At 8:13 p.m., as the plane flew over the Lewis River in southwest Washington, the plane’s pressure gauge recorded Cooper’s jump from the aircraft. Wearing only wraparound sunglasses, a thin suit, and a raincoat, Cooper parachuted into a thunderstorm with winds in excess of 100 mph and temperatures well below zero at the 10,000-foot altitude where he began his fall. The storm prevented an immediate capture, and most authorities assumed he was killed during his apparently suicidal jump. No trace of Cooper was found during a massive search.
In 1980, an eight-year-old boy uncovered a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington. The fate of Cooper remains a mystery, but one suspect, Richard McCoy II, was arrested after a nearly identical hijacking and parachute escape five months later. (He died in a shoot-out after breaking out of prison.) However, multiple witnesses in the first case said McCoy did not look like the perpetrator they saw, who may have been wearing a disguise.
In late 2024, amateur sleuth Dan Gryder, who has been investigating the case for two decades, went public with a video claiming that McCoy's adult children had contacted the FBI to show them possible evidence of their father's guilt, including a highly modified parachute rig that had long been hidden on their family property, which they believe was used in the infamous 1971 crime.
