HomePaper MoneyD.B. Cooper - The Getaway Money - Video

D.B. Cooper – The Getaway Money – Video

At the 2018 Florida United Numismatists (FUN) Convention, Paper Money dealer Ethan Thomaston exhibited several banknotes connected to notorious airline hijacker D.B. Cooper.

D.B. Cooper, or a man using the name as an alias, hijacked a Boeing 727 airliner bound for Seattle, Washington on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 24, 1971. Armed with a device that he claimed was a bomb, Cooper informed a flight attendant of his demands. He wanted $200,000 in cash and a parachute.

Quickly, federal authorities assembled a ransom of 10,000 $20 bills, making a microfilm photograph of each of them, according to investigative author Ralph P. Himmelsbach. The bills and the parachute were given to cooper in exchange for the release of the passengers onboard.

What happened next has fueled unending speculation. Cooper instructed a skeleton crew of just four airline staff to take off on a Southwestern heading. Unbeknownst to the hijacker, the plane was tailed by two military jets. At approximately 7:40 am, Cooper opened the aft door with his ransom money in hand and jumped to an uncertain fate.

In 1980, a group of torn and tattered notes were discovered by an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram while he was vacationing with his family on the Columbia River. Ingram discovered three packets of ransom cash and afterwards turned the notes over to the FBI. In 1986, after prolonged negotiations, a small number of the bills were returned to Ingram, then 14 years old. Ingram sold 15 pieces of his found “treasure” at a 2008 Heritage Auction for about $37,000 USD.

In this video, you get to see what remains of the money that the notorious hijacker D.B. Cooper had on his person during this daring getaway attempt.

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Charles Morgan
Charles Morgan
Charles Morgan is an award-winning numismatic author and the editor and publisher of CoinWeek.com. Along with co-author Hubert Walker, he has written for CoinWeek since 2012, as well as the "Market Whimsy" column for The Numismatist and the book 100 Greatest Modern World Coins (2020) for Whitman Publishing. From 2021-2023, Charles served as Governor of the American Numismatic Association (ANA), where he was bestowed the Glenn Smedley Award. Charles is a member of numerous numismatic organizations, including the American Numismatic Society (ANS) and the Numismatic Literary Guild (NLG).

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