Ten Thousand Feet
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 175 of 200.
Seattle, Friday, November 26, 1971, 10 pm. On Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving, a man in a dark suit, dark glasses and slick black hair boarded Cascade Pacific flight 412 in Portland and showed a flight attendant a bomb in his briefcase.
He took $200,000 in $20 bills, whose serial numbers the FBI photographed before the handover, and four parachutes. At 8:13 pm, on the route to Reno, he jumped out the rear stairs of the 727, at night and in the rain, over the forest by the Lewis River.
No one found the man, the money or the parachute. Tonight the FBI has gathered three people: the instructor who supplied the parachutes, the flight attendant who spent the flight beside him, and a mechanic from the airline's hangar who has been missing work since Tuesday.
One of them knows where the man in seat 18E went.
FBI interrogation room in Seattle, 1971, with two parachutes in bags on a chair.
Suspects
Orval OdegaardSkydiving instructor and parachute riggerparachute rigger Specialist who packs, inspects and repairs parachutes, and is responsible for their safe condition before a jump., owner of the school that supplied the parachutes, 51
Merle KostelnikHydraulics mechanic for the 727s at the airline's hangar in Seattle, 44
Arlene SundquistFlight attendant who spent flight 412 beside the hijacker, 26
The real case
The D. B. Cooper hijacking
Oregon and Washington, United States, 1971
Read the real case