Five most likely suspects behind iconic DB Cooper mystery as net closes in on identifying him

Daily Mail​

03-05-2025

While the true identity of DB Cooper has been a mystery for decades, an expert says he could be unmasked in months.
The enigma behind Cooper - the man who jumped out of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 with thousands in cash after handing a stewardess a note demanding the ransom on November 24, 1971 - has long stumped the FBI.
Over the years, several names have been tossed around from Richard McCoy Jr. to Vince Peterson, but no one has officially taken the crown as the real DB Cooper.
'I think it's a very real possibility we figure out who this guy was this year,' independent Investigator Eric Ulis told DailyMail.com. 'So it's actually really, really pretty thrilling.
'So I feel very good that ultimately, there's a real possibility we're going to have a pretty good idea who this guy was within the next 10 months, by the end of this year.'
Cooper was flying between Portland and Seattle when he made his heist, demanding $200,000 in cash and four parachutes in exchange for keeping the 42 souls onboard alive.
He wanted the money once they landed in Seattle and the mysterious man then ordered the pilots to refuel and head toward Mexico.
While 10,000 feet over Washington, he left from the rear of the plane with the ransom strapped to his waist.
The famous conman then disappeared into thin air, leading to a 50-year investigation into the hijacker's real identity.
However, there have been a few recent updates that offer promising leads.
A JCPenney clip-on tie may lead to the breakthrough in his identity as it was left behind during the infamous hijack.
A speck of a chemical on the discarded tie has opened the door to an explosive theory that could finally reveal the true identity of the elusive suspect.
While the FBI closed its investigation into Cooper in July 2016, the tie remains in the bureau's possession. Only a handful of people have ever been allowed access to it.
Over a 20-year period the FBI interviewed more than 1,000 suspects, but the real culprit has never been revealed.
DailyMail.com takes a look at the top suspects for the bewildering plane hijacker.
1. Dan Cooper
DB Cooper smoked many cigarettes while on the flight and used a matchbook made in Oak Ridge to light it.
Ralph Cooper was a longtime employee at Oak Ridge, working there from 1962 to 1997, and he had a brother named Dan.
Dan Cooper was accidentally shot dead by police in August 1960 while helping law enforcement search for a fugitive cop killer near his home in Heiskell, Tennessee. His father, Kaley Cooper, was also shot but survived.
The Cooper family later sued the local sheriff, seeking $400,000 in damages: $200,000 for the death of Dan Cooper and $200,000 for the injuries sustained by Kaley Cooper.
The family lost the Kaley Cooper suit, meaning they missed out on a $200,000 settlement - the same amount requested by DB Cooper a decade later in 1971.
There is no concrete evidence linking the shooting of Dan Cooper to the DB Cooper heist, but Ulis thinks it might be worth looking into.
However, Ulis theorized it's possible that DB Cooper was a colleague of Ralph's and used his brother's name as an alias in a 'wink-and-nod' reference.
'It's possible that DB Cooper knew of this story because it was well-reported in the media at the time,' Ulis said. 'Maybe it was a subtle reference, or maybe it's just a name he subconsciously latched onto.
'Who knows? But it's something interesting to consider as this investigation moves forward,' Ulis said.
2. Richard McCoy Jr.
McCoy's children - Chanté and Richard III 'Rick' McCoy - had always suspected their father may have been DB Cooper but had refrained from coming forward until their mother died as they believed she was complicit in the crime.
When she passed away, they reached out to amateur investigator Dan Gryder to tell their story.
The YouTuber said he discovered what he believes to be the parachute and rig used by Cooper while visiting the McCoy family's North Carolina property in July 2022.
'We stumbled upon this happenstance, which caused us to have access to this building, and we went up in that building and we looked around it,' he told the DailyMail.com.
'We didn't find [the rig] quickly. It took me and two other people like four hours. We all discovered that together, equally, and completely random.'
Cooper's hijacking demands had included that authorities give him four parachutes, which were supplied by a local skydiving center.
Gryder explained that the parachute found in the McCoy's storage unit has the same unique alterations as the chutes in the Cooper hijacking.
Another crucial piece of evidence is a logbook that aligned with Cooper's hijacking over Oregon as well as the Utah hijacking McCoy was convicted of that took place months later.
What stands out is that McCoy had a test jump on September 1971, two months before the Cooper heist, and again on March 1972, one month before the Utah hijacking.
On April 7, 1972, McCoy commandeered United Airlines Flight 855, another Boeing 727, en route from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, California.
He demanded $500,000 in cash and parachuted out the plane as soon as he had the money. He was arrested after the FBI received a tip from a concerned citizen.
McCoy was later sentenced to 45 years in prison for the heist, but later broke out of the maximum security with three other prisoners. The hijacker was eventually shot and killed by agents in his Virginia Beach home after being tracked down in 1974.
Gryder explained that the North Carolina farm was owned by McCoy's mother and she had kept those items in memory of her son.
'She was kind of a hoarder of emotional things, pictures, letters, scrapbooks. This was her prized son. She was very proud of Richard Floyd McCoy. She knew full well that he did two hijacking. Those rigs and those artifacts became treasured family heirlooms,' he said.
McCoy's grave is on the property and his headstone lists his military accomplishments including his experience with parachuting - implying he was capable of making the jump on November 24, 1971.
For years the authorities have sought answers and Gryder told DailyMail.com that the FBI is taking his new find very seriously and conducting DNA tests.
'Finding the parachute is not conclusive, it's not going to solve it, that's all circumstantial. What the FBI is going to have to have is solid DNA, and that is the path,' Gryder said.
'Their entire goal is a positive DNA lock, and that's the end towards which they are working.'
Gryder told DailyMail.com there are parts of Rick's DNA that lined up 'perfectly' with that of DB Cooper, possibly indicating a partial match of a relative. He added that investigators are now seeking to exhume the body for further testing in a bombshell revelation.
'All [the McCoy children] were able to tell us is that there's DNA markers that are present, and they have X amount of those that line up perfectly like Swiss cheese models where all the holes in the Swiss cheese eventually line up, but they need more of those markers, and where they have fallen down is the difference between the son's DNA and the necktie versus actual Richard Floyd Mccoy,' he said.
'Indisputable DNA, which would give them more of those markers, is what is what they're looking for. That that's where they were at on the thing. And that's how come they've requested to exhume the body, which is a huge deal.'
3. Walter R. Reca
Michigander Walter R. Reca allegedly admitted he was Cooper to a friend, 2018 recordings showed.
The 82nd Airborne paratrooper, who went on to become a covert intelligence operative for several governments, says he handed a stewardess a note announcing the hijacking that said: 'This is a hijack and I've got explosives.'
'She said: "I can't believe you're actually hijacking this airplane." I said: "I can't believe it either but I'm serious,"' Reca recalled.
As a result of his admission, a team of investigators in Michigan are certain that Reca is the true identity of Cooper.
They claim that 'Cooper' was a former Army paratrooper and war veteran who survived the jump and went on to become a high-level covert intelligence operative for several governments.
Reca died in 2014 at the age of 80.
4. Vince Peterson
Ulis also previously claimed in 2023 that Vince Peterson, an engineer, could be the culprit.
Petersen worked as a Boeing subcontractor at a titanium plant and fits the evidence left behind by the infamous hijacker.
He would have been 52 at the time of the crime and has been long dead.
Ulis - who was five when the plane-jacking occurred - first landed on Petersen's name after analyzing microscopic evidence left on the clip-on black tie DB left before he parachuted out of the plane.
Several of the particles found were consistent with specialty metals used in the aerospace sector, such as titanium, high-grade stainless steel and aluminum, Ulis explained.
The sleuth claimed he found 'three particles of a very rare alloy of titanium and antimony that have a very specific balance, a very specific blend.' Ulis then paired the alloy with a US patent given to the Boeing subcontractor in Pittsburg.
The company is no longer around which but Ulis managed to interview a man who worked there as a supervisor and pointed to Peterson.
Peterson is also a match for the physical description of DB, which Ulis described as 'between the ages of 45-50, clean-cut, conservative, with a high forehead and roughly six foot one'.
After hearing the description, the supervisor reportedly responded immediately, saying: 'That sounds like Vince Petersen.'
5. Sheridan Peterson
Sheridan Peterson was one of the chief suspects in the notorious 1971 hijacking.
Peterson, who once admitted even his friends believed it was him, died on January 8, 2021, in Northern California, according to an obituary posted online.
His cause of death is not clear, but he leaves behind a son and daughter.
Peterson long claimed that, at the time of the skyjacking, he was living in a mud hut in Nepal working on a 'protest novel' about his experiences in Vietnam.
But he also toyed with the idea he could be the mysterious DB Cooper on several occasions over the years and his ex-wife once said she believed it could have been him.
Investigators long suspected Peterson could have been the notorious hijacker due to his time in the Marines and work for aerospace giant Boeing.
He also loved skydiving and was a smokejumper - the name for the highly trained firefighters who parachute into wildfire zones - and was prone to quirky risk-taking, such as experimenting with homemade bat wings.
Within weeks of the November 24 hijacking, FBI agents showed up to interview Peterson's ex-wife at her high school counseling office in Bakersfield, California.
Asked if her ex-husband could be DB Cooper, she replied: 'Yes, that sounded like something he'd do.'
Many years later in 2004, the FBI took a DNA test from Peterson to compare it against a clip tie that DB Cooper left behind on Northwest Orient flight #305.
After the test was taken, he was never publicly ruled out by the FBI - unlike other suspects who were DNA tested.
Peterson has also reveled in the speculation surrounding him, writing in a 2007 essay for trade publication Smokejumper that 'the FBI had good reason to suspect me'.