DB Cooper & Richard McCoy Jr. side by photos - Photo by the New York Post
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WSAU) – One of the most notorious unsolved mysteries of the last century may be on the brink of being solved after a pair of siblings came forward with key evidence that could help the FBI crack the case.
Chanté and Rick McCoy III, according to the New York Post, spoke to the Cowboy State Daily and claimed that their father, Richard McCoy Jr., was the infamous DB Cooper who abducted passengers and crew in 1971 and jumped from a Boeing plane with $200,000 in cash, which is valued at $1.5 million today. Investigators have never confirmed Cooper’s survival of the jump. Still, in 1980, a black tie and a shattered bundle of $20 bills totaling $5,800 matched the serial numbers on the ransom money on a beach near the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington.
Fearing their mother may be implicated in the crime after the parachute was discovered in her storage stockpile outside the house in Richmond, Virginia, the siblings said they waited until she passed away in 2020 before coming forward.
Dan Gryder, an aviation expert and YouTuber who originally found the parachute and thinks it is the same one Cooper used in 1971 said, “That rig is literally one in a billion,” when the siblings met him after her passing.
Five months after Cooper’s well-known heist, their father, Richard Jr., was apprehended in Utah for committing a similar hijacking. After breaking out of prison, he was shot and killed by police during a shootout in 1974.
In 2023, the siblings reportedly alerted FBI investigators about the parachute and provided DNA samples. The bureau suggested that exhuming their father’s body might be the next move, but no further action has been taken. The FBI has stated that the DB Cooper case was formally closed in 2016 due to a lack of leads and has not made any public statements in recent years regarding the case but stated during their 2016 statement that anyone who finds “specific physical evidence” should contact their local FBI field office.
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