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True Crime Guys

#263 The Best Podcast Episode on D.B. Cooper

True Crime Guys

True Crime Guys

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

D. B. Cooper is the name we use for a man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the pacific northwest, in the airspace between Portland and Seattle on Wednesday, November 24, 1971.  He demanded a ransom and leaped from the plane with a parachute…probably. Despite a manhunt and massive FBI investigation, the man has never been located or identified. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history. The FBI maintained an active investigation for 45 years after the hijacking. The FBI kept the case open till July 2016.    This episode brought to you by, Magic Mind! CLICK HERE to learn more!   Check out our other shows!: Cryptic Soup w/ Thena & Kylee   Strange & Unexplained   True Crime Guys YouTube   EVERYTHING TRUE CRIME GUYS:   https://linktr.ee/Truecrimeguysproductions   True Crime Guys Music: True Crime Guys Music on Spotify   OhMyGaia.com Code: Creepvan     Patreon.com/truecrimeguys Patreon.com/sandupodcast Merch: truecrimeguys.threadless.com   Other possible suspects not mentioned in the show: William Gossett Gossett was a veteran who saw action in Korea and Vietnam. His military experience included advanced jump training and wilderness survival. He was a crazy fan of DB Cooper, claiming he could "write the epitaph for D.B. Cooper".  Late in his life he reportedly told three of his sons, a retired Utah judge, and a friend in the Salt Lake City public defender's office that he had committed the hijacking. Photos of Gossett taken circa 1971 bear a close resemblance to the most widely circulated Cooper composite drawing. According to Galen Cook, a lawyer who has studied Gossett for years, claimed Gossett once showed his sons a key to a Vancouver safe deposit box which, he claimed, contained the ransom money. Gossett's eldest son, Greg, said that his father, a compulsive gambler who was always "strapped for cash", showed him "wads of cash" just before Christmas 1971, weeks after the Cooper hijacking. He speculated that Gossett gambled the money away in Las Vegas. In 1988, Gossett changed his name to "Wolfgang" and became a Roman Catholic priest, which some interpreted as an effort to disguise his identity.  The FBI has no direct evidence implicating Gossett and cannot even reliably place him in the Pacific Northwest at the time of the hijacking.  Richard McCoy, Jr. McCoy was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert, and later, with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot.  On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called "copycat" hijackings. He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with rear stairs) in Denver, Colorado, brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000.  After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he was reading.  He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession, and after trial and conviction, received a 45-year sentence. Two years later he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents. The FBI agent who killed McCoy said "When I shot Richard McCoy, I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time." Although there is no reasonable doubt that McCoy committed the Denver hijacking, the FBI does not consider him a suspect in the Cooper case because of mismatches in age and description; also he had a level of skydiving skill well above that thought to be possessed by the hijacker; and they also had evidence that McCoy was in Las Vegas on the day of the Portland hijacking, and at home in Utah the day after, having Thanksgivi

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to True Crime Guys podcast. I'm your host Michael and of course Andy's here with me today.

0:09.9

Are you sure that's me, Michael, with these dark sunglasses? I mean, all you have is basically just an outline of my features.

0:14.7

Right. Yeah, we might need to get a police sketch of how you look to remember you today. I could be anybody today, Michael.

0:19.8

You could be. You could be. much like old d b cooper i see what

0:22.4

you're getting that andy right you're getting damn good at these segways i know i mean i just i actually

0:26.0

plan a little bit ahead now do you that is not in true crime guys fashion i'm gonna have to ask you to

0:31.0

stop doing that no but we are talking d b today. One of my favorite cases of all time.

0:38.4

It has been years since we covered D.B. Cooper on True Crime Guys.

0:42.2

And I don't even think we have a free episode available on D.B.

0:45.3

And I was like, we got to change that.

0:47.3

We got to change that.

0:48.6

I think we covered them back in 2018.

0:51.8

Damn, I believe.

0:53.0

Well, I was still in Vegas.

0:54.4

Oh, yeah.

0:56.4

I remember when you guys did D.B. Cooper.

0:58.6

It was way back when I think I was like, yeah, yeah.

1:02.1

I remember, I remember listening to it while I was cutting grass one time.

1:02.8

Oh, wow.

1:04.4

In 2018, right on.

1:04.9

Way back on. Long time listener, Andy.

1:05.9

Glad to have you on the show.

...

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