Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper's parachute found

36 years after he jumped from a hijacked plane with a bag containing $200,000 in ransom, D.B. Cooper's whereabouts remain unknown. But his parachute was discovered yesterday.

If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery -- where he apparently landed -- but it will raise another, Carr said.
In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.
"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole theory is out the window."

Link (Via Reason)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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DRayMorton

Now if only we could find Dale Cooper’s Annie….
jmatthew3

I thought this was resolved already. I thought we all knew that D.B. Cooper was really Jimmy James (Stephen Root)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0740535/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper_in_popular_culture
akbar56

baltimoregal and jmatthew3, while Johnny Johnson may have had the proof about Jimmy James, we all know Adam West is the REAL DB Keebler.
hlkneedler

There was an interesting indie film called THE SKYJACKER based on this incident at the Rotterdam Film Festival this year. Worth a look if you are into Cooper.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/ned/search/film.aspx?id=6e588139-437f-441d-ba4f-26d823280989
jeblis

Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper’s parachute might have been found
Dead Air

Mark, we look to Boing Boing to be less sensationalist than the regular news – not moreso. I read this story already on Yahoo news and when I saw your headline, I got excited that more had been found out. But it hasn’t as of yet, now has it.
drewstarr

Jeblis already jumped in w/ what I was going to say.
For those reading BB over RSS, the headline is as misleading as these headlines would be:
Shroud of Turin proved real
Al Capone’s vault full of goodies
TheFool

He could have planted the parachute there to throw investigators off (or just hid it far away from where he landed, just in case it was found). Same with the money found in the 80′s in the river. This is not a big area, and most of it is suburban Portland, easy to travel around. Also, the most likely suspects over the years have all been from the area and know it or could have hung around planting or hiding evidence here and there.
Aaron

What #16 said. If Fox News had run that headline, they would have been (rightly) strung up by BB for sensationalism. But when BB runs a totally misleading headline, it just sits there.
Takuan

Heh! Suckers! Yep,$200K invested the right way sure has – uh,”would have”, paid off!

Aren’t criminals simply dreadful!
scottfree

Well, in the spirit of the headline, I propose a contest to make the most sensationalist story out of it. Best one wins at BB.
jeblis

Shroud of Turin proved real cloth
Al Capone’s vault full of imaginary goodies

Do I have to fix everything?

I doubt Mark meant to intentionally mislead with his headline, but this seems to occur a lot in the news.
mellowknees

Do you mean to tell me the one at the Wax Works Wax Museum in Newport Oregon in the DB Cooper display isn’t the REAL one? Ugh! I’m so disappointed.

(Sorry, had to make SOME comment…everyone else already stole my “you mean it MAY have been found” come-uppance comment…!)
maturin

more like….”A Parachute Was Found, Is Within the Realm of Possibility That It Was Cooper’s”
baltimoregal

That drawing doesn’t look anything like Jimmy James!
Antinous

Am I the only person who reads BB for entertainment? When I come here I want to read a ripping yarn with a lurid headline. If I want news, I’ll go to Al Jazeera.
semiotix

Oh, come on. Cooper’s done all the damage he can ever do (at least with respect to this particular caper, and probably in any sense ever again). At this point, pure conspiracy-theory/urban legend fun is all we have left, and the discovery of this parachute means there’s a LOT MORE of it to be had!

I insist that Mark change the headline to “CIA: suspicious radiation readings, French-Russian dictionaries discovered in vicinity of D.B. Cooper’s parachute.”
Frank_in_Virginia

Minor Correction:

Change:

If it is Cooper’s parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed —

To:

If it is a parachute, and it is Cooper’s, that may solve at least one mystery — where it was apparently found —
noen

Here’s mine:

“The Comments at BoingBoing were polite, kind and understanding today. Researchers are puzzled and have no explaination.”
Deidzoeb

I’m mostly concerned about how this affects the verisimilitude of the movie Without a Paddle.
scottfree

Semiotix,

‘Bigfoot tracks dated to the time of the hijacking surround parachute, revealing insight into Coopers true identity. Vancouver, at the same latitude of Loch Ness, and presumably on the migratory route of its monster, is a known hideout for shape shifters, wizards, and flying squirrel men, who are thought to be wanted by the FBI as accomplices to the hijacking, having caught up to the plane in ultralights and glided throuh open emergency exits into the cabin’.