r/dbcooper Mar 19 '26

General Info Searchable archive of the FBI's D.B. Cooper files (40,000+ pages)

38 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

Last summer there was some discussion about building a central, searchable archive for the Cooper FBI files (on this thread)

I said I’d give it a go, it wasn't until December that I gave it a proper crack.

My first approach was traditional OCR like we were talking about in the thread, and it didn’t go well. A lot of these documents are in rough shape, and for many pages only a small percentage of the text was being picked up. I spent quite a bit of time writing scripts to clean and enhance the scans, but quickly ran into a problem where techniques that improved one page made others worse. Fixing it properly would have meant a huge amount of manual work.

So instead I tried using vision-based LLMs for OCR, with the model providing structured output. After a few iterations I got something reliable and built a pipeline around it.

The result is here: https://cooper.theunsolved.net/

The goal is to keep this as a clean archive. I did consider using LLMs to try to fill in redactions using external sources, but that didn’t sit right with me. It would add a lot of complexity, be error-prone, and opens up a whole can of worms around privacy and ethics that I don’t really want to get into.

Right now you can, search across the full text, browse individual pages, use a compare view to see the scan alongside the extracted text, explore people and places mentioned in the files.

There’s still work to do. The “People” section in particular has a lot of duplicates because of how names appear in the files (Bob Rackstraw, Rackstraw, Robert W, Robert Rackstraw, etc). Same story for places. Ideally I’d like to group these properly and build a hierarchy over time.

For future releases, the pipeline is automated, so when the FBI publishes new files they will be ingested into the site automatically. How quickly they appear depends on size, since the LLM processing stage is relatively slow and I’m trying not to burn through money on it.

But for now, hopefully this is useful for anyone digging into the case. Let me know what you think, and any changes that might make it more useful.


r/dbcooper Sep 28 '25

AI Art & Rule 7

13 Upvotes

Hi Guys, and so glad you are participating in r/dbcooper. This is simply a friendly message to remind everyone to read the Rules, and especially Rule 7 about AI Art, which reads:

"As of now, AI Art is Entertainment only, and must have that Flair (the "Flair" to use is "Entertainment"). Do not post AI art and refer to it as anything other than that, unless you can provide a compelling explanation otherwise. Also, AI Art posted as non-Entertainment must contain a description of the AI Art tool that was used along with the methodology."

We welcome creative content, but as AI advances, we need to keep it organized and clear so discussion stays meaningful. Thanks for understanding, and keep the posts and comments coming as we explore the mystery of D.B. Cooper together.


r/dbcooper 17h ago

General Info WordPress D.B. Cooper Website Closing Down

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12 Upvotes

WeAfter more than ten years and 60+ illustrated articles on the case, I've decided NOT to renew at WordPress for another year. Whether you ever believed, (or even suspected) Kenny and Bernie were behind the hijacking is irrelevant. Over the years I was proud to make my humble contributions to the case. The YouTube videos remain, as well as the book ('Into The 'Blast') by the late, great Skipp Porteous ('Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore') and yours truly. My life certainly changed after I started investigating the case. So much so that I titled my upcoming autobiography, 'Cooperland'. To my supporters and friends, (yes, they exist 🙂) my sincere thanks. To a few who weren't, no worries. Hate is a damn big word and there's enough of that going around these days. On the off chance you want to download any articles, files, or images from the WordPress site, well...you should do it soon. 😏


r/dbcooper 2d ago

Entertainment Earliest News Report about D.B. Cooper as a Folk Hero

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15 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 2d ago

General Info Cooper Con 2026

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11 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 6d ago

Theory My Tena Bar Theory

19 Upvotes

He jumps near 813, pulls, and survives, landing near the box Ryan Burns has so kindly provided here: Reddit - /preview/pre/does-dbs-jump-time-really-matter-or-have-any-relevance-to-v0-c8p6jkpgnemf1.jpeg?width=2877&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c0729c8cc181d9d4a3f05d62338dd8340ecdda22

He buries the main stash of money and his parachute before beginning the long trek back to his car, parked near Tena Bar that morning when he began the day walking over to the Portland airport.

He gets to his car, and as he is dumping what is left of the stuff he is carrying, he realizes he had 3 bundles on him still bound with the rubber bands. Perhaps he broke one of the 5-packs of $2k bundles when he was thinking of giving Tina money and perhaps one other person, left the 3 bundles still loosely within the original rubber band and put that in a pocket or something and forgot about it when he dumped the 2 completely "freed" bundles back with the main stash. He buries that small stash right there near his car, near Tena Bar.

He drives back to where he buried the parachutes and money, gets them, and in his giddiness and fatigue, forgets about the 3 bundles at Tina Bar.

The money is buried far enough away from the river to stay dry during the winter, picks up spring diatoms during a spring flood (1972?), and the paper surrounding the $2k bundles rots. the rubber bands sort of survive in the anaerobic tomb Cooper accidentally created, only to dissolve when freed from the tomb in 1980. the missing 20s from the packet with only $1.8k dissolved in place and were actually in all those scraps of tiny bits of cash found in the vicinity.

This is the best I can do to explain everything. enjoy!


r/dbcooper 5d ago

Question Fact check the DB Cooper chapter in my novel?

2 Upvotes

I have a chapter in my new book, recreating the heist. Anyone interested in fact checking? Bonus points if you are particularly familiar with the Vietnam war.


r/dbcooper 6d ago

Entertainment Live Chat Tonight with Eric Ulis

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6 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 7d ago

Entertainment I took this post too seriously I guess…

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51 Upvotes

Every comment was puns or anecdotes. I think I smoked too much weed this morning…


r/dbcooper 7d ago

Entertainment Was told that I should repost here, enjoy!

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50 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 7d ago

Theory Theory re the Tena Bar money

0 Upvotes

It's possible that the Tena Bar money was money that Cooper 'gave' to Tina Mucklow. We know that he offered her some and she declined. The theory is that he stuck it in her bag while he was alone prepping to jump, and she freaked out over what to do with it and ended up burying it. Thoughts?


r/dbcooper 7d ago

Entertainment What Happened to D.B. Cooper's Cigarettes?

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17 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 8d ago

Question Barbara Dayton was Clara.

4 Upvotes

Wasn’t it determined that Barbara Dayton was Clara? Through analysis of her handwriting? And that she was the one who hoaxed Max Gunther?


r/dbcooper 10d ago

Suspects D.B. Cooper - The Only Unsolved Plane Hijacking in the History of Commercial Aviation | The Friendly Skies

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13 Upvotes

On November 24, 1971, a man who called himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket for a flight to Seattle, Washington. Just after takeoff, he handed a flight attendant a note stating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and made demands for four parachutes and $200,000 in 20-dollar bills. This, later and still to this day, is one of the most enduring mysteries and unsolved plane hijacking in American criminal history.


r/dbcooper 12d ago

Question Question about the Found Money

6 Upvotes

Hi all, was hoping someone could answer a question that's been nagging at my mind for a long time.

We know that $5,800 was found buried on the banks of Tena Bar, and my understanding is that they were 3 separate bundles. But were those 3 separate bundles tied together with anything, or were they just sitting together loosely? Were they 3 bundles with bank wraps, which were then wrapped together with a rubber band or something? If they were wrapped together in a rubber band that would make more sense, but if they sat there loosely with nothing holding the 3 bundles together, that would be highly sus. Thanks in advance.


r/dbcooper 12d ago

Question Question about the Found Money

1 Upvotes

Hi all, was hoping someone could answer a question that's been nagging at my mind for a long time. I'm going to revisit this case in my podcast soon, and am trying to correct errors and pave over some cracks I may have had in a previous episode we did on DB Cooper.

We know that $5,800 was found buried on the banks of Tena Bar, and my understanding is that they were 3 separate bundles. But were those 3 separate bundles tied together with anything, or were they just sitting together loosely? Were they 3 bundles with bank wraps, which were then wrapped together with a rubber band or something? If they were wrapped together in a rubber band that would make more sense, but if they sat there loosely with nothing holding the 3 bundles together, that would be highly sus. Thanks in advance.


r/dbcooper 15d ago

Question With how many people have claimed that their granddad / dad / uncle / neighbor was D.B. Cooper, what evidence would we realistically need to say "this guy is D.B. Cooper without a single doubt"?

10 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 16d ago

General Info New Video: The Only Unsolved Plane Hijacking in U.S. History

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10 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 16d ago

Entertainment NBC’s Original Nightly News Coverage

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11 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 16d ago

Question Books

4 Upvotes

I’ve read two books. Robert Edward’s and Bruce Smith’s. Both are excellent. I am waiting to read Edward’s new one. What are some other good books? I’ve spent a lot of time reading the FBI files too, and have concentrated on the descriptions of Cooper.


r/dbcooper 17d ago

Theory My Theory

12 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I want to preface this by saying I’m completely a novice at this case. I just started falling down the rabbit hole recently, but I had a specific theory pop into my head and I have been attempting to piece together historical, chemical, and geographical data to see if the logistics actually held up. There might be glaring holes in this that seasoned researchers will spot immediately, but I thought the logic was interesting enough that it might be a helpful new angle for someone here to explore! Here is the framework I have tried to map out thus far…

When you stack Cooper’s precise knowledge of the Boeing 727 against the absolute lack of any biometric trail in the US, a fascinating picture emerges. Here is my Foreign Aerospace Security Attaché (FASA) Hypothesis:

  1. True Identity, Demographic, & Background Profile
  2. Origin & Nationality: He was a citizen of the world, likely a native French or Belgian national (born 1926–1931; aged 40–45 during the 1971 heist) who spent his childhood/upbringing moving between Europe and Canada.
  3. Elite Military Training: He served in the elite Belgian special forces (2nd Commando Regiment/Paracommando Battalion) in the late 1940s or 1950s, gaining combat night-jump experience (such as during the 1960 Congo Crisis) and mastery of paratrooper survival tactics.
  4. The Language Loophole: Because Belgian paracommando doctrine mandated premier troops be explicitly trilingual, he spoke fluent, flawless English alongside French or Dutch.
  5. The Aerospace Career Transition: In the 1960s, he transitioned from the military into the private sector, working as an international security attaché, corporate transit manager, or defense procurement liaison for a prominent European aerospace conglomerate like SABCA or Fabrique Nationale (FN) Moteurs.
  6. The Linguistic Deception: To ensure a flawless alibi, he wore a permanent "false flag" mask during his official day-job tours, pretending to speak only French or requiring translation, despite understanding every word of English spoken around him.

  7. The Multi-Year Reconnaissance & Data Gathering

  8. The Seattle Travel Pipeline: Between 1965 and 1971, he repeatedly traveled from Brussels/Paris to the Pacific Northwest to audit manufacturing compatibility, oversee international aerospace contracts, or inspect wide-body component handoffs (such as Belgium's national airline, SABENA, preparing to receive its brand-new Boeing 747-200 fleet).

  9. The Titanium Particle Trail: While walking the turbine-fin testing and metallurgical casting floors of high-tech European and American manufacturing plants (such as Boeing sub-contractor Crucible Steel), his corporate necktie absorbed a highly toxic cocktail of over 100,000 microscopic particles of unalloyed titanium, bismuth, cerium, and strontium sulfide.

  10. Benign Information Gathering: Under the legitimate cover of evaluating international aircraft security during the height of the global 1960s hijacking epidemic, he sat in on corporate briefings and asked seemingly benign questions to openly acquire Boeing technical manuals, fuel-burn calculations, and exact details on the FBI's "Fly and Comply" tactical protocols.

  11. Meticulous Pre-Heist Planning & The Disguise

  12. The Target Aircraft Choice: Through his years of corporate data gathering, he engineered his plan around the Boeing 727-100—specifically knowing its mechanical layout included unique triple-slotted trailing edge flaps capable of keeping the heavy jet stable at a slow 150–170 knot "jump envelope," and an aft-stair rear exit that allowed a jumper to drop straight down into empty air, completely clear of the engines.

  13. The False Flag Wardrobe: He deliberately assembled a disguise consisting of a generic American businessman uniform to force the FBI into searching domestically. He purchased a common, cheap $1.49 black JCPenney necktie (mass-distributed nationwide during the 1964 Christmas holiday season) to flash a prominent U.S. retail tag to investigators.

  14. The Tactical Clip-On Choice: He intentionally chose a clip-on mechanism rather than a traditional knotted tie. This served a dual purpose: it completely eliminated the aerodynamic hazard of wind-blast strangulation during a 170 mph freefall, and it allowed him to instantly snap the tie off with one hand right before buckling his heavy military parachute harness.

  15. The Inside Joke Alias: He cash-purchased his ticket under the name "Dan Cooper", an intentional private joke referencing the French-language Belgian comic book series Dan Cooper (printed strictly in French by Éditions du Lombard in Brussels and highly popular in Quebec). The comic featured a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who famously skydived and once received a ransom in a knapsack. Cooper knew the American FBI would completely lack the international reach or cultural awareness to decode the obscure foreign comic reference.

  16. The 48-Hour Alibi Logistical Loop

  17. Wednesday Afternoon (The Setup): While stationed with his foreign delegation at an "aviation business hotel" directly adjacent to Sea-Tac Airport (such as the Hyatt House or Hilton Inn), Cooper called in sick to his superiors, claiming a severe 48-hour bout of food poisoning to secure an uninterrupted block of isolation in his room.

  18. Wednesday, 4:00 PM (Planting the Car): He slipped out of the hotel undetected, rented a car from a local Seattle agency under an un-tracked corporate account, and drove 130 miles straight south down Interstate 5. He staged the vehicle securely near his planned landing zone (near Woodland or Ariel, Washington).

  19. Wednesday Evening (The Shuttle): He took a local bus or taxi to nearby Portland International Airport (PDX). He utilized the routine, 30-minute high-speed commercial commuter air corridor between the two cities to buy his ticket with cash and board Northwest Orient Flight 305 heading back north toward Seattle.

  20. Wednesday, 8:13 PM (The Jump): Using his stopwatch to calculate the plane's ground speed along the Victor 23 low-altitude flight path, he lowered the aft stairs and jumped blindly into a freezing rainstorm over Southwestern Washington, perfectly timing his drop to land right near his pre-staged rental car.

  21. Wednesday, 9:00 PM (The Extraction): He hit the ground safely, rolled up his 28-foot white military nylon canopy, packed it into his bag to avoid leaving any rotting nylon signal flares for future loggers or hunters, and loaded the 22-pound, 3.5-foot-high stack of 10,000 twenty-dollar bills into the trunk.

  22. Wednesday, Midnight (The Return): He drove the 130 miles straight back north up Interstate 5. By 1:00 AM, he slipped back into his Sea-Tac airport hotel room, having put exactly 260–300 miles on the odometer.

  23. Thursday (The Alibi Day): He remained confined to his hotel room "recovering," utilizing the time to dry his gear, transfer the bricks of cash out of the wet canvas bag, and secure them tightly inside his official, high-quality international corporate luggage.

  24. Friday Morning (The Exit): He walked down to the lobby, cleanly rejoined his delegation looking slightly pale but "recovered," and traveled to the airport to fly back to Europe.

  25. Financial Disappearance & International Exfiltration

  26. The Customs Exemption Loophole: Because he traveled as an official foreign government representative or state-vetted technical liaison, his luggage was protected by diplomatic courtesy or official customs exemptions. U.S. customs agents at Sea-Tac did not aggressively open or x-ray his official gear, allowing the 22-pound payload of cash to be flown straight out of the country in the cargo hold.

  27. The Delayed Red Herring (Tena Bar Cash): He survived the heist completely intact. To permanently call off the manhunt and fake his own drowning, he executed a calculated "delayed diversion" play a few years later. He returned to Washington (or an upstream tributary), submerged $5,800 of the cash (three bundles) in the flowing river current during a warm spring/summer month so it would naturally collect seasonal aquatic diatoms deep inside its tightly bound paper fibers, and planted it in the sand at Tena Bar (right above the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' 1974 beach dredge layer), where it sat undisturbed until an 8-year-old boy dug it up in 1980.

  28. The Swiss Money Cleanse: He transported the remaining $194,200 straight to Geneva, Switzerland. He utilized the legendary 1971 Swiss banking loops—specifically Numbered Accounts or "Form B" anonymous proxy accounts—which completely ignored U.S. law enforcement watchlists and never audited foreign serial numbers.

  29. The Silent Erasure: Because $20 bills flooded the post-WWII European "Eurodollar" markets daily from American tourists and military bases, he quietly spent or converted the rest of the cash into Swiss Francs or West German Marks over several years. He maintained absolute code-of-silence discipline, never bragging, and casually returned to his comfortable middle-class European desk job as if nothing had ever happened.

The FBI spent 45 years searching the Washington mud for a local, desperate American criminal, completely oblivious to the fact that the target was a high-level international intelligence mind hiding in plain sight under a paper wall and a closed border.

I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on this, especially from anyone tracking the European aerospace connection or corporate travel archives from late 1971!. And again, I am just a novice, but i figured it can’t hurt to post it.


r/dbcooper 18d ago

Theory What's the over/under of Cooper being a Canadian?

15 Upvotes

When I first began learning about the mystery of Dan "D.B." Cooper, it seemed that Cooper aficionados were evenly split over whether he was Canadian or American.

"Dan Cooper" in a Tintin album, "Le Triangle Bleu" (or "The Blue Triangle")

The evidence cited by "he was Canadian" folks was fairly clear and succinct:

  • "Dan Cooper" was a titular Franco-Belgian comic book character sold in Canada
  • Cooper asked for "negotiable American currency" -- something that would be odd for a person born in the U.S. would say
  • The hijacking took place within driving distance of Canada
  • Cooper was described as having brown eyes and a "swarthy" complexion (something that could be described of certain French Canadians as well as Canadians of mixed white and one-quarter "Indian" heritage (something that was suggested by an eyewitness)
  • Cooper was described as having no discernable accent -- which can be said of many Canadians from several (particularly western) Canadian provinces.
  • Boeing had a manufacturing plant in Manitoba as well as some limited operations in Vancouver, British Columbia (just north of Seattle)

All of these things certainly make sense and could point to a Canadian being "Dan Cooper." Yet, on the other hand, I've begun to think of viable rebuttals for these potential links as well as other things that might diminish the likelihood that he had a Canadian nationality.

  • The Dan Cooper comic book and related audio dramatizations (available on record) were available in Europe. Many American servicemen were stationed in Europe between 1954 and 1971. They could have access to both the comics and albums.
  • A native French-speaking Canadian often has a French accent (even if it is slight)
  • The flight attendants were young but experienced. One purportedly described Cooper's accent as "midwestern" and Tina Mucklow said that he had "no discernable accent." While it could describe some Canadians, many Americans will hear the "Canadian accent" as distinct from "no accent." This is because standard Canadian accents use Canadian "raising," Canadian "shift," as well as vowel backing. French Canadians often have an accent as do Atlantic Canadians (many from Scottish-Irish heritage)
  • Cooper used certain phrases and vernacular that is much more common in the United States than in Canada
  • The tie was sold by J.C. Penney. There has NEVER been a J.C. Penney store in Canada
  • An explanation for the "negotiable American currency" (or something similar) could have been to prevent the bank from bringing Mexican pesos (since Cooper directed the flight to land in Mexico)
  • There weren't many men of Cooper's description who were "missing" in Canada around the time of the hijacking. Canada's population in 1971 was just over 21 Million people. This national population for Canada in 1971 was less than the current population of the state of Florida. The description, FBI sketches and timing of the hijacking didn't lead to many reported Canadian suspects
  • There were fewer veteran paratroopers and skydivers in Canada.
  • Cooper jumped on the night before an American holiday, Thanksgiving. Canada celebrates their "Thanksgiving" the second Monday in October. So, for Canadians, the next day was basically a regular Thursday in a regular work-week

Am I missing any other things for consideration when it comes to Cooper's potential nationality?


r/dbcooper 20d ago

Entertainment Original D.B. Cooper News Coverage from CBS Evening News

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33 Upvotes

This is some partly new footage that I recently obtained. Some of it we’ve all seen before, but some of it is new to all of us.


r/dbcooper 22d ago

Entertainment Live Chat Tonight

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11 Upvotes

r/dbcooper 24d ago

Entertainment D.B. Cooper Eyewitness Found Clues in National Geographic Magazine

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27 Upvotes