**After 54 Years, the True Identity of ‘D.B. Cooper’ May Have Been Revealed**
D.B. Cooper – the name associated with America’s most mysterious plane hijacking – may have finally been identified. In 1971, a man in a black suit and sunglasses, who bought a plane ticket under the name “Dan Cooper”, hijacked a Boeing 727, demanded $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted out of the plane while flying over the Oregon jungle – disappearing without a trace. Since then, for more than half a century, his true identity has remained a mystery, with the FBI, researchers, and the public constantly searching for him.
In 2023, retired aviation analyst and pilot Dan Gryder announced the discovery of a military parachute believed to belong to D.B. Cooper, found in the storage room of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.’s family. – a former helicopter pilot, Vietnam veteran and perpetrator of a similar hijacking just five months after Cooper’s.
The parachute, along with a personal parachute logbook and military gear, was discovered in the possession of McCoy’s mother – who had no connection to aviation – as a secret that had been buried for more than 50 years.
Gryder said the parachute had specific modifications that matched the description from the FBI’s file on the 1971 hijacking. The FBI – which had claimed to have closed the case in 2016 – immediately contacted Gryder after he released the video, took the parachute for testing and is reportedly conducting DNA analysis at its Quantico lab.
McCoy – who had parachuted from a commercial airliner after the second hijacking in 1972 – was arrested and sentenced to 45 years in prison, but escaped and was shot dead in a shootout with the FBI in 1974.
He had previously been dismissed as a Cooper suspect due to his alibi. But now his parachute logs show that he had practiced a free jump shortly before November 1971 and then abruptly stopped – as if practicing for a secret jump.
The McCoy family – especially his wife, Karen McCoy – are believed to have assisted in both robberies. McCoy’s children, Gryder says, lived in silence for decades, carrying the family secret like a “prison without walls”. Only after the deaths of both their mother and grandmother did they begin to piece together the puzzle.
With the highly authentic parachute, the period-appropriate parachute log, and the military and parachute-jumping connections, many believe Gryder has uncovered the true face of the man who once drove America crazy.
If McCoy is indeed D.B. Cooper, the legend of the mysterious “space knight” becomes more complicated: he is not just a rogue outlaw, but a veteran with two opposing sides – a exemplary father and a reckless criminal.
