D.B. Cooper Was Former Military Paratrooper From Michigan: Report

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — After a 45 years of investigating, the believed identity of D.B. Cooper, the infamous skyjacker, is being revealed in Grand Rapids Thursday. Cooper is the man who boarded a Boeing 727 in Portland that was heading to Sea-Tac in Seattle, Washington, on Thanksgiving Eve, 1971, demanding a $200,000 ransom before jumping out of the plane at 10,000 feet.

The legendary man has been revealed as former military paratrooper and intelligence operative Walter R. Reca. An obituary online lists Reca, of Oscada, Mich., as having died in 2014 at the age of 80.

An investigation was spearheaded by Principia Media, a Grand Rapids-based publishing company, after being approached with overwhelming evidence. The company has since worked with Reca's best friend Carl Laurin, the person who captured the audio recordings and other physical evidence, to craft a memoir, D.B. Cooper & Me: A Criminal, A Spy, My Best Friend, telling the story of his friendship with the real D.B. Cooper.

Evidence, including almost-daily discussions over a 14-year period and 3+ hours of audio recordings featuring the skyjacker, was compiled by Reca's best friend, according to a news release issued Thursday. It was then analyzed by a Certified Fraud Examiner and forensic linguist. The audio recordings, created in 2008, include him discussing skyjacking details that were not known to the public prior to the FBI's information release in 2015.

A press conference regarding this announcement and an exhibition of its supporting evidence will be held May 17 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, including witness testimony from an individual who spoke with the infamous D.B. Cooper within an hour of his jump and documentation about how the $200,000 ransom was spent.

About the skyjacking

According to the FBI, on the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington. Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.

Cooper was described as a quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt. He ordered a drink—bourbon and soda—while the flight was waiting to take off. A short time after 3 p.m., he handed the stewardess a note indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.

“The stunned stewardess did as she was told,” the FBI narrates. “Opening a cheap attaché case, Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of wires and red-colored sticks and demanded that she write down what he told her. Soon, she was walking a new note to the captain of the plane that demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills.”

When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes. Cooper kept several crew members, and the plane took off again, ordered to set a course for Mexico City. Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: He jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money.

After the skyjacking, Reca later became a high-level covert intelligence operative, according to the publishing company.

Timeline of Walter Reca's Life by Jessica Strachan on Scribd

Composite via FBI. Reca image via Principia Media