an engine. Moments later, gunshots rang out inside the cabin. Susan and Downs were killed. Giffe died by suicide. Joe Lakich publicly accused the FBI of mishandling the incident, saying they had “blood on their hands.” According to Rollins, the family was later harassed after speaking out and again after filing a wrongful death lawsuit. Grief, Rollins argues, hardened into motive.
‘Extremely possible’
Lakich died in 2017, aged 95. Later that year, Rollins contacted Lakich’s son, Keith Bagsby, who was unaware of the theory. Speaking to MailOnline, Bagsby, now 56, said he only met his father when he was 35. His birth resulted from an extramarital affair Lakich kept secret. By the time they met, Lakich was elderly and showing early signs of Alzheimer’s. “I believe it’s extremely possible,” Bagsby said. “On one hand, it could’ve been Joe with all the circumstances at hand, but if so, he hid it very well from any of us.” He added: “The tragedy with Susan greatly affected Joe. He would talk about it from time to time. It genuinely saddened him. But we never discussed DB Cooper.”
Why some experts remain unconvinced
Not everyone accepts Rollins’ conclusions. Retired FBI agent Larry Carr believes Cooper likely had limited military training and almost certainly died on the night of the jump. He points to what he considers basic mistakes: Cooper failed to specify parachutes, dictate a precise flight path, or wear adequate protective clothing. A storm was moving across the Pacific Northwest that night. “Anyone with real military jump experience would have scrubbed the mission,” Carr has said. Independent investigator Eric Ulis, founder of the CooperCon conference and one of the case’s most prominent researchers, agrees the tie is crucial, but disputes Rollins’ interpretation. Ulis believes the particles point instead to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee or Rem-Cru Titanium in Pittsburgh, a major supplier of titanium and stainless steel parts to Boeing during the era. Patents from Rem-Cru match the particles found on the tie, Ulis argues, and Citizen Sleuth scientist Tom Kaye has identified a thorium–uranium compound consistent with Oak Ridge. “If you can’t explain the tie, he’s not the guy,” Ulis said. “And to me, Joe Lakich just doesn’t make sense as a suspect.”
A mystery that refuses closure
Hundreds of suspects have been proposed over five decades. None have been arrested. Some money was recovered in 1980 along the Columbia River, but no definitive trace of Cooper himself has ever surfaced.
Money recovered in 1980 that matched the ransom money serial numbers/FBI
Netflix’s documentary series DB Cooper:Are You? has renewed public interest, as have repeated claims from supposed relatives, many of which have been publicly debunked, including by Ulis in interviews with LADbible. What remains is a case built on fragments: a tie, a ransom, a name that never existed, and a leap into darkness that may or may not have been survivable.
Whether Joe Lakich was the man behind the alias remains unproven. What is clear is that more than half a century later, the mystery still holds, sustained by evidence that resists final interpretation, and by a single sentence spoken mid-flight that continues to invite scrutiny.
