Companion Document
Case File 001 · Unsolved
Seat 18E paid cash. Nobody solved it.
What happened after Portland has never been explained. Not in fifty-five years.
Northwest Orient 305 · Boeing 727
Portland → Seattle · November 24, 1971
Passenger of record: Dan Cooper
Section 01
The Night
November 24, 1971. Thanksgiving eve. Everything below is what the file can support — and it runs out at 8:13 PM.
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Portland · Afternoon
He pays cash
A man walks up to the Northwest Orient counter at Portland and buys a one-way seat to Seattle. He pays in cash. On the ticket he gives a name: Dan Cooper.
Ticket coupon 1 — Portland to Seattle. The only paperwork he ever signed. -
Flight 305 · Boarding
Seat 18E
Boeing 727. Short hop north. He takes seat 18E near the back of the cabin, next to the one door on the aircraft that opens on a staircase.
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Airborne
The note
He hands flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note. There is a bomb in the briefcase.
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Airborne
The demand
Two hundred thousand dollars, in twenty-dollar bills. And four parachutes.
Doesn't add upFour. Four is the number you ask for when you intend to take someone out the door with you. He left alone.
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Sea-Tac · Evening
The handoff
The 727 lands at Seattle-Tacoma. The passengers are released and walk off into the rain. The money and the parachutes come aboard. The aircraft refuels for Reno.
Doesn't add upOne of the four chutes was a dummy training reserve — sewn shut, useless. He did not take it as his primary.
Polaroid — Sea-Tac, 11-24-71. Refuel and handoff. -
Departure
His specifications
He dictates how the aircraft will fly to Reno. Flaps at fifteen degrees. Landing gear down. Below ten thousand feet. Aft stairs unlocked.
Doesn't add upThat is not a passenger's list. That is a configuration a man builds when he already knows what he is going to do with the back of the aircraft.
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8:13 PM
The pressure bump
Somewhere over southwest Washington, the crew feels the cabin pressure shift. A bump. Nothing else.
That is the last moment anyone can prove he was on the aircraft.
Plate — the aft airstair, 8:13 PM. Night, rain, under ten thousand feet. -
Reno · Landing
The empty cabin
The 727 comes down at Reno with the aft stairs hanging open. There is no one in the cabin. On seat 18E: a clip-on tie.
Polaroid — seat 18E. What he left behind. -
February 1980
Nine years later
An eight-year-old boy digging on a Columbia River sandbar called Tena Bar turns up $5,800 of the ransom. The rubber bands are still around the bundles.
Doesn't add upWrong place for every drift model of the jump. And rubber bands do not survive years in a river. These did.
Polaroid — Tena Bar, 2-10-80. Evidence marker 3. -
Since
Nothing else has ever come back
No body. No parachute. No briefcase. And not one of the 9,997 remaining recorded bills has ever surfaced in circulation.
Section 02
Route of Incident
Two legs, one night. Tap a marker for what the file says — and what the file cannot make fit.
Stylized reconstruction · not to scale · drift cone approximate
Section 03
Evidence Locker
Six items. Every one of them tells you something. Every one of them breaks something else.
Section 04
Suspect Files
Six names have been carried in this case. One of them is moving right now.
Two of these names are here only because the file will not let go of them. Where there is no evidence, the card says so.
Section 05
The Theories
Three camps. Everyone who reads this file ends up in one of them, then gets pulled into another.
It was McCoy
Months after Cooper, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. hijacked an aircraft and jumped with the money — the same method, run again. In December 2025 the FBI thought a parachute found on his family's property was worth seizing and testing.
They tested it and quietly gave it back. No charge, no confirmation. Repeating a method is not the same as inventing it.
He died in the jump
Night, rain, unfamiliar ground, under ten thousand feet, in a business suit. He turned down the one reserve he was handed. And not one of the 9,997 remaining recorded bills has ever been spent — the simplest reason a man never spends money is that he can't.
Fifty-five years of searching has produced no body, no chute, no briefcase — and one bundle of cash on a sandbar in the wrong place with the rubber bands still on it.
He vanished clean
He knew the aircraft, dictated a flight profile a man can step out of, and picked a jump nobody could follow. Someone who plans that far ahead plans the part after the landing — including never touching a marked bill.
Then account for four parachutes demanded and never used, a dummy reserve he somehow avoided, and $5,800 of his own money buried on a riverbank nine years later. Clean getaways don't leak.
Reader position
Where do you land?
No position logged. Pick one — you can change it as often as the file changes your mind.
Section 06
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June 2026
Officially unsolved. No suspect confirmed, no charge filed, the file still open.
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December 2025
The FBI seizes and tests a parachute found on the McCoy family property, then quietly returns it. A DNA comparison against the clip-on tie from seat 18E is ongoing.
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February 1980
$5,800 of the ransom surfaces at Tena Bar. It remains the only piece of the money ever recovered.
This is not history. It is a case that is still moving while you read it.