Unmasking D.B. Cooper: Bruce A. Smith on America’s Greatest Skyjacking Mystery

On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient flight, parachuted into the night with $200,000 in ransom, and vanished without a trace. To this day, it remains the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.

In this episode of the Common-X Podcast, we sit down with journalist and author Bruce A. Smith, one of the leading researchers on the D.B. Cooper case. We explore the FBI investigation, the suspects, the myths versus facts, and why this mystery still grips the public imagination more than 50 years later. Was Cooper a criminal mastermind who got away clean — or a desperate man who didn’t survive the jump?

DB Cooper, Bruce A Smith, Common X Podcast, skyjacking mystery, Northwest Orient Flight 305, FBI investigation, unsolved crimes, true crime podcast, American mysteries, Cooper suspects, ransom money, parachute hijacking, 1971 hijacking, aviation history, conspiracy theories