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During the weaning hours of Thanksgiving Eve 1971, a Boeing 727 leaves Portland bound for Seattle.

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This plane and its passengers will become the most infamous skyjacking in American history.

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A man called D.B. Cooper by the news media jumped from the plane over dense forests carrying four parachutes and $200,000.

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Why is the crime still unsolved? Who is Cooper? Where is the money today?

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The day before Thanksgiving 1971 was busy as usual for air traffic. The air corridor between Portland and Seattle was crowded.

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By mid-afternoon, the bulk of departing passengers had left Portland International Airport.

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At approximately 2 o'clock, a man calling himself Dan Cooper arrived at one of the seven entrances to the terminal.

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As recreated for in search of, he passed anonymously through the 2,500 people who still remained.

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Flight 305, a milk run originating in Washington, D.C., was on schedule for its quick stopover in Portland.

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Dan Cooper purchased the ticket with cash for the last leg of the flight, Portland to Seattle.

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The airline clerk who sold him his ticket did not take any special notice of Cooper.

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Later, through an error in newspaper reporting, he was incorrectly identified as D.B. Cooper, not Dan Cooper, a mistake which often continues to this day.

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At 2.30, boarding began for flight 305. Cooper was the 36th passenger to board the plane.

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Loading of both cargo and passengers was complete by 2.45.

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The 727 carrying Cooper and his fellow passengers swung out onto the airport runways in the early twilight.

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Portland Tower cleared flight 305 for takeoff at 2.58 p.m.

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The plane was lifting off when Cooper approached the stewardess and gave her a note.

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It demanded $200,000 in $20 bills and four parishes.

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Everything was to be delivered to him when the plane landed in Seattle.

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The Skyjacker, calling himself Cooper, was the first American to hold a plane and its passengers for ransom.

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He established the dangerous precedent of air piracy for financial extortion, which is still copied by many terrorists today.

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But in Cooper's case, it was an act of pure greed. It was not a social protest, not an outcry for political justice.

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Cooper's only motivation was the money.

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The way in which he carried out his crime was coldly calculated.

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He reinforced his demands by opening a briefcase and showing the stewardess what appeared to be a bomb.

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The stewardess reported directly to the captain, who then communicated the Skyjacker's demands to the airlines and the FAA.

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Ralph Himmelsbach, an FBI veteran with 29 years service, was notified of a skyjacking in progress.

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Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle normally takes 36 minutes. This day, it would last more than two hours.

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Two of the passengers on that flight were Richard and Barbara Simmons.

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They had asked us to remain in our seats. And of course, after two hours in the air, I felt an urge to go back to the men's restroom and got up and walked down the aisle.

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And noticed the expression of the stewardess was rather horrified.

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She glanced first at me walking up the aisle and then at B.B. Cooper and at the handbag by his side.

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And then back at me again as if, why are you doing what you're doing?

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But as I walked past her into the men's room, he turned around and looked very intently at me.

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And I got a pretty good look. I thought it rather strange that he was that interested in me.

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And so I got a pretty good impression of him. He was very alert and very much in command of the situation.

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He knew what was going on and he was watching carefully every move of every passenger.

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Meanwhile, law enforcement officers and airline officials were now preparing to meet Cooper's demands.

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General Kossi, a parachutist with 16 years experience and 3,200 jumps to his credit, was asked to supply the four parachutes Cooper wanted.

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By 3.34, Captain Robert Scott was circling the Seattle Tacoma International Airport while airline officials collected the $200,000 from a group of Seattle banks.

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Kossi was quickly preparing the parachutes to be delivered to Cooper.

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By mistake, one was a ground training shoot with his panel sewn shut, thus making it defective.

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At FBI headquarters, a furious effort was being made to record each serial number on the $10,020 bills that would comprise a ransom demanded by Cooper.

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A plane finally landed in Seattle at 5.46 p.m. It was brought to a remote area of the runway.

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When we finally did land, we landed way off in the forest into the field, which I felt was just a way that showed that he had engineered things so that there was just no possible thing that could have gotten in his way.

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He allowed the passengers to be unloaded but kept them grouped out on the airport for close to 45 minutes in the wind, in the cold, in the rain.

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And a car met the airplane with the parachute and the money and we were rumored that that was there.

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But none of us were allowed to leave until that had all taken place and then we were allowed slowly to walk across the airfield.

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The flight crew and Cooper remained aboard the aircraft.

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At 7.36 p.m., the plane, refueled and prepared for flight, headed south in low clouds, wind and showers.

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Cooper demanded that the landing gear be kept down and displaying basic flight knowledge.

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He also ordered the wing flaps set at 15 degrees to slow the jet speed.

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The Air Force scrambled jet fighters from McCord Air Force Base near Tacoma to follow the plane from a safe distance.

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Trying to find and follow a low-flying 727, even with radar vectors, is like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

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About 20 minutes later, Cooper ordered the entire crew to stay locked in the front of the plane.

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At 8.11 p.m., the crew felt a sudden change in the pressure throughout the plane.

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Because of the inclement weather, no one, including the Air Force jets, ever saw Cooper jump or a chute open.

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The territory in which Cooper jumped was to be searched by planes, helicopters and trackers on foot.

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Both Washington and Oregon possessed some of the most impenetrable forests in the country.

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That Cooper would pick these areas may provide clues to his identity.

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For the present, all we have is an artist's rendering of his face.

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Who was Cooper?

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Why has this sky-jacking been deviled investigators for so long?

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We will have to retrace the crime and analyze the incredibly complex strategy Cooper might have plotted.

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Meteorologists, expert parachutists and the crew of Flight 305 were all questioned.

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That data and flight-law information were fed into FBI computers.

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The FBI concluded that Cooper jumped in a 4x6 mile area near Merwin Dam.

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Merwin Dam, 313 feet high and 1,250 feet wide.

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It holds back the Lewis River in order to create Lake Merwin.

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When Cooper jumped, the dam was crowned with a series of brilliant lights.

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If Cooper could have caught some glimpse through the cloud layers, he would have been provided with an unmistakable landmark.

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He would have known exactly where he was.

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Les Nelson, sheriff of Cowlitz County, the supposed Cooper landing site,

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assisted FBI agents in coordinating the search by procuring a helicopter from Warehouser Paper Company in Longview, Washington.

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We searched the area up the Lewis River to the south into Clark County,

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and north side into Cowlitz County and made several passes.

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We ran for several days there with an intensified search initially with patrol cars and some foot patrol,

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but basically just the overflight of both fixed wing and helicopters.

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We have had experience in the past with downed aircraft, searching for different individuals,

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and we have had comparatively good success at spotting people from the air who were lost or incidents where we've had plane crashes.

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It's my belief that had this man made a safe jump and had pulled the ripcord on that chute and it had blossomed out,

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we would have easily have spotted it from the air.

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But if the chute caught in the trees and hung vertically, the chances for finding Cooper would have been minuscule.

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Searchers would have been looking for a one square foot white splotch in the more than 24 square miles they were searching.

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Cooper could not have landed in a more inhospitable place. The landscape is laced with bogs and thickets.

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Is it possible that just such a setting helped Cooper instead of hindering him?

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Frank Heil is a survival school expert who trains men working on the Alaskan Pipeline.

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He is convinced that given the proper background, Cooper could easily survive in the wilderness.

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I like to feel that with the clothing that I have on my back and the tools of survival that I carry in my pocket,

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that I could live indefinitely out here.

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Now these tools of survival can be of course concealed in your pockets.

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No one would even know that you had them and maybe this is what Cooper did.

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This area that supposedly Cooper came down in would be in my way of thinking an ideal area. I'd selected myself.

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La Center, Washington, population 420, a tiny farming community nestled in a pine forest.

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It and another town, Ariel, were the closest to the supposed drop site.

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On the night of November 24, 1971, Cooper could have passed through the town unnoticed

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because everyone had crammed into the evangelical free church to attend the wedding of their popular high school music teacher.

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While it is most likely that Cooper was not from southwestern Washington, it is possible that he knew the area and that he knew about the wedding.

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There is more. One highly questionable report concerns a light plane.

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People in this area claim that a small plane intermittently crisscrossed the skies over lonely farm fields near Ariel and La Center for a week preceding Cooper's jump, sometimes rendezvousing with a car.

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A mystery of who Cooper is may be unlocked by the man totally dedicated to finding the skyjacker.

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Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent, still searches the area in his own plane.

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He believes Cooper was incapable of the intricate planning needed for the skyjacking.

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He was a desperate man, possibly had a criminal background. He was probably not very well educated.

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He may have been in a service capacity. He was wearing the type of clothing that would be worn by perhaps a bartender or a waiter.

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We don't know who he was, where he came from, or where he went.

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We may learn more about Cooper from the type of shoot he chose.

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Earl Kossy, demonstrating the normal freestyle parachute, explains.

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The type of parachute that the FBI used was a 28-foot parachute in a military type container.

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And this type of container in harness would be very, very difficult as far as finding the ripcord goes.

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In selecting this type of parachute, it would seem that he had some military background.

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He would encounter numerous problems. Number one, as he exited the airplane, he's likely to go unstable, which would also cause him some problems in reaching and locating and finding his ripcord.

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Aside from the fact that it was a night, since it's rainy and windy, if he got the parachute open, then the problems of the parachute would be very difficult.

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His landing would come up. I'm just sure if he pulled the ripcord, he made it.

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The sketchy evidence leads us to a peculiar but quite plausible conclusion.

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During the Vietnam War, 727s were extensively used. They turned up at both civilian and military terminals, carrying supplies and personnel.

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The 727 pilots were drawn from both Air Force and civilian sources. Cooper could have been any one of these pilots.

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If so, he would have had a familiarity with military parachutes and survival techniques.

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Who was Cooper? Dr. David Hubbard, a psychiatrist and leading authority on the psychology of skyjackers, has interviewed most of the individuals who've been apprehended for skyjacking.

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Hubbard has drawn a personality portrait of who he thinks Cooper is.

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As an individual, it was a personal failure who had lost the capability of earning a living in our society.

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In actual fact, Cooper was an early, middle-aged, mentally deteriorated ex-aircraft pilot.

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He had flown clearly in the Vietnamese War and had undoubtedly taken part in the air drops in which the tailgate of a 727 was used for dropping material.

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The evidence suggests that Cooper must have had military experience to be able to plan and successfully execute such a crime.

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Some experts consider this theory irrelevant, insisting that Cooper never even survived his jump.

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Seven years after Cooper committed the first American skyjacking, a scrap of evidence of his possible survival was found.

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Carol Hicks is a hunter and woodsman.

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While hunting with my hunting partner, I took off chasing a herd of elk.

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As I was going through the woods, chasing these elk, which I never saw, of course, I was going through the brush and lo and behold, there this piece of plastic was with some writing on it.

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I noticed that it was an emergency exit plaque.

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Of course, we collect the trash and stuff that we find in the woods, so I folded it up and put it in my pocket.

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The thought wasn't there about Cooper's plane, but I knew it was off an emergency exit off of the plane.

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I returned to where we started while emptying my pockets into a trash container there.

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I remember this was in my uppermost pocket and I showed it to my hunting partner.

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We decided that we should turn it over to the Sheriff's Department.

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My personal thoughts are that when Mr. Cooper opened the door on the back of that jet, that he was sucked out and fell to a very, very cold death somewhere up in the mountains there.

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For an instant in February 1979, the police and FBI thought they had their man.

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35-year-old Robert Wesley Rackstraw, arrested by the police on unrelated charges, was at first connected with the skyjacking.

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A few days later, law enforcement officers admitted he was completely cleared of the crime.

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To this day, Cooper, who he is, where he is, and where the $200,000 are, remain a mystery.

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The FBI's Ralph Himmelsbach admits that Cooper's true identity is still unknown.

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He had to have been someone, he had to have had friends, family, associations, perhaps a job.

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He's missing. We don't know any more about him really now than we knew at that time.

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I expect that we'll keep looking from now on until we find him or find out what happened.

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We have a long memory. We build our reputation on perseverance.

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I can see no reason that would stop us from continuing the investigation to its conclusion.

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A federal indictment has been handed down in Portland against Dan Cooper, John Doe, for air piracy and extortion.

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So far, not one dollar of the ransom has ever been found, nor the existence of a Dan Cooper ever been proven.

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Coming up next in Search of continues with a probe into the disappearance of mob connected union leader Jimmy Hoffa.

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Then agents investigating the murder of radio DJ Alan Berg uncover a white supremacist conspiracy.

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On FBI, the Untold Stories, and later tonight, Histories Mysteries investigates the case of Ted Hall,

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the teenager who gave away the atom bomb secret to the Soviets, at 8 here on the History Channel, where the past comes alive.

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