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- Tonight on History's Greatest Mysteries: and may contain mature subject matter.
ERIC: Ready to find D.B. Cooper?
WOMAN: Do you think that he could be
-D.B. Cooper? -Yeah, I do.
ERIC: I think I've pinpointed where it is.
ERIC: This could be our smoking gun.
WOMAN: They've got to take this back and reopen it.
- It's a mystery that's confounded law enforcement
for 48 years.
[♪♪]
On November 24th, 1971,
a man who would become known as D.B. Cooper
hijacks a plane and then jumps out,
taking with him a ransom of $200,000.
I'm Laurence Fishburne and tonight;
Who is D.B. Cooper,
and how did he escape?
Neither his identity nor his body has ever been recovered.
It's impossible.
Or is it?
(helicopter blades chop)
- Can investigator Eric Ulis finally close
the only unsolved skyjacking in US history?
Eric and his team will reexamine
the plane's alleged flight path.
They'll search alternate landing sites for fresh clues
and profile a possible suspect.
Tonight, a search for new answers
to one of history's greatest mysteries.
Who is D.B. Cooper?
[♪]
FISHBURNE: D.B. Cooper investigator Eric Ulis
is on his way to Washington State,
but his research and investigation started
12 years earlier in Arizona.
ERIC: I've always had a fascination with aviation,
which is what I believe
ultimately drew me into the case.
Here was a man who developed a cult-like following
over the years,
despite the fact that nobody really knew
anything about the guy at all.
He became a legend overnight.
MAN: I think D.B. is like coolest guy in America.
He did the ultimate crime.
ERIC: Eventually, I found the case was being hijacked
by conspiracy theories and so forth,
and I just ended up getting sucked in
to this D.B. Cooper vortex.
And, ultimately, I decided that I was gonna undertake
an investigation of my own into the case.
MAN: Over the years, more than 1,000 suspects
have been scrutinized.
GEOFFREY: When this case happened in the 1970s,
the era of DNA was not upon us,
and agents really didn't look out to preserve
this evidence in the way that we do now.
ERIC: In order to identify where the FBI and others
went sideways with this case,
I knew that I was going to have to personally read
all 20,000 pages of redacted FBI files
regarding the case.
FISHBURNE: Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit filed in 2016,
every few months, the FBI releases files
from the case in chronological order.
This constant drip of new information
and new sources is key to Eric's theory
about what really happened on Northwest Flight 305.
[JET ENGINE HUMS]
ERIC: The night of the skyjacking,
we know a man boarded Northwest Orient Flight
in Portland destined for Seattle.
He bought the ticket with a $20 bill at the airport.
There was no ID required.
And he gave the name Dan Cooper to the ticket agent.
He would end up taking a seat
in the very back row of the jet,
18E to be exact.
The flight attendants recall D.B. Cooper
being a guy who is in his mid-40s,
dressed as a business person wearing a black suit,
wearing loafers with a skinny black tie,
and a raincoat.
And he would later put on a pair of dark sunglasses
as the jet was about to take off.
By his side, he had a black attache case.
As the plane starts taxiing toward the runway,
D.B. Cooper hands one of the flight attendants,
Florence Schaffner, a note.
Which says that he has a bomb.
MAN: Thirty-six passengers got off the jetliner
in Seattle last night.
Left aboard four crew members and the hijacker,
dressed in a business suit, demanding $200,000
with the full ransom collected from the Seattle banks,
and four parachutes aboard.
The plane headed for Reno.
ERIC: What many people don't know was that
Reno was not the intended destination.
Cooper actually requested that the plane fly
to Mexico nonstop.
But the problem is, is that he wanted the jet to fly
with the landing gear down.
He wanted the jet to fly with the flaps down.
He wanted the jet to fly at a very slow speed,
and not fly over 10,000 feet in altitude.
So there was simply no way
that they could fly nonstop to Mexico City.
They would need to refuel somewhere.
And they decided Reno.
- According to Eric,
Cooper's request to be flown to Mexico was a ruse.
Seven minutes after the plane left Seattle,
the flight crew received an alert.
The rear airstairs were activated.
ERIC: The Boeing 727 was unique
in that it had airstairs that would deploy
from the back bottom of the fuselage.
In fact, it's these air stairs
that the passengers actually boarded the jet with.
FISHBURNE: Roughly 27 minutes
after the airstairs' deployment alert,
the crew experienced a cabin pressure disturbance.
ERIC: At approximately 8:12 PM, the pilots experienced
what they described as a pressure bump on the plane.
What felt like a popping in the ears.
This pressure bump was created
when D .B. Cooper jumped off the back airstairs
and the airstairs snapped back up
into the bottom of the fuselage.
That bump holds the key to everything.
- Estimating where and when
that bump took place is key.
It determined the area in which FBI, Air Force,
and local law enforcement members looked for Cooper
in a coordinated ground search that lasted for months.
ERIC: The FBI never found anything
in their original search area.
And my research indicates
that the reason they came up empty-handed
was because they were actually searching in the wrong place.
Why were they searching in the wrong place?
Because the flight path was off.
Understanding that pressure bump
and identifying the correct search area
will allow us to ask the basic fundamental questions.
- To test his theory about the plane's path,
Eric is meeting with the person charged
with tracking Flight 305
on the night of the hijacking.
The air traffic controller on duty, Cliff Ammerman.
CLIFF: My name is Cliff Ammerman.
And, uh, I'm a retired air traffic controller.
I worked at the Seattle Center Air Route Traffic Control
from 1969 till 1998.
ERIC: Did the FBI or law enforcement at all
ever reach out to you?
Never did.
I never got a request like that at all.
What did you know about 305?
I mean, I assume you knew it was a skyjacked jet?
CLIFF: We knew it was a hijacking.
We didn't have a flight plan on it
because nobody knew exactly what the routing was gonna be,
so we were told, "Just follow him.
Keep everybody else away from him."
It became fairly obvious that he was on Victor 23.
Victor 23 is one airway in a low-altitude airway structure
that's nationwide.
It's a system of ground-based navigational aids
that pilots can follow,
and it allows them to hold a track over the ground.
Just like when you're on Interstate 5 in a car,
Victor 23 is a highway in the sky.
ERIC: The first priority here when tackling this case
is trying to figure out the path that the jet took.
Can you gauge how precisely you could identify
the exact location of Flight 305?
Yeah. What I'm looking at is a map
on a video screen.
Aircrafts are being presented in
what would look to you like an equal sign.
And on the leading slash,
the aircraft itself could be anyplace on that line.
So it could be in the center, it might be at the left side
of the line, it might be at the right side. We don't know.
Any idea of roughly what kind of distance
you're looking at there?
I would guess four to five nautical miles long,
that line is.
How do you know that he's actually within Victor 23
if you've got sort of that much
-play there? -CLIFF: Sure. Sure.
It's very uncertain just exactly where the airplane was
within that target area that we're seeing.
So, uh, where's the airplane actually?
ERIC: There's quite a bit of variance in there.
Indeed, the jet could have actually been a handful of miles
outside of this Victor 23 airway,
and not have been noticed by anyone.
It seems to indicate that the jet indeed took a path
that was more along the western side,
that lines it up with the money find and all that good stuff,
that is not at all consistent
with the official version of the flight path.
The pilot of Northwest 305 also said
that they were not looking far enough west.
ERIC: Well, that confirms it for me.
-Yeah. -That's an area that
they should have looked, but they didn't look.
[♪]
FISHBURNE: Convinced the plane was actually eight miles
west of the original FBI search zone,
Eric and his team head up to a remote wilderness refuge
that's never been searched.
They're looking for any evidence of D.B. Cooper,
including possible remains of his parachute.
-Hey. Hey. How's it going? -How's it going?
-Eric Ulis. -Hey. Ryan.
FISHBURNE: To maximize the time he'll have on the ground,
Eric first takes to the sky
to see how closely his search lines up
with an area known as Tina Bar.
In 1980, the FBI found important evidence there.
MAN: A child has led the FBI to the start of a trail
it hopes it'll help them solve
the eight-and-a-half-year-old mystery of skyjacker
D.B. Cooper.
The first break in the only unsolved
airplane hijacking in United States history
came on a Columbia River beach,
along the Oregon-Washington border
where an eight-year-old boy
dug up the shreds of $3,000 on Sunday.
The money was found about 20 miles
from the FBI's original search zone.
Also, it was found about eight or nine miles
against the current along the Columbia River.
So there was no possible way
that the money just washed ashore.
The bundles of 20s were found
just below the surface of the sand,
neatly stacked upon each other
with the original rubber band still intact.
So by all appearances,
it looks like somebody actually buried
those three packets of 20s.
FISHBURNE: Since it's impossible to know the precise
altitude at which Cooper pulled his parachute ripcord,
Eric plans to search a wide area the FBI missed.
The first is an island a few miles north of Tina Bar.
[HELICOPTER BLADES WHIRRING]
- The second zone is an extended meadow
along the tree line on the west side of the train tracks.
If Cooper landed there,
Eric believes he could have walked south
along these train tracks
crossing over from the mainland
at the River S Bridge to Tina Bar.
Eric thinks Cooper might have buried the ransom here
temporarily, and then fled.
The third zone, private properties
across from the refuge provide access
to a large untouched ravine
which could have given perfect cover for D.B. Cooper.
ERIC: Part of what has guided me
to these three specific search areas
is that they're pristine and largely untouched
in the last 50 years.
Eric Ulis. Good to meet you.
I'm thinking about, you know,
the 12 years of research
I have put into this case.
This is what I have been waiting for,
the opportunity to actually get boots on the ground
and dig through the brush
and look for those missing parachutes,
look for any sign of D.B. Cooper.
FISHBURNE: Coming up.
Eric Ulis and his team
put 12 years of research to the test
as they battle the Pacific Northwest...
[GRUNTS] The search just got real
when you draw a little bit of blood.
- ...and time.
ERIC: Fighting our way
through that stuff
really, really slows us down.
I'm aware that we're marching against time here.
FISHBURNE: Later, Eric gets his hands
on possible DNA taken from D.B. Cooper's tie.
ERIC: The tie knot seems like
the most logically place to look.
The place that would have been touched the most by D.B. Cooper.
- Will Eric finally be able to reveal the identity
of history's most mysterious skyjacker?
[♪]
FISHBURNE: Eric Ulis has investigated
the D.B. Cooper case for 12 years.
CLIFF: The pilot of Northwest 305
also said that they were not looking far enough west.
FISHBURNE: Convinced the FBI misjudged
the hijacked plane's flight path,
Eric's assembled a team to look for new evidence.
They hope to find something to reopen this cold case.
ALEX: Hey.
ERIC: Hey, you guys. How you doing?
ALEX: Alex Gall with Archeological Services.
This area was home to thousands of Native American's villages.
So in order for the project
to have special access to the refuge,
it needed an archeologist to join the project,
and, uh, that archeologist is me.
Given the terrain, it's gonna be, uh--
require a lot of luck.
FISHBURNE: Accompanying Eric on his mission,
geophysicist, Colin Miazga,
who will help examine any ground disturbance
or man-made materials left behind by the skyjacker.
COLIN: With my geoscience background,
you look for man-made objects.
In this case though, there's a very small object
in a very big area, so it's incredibly challenging.
There's just so much ground to cover,
and the only real best way to do that
is by physically walking over the area.
Who wouldn't wanna be the person responsible for solving,
uh, a 50-year-old case that the FBI gave up on,
essentially?
FISHBURNE: He's also enlisted the help of
local search and rescue volunteers,
Jason Cole and Barry Wells.
Both have a vast knowledge of the area.
- I was here when the event happened,
and there was a lot of theories going around.
ERIC: So, today, what we're gonna be doing
is getting on the boats.
We're gonna be traveling along the Lake River
up to the Columbia River.
Then once we're on the Columbia River,
we're gonna go upstream a little bit.
This area we're talking about here
was not part of the original search area.
And obviously, the fact that it's a refuge as well
and is off-limits to people,
-essentially-- -Jason: Yeah.
--provides a real opportunity
where the stuff would have never been found.
Ready to find D.B. Cooper?
FISHBURNE: With restrictions in place
to protect the local wildlife,
Eric and his team must also contact
the state environmental expert
before they can begin their search on the island.
Hey, Brent. How you doing? Um...
BRENT: Good, Eric.
We'll work our way north,
see if we can actually get over to where you are
because I think the refuge is where we wanna start
versus the DNR land.
-And then we'll, uh-- -BRENT: Right.
--we'll go from there.
Let's get these guys over on this shoreline here.
-Landfall, here we go. -Right now, we're on, uh,
Washington Department of Natural Resources land.
And basically at the tree line there
is where the wildlife refuge starts.
- They'll be limited in the tools they can use,
and are forbidden to dig anything up
or remove any evidence from the refuge.
If you wanna go over some of these, uh,
-maps that I pulled. -ERIC: This is 1970.
ALEX: So this '70.
Compared to now, the footprint...
ALEX: It's pretty-- it looks pretty stable.
ERIC: Looks pretty consistent.
So the only-- the only thing
that might give us a little pause
is the 1996 aerial.
ERIC: I know there was quite a bit of flooding in '96.
So it looks like to me that this area here
is actually under water.
In 1996, there was actually
a very big flood in the area.
In reality, if the parachutes were in that area,
they could have easily been swept out to the Columbia River
and out to the Pacific Ocean.
I believe that the parachutes
were placed a little bit farther inland
which wasn't affected nearly as much.
ALEX: So you said the parachute was white and the--
ERIC: The parachute itself was white.
---and the pack was green? -That's correct.
ALEX: Always helps me to know what colors to be looking for.
It's dark green. Yeah. Yeah.
FISHBURNE: Eric's team is looking for D.B. Cooper's
missing parachutes and other evidence,
including his attache case,
ransom notes, or unrecovered money.
They must notify local authorities
and the FBI immediately
if they find anything.
But Eric's search permit for the refuge
is limited and will expire.
- We'll just start working off from this direction
and work our way through.
[♪♪]
-ERIC: A little bit of rain. -WOMAN: Today.
Until end of day and tomorrow.
ERIC: I think we got to go a little farther down
to the open field basically.
BRENT: I was surprised-- or is.
At how he was dressed as businessman.
ERIC: You bring up a great point
because a lot of people said, you know,
"Who in their right mind would jump
into the middle of the woods wearing, uh, loafers
-and a-- and a tie." -BRENT: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
ERIC: And I've always argued, nobody.
I believe that the evidence clearly shows
that D.B. Cooper intended to jump
initially in the outskirts of Seattle.
FISHBURNE: After the skyjacking,
flight attendant, Tina Mucklow,
told authorities that D.B. Cooper
was visibly frustrated and complained to her
about how the money was delivered.
TINA: He, uh, made me feel very sure
that, uh, we had a very real
and horrifying threat.
ERIC: When the money showed up,
it was not in a knapsack
as he requested.
It was actually just delivered
in a white open-top
canvas bank bag.
It didn't have any zippers, didn't have any snaps,
didn't even have a handle on it.
Cooper needed to figure out a way
to secure the top of that bank bag.
If he didn't, the force of the free fall
would have immediately ejected
all of the cash out of that bag.
- It was also reported by copilot, Bill Rataczek,
that Cooper had difficulties lowering the airstairs.
He called us on the interphone and requested that, uh,
he was having trouble with the stairs.
"I can't get the stairs down."
- Eric believes these delays forced Cooper
to jump into rougher terrain
than originally planned.
ERIC: I think that's really ground zero,
-as far as-- -ALEX: Yeah.
ERIC: --searching for the D .B. Cooper's parachutes
if he landed in this area.
And basically we need to start right around here
where these thicker bushes are,
but start working our way down
around to the south.
ALEX: Along the edges?
FISHBURNE: To ensure a thorough ground search,
the team walks at arm's length from each other,
searching in a traditional grid pattern.
Let's move.
[♪♪]
ERIC: Uh, looks like a un-penetrable wall back there,
so I'm not even gonna try that.
ALEX: It's pretty thick in front of us here.
ERIC: This stuff is brutal.
WOMAN: Oh.
Yikes.
ERIC: Yeah.
That looks prime spot to dump a parachute.
ALEX: Exactly.
FISHBURNE: Eric believes Cooper left his parachute
behind wherever he landed.
ERIC: All the soil around here is pretty packed clay.
Um, there's no way he's digging
more than whatever he could kick with his boot.
ALEX: Right. And it's dark too,
-right? -ERIC: Yeah.
ALEX: So he couldn't get too far in there.
ERIC: No.
- Although the parachute
may have deteriorated,
metallic and nylon material could have survived.
-Alex found some, uh... -Let's check it out.
It's really the first sign of human activity
I've seen in here.
Oh, yeah.
This could be promising.
- Coming up.
A retired FBI agent joins the investigation...
MARY JEAN: I received, uh, communication
from the Seattle office
to obtain a voluntary DNA sample.
- ...and revisits a person of interest
from her past.
ASHLEY: Do you think he could be D.B. Cooper?
Yeah, I do.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: Searching on federally-protected land
on an island along the Washington-Oregon border,
investigator, Eric Ulis,
and his team make what they hope
is a significant discovery.
-Alex found some, uh... -Let's check it out.
It's really the first sign of human activity
I've seen in here.
Oh, yeah.
This could be promising.
ALEX: Uh, I don't know anything about parachutes
-and the kinds of-- -Yeah.
--shroud lines they would use.
The problem is the color of the shroud lines
were, uh, either white or light pink.
And so that would not be part of...
-[INDISTINCT] -Okay.
D.B. Cooper's parachute.
This area is clear.
FISHBURNE: After 10 grueling hours,
the team ends the search for the day.
ERIC: With the restrictions that we have from the refuge,
limiting the number of people
that we can actually search with,
and seeing how vast this area is,
and how dense the growth is
that we have to fight through,
it just made me realize
how difficult this search
is actually going to be.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: With only a few days remaining to search
what he believes is the landing area,
Eric reviews the mystery of D.B. Cooper.
ERIC: There are really two parts
to the D.B. Copper mystery.
There's the part that relates to what actually happened...
MAN: All these years later,
they're still looking for D.B. Cooper.
Everything FBI Special Agent Larry Carr
has on Cooper fits in one battered box,
mostly what Cooper left on the plane.
ERIC: ...and there is this other part
that relates to who the guy actually was.
LARRY: D.B. Cooper came from someone.
He came from somewhere.
You know, he just didn't miracle himself here.
Uh, and so, uh, someone has information.
FISHBURNE: During the 45 years that D.B. Cooper's
skyjacking case remained open,
the FBI investigated more than a thousand
possible suspects.
Some simply matched the crime sketch.
Others confessed on their death beds.
Hospitalized here in Florida with kidney disease,
Duane Weber motioned to his wife to come close.
He says I have a secret to tell you.
I said, "What?"
He says, "I'm Dan Cooper."
FISHBURNE: Even a woman was investigated,
pilot Barbara Dayton.
Eric's determined to provide a definitive answer
about one person of interest,
a man DNA-tested in 2003
but never publicly eliminated.
Eric believes this man could be D.B. Cooper.
His name is Sheridan Peterson.
ERIC: He actually became a suspect
within one week of the skyjacking.
However, it wasn't even until 2003,
the FBI was actually able to interview him.
That FBI agent was a woman named Mary Jean Fryar.
And what she told me when I first reached out to her
has completely changed the trajectory in my case.
I'm Mary Jean Fryar.
I'm a special agent with the FBI
from 1985 to 2006.
In 2003, I received, uh,
a communication from the Seattle office
to locate and interview Sheridan Peterson
who was residing in Santa Rosa
and obtain a voluntary DNA sample.
ERIC: In late 2007, the FBI announced
that they had a partial DNA profile
that they've got from D.B. Cooper's clip-on tie.
MAN: This is the tie we got the DNA from.
ERIC: This could explain why the FBI had Mary Jean Fryar
obtain a DNA sample from Sheridan Peterson
to compare it against the partial DNA profile.
MARY JEAN: When I met with Sheridan Peterson in 2003,
it was special because it was a historic case.
During my training at the FBI Academy,
we had instructors that came in
and, uh, talked about it.
Sheridan's alibi, since I talked to him in 2003,
was always that he was present in Nepal
for his children's birth.
He was saying he wasn't in the country
so he couldn't have been D.B. Cooper.
He did show me his birth certificates of his kids,
but his wife could have very easily given birth
without him there.
Sheridan worked in the department
that literally wrote the flight manual
for the Boeing 727 jet.
He worked as a smokejumper in Montana.
He's an expert skydiver.
He's a former Boeing employee.
Then in 1966,
Sheridan found himself in Vietnam
working as a refugee adviser
until August of 1970
when he and his wife moved to Nepal.
There is nothing that Sheridan can point to
that proves unequivocally that he was in Nepal
at the time that the skyjacking took place,
with the exception of the second wife.
The problem is, according to Sheridan,
his second wife died in 1977.
[♪♪]
ERIC: Sheridan Peterson was interviewed for a program
related to D.B. Cooper,
and there are some inconsistencies in there.
There are things that he stated that just don't add up.
There are two things that I found
that could rule Sheridan out as a suspect.
There's some discrepancy with respect to eye color.
Specifically, Sheridan has blue eyes,
and the FBI's very first description of D.B. Cooper
had him having brown eyes.
However, very quickly after they put up
the initial description for D.B. Cooper,
the FBI updated the description
and described D.B. Cooper
as possibly having brown eyes.
The second being, we know that D.B. Cooper
definitely smoked cigarettes.
In fact, he smoked eight cigarettes
during the skyjacking.
I have never been able to prove that Sheridan Peterson
was ever a smoker.
FISHBURNE: Eric's asked Mary Jean
to help secure an interview with Sheridan.
Her goal, get him to request his DNA test results.
[♪♪]
- Now, we can't use DNA to prove that he was D.B. Cooper
because the profile that the FBI has
is only a partial DNA profile.
But if we can get Sheridan Peterson
to actually request
to get his DNA comparison results
from the FBI,
we may actually be able to prove
definitively that he wasn't D .B. Cooper.
[TRAIN HORN HONKING]
[♪]
FISHBURNE: Back on the refuge,
Eric Ulis and his team of investigators
continue their hunt.
Yesterday, they searched a remote island.
Today, they're searching an extended meadow area.
None of this land has been searched before
because the FBI used a different flight path
to calculate its search area in 1971.
If Eric can find any evidence
that D.B. Cooper landed here,
it might lead to finally identifying
the skyjacker.
[♪♪]
ERIC: All right. So, uh, today,
uh, we're continuing the search
for the missing parachutes.
We've got our survivalist
with us as well, Dan.
I'm Dan Baird. I'm a backcountry
guidance survival expert.
I'm not an expert on D.B. Cooper himself,
but to me, it seems like it's a survival situation.
I'm looking forward to the search,
this is gonna be awesome.
There are several copycat jumps that took place
after Cooper's jump.
Every single person
who did it survived.
FISHBURNE: Although every copycat jumper survived,
none of them got away with the crime.
Most notable, a man named Richard Floyd McCoy
who, in 1972, remained free
for two days before being arrested.
It seems that the real challenge
comes once he hits the ground,
how he gets out of the area.
DAN: Were these tracks in place at that time?
-MAN: Yes, they were. -ERIC: Yeah, they were. Yup.
We're on top of the BNSF Railway tracks.
If D.B. Cooper landed in this area,
the railroad tracks provide a perfect corridor
that he could've used to get to Tena Bar
where the money was found.
DAN: Do you ever think of looking into
what the train schedule was like that night?
If he landed, started walking for 20 minutes,
half hour, I'm sure the train would've gone by.
ERIC: There was a railroad conductor
who was driving down the tracks that night
who actually did report to the FBI
that there was somebody on the tracks.
And it's important to remember
that as the conductor was bringing this
to the attention of the FBI,
the FBI actually thinks
that D.B. Cooper landed six,
or seven, or eight miles east
of the railroad tracks.
[TRAIN HORN HONKS]
ERIC: Today, we're gonna be doing half of the meadow,
because there's just too much territory
to cover in one day.
Tomorrow, we'll deal with the other half.
That said, the search starts right here.
BARRY: There's gonna be four of us that really have to work
as the actual line searchers.
These guys are gonna be a little bit more independent.
ERIC: I'll look along the edge here a bit.
That's due north.
ERIC: We need to work our way and go further north.
COLIN: It's more of like a pinpoint
-so then it'll open up-- -ERIC: Yeah.
COLIN: --it'll make it really sensitive
-so you pick up everything. -Your receiver, yeah.
And then you can kind of do your crisscross...
And if I left it on that, it would be like, woo.
-COLIN: Exactly. -It's messed up. Okay.
ERIC: Somebody landing in some place like this
in the middle of this thicket, that would be pretty brutal.
I mean, I just don't see how you land
in something like this
without getting injured.
FISHBURNE: On the night D.B. Cooper jumped,
moderate wind gust upwards of 11 miles per hour
were reported on the ground
with sporadic rainfall.
When Cooper hit land, he would've experienced
ground temperatures dropping into the 30s.
ERIC: It's so swampy right here.
[♪♪]
ERIC: Is it dry over there, Jason, or...
JASON: Yeah, if you come around the north side,
follow the grass.
[MACHINE WAILING]
ALEX: Can I go forward and back a little bit?
This could be promising.
Found it.
FISHBURNE: Coming up. Eric's ground team
rose even bigger.
ERIC: All right. Folks, we ready?
We found what appears to be like a wire.
It's not shiny, but it doesn't appear to be rusted.
MARK: In the pilot chute, there's a spring.
FISHBURNE: As Mary Jean Fryar
prepares for a sit-down with Sheridan Peterson.
MARY JEAN: It's been a long time
since we've seen each other.
SHERIDAN: Yes, it has. [LAUGHS]
[♪♪]
JASON: Yeah, if you come around the north side,
follow the grass.
FISHBURNE: Eric Ulis and his search team
are in a protected wildlife refuge
in Southwest Washington,
searching for evidence that D.B. Cooper
landed here.
Halfway through searching a large meadow area,
they uncover something that could be connected
with this unsolved myself.
ALEX: I think I pinpointed where it is.
FISHBURNE: Cooper's NB6 parachute
had stainless steel parts.
ALEX: Just, uh, this must've been an old...
- So a hit on the metal detector
is encouraging news.
ALEX: Yeah, looks about it.
It's either two separate objects
or one slightly stretched out
like the backpack I think would be.
ERIC: All right. We got something on the ground.
Wow. So what does that mean
as far as, uh, the size of the piece?
COLIN: With any metal detection,
it's hard to get size
until you start digging it up
because you could have something really small
that's really conductive right at surface
and that's gonna give you a really solid response.
But if you have something larger
that-- that's at depth, it could actually give you a--
it'll give you a smaller response.
And so it's just how close the object is to the sensors.
FISHBURNE: Although the metal detector
registered a strong hit,
the size of the object, how conductive it is
and how close it is to the surface,
can all influence the strength of the signal.
ALEX: It seems really pinpointed
at that little soft spot right there.
I mean, that's a robust signal.
I mean, clearly, there's something down there.
[MACHINE WAILING]
COLIN: Well then maybe...
ALEX: Oh, there we are.
-Oh, wire. -COLIN: A wire.
What kind of wire though?
Parachute pull cord?
ALEX: So the wire has to stay on the ground, so...
ERIC: Let me-- let me try to see
if I got cell service in here.
I'll give Mark a really quick call.
Mark Meltzer is an expert skydiver.
He's gonna know this parachute
inside and out.
So, he's the perfect person to reach out to
to see if he recognizes this piece of wire
and if he thinks it has anything
to do with the parachute.
-MARK: Eric? -ERIC: Hey, Mark.
Yeah, it's Eric. So we found what appears
to be like a wire, uh, buried,
kind of half buried in here.
Is there any sort of wire?
Uh, it's a little heavier gauge wire,
anything like that in the-- in the parachutes,
uh, either the reserve or the, uh, the main
that would-- that's consistent with that?
MARK: Uh, in the pilot-- in the pilot chute,
there's a spring, it's not stranded.
It's solid wire, but it's springy.
So what kind of gauge are we talking about,
relative to, like, the size
of a, uh, a hangar, for example?
MARK: About the same.
Okay. Is it okay if we take a picture
and send the picture to you
and just kind of get your impression?
MARK: Yeah, that's fine.
Okay. Hold on a second here, Mark.
MARK: Uh, is it-- is it rusty?
ERIC: I mean, it's not shiny, but it doesn't appear
to be rusted to me, but...
let me send this over to you.
Hopefully, it lets me
send it out to you here.
And then you can just shoot me a callback
as soon as you have a chance to take a look at it.
-MARK: Okay. Try that. -All right.
-Thanks, Mark. -MARK: All right.
ERIC: There's an old road in here, too,
about a hundred yards in.
-MAN: Hmm. -ERIC: Had a gate on it even.
Let's see what kind of metal they used on the fencing here.
But that's what it looks like actually right there.
ERIC: Yeah.
BARRY: That's what it looks like.
Yeah, as you can see down there-- down there,
that's how they secure the post together
-and make them stand up. -ERIC: Yeah.
BARRY: It looked just like that.
It looked just like that, exactly like that.
ALEX: At least we have an idea of what it is now, so--
Yeah, that appears to be the case.
I was hoping that we would have found something
a little bit more concrete at this point.
We've only got more day left
to search the refuge,
then it's onto searching the private property.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: While Eric and the team call it a day,
retired FBI agent, Mary Jean Fryar,
is in Santa Rosa.
She's spoken with Sheridan Peterson.
Eric's key person of interest.
And now, she said she has even more reason
to believe he could be D.B. Cooper.
In September, I received
communication from Sheridan Peterson,
which was very strange.
I've never had another person I've ever interviewed
in my 21.4 years
ever contact me again.
And he sent me two messages
about things that were upsetting him
and signed them both D.B.
I think Sheridan loves the simulation,
the engagement, the thrill of him
being a suspect as D.B. Cooper.
ASHLEY: Do you think that he could be D.B. Cooper?
Yeah, I do.
FISHBURNE: To prepare for her meeting,
Mary Jean watches an interview Sheridan did
for a 2016 documentary.
In it, Sheridan acknowledges he sky jumped
at Issaquah Skyport,
the place that supplied the parachutes D.B. Cooper
requested during flight 305 skyjacking.
SHERIDAN: Oh, I was the most obvious,
uh, suspect of anyone.
I have jumped in Issaquah
and I got my instructor's license there.
And that is where the guy got the parachutes
and I had worked for, um, Boeing.
MARY JEAN: He's building a very good case
against himself.
SHERIDAN: She said, "Where were you?"
And I said, "I was in the park."
"Oh, in the park. Come on.
You can think of a better one then."
No, I did not say that.
And they didn't keep track of people
going back and forth from the country.
If he was there, that's great.
But, that doesn't prove that he was there.
SHERIDAN: And then I told them, I said,
"He had four parachutes."
He had one parachute with a red X cross
and that was a reserve.
Another reserve was perfectly good.
Which reserve do you take?
The one that was daisy-chained. I remember that one.
This is interesting that he's so detailed.
MAN: Took more than taking the right parachute,
it also meant that the person would have to know
those stairs come down on the 727.
SHERIDAN: I wouldn't know what's on the--
MAN: So that's what I-- that's what I'm saying,
so anybody is saying that you would've been
a great D.B. Cooper,
not if you didn't know how to get off the airplane.
Oh, yeah.
That made him nervous, you know,
with that conversation.
Didn't know about the stairs
and he's kind of fidgeting with his cup.
MAN: And did you ever hear from Mary Jean again?
She came back for some reason
and told me that, uh, there's no match.
Well, it's very fortunate for me.
MARY JEAN: I'm about to go see Sheridan Peterson
for the first time since 2003
and I'm hoping that maybe at this point,
he's finally ready to accept
that he's gonna tell us that he's D.B. Cooper.
Don't take it to your death.
Set the record straight.
Put this to rest so that everyone can appreciate
what you did and got away with,
and not let anyone else take credit for it.
[♪]
FISHBURNE: With their permit expired at the refuge,
Eric and his team arrive at their final search zone,
a ravine on private property.
It's on Lake River
and Eric believes Cooper could have used it
for cover as he made his way to Tena Bar
where some ransom money was uncovered in 1980.
-ERIC: How's it going, man? -It's going good.
-Good to see you. -ERIC: Good to see as well.
MAN: Yup. Yup. How you doing?
Good morning. Uh, so my name is Eric.
Barry, I wanna thank you very much for, um,
getting these group of people together
and why don't you give me an idea of who we've got here?
Because clearly we have two different teams.
We have, uh, as you see by the different colors of blue
and the red, so, uh, I'm with the Southwest Washington
Search and Rescue
and, uh, these folks here in the red
are with the Clark County Sheriff's Office.
ERIC: How many of you have actually heard
of D.B. Cooper or haven't heard of D.B. Cooper
who are familiar with the case?
-[INDISTINCT CHATTER] -ERIC: I know you guys are.
It'd be more surprising if somebody
-hadn't ever heard of that. -Yeah.
-I'd know. -[LAUGHTER]
I'm from the East Coast, so this is--
I-- I've read a little bit about it
and thought it was interesting and being here
with the rest of the team is,
it's exciting and it's fun.
So, um, you know, hopefully
we do come across something
and, you know, get to learn a little bit more
about the Pacific Northwest legend.
ERIC: There's a lot of evidence
that suggests that D.B. Cooper
landed somewhere in this vicinity.
We did some searching on the refuge side
of Lake River.
Now it's time to focus on this side of Lake River.
My thought is that Cooper,
you know, if he landed in this area here,
would have, you know, walked his way down
to the ravine looking for a path
out of the area,
a path toward he railroad tracks.
FISHBURNE: Today's search will cover over 12 acres.
So they've doubled their search team.
Each member is outfitted with a GPS tracker
and monitored from a mobile command center.
ERIC: All right. Folks, we ready?
FISHBURNE: If evidence of D.B. Cooper is here,
Eric's confident his team can find it.
[♪♪]
MAN: Right side good?
ERIC: Right good.
-Left side. -Left side good.
MAN: Okay. Moving. All right. Slow, methodical.
ERIC: Just follow this ravine straight down.
MAN: Low and slow, folks. Low and slow.
Make sure you clear under trees
and things like that.
Look up every once in a while.
WOMAN: Yeah, look behind you, too.
MAN: And you can break as much as you need to.
Okay. We got permission.
ERIC: Keep going. Yeah, looking good.
-MAN: Keep going. -ERIC: Think,
where would I hide a parachute?
One other thing to consider as I look
at these trees up here,
one of the premier suspects
in this case was actually a smokejumper.
If he happened to land in this type of environment,
he would have known exactly what to do
and how to handle the situation
if he had caught up in these trees, you know,
60, 70 feet up.
We know that he had a pocket knife on him
and how he actually used that
to cut some of the shroud lines.
So, uh, he would have figured out a way to get down.
It wouldn't have been an issue for him.
MAN: Oh, yeah, something.
BARRY: They got, uh, something.
They're digging in something over there, Eric. I'm not sure.
COLIN: Eric, do you wanna come over here?
ERIC: Yeah. Hold on.
WOMAN: Right. Holding.
Yes. That's the same area.
Hold this.
The wine bottle like the piece of aluminum.
Yeah, I think that's all it is.
ERIC: Yeah, some cork on it. Yeah, it's definitely
like a top of a wine cork.
We know the guy was drinking.
Um, had a bourbon on the flight, you know.
This is one of those things I'm just curious
-if he took a couple. -COLIN: Yeah.
Yeah. I mean you never know he's got many bottles
with him you don't know, so it'd be the kind items
to save, uh, for the heck of it,
but, yeah.
Seems unlikely that there's any significance,
-but, uh, an idea... -COLIN: Gives an idea of how--
how sensitive this instrument is.
ERIC: Yeah. All right.
-COLIN: We'll continue. -ERIC: Let's just pocket that
and we'll continue, yeah.
COLIN: Does that look like something part of a plane?
Cabinet or something?
-Hey, Eric. -ERIC: Yeah.
Do you wanna come here for a second?
-ERIC: Yeah. -COLIN: Large metal box
and I assume somebody's filled it with rocks,
but I just wanna make sure that...
-you don't have any... -ERIC: I'm gonna [INDISTINCT]
with me. You see it anywhere.
COLIN: This right here.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's the kind of thing
that, uh-- I don't know how it ended up here,
but it's certainly not associated with the parachute
-or anything like that. -COLIN: Yeah.
And it's not associated with anything...
Nothing that I'm aware of, yeah.
It doesn't, uh-- it's certainly much bigger
than the attache case would have been.
It looks just-- up here, it looks to me
just like a, uh, you know, old metal box, so...
COLIN: Yeah. It's an old metal box, yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
All right. Good to check out though.
FISHBURNE: Although they've yet to find definitive evidence,
the search team has recovered a few items of interest,
including this small gauge wire
which could have been part
of the NB6 parachute.
They also found nylon rope
hanging from a tree
and aluminum that could be from beverages
served on Flight 305.
ERIC: A few, you know, falls positive, so to speak,
it helps keep a little fresh in your mind
that this is a very real case.
Uh, this guy really did really exist.
He really did jump somewhere in this area.
Those parachutes are somewhere in this vicinity,
uh, and it's just a matter of finding them.
FISHBURNE: Coming up.
A possible suspect becomes more in focus.
You didn't have these when I interviewed you way back.
When you pulled out the passports, I said,
"Oh, I think it might be him."
FISHBURNE: A break in Washington State.
There's some light something here.
ERIC: What is that? Oh, what's this?
This had to be on something with some serious tension.
SHERIDAN: It has sort of a ripstop weave.
I certainly can't rule it out.
ERIC: This could be our smoking gun.
FISHBURNE: And findings from an unlikely source
could force the FBI to reopen the case.
ERIC: He actually got special access to the evidence.
MAN: This DNA sample may infect crack the case wide open.
MARY JEAN: You would think this is enough
that if we need law enforcement,
they've got to take this back and reopen it.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: Investigator Eric Ulis is on the last day
of his search for evidence that could solve
the mystery of D.B. Cooper.
Eric believes the FBI got it wrong
and Cooper actually landed eight miles west
of law enforcement's original search zone.
If he can find any sign of Cooper,
it would prove he survived the jump,
and may be alive today.
WOMAN: I wonder what this area looked like
for 48 years ago.
ERIC: I think it looked just like this.
FISHBURNE: The ravine the team's searching
has remained untouched by loggers for 50 years.
Eric believes decades of overgrowth
could have helped preserve evidence.
There's an awful lot of vegetation, uh,
and this is exactly the kind of area
that we would expect to find something
if he was in this area and happened to stash up.
WOMAN: It wouldn't be fun to land a parachute in.
-ERIC: Yeah. -WOMAN: You'd get caught up.
ERIC: This is actually a pretty long property.
-Is it a long line? -MAN: Yeah, we're about
-a fifth of the way right now. -ERIC: Oh, wow.
Watch to your right, folks.
Don't outwalk your flanks.
-Hey, Joe. -JOE: Yeah.
ERIC: See that big tree on the other side
of that ravine right there?
-That one right there? Yeah. -ERIC: So once we get to that,
we wanna spread out to the right.
-JOE: Okay. There you go, Eric. -ERIC: All right.
-BARRY: All right. -ERIC: So you tug like this?
BARRY: There you go. Yeah.
And it'd catch you if you fall, yeah.
-MAN: Excellent. -BARRY: There you go.
ERIC: All right. This one's still like that.
-MAN: All right. -MAN: All right.
MAN: Good job.
[♪♪]
WOMAN: $200,000 in 1971, what would be the value
-of that today? -MAN: It would be 1.2 million
-today. So, he'd be-- -WOMAN: Wow.
MAN: --be a millionaire in today's dollar.
WOMAN: All of that for one million?
ERIC: The FBI's never been able to prove one way
or the other whether any of the ransom was spent.
If D.B. Cooper did actually spend his money,
my research indicates that there would be approximately
50 of those bills still out there
in circulation today.
There is a very strong chance
that someone out there right now has
one of those bills, but they just don't know it.
As you can see here,
this is not a complete $20 bill.
In fact, I estimate that what we're looking at is only about
25% of the original bill.
FISHBURNE: After a difficult grid search,
the team finally reaches the ravine.
BARRY: Okay, guys. You're gonna have to--
a little slower. It's a little bit more brushier here
for both sides, so...
FISHBURNE: From here, Eric believes
Cooper could hear trains running on the BNSF
Railway tracks, tracks leading to Tena Bar.
ERIC: Oh, look at right here right in front of you.
WOMAN: There's some white something here.
I don't know.
[♪♪]
MAN: The material is interesting.
ERIC: We have a parachute expert.
Um, I'm gonna, well, ask him about it.
-MAN: Where'd you find it? -ERIC: Uh, just right under
the log here.
[♪♪]
MAN: It looks like a mixed material,
some of which could be on a parachute's...
ERIC: I'll ask the expert and, uh--
-MAN: Yeah. -ERIC: --he'll be able to tell
-us definitively. -MAN: Something with tension.
This had to be on something with some serious tension.
- The team sets up a GPS locator on the spot
where the cloth fragment was found
to provide coordinates they can plot on a map.
ERIC: The situation we find ourselves in right now
is rare, unique in a very limited time.
So, we just cannot afford to pass up on situations like this.
We have to thoroughly vet this.
We have to figure out what we're working with here
because this may be it.
This may be the one final golden opportunity
to figure out once and for all
what happened to D.B. Cooper.
We'll get it checked out. We'll see what the--
-BARRY: Yup. -ERIC: --expert says.
MAN: Yeah. We'll see.
FISHBURNE: Could this fabric be part of D.B. Cooper's
missing parachutes?
[♪♪]
ERIC: It appears to be nylon and canvas,
which looked very durable.
It resembled a piece of a parachute.
It certainly looked like it could be, but I'm not sure.
So, now that we've got the piece in hand,
we've marked where we found it,
we'll present it to our parachute expert,
Mark Meltzer, and he'll be able to tell us
definitively whether or not this is a piece of a parachute
or not.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: To learn more about the fabric he found,
Eric heads to LA to meet with Mark Meltzer.
ERIC: Not only is he very knowledgeable
about the Cooper case, he's also got something like
1,500, 2,000 parachute jumps.
It gives us the opportunity to give him
that piece of evidence that we found
during the search, see if he thinks
that could possibly come from a parachute,
either the main parachute or the reserve parachute
or something else.
And he actually personally knows Sheridan Peterson.
I wanted to start out talking to you a little bit
about D.B. Cooper's skill level
with respect to parachutes given everything
you know about this case specifically in skydiving
-in particular. -What indicates to me
that he probably had some experience
with military parachute gear
is the type of main parachute rigs
that were brought to him were either Navy NB6
or NB8 containers and harnesses and parachute
instructions were brought to the plane,
printed instructions on how to use the gear.
He didn't need them. And Tina Mucklow,
the stewardess that spent the most time with Cooper,
noted Cooper taking out a packing card out
of one of the parachute rigs.
And to me, that's a huge clue that Cooper
was most likely a skydiver.
I mean, skydivers know what a packing card is.
Nobody else does. Very well concealed.
So, if Cooper actually found the packing card
and knew how to put on an NB8 or NB6,
-that's very telling. -ERIC: We did find something
that may or may not be related to a parachute.
-MARK: I'd like to see it. -ERIC: I'll take it out.
Get this open here.
[♪♪]
MARK: Well, it's interesting and it has sort of a ripstop
weave in the-- in the fabric material here,
the porous fabric material.
It has nylon webbing.
And I see nothing in the materials
that's inconsistent with the late '60s, early '70s.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: Coming up.
ERIC: Could you describe the nature
of your relationship during that seven years with Sheridan?
The relationship was bumpy.
When you sent me the message,
you signed it D.B.
FISHBURNE: And later, Eric collects a DNA sample.
MAN: Hopefully we can apply some new technology
to the Cooper case here and...
FISHBURNE: To test at a high-tech forensics lab.
ERIC: This is really the only opportunity
that we have to try to establish
a DNA profile for D.B. Cooper.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: Investigator Eric Ulis is in Los Angeles
meeting with parachute expert, Mark Meltzer.
He hopes Mark can shed light
on a piece of possible evidence.
ERIC: Looking for the missing parachute,
we did find something that may or may not be related
to a parachute.
[♪♪]
MARK: Well, it's interesting and that it has sort
of a ripstop, uh, weave in the--
in the fabric material here, the porous fabric material.
It has nylon webbing.
FISHBURNE: A ripstop weave is commonly found
in fabrics made to resist tearing.
Yarns are interwoven at regular intervals
in a crosshatch pattern.
MARK: I see nothing in the materials that's inconsistent
with the late '60s, early'70s.
But it's not the right color for a military parachute gear.
This is a turquoise blue and it apparently has leather
over-sewn on the perimeter of the, uh, thing.
And there is no leather on the-- on the type of gear that Cooper
jumped with. It does have components
in common with a parachute gear.
There's nylon webbing.
It has some sort of ripstop weave fabric.
But I can say with a hundred percent certainty
that this was not from D.B. Cooper's parachute gear.
So you've pretty much established
that it's absolutely not related
to the parachute that he jumped with.
What's the possibility that there's some sort of
relation to the dummy reserve parachute?
Yeah. That's an interesting question, Eric.
I've seen some crude things done to those trainee reserves
that the only thing you want to do is have it be able
to be deployed and packed up really quickly.
So, they cut panels out.
They sometimes cut some of the suspension lines off.
It doesn't have to be done to FAA specs.
And so, I can't definitively say this wasn't part
of a trainee reserve.
I think it's unlikely.
But I certainly can't rule it out.
ERIC: This is very exciting for me
because there's a possibility
that this piece could be part
of the modification that was made
to the dummy reserve parachute.
You personally know Sheridan Peterson.
What are your overall impressions of Peterson
as they pertain to the possibility of this guy
being the real D.B. Cooper?
Sheridan Peterson is absolutely a qualified candidate.
There is no aspect to that jump that he wasn't a master of.
He knew how to jump into the wilderness and egress.
Do I think he's D.B. Cooper?
I just don't know.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: To further his investigation,
Eric Ulis next visits Claire Peterson,
Sheridan Peterson's first wife.
He hopes she may have some insight into whether
Sheridan could've pulled off the skyjacking.
She also has details about Sheridan's second wife,
the key person who could corroborate his alibi.
ERIC: Sheridan has three children,
all grown, with Claire.
They were married in the '50s
and divorced in 1962
which is right before Sheridan moved up to Seattle
and got the job at Boeing.
Actually Sheridan started working at Boeing
in May of 1962.
So, they went their separate ways right before that.
So, this is gonna be fascinating to speak with Claire
about her time with Sheridan.
Claire Peterson was interviewed
by the FBI in 1974
about Sheridan and about this case.
And at that time, Sheridan was living in Asia.
So, she knew as of 1974 that Sheridan was a suspect
in the D.B. Cooper skyjacking.
- Sheridan was 45 at the time of the skyjacking.
And Eric believes his appearance is similar
to the original sketch of D.B. Cooper.
Sheridan lived in Seattle prior to the skyjacking
and was photographed in a suit and tie
while posing as a skydiver.
As a Boeing employee,
it's also likely that Sheridan knew
the inner workings of the Boeing 727.
And finally, Eric does not believe that Sheridan's alibi
can be corroborated for the time of the skyjacking.
[♪♪]
-ERIC: Hi, Claire. -CLAIRE: Hi.
-ERIC: Hi. Eric Ulis. -CLAIRE: You must be Eric.
-ERIC: I am Eric. How are you? -CLAIRE: Fine. Thank you.
ERIC: Good to meet you.
FISHBURNE: Claire agreed to help Eric obtain a DNA profile
from one of their children.
It will be compared to the DNA from D.B. Cooper's tie
left aboard flight 305.
If it's a match, Eric could finally have the answer
to the mystery of D.B. Cooper's identity.
ERIC: First of all, Claire, thank you very much
for taking the time to sit down with me
and talk a little bit about your life
and your life with Sheridan.
Could you describe just the nature of your relationship
during that seven years with Sheridan?
The relationship was bumpy.
He did have tirades of anger.
I don't think he could control it.
So, I knew there was a time that I was gonna have to say
goodbye to him.
And that's the way it went,
something had to be done 'cause I didn't wanna get hurt.
ERIC: In terms of being clever and deceptive
when there's something that he wanted or what have you,
did you detect any of that in him,
the ability to be deceptive?
I think he was deceptive, yes,
in a way that would work for him.
FISHBURNE: As Eric speaks with Claire Peterson,
former FBI Agent Mary Jean Fryar is in route
to visit Sheridan Peterson.
In 2003, she interviewed him as a person of interest
and collected a DNA sample.
This is the first time they've met since then.
[♪♪]
MARY JEAN: I was glad you reached out to me
and, uh, on Twitter.
When you sent me that message that you wish
I was still in the FBI because you had things
that were happening to your computer.
-Yeah. -MARY JEAN: Do you remember
that in September?
-With your book, with your book. -SHERIDAN: Oh, yeah.
MARY JEAN: Yeah. You signed it D.B.
[LAUGHS] Well, because I thought
I'd amuse you.
Yeah. You did amuse me.
Twice you sent-- you signed D.B.
[LAUGHS] Yeah.
I was so surprised to find you.
MARY JEAN: It's been a long time since we've
-seen each other. -SHERIDAN: Yes, it has,
that was 20 years ago, huh?
-MARY JEAN: Long time ago. -Uh, heisting of aircraft
and that wasn't me.
[CHUCKLES] There were easier ways
to get 200,000 I would say,
I'm surprised that you guys are still interested.
MARY JEAN: They never caught the guy.
Sheridan: Uh-huh. They didn't? [CHUCKLES]
MARY JEAN: The FBI gave up on it and closed it.
-Oh, did they? -MARY JEAN: The fact that
people think that you could be D.B. Cooper makes sense.
D.B. Cooper was a-- was a gangster.
He was a thief.
-He stole $200,000 and he... -MARY JEAN: Yeah. He did.
And he also-- he wanted to blow up a plane.
He would've killed a lot of people.
MARY JEAN: Do you think the bombs were real?
Oh, they weren't real. No.
MARY JEAN: How do you know that?
FISHBURNE: Coming up. Eric turns to science for answers
surrounding Cooper's identity.
ERIC: We are working with Special Agent Curtis Ang.
He allowed us then to have access to the tie.
FISHBURNE: And later an alibi is brought into question.
MARY JEAN: Now, after August of '71 then where did you go?
SHERIDAN: I don't want them to know anything.
[♪♪]
FISHBURNE: Retired FBI Investigator Mary Jean Fryar
is meeting with Sheridan Peterson.
A man she interviewed in 2003 as a person of interest
in the D.B. Cooper case.
MARY JEAN: Do you think the bombs were real?
Oh, they weren't real. No.
The FBI [CHUCKLES] found proofs that they--
-the bombs weren't real. -MARY JEAN: They did?
I don't think-- I don't-- didn't hear that.
SHERIDAN: Oh, yeah. They've-- they--
once he had jumped, uh, he left the stuff behind.
MARY JEAN: He only left the tie behind.
FISHBURNE: The only items recovered from the hijacked
plane were a long skinny black clip-on tie.
A gold tie clip and eight cigarette butts.
It's believed Cooper jumped with everything else
including the handwritten note exchanged
between he and the flight attendants.
Why would he do it?
I feel that-- my personal opinion that he, uh,
ended up in the Columbia river.
That money all rotted and everything
was in the sand along
the bank up north of The Dalles.
MARY JEAN: Actually, I think the money was buried not lost.
Buried?
MARY JEAN: Because it was like in a stack in the sand,
not like just drifted there.
If he jumped and then just, uh,
and entirely he was wearing,
he was crazy.
And I'm not crazy.
That took a lot of guts to do what he did.
Oh, yeah. I think so.
Uh, uh, yeah. [LAUGHS]
[♪♪]
MARY JEAN: You know, your life story is fascinating.
Can we start after your first wife Claire?
Yeah. So, right after my first wife,
I took a sabbatical in the Philippines.
I was just an English teacher
and I met Zeny she lived in a very poor area.
She wasn't, um, uh, well-educated.
But I married Zeny and we had two children.
And then I went to Vietnam, with the express purpose
of writing a documentary on the Vietnam War.
You know, I needed a passport.
Oh, I have those passports.
-MARY JEAN: Oh, you do? -ASHLEY: Can we see them?
SHERIDAN: Yeah.
MARY JEAN: This is the-- all your travel everywhere?
-ASHLEY: Wow. -SHERIDAN: Well, I'm not--
I'm not sure it's all of them, but...
MARY JEAN: You keep everything. I love that.
So, here's Kathmandu in August of '71.
-ASHLEY: Yup. -MARY JEAN: Now after
August of '71, then where did you go?
SHERIDAN: Oh, I went back to Vietnam. [LAUGHS]
Yeah. I remember that, we went--
I went back and I left the family in,
uh, Malaysia in Penang.
MARY JEAN: Your wife died in 1977?
SHERIDAN: Well, yeah.
I don't want them to know where I am.
I don't want them to know anything.
FISHBURNE: Back in Idaho,
Eric Ulis continues his meeting
with Sheridan's first wife, Claire.
- He was not money crazy.
But he did not wanna work but, you know,
he wanted to have a living
and I knew he wanted to go to Asia.
And it looked like he was doing what he wanted to do.
So, you were made aware at some point that he, like,
headed to Asia?
I did know that he left
and he went overseas.
And was there any contact with him
-while he was over there? -Um,
probably a couple of letters.
And then-- but for years and years, no contact.
One thing that was intriguing
that we talked about...
related to, uh, his second wife.
And you're talking about a wife
that he led me to believe was alive.
What did he say to you in 2007
that made you think she was still alive?
I met his, uh, daughter, their daughter,
and she wanted to see her mother and she wanted to see her,
that her mother got over here to the United States
-from the Philippines. -What year was this?
-CLAIRE: Oh, this was, 2007. -So, you talked--
you had a conversation with Sheridan about this--
-I did. ---right here at your house,
-where we are right now? -I did. Yes.
-What did Sheridan say about... -Well, I asked him.
Why don't you send for her?
Why don't you see that she can get here?
And he laughed and what he said was,
"Oh, she wants to bring her entire family over with her."
Clearly, you're under the distinct impression
that his second wife, at least as of 2007
is alive and well and is living in the Philippines,
-is that correct? -Exactly.
According to Sheridan, his second wife
had passed away
in 1977.
Well, he's lying about something.
If he is...
possibly Dan Cooper,
uh, she would know.
Well, that's where I started to really think
perhaps that was he...
who did it.
He had the knowledge and probably--
he probably had the courage to do something like that.
MARY JEAN: Look, I read Eric's work
and I have to ask you.
I want to know how you knew
the reserve parachute was daisy-chained.
I daisy-chained it.
ASHLEY: You daisy-chained it?
Yeah, I daisy-chained it.
We use it there, at Issaquah, for years.
FISHBURNE: Sheridan Peterson worked at the
Issaquah Skydive Center in the early 1960s.
The same place that would later provide parachutes
used by Cooper in his escape.
I daisy-chained it so...
they throw it down and out, see,
the reserve, I put the red x on it.
ASHLEY: You hadn't been to Issaquah in five years.
How did you know that...
that's the same reserve you made?
Well, I was sure it was.
Why would they change it?
Who gave it to him?
ASHLEY: Linn Emrich.
SHERIDAN: Well, that's why Linn Emrich
figured it was me.
- Linn Emrich worked at Issaquah Skyport
at the same time of the hijacking.
But, uh, the others don't--
no longer think that I'm, uh,
D.B. Cooper.
And you still had DNA out there.
Yeah. You still have my DNA.
There-- it's still there. Yeah.
And I've never heard what-- that it was cleared.
Well, I thought you said that...
MARY JEAN: No, because I never found out.
But you-- you can find out yourself.
I can send you the form.
You just make the request and they'll tell you.
-Well... -There was a little part of me
that was hoping you were gonna confess
to being D.B. Cooper today.
-A little part of you? -MARY JEAN: Yeah.
Oh. She really is this FBI.
-Yeah. -MARY JEAN: I just hope that...
whoever it is
takes some credit for it
before they die, if they're still alive
because it's quite the accomplishment
and so many people have claimed it
or tried to steal it from this person saying,
"Oh, I was D.B. Cooper." Or in their deathbed,
or family members who will come out.
But it'll be nice if the person
doesn't let it go himself.
All right. Listen, I have to say goodbye.
-SHERIDAN: Yeah. Yeah. -MARY JEAN: Hey.
All right. You take care of yourself.
SHERIDAN: Yeah.
MARY JEAN: I will send you that form.
-SHERIDAN: All right. -All right? Is it...
-SHERIDAN: Uh, I will. -Then we can put this to rest.
-I'll go back... -MARY JEAN: Unless you wanna
-confess to me. -Huh?
MARY JEAN: Unless you wanna confess to me.
Oh, I got to get on my knees. [LAUGHS]
MARY JEAN: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
-Quality, sister. -You take--
you take care of yourself.
SHERIDAN: I'm gonna remember this forever.
MARY JEAN: Oh, well, good. I will, too.
FISHBURNE: Coming up.
ERIC: A scientist Tom Kaye and a couple of his associates
were actually granted special access
to the evidence by the FBI.
It only makes sense to see if Tom Kaye
happened to extract some of D.B. Cooper's DNA.
MARY JEAN: And I asked him, "I thought you were gonna do
the paperwork and follow through with the DNA filing?"
And then that was it.
The conversation ended.
FISHBURNE: Twelve years after he began
his obsessive search into D.B. Cooper,
Eric Ulis is in Arizona
meeting with one of the only researchers ever
to be given access to Cooper evidence
by the FBI.
Eric hopes that he will finally learn
that the man he believes could be D.B. Cooper...
really is.
ERIC: Tom Kaye is a rockstar
in the D.B. Cooper world
and the reason the guy is a rockstar
is because he actually got special access
to the evidence in 2008 as well as 2011.
Knowing this, it only makes sense to see
if Tom Kaye happened to extract
some of D.B. Cooper's DNA while testing the tie.
-TOM: Eric, glad you made it. -ERIC: Hey, Tom.
-How you doing, man? -Good to see you.
Good to see you. Come on in.
Back in 2008, I was approached by a Cooper group
that was looking for somebody to analyze the money
that was found on Tena Bar
and have been buried there for a long time.
Then we went back to the FBI in 2011 and by that time,
we were working with Special Agent Curtis Ang
and he allowed us then to have access to the tie
specifically so we could do a series of tests
and we also vacuumed the tie for particles.
What we found that was really amazing
is we found metallic titanium on the tie.
- Titanium is used to manufacture aircrafts
and is found at plane manufacturing plants
like the Boeing Facility
where Sheridan worked from 1962 to 1964.
There were very few applications
for commercially pure titanium back in 1971.
And I know that some of my research has actually shown
that indeed the 727 itself specifically the engine
has commercially pure titanium.
At that time, titanium wasn't very common.
It was used primarily in aerospace
and also in the chemical industry.
So it goes a long ways towards narrowing down
criteria for D.B. Cooper.
TOM: Now, we knew how vitally important
the particles were on the tie
and we knew what we were looking for
is we hooked up a vacuum
to a filter like this.
This is a sterile filter inside of a sterile jar.
We had a small nozzle coming out at the end here
and then we hook a vacuum to the back end of this
and we vacuum the tie including the knot of the tie.
The tie knot seems like the most logical place to look.
The place that would've been touched the most
by D.B. Cooper.
This filter that remains unopened to this day
has particles from D.B. Cooper's tie in it
but most importantly it also has Cooper's DNA in it.
The thing is there's only one shot with the DNA here.
I will never see that again.
It is destroyed in the process of getting the DNA.
I think that the lab that's been...
appropriated for this job is a good one
and they'll do a good job.
The extent of the job that they can do
nobody knows yet, not even the lab.
Tom, I wanna thank you for entrusting us
with this very valuable D.B. Cooper evidence.
We're gonna take it, send it right off to the lab,
see what they can find out and I'll get back to you
with the results as soon as I have something.
-TOM: Absolutely. -All right. All right, Tom.
-TOM: Let's go get him. -Thanks. All right.
[TOM LAUGHS]
FISHBURNE: While Eric waits to send
the Envac tie sample to a Florida lab
specializing in older forensics cases.
Former FBI Agent Mary Jean Fryar
receives an unexpected call
from Sheridan.
MARY JEAN: When I met with Sheridan Peterson,
I thought it was intriguing and kind of confusing.
They evidently found the guy that made the heist.
MARY JEAN: No. They never caught the guy.
Uh-huh. They didn't?
MARY JEAN: The FBI gave up on it and closed it.
-Oh, did they? -During the interview
I thought it wasn't him.
And then when he pulled out the passports, I said,
"Oh. I think it be might him ."
So here's Kathmandu in August of '71.
MARY JEAN: Now, you didn't have these
when I interviewed you way back when.
There are two faded stamps for Nepal, for Kathmandu
one ended late in 1971
before the hijacking
and then the other one started in April of 1972.
By the time the interview was over
I walked out thinking "I don't know anymore.
I'm totally confused."
Probably about a month after I was up in Santa Rosa.
I called Sheridan and I asked him,
"I thought you were gonna do the paperwork
and follow through with the DNA filing."
And he said, "Oh, you told me...
that I wasn't D.B. Cooper
and, you know, I don't think I'm gonna do it."
And then that was it.
The conversation ended.
And I hung up thinking, "Oh, my God.
Now, that makes me really suspicious."
He just wants to keep it 'til he dies
which is probably how it's gonna play out.
FISHBURNE: Five weeks later,
Eric arrives back in California.
He setup a video conference meeting
with a senior analyst at the lab
comparing D.B. Cooper's DNA
to one of Sheridan's daughters.
If his theory is right
he may finally learn the true identity
of D.B. Cooper.
ERIC: When I first embarked upon this investigation
I had no idea where it's gonna take me.
I had no idea who I was going to encounter.
Let alone that I'd find a suspect
who couldn't be ruled out by the known facts.
According to Sheridan his second wife
had passed away
in 1977.
Well, he's lying about something.
ERIC: I've often said
that I believe with 98% certainty
that Sheridan Peterson could be D.B. Cooper.
But there's always been that missing two percent.
Because truthfully,
I've never been able to find the smoking gun.
There's an awful lot riding
on what the lab comes back with.
FISHBURNE: Coming up.
I was very surprised with the results.
ERIC: I wanna give Mary Jean a call
and I wanna let her know.
MARY JEAN: I would think this is enough
that we need law enforcement.
They've got to take this back and reopen it.
FISHBURNE: After years of investigating
the D.B. Cooper case
and searching for lost evidence.
Eric Ulis readies himself for DNA results
that could break the case wide open.
He'll be speaking to an analyst at the lab
tasked with testing a sample
taken directly from the tie
Cooper left behind on the plane.
Should DNA be found within the sample
the results could reopen a near 50-year-old case
and confirm Eric's suspicions
about a person of interest.
ERIC: How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
ERIC: I'm doing well.
Well, my name is Samantha Wandzek
and I currently work at DNA Labs International,
we're a private laboratory
out of Deerfield Beach in Florida
and we have clients in over 40 states.
So it's very easy to go back to any cold case
and find more work to be done.
So for this case, I was actually
the reporting analyst for it.
And how did you tackle this material
that I sent to you to try to ascertain whether or not
there's any DNA or not?
SAMANTHA: Due to the size of the filter
we actually cut it out in teeny-tiny chunks
and then sent the whole filter for extraction.
That's the first stage of the DNA testing process.
We then try to determine how much DNA, if any,
is present in the sample.
If we have enough DNA
we'll then send it forward for implication.
When you have cases that are old,
um, typically you'll see a sample will be degraded.
That DNA is just gonna break apart over time
and you're just not gonna have as much intact DNA.
But I was very surprised with the results.
So there was DNA
in the filter?
We did end up with a profile
from one male individual.
Is there some way to quantify like the strength?
I mean, is it one of these things
where one out of a billion people would...
match this particular profile,
like, how strong is it?
What can it tell us?
SAMANTHA: Typically, once you have over 20 locations
you would have to see hundreds,
thousands, millions in planet Earth,
that are staying in current population
to expect to see that profile one time.
So once you have over those 20 locations
it usually becomes very rare.
So what you're telling me
is that we are the very first people
outside of the FBI to actually have
D.B. Cooper's DNA profile?
I'm anxious to find out what that means?
What can it tell us in comparison to DNA profile
for one of Sheridan Peterson's daughters?
Does it match?
She is not the biological daughter
of the male donor that we found.
Wow.
That's a-- that's a-- that's stunning.
I mean, it's really remarkable
given everything I know about this guy.
It's a game changer obviously.
The one thing that's very encouraging to me though
is that we have a very solid
DNA profile from the tie.
Getting a DNA profile is so important
because it can provide assurance to me and others
that this case is actually solvable.
I do very much appreciate all the effort
that you folks put into this
and I'm just very grateful that we've got
a solid DNA profile and I'm grateful
that we have some resolution
with respect to Sheridan Peterson.
So again, thank you very much
for your efforts and your time.
Please feel free to contact me
with any additional questions that you have.
We will do that.
FISHBURNE: Now, armed with new information from the lab.
Eric calls Agent Mary Jean Fryar to share the results.
Right now,
I wanna give Mary Jean a call
and I wanna let her know
what I have learned.
Because Mary Jean has really helped
move my investigation forward
and I'm sure she's gonna wanna know
what I've learned about the DNA.
Hey, Mary Jean. How are you doing?
-It's Eric Ulis calling. -MARY JEAN: Hey, there.
ERIC: I've got a DNA update.
Finally have some results
from the lab in Florida.
They did come up
with a full DNA profile
and it's from a male.
MARY JEAN: I'm getting really excited.
My stomach is like a knot
because I'm hoping that it's him.
They proved 100% that the DNA
does not match.
MARY JEAN: Oh, damn.
Sheridan Peterson is not D.B. Cooper.
MARY JEAN: Last conversation I have with Sheridan
he point blank refused to go forward with the DNA--
get the DNA results.
ERIC: I am absolutely convinced
that the DNA that we have
is D.B. Cooper's DNA.
So if anybody matches this DNA profile
all 20 points that's your guy.
There's absolutely no doubt about it.
MARY JEAN: Can we run it in databases
and find him or is this a lost cause at this point?
They actually can utilize it
to run through the CODIS system but of course that involves,
uh, you know, law enforcement getting involved,
then the courts getting involved.
MARY JEAN: Eric, I think what you've done is...
more than the FBI ever did.
And I would think this is enough
that if we need law enforcement
they've got to take this back and reopen it.
This is damn good evidence.
This is better than I've ever come up with
and maybe they can actually solve this case
-with your help. -I honestly believe
we will eventually figure out who this guy was.
-Thank you very much. -MARY JEAN: Take care.
FISHBURNE: After narrowing down Cooper's possible landing site
and eliminating an FBI person of interest.
Eric's even more determined
to continue his mission.
I feel very empowered at the moment.
I feel more motivated than ever.
Because having this DNA profile
provides an outstanding blueprint
as I continue to pursue this case.
I am now actually armed
with precisely what I need
to determine who D.B. Cooper was
and more importantly to prove it.
Time in the D.B. Cooper case
has served as a double edge sword.
In one sense you have,
you know, first-hand witnesses
that pass on and memories fade.
But in another sense
we have advances in science and technology.
And I think when all is said and done
time is going to be our friend
because I firmly believe
that this DNA profile is ultimately
what's gonna break this case wide open
and is what is going to solve this case.
FISHBURNE: The identity of D.B. Cooper
has haunted investigators for nearly five decades.
Who is the mysterious hijacker?
And will we ever finally discover his true identity?
I'm Laurence Fissburne, thank you for watching
History's Greatest Mysteries.