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D.B. Cooper documentary traces 4 suspects

By Douglas Perry, oregonlive.com
Published: November 26, 2020, 6:00am

The man jumped out of a Boeing 727 on Thanksgiving Eve in 1971. He had $200,000 in ransom and a parachute strapped to his body.

Nearly half a century later, we still don’t know the skyjacker’s identity or his whereabouts, and it’s highly unlikely we ever will. But true-crime aficionados just can’t give up the ghost.

And what does this pop-culture fame do to those who get sucked into the unsolved case? John Dower’s compelling documentary “The Mystery of D.B. Cooper” (HBO, premiered Nov. 25) zeroes in on four well-known suspects in the hijacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305 — and on those who continue to carry the torch for them.

D.B. Cooper has “used up a lot of good years that I could have put somewhere else, that I should have put somewhere else,” Jo Weber says early in the feature-length film.

Jo’s late husband Duane, a World War II veteran and petty criminal, told her on his deathbed that he was “Dan Cooper” — the name under which the skyjacker bought a $20 ticket for Flight 305. This hospital confession came in 1995, and it launched Jo on a quest to prove Duane’s skyjacking bona fides.

“The Mystery of D.B. Cooper” adroitly sums up the skyjacking case, putting the spotlight on the crime and its cultural impact. Dower, director of the Peabody Award-winning documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” showcases interviews that take us right to the heart of things.

William Rataczak, the co-pilot of the Portland-to-Seattle flight that Cooper hijacked, breaks down how the crime unfolded from his vantage point inside the cockpit.

Tina Mucklow, the flight attendant who sat with Cooper on the plane, offers insights into the skyjacker himself.

Bill Mitchell, the man who sat across the aisle from Cooper on the flight, also weighs in.

Author Bruce Smith argues that the FBI’s missteps early in the investigation proved costly, most notably the disappearance of physical evidence that years later might have identified the skyjacker through DNA.

But “The Mystery of D.B. Cooper” isn’t really about the people who were on Northwest Orient Flight 305 or even the FBI agents who tried — and failed — to find and arrest the skyjacker. (The federal law-enforcement agency closed the case in 2016.)

It’s about those who claim a personal connection to Cooper.

Smith, the best talking head in the film, points out that the people who insist they knew the one true D.B. Cooper need to believe it because their connection to the case gives them “validation.”

Adds Dower: “These people all have a D.B. Cooper-shaped hole in their lives.”

Sitting on a well-used couch in their home, the enthusiastic Ron and Pat Forman expound on how they came to suspect that their friend Barbara Dayton was the skyjacker. (Dayton, who died in 2002, was known as Bobby before a sex change.) One night, they say, Dayton confessed to them: “OK, I’m D.B. Cooper.”

The dreamy-eyed Marla Cooper makes the case for her late uncle L.D. Cooper being the criminal. She lays out childhood memories of her relative, a logger and Navy veteran, showing up battered and bruised at her parents’ home that Thanksgiving.

Ben Anjewierden relates how his friend and colleague Richard McCoy talked constantly about the D.B. Cooper caper in the weeks after it hit the news. McCoy’s 1972 hijacking of a United Airlines flight mimicked the Cooper crime; two years later, McCoy died in a shootout with FBI agents after escaping from prison.

“The Mystery of D.B. Cooper” won’t convince you that any of the highlighted suspects were actually involved in the skyjacking. It doesn’t even try. Instead, the doc will make you want to figure out how to fill in any D.B. Cooper-shaped holes you might have in your own life.

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