A few years back, amateur YouTuber Dan Gryder made a shocking discovery concerning the infamous D.B. Cooper hijacking case. Is it true that the FBI has now officially reopened the case because of his investigation?
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00:00A few years back, amateur YouTuber Dan Grider made a shocking discovery concerning the infamous
00:05D.B.
00:06Cooper hijacking case.
00:07Is it true that the FBI has now officially reopened the case because of his investigation?
00:11First, here's a quick recap.
00:14On a fateful November afternoon in 1971, a mysterious middle-aged man hijacked Northwest
00:19Orient Airlines Flight 305 on its way to Seattle and threatened to blow up the plane unless
00:23authorities met his demands.
00:25He demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes to be handed over to him in Seattle, where
00:30he would let the passengers go if he was given what he asked for.
00:33The authorities obliged, and the plane took off once again.
00:36Subsequently, the man, who has since been referred to as D.B.
00:39Cooper, was able to jump from the plane and escape with the money.
00:42A small amount of physical evidence was recovered in subsequent years, including a portion of
00:46the ransom money that was discovered by a man and his son while vacationing on the Columbia
00:50River.
00:51What the young son found was part of Cooper's loot, badly decomposed, in bundles, still
00:56in the same order when packed nine years ago.
00:58Regardless, no one has been able to conclusively determine who D.B.
01:02Cooper was or where he escaped to.
01:04Conclusively is the operative word here, since the FBI did have a suspect in mind.
01:08Just five months after the D.B.
01:10Cooper hijacking caper occurred, Richard McCoy II pulled off a similar crime.
01:14On April 7, 1972, he hijacked United Airlines Flight 855 over Colorado with a hand grenade
01:20and pistol.
01:21As in the Cooper case, McCoy asked for four parachutes and an even larger ransom of $500,000.
01:26He bailed out over Utah and would have likely gotten away if not for an acquaintance who
01:30he told about a foolproof method of hijacking a plane.
01:33The 29-year-old McCoy was a Vietnam veteran, helicopter pilot, skydiver, and member of
01:38the Utah National Guard.
01:39He also had serious financial troubles.
01:42The FBI arrested McCoy not long after the hijacking based on handwriting analysis and
01:46other evidence.
01:47A federal judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison after a trial.
01:51Then in 1974, McCoy broke out of federal prison and died in a shootout with FBI agents in
01:56Virginia Beach.
01:57The FBI ruled out McCoy as D.B.
01:59Cooper because he didn't quite fit the hijacker's description.
02:02However, the agency may be rethinking its original assessment.
02:06This is where Dan Grider and his independent investigation comes in.
02:09In 2020, Richard McCoy II's two children, Shante and Richard Rick McCoy III, broke a
02:14longstanding silence concerning their father.
02:17Following the death of their mother, Karen, who they believed had been complicit in their
02:20father's crimes, the siblings contacted Grider, a retired pilot who had been personally investigating
02:25the Cooper case for more than 20 years.
02:27While sifting through an outbuilding of the McCoy home in Cove City, North Carolina, Grider
02:31came across a parachute stuffed into an old chest.
02:34After examining it, Grider was pretty quick to posit that it was the one used in the D.B.
02:38Cooper hijacking.
02:39You know what this is?
02:40Yeah, that's supposedly the one he jumped out with the first time.
02:44This is the D.B.
02:45Cooper parachute.
02:46Why was he so certain?
02:47Being that the FBI has always known exactly what parachutes they gave D.B.
02:51Cooper on the day of the hijacking, they — and independent investigators like Grider — have
02:55always known exactly what to look for.
02:57They turned the new evidence over to the FBI, which also combed through the house.
03:01The agency, as part of a longstanding policy, will neither confirm nor deny whether it has
03:06reopened its investigation into the more-than-50-year-old case.
03:10However, in a recent update to his investigation, Grider was able to confirm — at least vaguely
03:15— that the Bureau was investigating the area where he found the parachute, after watching
03:19the first two parts of his documentary on YouTube.
03:21All right, so I just videotaped eight FBI cars coming down this road.
03:27Not that this officially proves anything, but it's certainly a major turn of events.
03:32Perhaps in the near future, the FBI will come forward and make the announcement that many
03:35have been waiting for for quite some time.