Take the Money & Run: The Vanishing of D.B. Cooper

By Chris Williamson

Take the Money & Run: The Vanishing of D.B. Cooper is the second book in the Vanished series from podcaster and author Chris Williamson. Based on the popular podcast Vanished, Take the Money & Run is a globe trotting, mind bending historical mystery that begins on Thanksgiving Eve 1971, when one of avi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Williamson
• Release date: Nov 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986373980

Book preview

TAKE THE MONEY & RUN

THE VANISHING OF D.B. COOPER

CHRIS WILLIAMSON

Copyright © 2022 MadHouse Films LLC.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [e-mail]

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Vanessa Marie, we did it.

This book is for you.

I love you forever and ever.

CONTENTS

Prologue

Forward | The Cooper Vortex

Darren Schaefer

Thanksgiving Eve, 1971

A Dark Horse

Trial by Jury

Exhibits

1 Year Later: A Retrospective Series

Afterword

Bruce Smith

Investigation Notes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Chris Williamson

PROLOGUE

"It all comes down to power. Control of the narrative. If there was a rogue operation at work, no one wants that to come out, ever. Think Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, etc.

Or the FBI has something on the crew- could be simple shit, like a crew member getting a free pass on a DUI, or Tina feeling lousy because she had to lie to keep the NWO looking good, ie: the chaos aboard 305 during the flight. Or death threats from a crazy covert operative like Braden. Maybe Singlaub told everyone to STFU.

You pick it. There's a thousand possibilities. You're beginning to know the players. You're reading the conflicting and strange testimonies.

Why was Ted released from Ft. Dix in the manner that he was - now extrapolate on that.

Add a dose of crazy. Sprinkle in bureaucratic stupidity. Stir with political backstabbing. Pour over a pile of money. Mix in media confusion.

Voila: D.B. Cooper.

Welcome to America, dude." 

- Bruce Smith

The following text, is a theoretical account of the events that occurred on Thanksgiving Eve of 1971 and thereafter. Although the FBI officially closed their case in 2016, the outside investigation into the identity of the man known as D.B. Cooper remains unresolved.

FORWARD | THE COOPER VORTEX

DARREN SCHAEFER

"They call it the Cooper vortex because once you get sucked in, you can't escape" was a statement I kept hearing.

Why am I doing this? That’s a question I ask myself all the time. That D.B. Cooper thing happened 14 years before I was born. I’m not a skydiver or a pilot, I’ve never been in law enforcement or the military, and I’m not a true crime fan.

So why have the last six years of my life been consumed by D.B. Cooper?

I don’t know why I’m doing this. If I wouldn’t have started the podcast, I wouldn’t be talking about D.B. Cooper with anyone, and I definitely wouldn’t be writing this. I think I can say that with confidence.

Well, probably not.

Is the podcast the reason I’m still in the vortex or is the vortex the reason I’m still doing the podcast? That's a chicken and the egg kinda thing I guess. To quote my good friend Chris Williamson This is something I’ve tried walking away from multiple times. He was talking about Amelia Earhart there but it perfectly applies to my life in the vortex.

Let's start with the vortex because I don’t want to rehash the details of the hijacking—I’ll let Chris do that.

What is the Cooper Vortex? We call it the Cooper Vortex because once you get sucked in, you can’t escape. When I really got into D.B. Cooper, people kept saying that to me. That perfectly describes the group of people that obsess over this case.

Shoutout to Mark Meltzer for coining that term.

That sounds a bit ridiculous on its face, but in my experience it's true. I can’t fully explain why, but I’ll try anyway. This a wild case full of crazy details, wild twists and turns, mysterious people, unsolved murder, money, and a man jumping out of a plane at night never to be seen again. What a great story!

The problem is there is no beginning to the story, or an end, and we don’t know who the main character really is. D.B. Cooper only exists for a few hours, his story starts at 2:50 PM on November 24th 1971 and ends somewhere around 8:13 PM that same day. If you’d like to know more about this man or woman. [Chris, you’d better cover that], then you have to know the answer to the question we’ve wondered about for over 50 years. Who was D.B. Cooper?

TO ME THIS STORY IS LIKE THE BEST BOOK YOU’VE EVER READ, BUT HALF THE BOOK IS WRITTEN IN A CODE THAT NO ONE CAN CRACK.

The first time I heard about D.B. Cooper would have been 1993ish. My sister and I were watching a rerun of Unsolved Mysteries. As soon as we heard Robert Stack say Portland, Oregon our curiosity was piqued. That's close to where we live! We both shouted that at each other while watching the five year old episode on our 27" Zenith Console TV. It was a very exciting story. Was he still out in the woods a few miles from our house, or did he get away with it? I was 8 years old at the time so I wasn’t going to get to the bottom of that myself. 

Fast forward to 2015. I’d just turned 30 so, why not start obsessing over the only unsolved plane hijacking? I didn’t mean to do that, it just happened that way. I looked at my bookshelf for something interesting to have with me while traveling for work. Skyjack by Geoffrey Gray. My wife had bought it for me a few months prior. D.B. Cooper, this could be interesting, I told myself as I threw it in my carry-on bag. As cliche as it sounds, I couldn’t put it down.

It’s a great book.

Geoff takes you on a wild boots-on-the-ground journey into the Cooper vortex.

Spoiler alert, the book doesn’t end up solving the case.

In Skyjack, he references someone else working on a book of their own. I checked Amazon and that book had already been out for a few years by then, so I went ahead and ordered it. I started reading posts on the Dropzone and The D.B. Cooper Forum. In those moments, I began wading into the pool that is the Cooper vortex. If you find yourself in the same spot, know that that’s as far as you should go. Any further and it will become very hard to get out. I didn’t know any better at the time, so I kept going.

Now we’re in February 2018; I’ve read 15 books on D.B. Cooper, I’ve watched all the documentaries, and I’ve spent years just lurking on the forums. By this point it's fair to say I’m pretty well versed on NORJAK. [NORJAK is the name the FBI assigned to the Northwest Orient hijacking.]

See, I told you I was well versed.

I had just started a new gig where I worked completely alone. I started listening to podcasts and talk radio 40-60 hours a week. There is a podcast for whatever you can think of, so I typed what I wanted to hear about into my Apple Podcasts search bar; D.B. Cooper. To my surprise, there were about 40 shows that had done an episode on exactly that. I was stoked! I listened to all of them in a week, and I wasn’t impressed. Very quickly, I’d start fast forwarding their explanation of the hijacking and just listening to their opinion on suspects or jump survivability.

IT WASN’T WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR.

I wanted to hear long form interviews with the authors of the books I was reading, or some of the people arguing about this all day long on obscure internet forums.

SUDDENLY, I HAD AN IDEA. I’LL CREATE MY OWN PODCAST.

It was an idea I’d tossed around in my head for a few weeks. I even told a few of my friends about it, one of which laughed in my face.

Remember that Eric?!

If I’m going to do a long form interview show about D.B. Cooper, I need to have someone to interview. I’m totally unknown to these people, and even though I’ve been reading the forums for years now, I’ve never posted anything. I emailed five people living in Washington state to see if they’d be willing to be on my show that didn’t exist yet. I told myself, "If two out of these five people say ‘yes,’ then I’ll make the show."

All five said yes.

SO, AT THIS POINT, I GOOGLED ‘HOW TO START A PODCAST’, BOUGHT SOME GEAR, AND HIT THE ROAD.

I planned on calling the show The D.B. Cooper Podcast, because I’m a creative genius. During those first five interviews they kept using the phase The Cooper Vortex. By the eighth time I’d heard that, I knew that's what I had to name the show. With the help of my good friend Russell Colbert, our show launched in October 2018.

THE ORIGINAL PLAN WAS TO DO ABOUT 20 EPISODES AND MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE. HOW MUCH CAN ONE MAN TALK ABOUT D.B. COOPER? 70 PLUS EPISODES LATER, RUSSELL AND I ARE STILL DOING THE SHOW.

Before this becomes my book, I guess I should say something about Chris Williamson. I got an email in August of 2020 from a guy who said he was going to start working on a D.B. Cooper project and he wanted to know if I’d be willing to be a guest. I said that I’d love to, and I told him to give me a call. I looked him up and I realized that he had done with Amelia Earhart, what I was doing with D.B. Cooper.

How cool is that?!

He gave me a call the next day and explained his plan to me. I didn’t like it at all. He was going to cover a controversial suspect that is pushed by a specific team of people. I instantly became unsure of Chris’ motivation, and I was uneasy about participating. Chris seemed a little surprised by my reaction, but I gave him my reasoning behind it. A week later he called me with a totally new plan and I was stoked about it.

Over the next few months I heard from others in the vortex Have you heard about this thing Chris Williamson is working on?

I actually started to get nervous.

Is this Amelia Earhart punk trying to steal my thunder?

His Vanished series on D.B. Cooper came out on the 50th Anniversary of the skyjacking. I listened to it that night. It was brilliant and I loved every second of it. The rest of the vortex agreed.

Now, this same Amelia Earhart punk is asking for my help with his new D.B. Cooper book. Lucky for Chris, and you the reader, I’m glad to help this time. I’ve become a big fan of Chris’ work. If you picked up this book and you aren’t a fan of his, I’m sure you will be by the time you put it down.

- Darren Schaefer | Fall 2022

THANKSGIVING EVE, 1971

Anniversaries are fun.

If you’ve followed our podcast Vanished you know that we kind of make a big deal of those around here. January 5th, 1939—after vanishing over the pacific ocean alongside her navigator Fred Noonan, icon Amelia Earhart is declared dead in absentia. August 31st, 1888—the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered at 3:40 AM in Whitechapel...officially beginning Jack the Ripper’s Autumn of Terror. April 14th, 1865—President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth leading to a nationwide manhunt just after the end of the Civil War. 

Those dates are important because they tell stories. Stories that have been expanded upon and investigated thoroughly to this day. And that brings us to this moment.

NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE CAN BECOME HISTORICALLY ASSOCIATED WITH A VERB. BUT OUR NEXT SUBJECT CAN.

51 years ago tonight, a still unidentified man skyjacked a commercial airliner, demanded a $200 thousand dollar ransom (a little over 1.3 million today), and jumped out of that airliner into the darkness, never to be seen again.

HE HAS NO ENDING AND NO BEGINNING. HE EXISTED FOR ONLY A FEW SHORT HOURS, AND IN THAT TIME, HE COMMITTED THE PERFECT CRIME. HIS NAME IS ONLY AN ALIAS, BUT IT’S BECOME THE MOST FAMOUS ALIAS IN ALL OF AVIATION HISTORY.

51 years ago, an unassuming man jumps into history. He’s become a ghost. But now, perhaps finally, we’ll have a name to go with that ghost. 

If you know our show and you’ve already read my first book Rabbit Hole, you’ll know how important Jennifer Taylor is. I was looking forward to having her expertise on the D.B. Cooper case for this book, but as I was gearing up to begin my investigation, I received a voicemail that changed the trajectory of this case for me.

Jennifer Taylor

Hey, Chris, just checking in. It looks like you're gonna have to do this one on your own.

AS MUCH FUN AS IT WOULD BE, I HAVE MORE PRESSING ISSUES THAN D.B. COOPER TO DEAL WITH IN THE SOUTHWEST REGION.

Let me know if you uncover anything. We'll talk soon.

Chris Williamson

Southwest Region? Well, at any rate, it looks like you're stuck with me for this one. So let's get into it.

I've been out of the game for a long time. At the time I’d recorded the following interviews, we hadn’t recorded in the better part of a year. But Cooper had been looming. With the recent passing of the 50th anniversary, I figured I’d better warm up. The best way to put a series like this together is to start talking. Begin that discussion. And of course, I have plenty of friends I can call on to give me their perspectives on what I'm about to do.

I DON'T THINK ALL CRIMES COMMITTED ARE COMMITTED BY VIOLENT CRIMINALS. SOMETIMES THEY'RE JUST DESPERATE PEOPLE AT THE END OF THEIR ROPE. THEY’RE SO DESPERATE AND DOWNTRODDEN, THEY FEEL BOTH HOPELESS AND HELPLESS. THEY'RE WILLING TO DO ANYTHING. MAYBE THAT'S WHERE HE WAS AT. - ANGEL MAYES

Chris Williamson

When you and Nikki were running Color Me Dead you focused very heavily on the true crime genre, and you've covered some really horrendous cases.

Angel Mayes

Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson

I got a little sample of that when we covered Ripper to open season two of Vanished. So in essence, D.B. Cooper fits your MO simply by this story being a true crime story. What have you heard about this case? When do you first remember hearing about Cooper?

Angel Mayes

When I was a young lady in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time at clubs and raves. There was a place called D.B. Cooper’s; It was a bar that had a basement they’d sublease for private events. I remember asking somebody, Oh, is D.B. Cooper the owner? They laughed, and said, You don't know who that is?! They gave me the cliff notes version; he was this really famous hijacker who pulled this crazy heist, got all this money and then leapt out of a plane with his fortune never being found. Well, okay, now I’ve actually got to find out what this guy did and how much money he really got.

Chris Williamson

Right.

Angel Mayes

I honestly just hopped online, and I looked at Wikipedia. So I only have a basic knowledge.

Angel Mayes was one half of the very popular Color Me Dead podcast. She and her co host Nikki immersed themselves in true crime; covering some of the most horrific cases you'll ever hear.

While Cooper is out of the league of people they investigated, Angel always has a very straightforward approach to everything she looks at. That's what made her the perfect person to start this long walk with.

Chris Williamson

What I really want to ask you is the same question I asked Forrest Burgess from Astonishing Legends when he sat in with me during our Ripper series. Cooper is a guy who hijacks a plane, essentially putting the lives of dozens of people at risk. There were 36 passengers on the flight in addition to the flight crew. Cooper was passenger 37. Certainly the flight crew was still at risk once the passengers were eventually deplaned. I’ve been trying to figure out what his mindset must have been because he's cool and calm the entire time. He even includes food for the crew as one of his ‘demands.’ A woman by the name of Tina Mucklow, who was a stewardess on the plane and spent four to five hours with him, said that he was never mean; he was never rude. In fact, he never said an unkind word to anyone. At the same time, he's committing an act of air piracy. It's potentially a heinous act, if things get really dark. What must the mindset be for someone that can stay that calm, cool, and collected, while potentially having to do something horrendous at any moment should things go south?

Angel Mayes

That reminds me of a movie, and also a case that Nikki and I covered from 1975 called Dog Day Afternoon. That was based on a true story—same thing, the guys went in and it was a difficult situation for them. It’s a crime that they committed and it did go horrendously wrong, but it was done out of desperation, and love. It was a means to an end.

Chris Williamson

Right.

Angel Mayes

He was good and kind to the employees in the bank. At one point in time, he had pizza delivered for them. I don't think all crimes committed are committed by violent criminals. Sometimes they're just desperate people at the end of their rope. They’re so desperate, and downtrodden that they feel hopeless and helpless. They're willing to do anything. Maybe that's where he was at.

Chris Williamson

Piggybacking off of that, our advisor for this series, Darren Schaefer, who runs the Cooper Vortex podcast, told me that right now as it stands, he's around 90% certain that the bomb Cooper had was not real. Readers will get to that in a bit. It got me thinking and I wanted to ask you this: does that fact add to his intelligence level or his ability to keep a cool head when it comes to pulling this off? He’s the only one that knows there's no real threat if he's using a fake bomb. Does that change anything for you?

Angel Mayes

It does because I think he goes in there with the mindset of not wanting any casualties.

He doesn’t want anybody hurt.

At the end of the day, he’s not doing this because he’s a hateful, evil, violent, aggressive person. People get desperate. Sometimes, people will go in and try to rob a gas station by sticking what appears to be a weapon in their jacket. Maybe they’ll go so far as to use a replica pistol or something that’s not loaded. It doesn't have a firing pin, things like that. Bottom line, it's not going to work, but it gives them the appearance of being in control. It gives them the appearance of having the upper hand. I’ve got this weapon, I can hurt you really bad if I wanted to. Deep down, they don't want to do any of that.

BUT THEY NEED PEOPLE TO THINK IT’S POSSIBLE.

Chris Williamson

Darren mentioned that if there was an Air Marshal on board or someone to call his bluff, it could have gone south really fast for him.

Angel Mayes

Right. In an instance where an Air Marshal is ultimately responsible for everybody on that plane, the likelihood of them taking that risk though is low.

"I DON'T KNOW THAT A RESPONSIBLE HUMAN BEING PUT IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY WOULD TEMPT FATE