Skyjacker: The Enduring Mystery of D.B. Cooper

Imagine a man in a crisp business suit, sipping bourbon on a commercial flight, who casually slips a note to a flight attendant: "I have a bomb." On Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, this stranger—known to the world as D.B. Cooper—hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, extorted $200,000 in ransom, released the terrified passengers, and then, in a feat straight out of a pulp thriller, leaped from the plane's rear stairs into a raging Pacific Northwest storm. He vanished with the cash, the parachutes, and any hope of a tidy resolution. To this day, it's the only unsolved hijacking in American history. Skyjacker: The Enduring Mystery of D.B. Cooper cracks open this audacious enigma with pulse-pounding detail and razor-sharp insight. Relive the hijacking's tense hours—from Cooper's eerily polite demands to the FBI's frantic scramble at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Delve into the NORJAK investigation's wild twists: a boy's 1980 discovery of soggy ransom bills on a riverbank, lost cigarette butts with potential DNA, and a suspect list stretching to 1,000 names. Was Cooper a rogue paratrooper like Kenneth Christiansen, a confessional crook like Duane Weber, or a ghost who outfoxed them all? More than a crime story, Skyjacker uncovers how Cooper rocketed from fugitive to folk legend—inspiring songs, films, and rowdy "CooperCons" where amateurs still hunt for clues. It charts his seismic ripple through aviation: goodbye to unlocked cockpits, hello to metal detectors and the "Cooper Vane" that sealed off escape hatches forever. Even after the FBI shuttered the case in 2016, the hunt endures, fueled by podcasts, forensics, and the tantalizing what-ifs. Gripping as a heist novel, rigorous as a cold-case file, Skyjacker is your ticket to the skies of one man's impossible gamble. True crime addicts, history sleuths, and armchair adventurers: buckle up. Who was D.B. Cooper—and did he really pull it off?