One the most famous crimes of the 1970′s took place in 1971 in the airspace over Washington State. A man who identified himself as Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines flight and demanded a ransom of $200,000. (That might not seem like much reward for the risk today, but when you adjust for inflation, Cooper was asking for what would be over a million dollars today, definitely improving the risk to rewards ratio.) After receiving his ransom, Cooper ordered the pilot to fly to Reno. At some point he jumped out of the plane and neither he nor most of the money he received was ever seen again.

Although just about everyone familiar with the case has a theory, the mystery of what exactly happened to Cooper and his money has never been solved. Obviously, it’s not a high profile case any more, but the FBI would still like to solve it. One of my favorite blogs, Investigation Discovery, got a copy of the FBI’s press release about the case and did a nice little write-up here, which is a good starting point for getting to know the tale.

Like a lot of people, I think Cooper died the night he jumped from the plane, although I’ve never fully made up my mind if I think he thought he could actually make it or if that point he realized that the odds of getting away with his crime were really slim and considered parachuting into the darkness to be his version of going down fighting. What do you think?