- There are so many leads to this case!
Did you read Who Is DB Cooper and What Do We Know: Part One? Follow the link if you’d like to because this is part two.
According to the tipster, McCoy had just gotten away with another hijacking.
It was April 7th 1972, on a flight 855 from Denver to LA. We know this hijacking happened just 5 months after the DB Cooper hijacking.
The hijacking was almost entirely the same as Cooper’s. McCoy asked for
$500,000 and four parachutes. He lands the plane to let passengers off in exchange for the money. He too wanted low and slow at about 16,000 feet.
And he too grabbed the cash, donned a parachute and jumped out the back stairs.
Authorities find $499,970 in McCoys house. He was caught red-handed in the James Johnson hijacking, and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Nothing ties him to the DB Cooper plane hijacking. None of the fingerprints match the 60 that were pulled up and eyewitnesses told authorities “no” when they were asked if the McCoy picture was the same man from the DB Cooper hijacking.
However, according to the family the tie clip that DB Cooper left behind on the flight belongs to McCoy. That’s a crazy thing we know.
Soon after McCoy was sent to prison, he escaped. He was found shot and killed after a shoot out with the FBI.
They can’t link McCoy to DB Cooper case definitively.
DB Cooper has become a legend kind of like a Jesse James or a Billy The Kid. It became a way to get 15 minutes of fame and a logistical nightmare for investigators, as they had to sift through all the false confessions.
Authorities looked into 1000 something suspects but nothing came to fruition. The fame around the case gets the public in on it as well, wanting to look at the case for themselves.
Case breakers Tom Colbert and announce suspect Ron Carlson. Carlson worked in cocaine back in the day and his friend, Dick Briggs, apparently used to brag about being DB Cooper.
Carlson said Briggs had a party and bragged he was DB Cooper. The party people tell him to prove it.
Briggs said that this couple will find the cooper bundles and cash and that would be proof. There was $5800 dollars deteriorating in the sand when the couple found the money. The serial numbers on the cash matched the ransom money that was given to DB Cooper.
The money was found as Briggs described it. Crazy that’s something that we
know.
This is the only physical evidence ever found outside the plane. Detectives tried to process the money but the bills were falling apart and there was no additional evidence.
Dick Briggs dies in a car accident and it’s unlikely that he was Cooper. But we will never know.
How did the Briggs, the money and DB Cooper add up? Want a part three to see how the rest of the story ends? Let me know in the comments!