History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

by Meltzer, Brad

  He was never seen again.

  The press began calling the skyjacker DB Cooper, and the FBI investigated thousands of leads. Suspects included a mass murderer, a college professor, a career criminal, and a World War II veteran. But they were all ruled out as the culprit. In the last 40 years, new suspects have emerged, and now we have an unexamined lead that may point to an inside job. We need to decode who he was and how he may have managed to pull off this unbelievable stunt without ever getting caught.

  Whatever the case, I can tell you one thing—

  When someone commits the perfect crime, I want to know who he is.

  The Perfect Crime?

  On November 24, 1971, a passenger using the name Dan Cooper parachuted from the back of a Boeing 727 into the Pacific Northwest night with $200,000 in cash. He was never seen again.

  To this day, it’s one of America’s greatest unsolved robberies. But thanks to a recent book, one of the most promising leads is actually a fairly new one.

  Kenneth Peter Christiansen, a former Northwest Airlines employee, was never really a formal suspect in the DB Cooper case. But now, thanks to the book Into the Blast by Robert Blevins, Kenny Christiansen has come to the forefront of possible suspects. We got Blevins to talk with us, and I have to admit, he makes a compelling case.

  “I would say I’m ninety percent to ninety-five percent certain” Christiansen was DB Cooper, Blevins asserted. “He worked for the airline. He had paratrooper training. He had the opportunity. He had a lot of unexplained spending within a few months after the hijacking. He lent his best friend’s sister five thousand dollars in cash to buy a house. Then he used another sixteen thousand dollars to buy another house for himself. As far as we can tell, Kenny Christiansen had one life before the hijacking and a completely different one afterward.”

  When you look at the numbers, you definitely start smelling something fishy. While working for Northwest Airlines, Christiansen never earned more than $512 a month—that’s a month—which even in the early 1970s didn’t go far. Yet within a few months of the skyjacking, he suddenly had a stash of money to throw around.

  So why didn’t the FBI take a harder look at Christiansen as a suspect?

  Blevins chalks the oversight up to three preconceptions the FBI brought to the case:

  Christiansen didn’t match eyewitness descriptions of the skyjacker.

  He had no previous criminal history.

  The FBI didn’t believe that the skyjacker had military training or background.

  Let’s look at this piece by piece, starting with what, to me, is the most glaring question: Why would they think that DB Cooper had no military training?

  According to Blevins: “The parachute that DB Cooper actually jumped with is called a Navy Backpack Six, and it’s a smaller parachute, more of a military type. The skyjacker was a pretty tough guy.” As Blevins added, “Kenny went through paratrooper training where they started out with two hundred and sixty-two men and ended up with eighty that actually finished, and he was one of them.”

  All of these factors have convinced Blevins that he’s cracked the DB Cooper case. He has few doubts that Christiansen is the culprit.

  “I think he jumped out of the back of that 727, hit the ground, popped off his parachute, disconnected the harness and the container from it, buried the silk part, and put his briefcase and the money bag into the container for the parachute, put it on his back, and walked out of the woods.”

  At first look, though, Blevins’s case is mostly circumstantial, which means we need to look at other pieces of evidence—and circumstances—to tell us whether Kenny Christiansen was really DB Cooper.

  The trail to investigate whether DB Cooper really was the late Kenny Christiansen had led us from writer Robert Blevins to Kenny’s brother, Lyle, who dropped an amazing bombshell when we spoke with him.

  “Before he passed away,” Lyle says of his brother, Kenny, who died in 1994, “he told me on his deathbed, ‘There’s something you should know, but I cannot tell you.’”

  And that’s the part where my spider-sense started to tingle. You know how they say don’t believe everything you hear? There’s only one exception to that: a deathbed confession. It is the only reason I’m so obsessed with this case—and with Kenny Christiansen. After his near-confession, Lyle spent years thinking about Kenny’s life—and decided he needed to examine his brother’s possessions way more carefully.

  The first thing he found?

  What’s in a Name?

  A Comic Alias

  Some say the hijacker took the name “Dan Cooper” from a Franco-Belgian comic series about a fictional Canadian military flying ace and rocket ship pilot.

  The name “DB” may belong to the most famous skyjacker in history, but it’s actually a fabrication invented by the press, though no one seems to know where it originated. As for the skyjacker himself, he actually put the name “Dan Cooper” on his ticket—a name that many think he got from this French comic book.

  A few observations:

  #1: I love comic books.

  #2: I love comic books.

  Y’know what I love more than comic books? The possibility that the alias “Dan Cooper” actually comes from one. That’s a way better alias than “Clark Kent.”

  According to Lyle, on that fateful day, “the skyjacker came on the airline with an attaché case. And I found this very same attaché case in Kenny’s final effects.”

  OK. They both have briefcases. So did my dad. That doesn’t mean I’m related to DB Cooper.

  Then Lyle started looking at the composite sketch that law enforcement put together. The descriptions of DB Cooper when he boarded the flight were all the same. He was wearing a black suit with a tie and carrying a briefcase. He was described as tall and dark-haired. Look at Exhibit 7B, the FBI bulletin featuring a sketch based on eyewitness reports.

  And then Lyle showed us the photo at left:

  “I found this picture in his photo book. I must have looked at the photo book many times and never caught it, and one day I said, ‘Wait a minute.’ Carrying a bag, looks like a bag of money, and he’s got the attaché case.”

  Again, does that make him guilty? Not by a long shot. In fact, the Dan Cooper who boarded that flight—wearing a black suit and tie and carrying a briefcase—was described by eyewitnesses as having dark hair, being in his 40s, and standing 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall.

  Kenny Christiansen was bald and stood 5 feet 8 inches, so the physical description doesn’t match. But we all know that eyewitness accounts are fairly unreliable. They’re dubious at best. And the other thing we know: Lyle said that Kenny used to wear a toupee prior to the skyjacking, but he never wore it again after the skyjacking. Again, great circumstantial evidence, for sure. But we need something that’s far more concrete.

  So let’s look at some other pieces of the puzzle:

  The skyjacker was left-handed—and so was Kenny.

  On the plane, the skyjacker ordered bourbon—Kenny Christiansen’s preferred drink.

  The skyjacker smoked—and so did Kenny.

  In the Bag

  Kenny Christiansen’s brother, Lyle, found this photo of Kenny—carrying a briefcase and what looks like a bag of money—tucked behind another in a family album. Why was the photo hidden? And why was it kept?

  Kenny’s Money

  But perhaps most interesting of all was the photo that Lyle showed us: of Kenny Christiansen carrying a briefcase and what looks like a paper bag of money. At first, just seems like any other old photo, right? But in this case, the picture had been in Kenny Christiansen’s photo album—hidden behind a different, more innocuous photo.

  Just darn creepy, right? Hiding the photo of yourself walking in with your big bag of money? Sure, it makes me raise an eyebrow, but even assuming all thi
s is true, when you look at the case, it’s still missing the most important thing of all: motive.

  What would cause someone who had been, by all accounts, a quiet man who caused little trouble to suddenly pull off the biggest unsolved crime in American aviation history? And why mount that crime against his own employer?

  Turns out there’s an explanation for that, too—one that’s found in Kenny Christiansen’s own handwriting. According to his letters, Kenny was never able to earn a stable living at Northwest because of constant protracted labor disputes at his job. There were eight strikes at Northwest Airlines between 1954 and 1971, and those strikes severely cut into his earning power. He was constantly having to take odd jobs like working in a hotel or digging ditches for friends just to make ends meet.

  That is not a euphemism. Kenny Christiansen was actually digging ditches.

  In the meantime, the $8-million jets that he worked on sat unused on the ground, and make no mistake, this hardworking former paratrooper resented it. If we believe that Kenny Christiansen was DB Cooper, then by 1971, he had simply had enough, and decided to strike out at the airline to make them pay for the struggles they’d put him through.

  Right there, we get our first taste of an actual motive. But y’know what convinces me even more than that?

  Kenny Christiansen’s bank statements.

  At the time of his death, this man who used to dig actual ditches had $186,000 socked away in savings, and over $20,000 in his checking account (see Exhibits 7C and 7D for bank statements). Add that to the sums he spent so freely in the months after the skyjacking, and you get another big piece of the puzzle, this one with dollar signs all over it.

  Still, even with the motive and the overflowing bank account, it doesn’t mean he absolutely was DB Cooper. But when you stack all the pieces together, you do have to wonder, Could it all be coincidence? And even more than that, Why wasn’t this paratrooper one of the FBI’s suspects?

  Bombs on Planes

  Such a scenario is all but unimaginable today. But you have to remember that this was the early 1970s and airline security was nothing like it is now. There were no ID checks before boarding a plane. You could still smoke on planes. It was like Studio 54 up there.

  After the DB Cooper sky-jacking, things began to change. Boeing installed something called the “Cooper vane” on the rear doors of all 727s, making it impossible to lower those doors from inside the airplane. The FAA also began installing metal detectors in airports to screen passengers and their carry-on luggage.

  Airport Security

  Those elaborate and time-consuming airport security procedures that are a fact of life today actually got their start in the aftermath of the DB Cooper hijacking, decades before 9/11 and the expansion of the TSA’s powers. So next time you go through the metal detector, think of DB.

  Could He Survive?

  The question of whether or not DB Cooper survived the jump is essential. Former FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach told us that he thought it was highly unlikely.

  But in April 1972, a man named Richard McCoy skyjacked a United Airlines 727 and demanded half a million dollars.

  McCoy jumped at 16,000 feet while the plane was traveling at 200 miles per hour. And he survived.

  The similarities to the Cooper case were such that authorities thought for a while that McCoy was DB Cooper. But McCoy didn’t resemble the descriptions of Cooper at all, and it turned out that he had been home having Thanksgiving dinner in Utah when Cooper pulled off his caper.

  For me, though, the point is that if McCoy could survive a jump from 6,000 feet higher than Cooper, there’s no way to just dismiss Cooper’s jump and say it’s unlikely he survived.

  A Massive Search

  The FBI assigned search crews to every area where they believed DB Cooper may have landed after parachuting.

  The FBI’s Side of the Story

  Of course, we approached the FBI. They told us that the DB Cooper case was never solved and, as a result, it’s still an open investigation.

  We did, however, get something that may be even better: Ralph Himmelsbach, the retired FBI agent who was actually in charge of the Cooper investigation from 1971 to 1980. Himmelsbach described the night of the skyjacking as stormy, windy, rainy—a lousy night for flying at all, much less for jumping out of a jet airplane.

  To help us reconstruct the crime, and understand how the FBI saw it, Himmelsbach arranged for us to accompany him onto a Boeing 727—in 1971, the most widely flown airliner in the world.

  Dan Cooper (he wouldn’t become DB until a news story assigned the initials to him in the days after the skyjacking) was in seat 18C. As a stewardess approached him, he handed her a note.

  “You better read this, miss. I have a bomb,” the passenger in 18C said to her.

  “He told her to take that note up to the cockpit, and his instruction to them was to stay in the air until they got to Seattle while the money and the parachutes were obtained,” Himmelsbach explained. “If they did anything wrong, he would set off the bomb.”

  At this point, we know where DB Cooper was sitting; we know about the note and the demands it made. When the FBI asked the airline how they wanted to deal with the hijacker, the head of the airline was determined to keep everyone safe. The airline agreed to pay the ransom and handed over the four parachutes the hijacker requested. At that point, the hijacker selected an older-style military parachute of the sort that Kenny Christiansen might’ve been familiar with. Then he opened the rear door of the 727 and, at 10,000 feet, jumped out.

  Beyond that, there’s nothing.

  Former agent Himmelsbach thinks there’s a very good reason for that.

  He doesn’t think Cooper survived the jump.

  “I can’t say that it wasn’t survivable,” he observed. “But it’s unlikely. That airliner was going one hundred and seventy knots at ten thousand feet. Outside air temperature is seven degrees below zero, with a chill factor of about sixty-nine degrees below zero.”

  It’s a strong point, right? But it doesn’t answer the most important question—the question people have been asking for four decades: If Cooper didn’t survive the jump, why was no trace ever found of his body?

  “The best explanation I can give you of that is just go look at those woods,” the former lead investigator replied.

  And that’s the FBI’s explanation. DB Cooper died in the jump, his body was claimed by some animal in the woods, and his clothing, parachute, and all the money were lost to time and the elements. As for why they don’t think he was a Northwest Airlines employee? They say he would’ve been recognized.

  Both of those are certainly explanations. They’re just not explanations I buy.

  Portrait of the Perpetrator

  Police sketches of DB Cooper show a man who bore no small resemblance to what Kenny Christiansen looked like. But did you know that Kenny wore a toupee? And get this: Kenny never wore the toupee again after the hijacking.

  Points On The Map

  Almost nine years after the hijacking—and 40 miles from Cooper’s supposed landing point—an eight-year-old boy found $5,800 in bills that matched the serial numbers of Cooper’s take.

  Let me say this: I have great respect for the FBI. But I think the FBI underestimated just how smart a guy DB Cooper was—and just how carefully he prepared his heist.

  He insisted that the pilot stay below 10,000 feet; any higher and they’d have to pressurize the cabin, making it even harder for Cooper to open the plane’s rear door and escape.

  He also asked that the flaps—y’know know those things on the wings that go up and down at takeoff and landing . . . ? He asked that those be set at exactly 15 degrees. Why? At that angle, the 727 couldn’t fly any faster than 200 mph, making it safer for Cooper to jump out.

  However you s
lice it, this guy knew what he was doing. He knew about planes, he knew how they worked, and he certainly used that knowledge to his advantage. Of course, I’m no expert on jumping from a jet aircraft. So we turned to someone who is.

  Decoded Team Report

  Scott: The “eureka” moment came after Buddy shoved me through the small opening in the roof that led to Kenny Christiansen’s attic. None of us, Brad included, believed we’d find anything this many years after Kenny had lived there. The only thing I noticed was some insulation had been moved around slightly. I could barely see it with my flashlight. Without really thinking about it, I sort of shoved the insulation back into place.

  That’s when I felt the top of a trapdoor of a hiding place that may indeed have hidden DB Cooper’s ill-gotten loot. My heart trembled as I opened the lid. While the hiding place was empty, I have no doubt that someone had made a small hiding place in that attic that was almost impossible to find. And the house was owned by a guy who was a trained paratrooper, worked for Northwest Orient Airlines, drank bourbon and smoked Raleighs (just like Cooper did), bought the house with cash, and apparently left a bundle of $20 bills hidden outside that were found by some kids years later.

  I’ve tried weaker cases and won them . . .

  Could He Have Survived?

  Larry Yount is a parachute expert with more than 200 military jumps and more than 4,000 civilian skydives.

  While he’s never jumped from a plane moving at 200 mph (civilian skydives are generally made from planes traveling at about 90 mph), he’s made military jumps from aircraft that are traveling at speeds up to 150 mph.

  So we asked him flat-out: When DB Cooper leaped from the plane, he had a bag of money weighing 22 pounds tied to his waist. Is that too much weight?