That was the note handed to a stewardess by a mild-manneredpassenger on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was the start ofone of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of Americantrue crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline, thenparachuted into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and intooblivion. D. B. Cooper’s case has become the stuff of legend andobsessed and cursed his pursuers with everything from bankruptcy tosuicidal despair. Now with Skyjack, journalist Geoffrey Gray delvesinto this unsolved mystery uncovering new leads in the infamouscase.
“I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”
That was the note handed to a stewardess by a mild-mannered
passenger on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was the start of
one of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of American
true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline, then
parachuted into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest and into
oblivion. D. B. Cooper’s case has become the stuff of legend and
obsessed and cursed his pursuers with everything from bankruptcy to
suicidal despair. Now with Skyjack, journalist Geoffrey Gray delves
into this unsolved mystery uncovering new leads in the infamous
case.
Starting with a tip from a private investigator into a promising
suspect (a Cooper lookalike, Northwest employee, and trained
paratrooper), Gray is propelled into the murky depths of a
decades-old mystery, conducting new interviews and obtaining a
first-ever look at Cooper’s FBI file. Beginning with a
heartstopping and unprecedented recreation of the crime itself,
from cabin to cockpit to tower, and uncanny portraits of characters
who either chased Cooper or might have committed the crime,
including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who
watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk
hero who supposedly shafted the system…Karl Fleming, a respected
reporter whose career was destroyed by a Cooper scoop that was a
scam…and Barbara (nee Bobby) Dayton, a transgendered pilot who
insisted she was Cooper herself.
With explosive new information and exclusive access to FBI files
and forensic evidence, Skyjack reopens one of the great cold cases
of the 20th century.