Tie - the main thing

The only undisclosed case of the theft of the aircraft moved from the dead point

On November 24, 1971, a man who introduced himself to Dan Cooper announced the theft of the Boeing 727 aircraft. Cooper exchanged hostages for 200 thousand dollars, demanded to raise the plane into the air, and then jumped out of the parachute liner over the forests of Washington. Who was the author of the only unexplored abduction of the aircraft in the history of and what happened to him is still unknown. A group of enthusiastic scientists, having carefully examined the hijacker tie, was able to at least assume where Cooper worked.

The case of Boeing’s theft in 1971 is one of the most famous riddles related to aviation. Events developed like this: a man who bought a ticket addressed to Dan Cooper, during a flight from Portland to Seattle, showed a suitcase with something like an explosive device, and announced the theft of the airliner. Upon landing in Seattle, he released all passengers in exchange for 200 thousand unlikely dollars (although the FBI photographed each bill) and several parachutes. During the capture, the man behaved politely and even paid the stewardess for two burgons, which he ordered during the flight.

Having released the hostages, the Cooper demanded to send the plane to Mexico with a refueling in Rino and gave the most stringent instructions: to fly with a minimum possible speed (about 200 km/h) at a height of three kilometers with a produced chassis and a rack extended in the rear of the airliner. When the plane landed in Rino, Cooper was gone there. The police could not find any data about his personality: fingerprints did not coincide with the data of any of the criminals well -known American police, and a detailed study of the small number of things that Cooper left on the plane did not give anything.

Since then, there was no information about the hijacker. In the 1980s, in Washington, 290 banknotes were found with a face value of $ 20, which, as established by the investigation, were part of the ransom paid to the merchant. It was not possible to establish the exact fate of these banknotes where all other money is still unknown. The investigation of the theft continued with interruptions of more than 40 years, until in February 2016 the FBI finally closed it due to the inability to establish all the details. There are a dozen different versions, who really is Dan Cooper, and not one of them is considered not just the main, but also at least somewhat similar to the truth.

Before jumping out of the plane, Cooper left a tie in the seat. Three samples of DNA were found on it, but could not establish whether they belong to the hijacker of the aircraft. It was on the tie that a group of scientists Citizen Sleuths, which has been engaged in an independent investigation of Cooper’s case since 2009, was concentrated. Ties usually erase much less often than other clothing items, and the analysis could tell a lot about the personality of the person who bore him.

The first results of an independent study of the hijacker tie appeared back in 2011: on the subject of clothing then traces of titanium were found, rare in the early 1970s of metal. Probably, researchers, a person known as Dan Cooper, worked at an enterprise related to metallurgy or chemical industry.

There are doubts that the tie belonged to the merchant, but at Citizen Sleuths analyzed all possible evidence and established - the owner was, apparently, the hijacker. There was a black tie on Kuop, similar to the one that was found in the cabin; He lay next to the place where the hijacker was sitting; There were traces of matches on the tie, and it is known that Cooper smoked cigarettes. Given these data, the probability that some other passenger left a tie is , according to researchers, about two percent.

In January 2017, new details of an independent investigation became known. As his leader Tom Kaye, in addition to titanium, said on the tie found traces of rare -earth metals of Ceria and Sulfide Strontium, which significantly narrows the circle of search for possible work of Cooper. Kaye assumes that a person who had a tie and collided with metals for those years could be, for example, an employee of Boeing, who in the 1970s waged work on a supersonic passenger liner and actively used the titanium, cerium and strontium. Working ties do not wear, and the clerks do not go to production. Therefore, Cooper was either an engineer or a manager.

The Citizen Sleuths website has a list of all particles found on the hijacker tie. According to Kaye, perhaps one of the specialists in the field of aircraft construction who worked in the 1970s is able to understand exactly where the owner could work.

Pavel Borisov