THE GREAT DISAPPEARANCE IN FBI HISTORY. On the afternoon of 24 November 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket for Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle for just $20. Witnesses described him as being in his mid-40s, around 6’1”, wearing a dark business suit, loafers and a black tie. Nothing about him stood out. Minutes after take-off, he handed a flight attendant a note informing her that he had a bomb. After briefly revealing what appeared to be an explosive device inside his briefcase, he calmly demanded $200,000 in cash, four parachutes and a fuel truck waiting in Seattle. When the aircraft landed, every passenger was released unharmed. The FBI delivered the ransom exactly as requested, along with the parachutes. Cooper then instructed the pilots to take off again, this time with only the flight crew remaining on board. During the flight south, somewhere over the forests of Washington, he lowered the Boeing 727’s rear airstair—a feature almost no commercial aircraft have today—and parachuted into the darkness with the ransom strapped to his body. He was never seen again. Despite one of the largest investigations in FBI history, no body was ever recovered, no parachute was ever found, and only a small portion of the ransom money was discovered years later on a riverbank, buried beneath the sand. None of the recovered bills ever led investigators to Cooper’s identity. Over the decades, hundreds of suspects have been investigated. Former military paratroopers, airline employees, criminals and even ordinary businessmen have all been linked to the case, but no theory has ever been proven. In 2016, after 45 years of investigation, the FBI officially closed the case, stating that resources would be better spent elsewhere. More than half a century later, one question still remains unanswered: Did D.B. Cooper pull off the only unsolved skyjacking in American history… or is the answer hidden somewhere beneath the forests of the Pacific Northwest? - @zlliott