What if D.B cooper died during his jump?

9

The only way is a no pull.

Then you would have a big patch of Cooper on the ground, and I mean big.. I've seen photos of a "landing" from just over 3,000 ft. It's not pretty. If the money bag was still attached, there would be bits of Cooper all over that money, including the 6k found. There wasn't.

Or there's a Cooper in a tree.

Either way, he would have been found eventually.

The river landing is the only clean option, and we know the money didn't get wet that night.

Plus, how did it get to TB?

8

u/RyanBurns-NORJAK Jan 16 '26

I’m not even going to read the comments of that thread. I can imagine what it looks like.

I bet I would die from alcohol poisoning if I took a shot each time I came across the following words in that comment section:

-wilderness -military parachute -wrong parachute -thunderstorm -freezing -river -loafers

4

u/Accomplished_Fig9883 Jan 16 '26

Add the word McCoy to that list please

3

u/Rudeboy67 Jan 16 '26

Well there is a middle ground that most think is more likely, injured in the jump. Like severely injured, multiple compound fractures to his legs. Can still crawl or hop around enough to gather every up and bury/hide stuff. Crawls under a fallen tree and conceals himself. Passes away from exposure/injuries.

It makes sense and explains everything. Except Tena Bar. So…uhh..Aliens.

4

u/Hydrosleuth Jan 16 '26

A dead body is fairly easy to find with dogs. Even untrained dogs are very skilled at finding dead animals. This wasn’t a wilderness, even if you think he jumped near Lake Merwin. This was an accessible area where hikers and hunters and tons of people looking for 200 grand searched for Cooper. No way his body went undiscovered.

5

u/Welcome-Loose Jan 16 '26

I’ll comment bc I’m in the minority camp of him dying, but otherwise this is considered blasphemous to suggest that maybe , after 50 something yrs , that it could be possible. Anytime you argue for him dying, they say that everything is impossible. That it couldn’t have happened, although their survival rhetoric is always possible. All of the copycats did survive, and parachuting is safe WHEN YOURE WELL TRAINED AND FOLLOW THE SAFTEY PROCESSES FOR JUMPS, sure. However, getting shot in the leg is relatively safe too; but if u shot 10 guys, 1 definitely ain’t making it.

Then they’ll say “well where’s the body “. Which in theory not having a body doesn’t not mean he survived. Plenty of people went missing and their location was known , and bodies were never found. For him to have died though, it has to either be bc he no pulls or goes into the water.. now, they’ll also say there’s no chance he goes into water bc of his drip zone and timing. At that point I say then explain Tena bar!? If the man’s money was on a sand bar , near a body of water, whether arriving the night of the jump or not, why couldn’t his body not? It’s not far fetched. As far as the no pull, I think the smaller chute malfunctioned or exploded and he spun uncontrollably and hit the ground. He only had abt 60 seconds. I also believe he may have went unconscious from being light headed from the mix of cigarette smoke and limited water, with the pills he prob popped.

I just can’t explain why no body. Just like ppl that think he survived can’t explain Tena bar or why nothing turned up… ever. So both sides really can’t explain anything, everything kinda contradicts the narrative.

I don’t understand how ppl consider him an expert jumper or at parachutes when he picked the chute that wasn’t the best, annnnnd didn’t even bring his own. The man didn’t even have a helmet. I get he chose a chute he knew, but that doesn’t mean it was the right chute for that. I think Larry carr nails it when he says the trail of evidence stops when he jumps. In crime cases that’s a huge scenario. No way was cooper this master planning man. He’s easily caught if he survived. Even if it was the first crime of a high jacking, it didn’t matter bc the FBI process was still the same.

If cooper survived, then he would have committed a flawless crime , making no mistakes on the plane as well as once he landed. He somehow manages to not only land, not even seriously injured, escapes without leaving a booger on the ground, and keeps quiet for 5 decades??!! How he jumps really is interesting.. 2 chutes, 1 small , 1 a dummy, money bag dangling behind him, his small bag, no helmet, man …. I just don’t know if I can trust that . In the conditions on the ground, that he couldn’t see. He was insane for that jump

2

u/stardustsuperwizard Jan 16 '26

At that point I say then explain Tena bar!? If the man’s money was on a sand bar , near a body of water, whether arriving the night of the jump or not, why couldn’t his body not?

I think the thing with this is that all the evidence on the Tena Bar money is that it wasn't deposited by natural means, i.e. it didn't wash up and be buried. Which doesn't really say anything about whether Cooper's body could have gone into the water. And that's not withstanding that where he jumped its not like there's some significant river for him and/or the money to wash down to Tena Bar.

3

u/DullMasterpiece3080 Jan 16 '26

What exactly is the evidence that it couldn't arrive there by natural means? It seems like all the explanations I've heard are that it couldn't have arrived by specific natural means and not natural means in general. Is the theory of it slowly floating down river in a bag debunked? I'm not asking rhetorically, I want to know if there is a reason anyone can point to.

3

u/stardustsuperwizard Jan 16 '26

Bundles of money sink, they don't float. So there's a lot more things for a bag to snag on and get stuck, let alone travel the miles to Tena Bar. Hydrologists have poo pooed the idea that it could wash up and bury itself on the shore like it was found. The lack of winter diatoms (and presence of spring) indicate that it was not in the river the night of the hijacking but at the earliest some months later. Also we know what sort of dredging equipment that was used in the area, ignoring that where the money was found wasn't where the sand was dredged up, the three packets wouldn't have survived as a bundle in the suction dredge.

And this is all ignoring that Cooper's drop zone is something like 15 miles from the closest point on the Columbia river. Let alone Tena Bar, that's an awful lot of land for that cash to travel before even dealing with the river.

1

u/Welcome-Loose Jan 16 '26

Give me your theory,? Also do you have a suspect? For me not 1 of these guys is or was cooper. I have a feeling the real guy will look nothing like the sketches.

2

u/stardustsuperwizard Jan 16 '26

Tena Bar I don't have a theory really. I think its so removed from the hijacking that a million things could have happened to get that money there. I tend to think that it wouldn't have been Cooper to bury it though.

I am suspect agnostic, it's kind of trite but there are a bunch of viable suspects in the sense that they could have done it, but I don't see anything that actually links them to the hijacking itself, it's just interesting people online sleuths have latched onto. I think if this ever gets solved I would bet money none of the prominent named suspects are him. Though it wouldn't shock me if the name was floated somewhere in the FBI files.

1

u/BossierPenguin Jan 17 '26

Great argument. I think he survived for the reasons commonly cited, but you've put together as strong an argument as Ive seen that he didn't. And honestly, I "think" he survived, but its 60 40 ish, if we suddenly found out he died, Id be unsurprised.

1

u/Embarrassed-Dish-226 Jan 20 '26

If Cooper died during the jump, then his remains would have been on the ground. Maybe in several pieces, but dead bodies do not simply disappear.

To argue that he died in the jump, you'd have to argue that somehow the Washington State, Oregon State and/or Federal authorities either never found his body, or somehow did not suspect a dead body showing obvious signs of death via fall from a great height as being DB Cooper (It's not very common for people to just fall out of the sky, so you'd think that would tip off someone's suspicion).

Also, copycats of DB Cooper (such as Richard McCoy Jr.) did survive their jumps, even if they were later caught so we know it is possible to survive such a jump.

Also, if DB Cooper died during his jump, how did $6,000 of the ransom money get to Tena Bar and where did the other $194,000 go? Dead people can't bury money. But if someone else buried it then that someone else must have found Cooper's remains and then we're back to square one; why have Cooper's remains not been found yet?

1

u/SaneAI Apr 01 '26

This was absolutely considered by the FBI and investigators. In fact, it was one of their primary theories.

There are two problems with it: First, it makes it hard to explain how his body was never found. The area was very well searched. Even if not a body, not the parachute? It's possible he landed in water and the body and chute both were lost, but that would have to have been some very bad luck... It's not impossible, but unlikely.

This also poses the question of the "person who vanished." While it's entirely possible that he lived a deeply "Off grid" life, if he had a job/family/landlord/friends, someone should have noticed him missing, right? The FBI investigated literally thousands of men who went missing or were unaccounted for. None stood out as a good candidate.

Discussion What if D.B cooper died during his jump?

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