00:00November 24, 1971. A calm man in a dark suit hijacks a Boeing 727, then opens the rear door
00:07at 10,000 feet and jumps into a stormy night. He is never seen again. It began in Portland,
00:15Oregon. The man bought a one-way ticket to Seattle under the name Dan Cooper. Dark suit,
00:21white shirt, black tie, sunglasses, and a briefcase he never let go of.
00:28Mid-flight, he slipped a folded note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner.
00:32She almost ignored it. When she finally read it, her hands shook. The note said he had a bomb,
00:39and he showed her the wires. His demands were exact. $200,000 in cash, four parachutes,
00:48a fuel truck waiting in Seattle. Meet them by 5 p.m., or he would detonate the briefcase mid-air.
00:54The airline paid. In Seattle, all 36 passengers walked free. The FBI delivered the money,
01:03$10,020 bills, every serial number recorded, and the parachutes. Cooper kept only the crew.
01:11Then came the strangest part of his plan. He ordered the pilots to fly low and slow,
01:17under 10,000 feet, landing geared down, flaps open, toward Mexico City. The destination did not
01:27matter. Only the altitude did. Somewhere over the dark forest of southwest Washington,
01:34Cooper ordered the crew to stay in the cockpit. He lowered the plane's rear staircase,
01:39a design no modern jet carries anymore, strapped the money to his body, and stepped into the night.
01:46Think about what he jumped into. A freezing rainstorm. Pitch black wilderness. A borrowed
01:53military parachute that could not even be steered. And he was wearing loafers and a business suit.
01:59The FBI called it a leap into the impossible. In 1980, a boy on the Columbia River found a rotting
02:07bundle of $20 bills. Part of Cooper's ransom. The only cash ever recovered. But no body.
02:14No parachute. No trace of Dan Cooper. 800 suspects. And not one answer.
02:22In 2016, the FBI officially closed the case. The only unsolved skyjacking in American history.
02:31Died in the jump? Or lived quietly with $200,000? The man who fell out of the sky took the
02:38truth with him.
