When John Dower first heard about the D.B. Cooper skyjacking, the British filmmaker was “really fucking annoyed” he hadn’t learned of the incredible caper sooner.
“You think, It can’t be true; it’s bonkers,” Dower told Vanity Fair over Zoom last week, speaking from his office, where he sat in front of stacks of books about the unsolved crime. “It’s just such a crazy story.”
On Thanksgiving eve in 1971, a man wearing a suit and black tie boarded a Boeing 727 in Portland. Once on board, the man—who gave the name Dan Cooper—sparked a cigarette, ordered a bourbon and soda, and handed the flight attendant a note alleging that he had a bomb in his attaché case. He demanded $200,000 in ransom (over $1.2 million today) and four parachutes. The flight crew relayed the demand to law enforcement—and, during an emergency stop, Cooper received his money. The plane returned to the air and Cooper parachuted out, never to be publicly seen or heard from again.
“I became, like some of the characters in my film, obsessed,” said Dower, who devoted about four years of his life to a documentary about the unsolved crime, The Mystery of D.B. Cooper, now available on HBO.
Dower managed to track down several crew members aboard the plane—including flight attendant Tina Mucklow. In the film, she recounts how Cooper demanded she sit beside him during the flight while her coworkers scrambled to meet his demands. Dower also speaks to former FBI agents assigned to the case. But in conversation, the filmmaker made it clear that he never set out to solve the puzzle.
“I mean, if the FBI couldn’t do it in nearly 50 years, how is a bloke from South London going to fucking do it?” Dower said.
He became more interested in the people who were already down the D.B. Cooper rabbit hole when he joined them—people who have devoted their lives, in one way or another, to the case. Throughout the film, in between the retelling and reenactments, Dower showcases four different D.B. Cooper theories and the real-life people who wholeheartedly believe each one. Dower also spotlights Bruce Smith, a former investigative reporter and author who lives in the Oregon wilderness, dresses in a cape, and has committed himself to uncovering the truth about the FBI’s role in the unsolved crime.
“I became obsessed with these people,” said Dower of the characters showcased. “My initial ambiguity was: Are they just going to be a load of wackos and crazies? And some might argue they are. I don’t. The people that we picked genuinely believe [in their theory]. It’s taken over their lives…and I weirdly became one of them while making the film…. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and think, That’s got to mean it is Floyd McCoy.”
One woman in the documentary, Jo Weber, has spent years convinced that her late husband, Duane Weber, was the mysterious criminal after he alleged on his deathbed, “I’m Dan Cooper.” Another woman, Marla Cooper, remains certain that her uncle L.D. was the skyjacker. A Washington aviation couple, Pat and Ron Forman, believes that their friend Barbara Dayton (who underwent sex reassignment surgery) skyjacked the plane.
The film “became about these people that believed so much, who I came to admire in a strange way,” said Dower. “It would have been very easy to take the piss out of these people, but actually, I felt quite an affection [for] and loyalty to them.” He also felt a certain kinship with their obsessive tendencies.
“To make documentaries, you have to be quite obsessive, if only because it can take you so bloody long to get the money [for financing] at times,” said Dower. “I like to read everything on the subject. I like to know everything.” At one point, Dower said, Smith turned emotional during filming. “It’s like, Jesus, man. What going on? But then I got it. Because you live it.”
Dower thinks the D.B. Cooper saga has retained such interest and intrigue, even nearly 50 years later, because of the sheer novelty of an unsolved mystery. “Particularly the age we live in, with the internet, where you can find out anything, to have some genuine mystery is nice, isn’t it? It’s exciting and weirdly comforting that there are things beyond us that can’t be explained by people on Twitter.”