The FBI suspended its active investigation in 2016. Its files are public. Its evidence—the tie, the bills, the composite sketches, the laboratory analyses—has been examined by professionals and amateurs alike for decades. No one has produced a convincing, verifiable identification of Dan Cooper.
Several developments after 2016 have been described in press coverage as potential breakthroughs. The children of Richard McCoy reportedly provided materials to a researcher. New analyses of the tie’s microscopic particles have been published. Renewed interest in specific suspects has produced new theories and new books. None of these developments has been confirmed by the FBI as constituting evidence sufficient to support an identification.
The most basic facts of the case remain what they were in November 1971:
A man bought a ticket under an assumed name. He showed a flight attendant what appeared to be a bomb, though no functional explosive was ever recovered. He received $200,000 in recorded $20 bills and four parachutes. He jumped into the night somewhere over southwestern Washington State. He was never seen again, at least not by anyone who has come forward to say so.
Eight years and approximately three months later, $5,800 of his ransom money turned up in the sand of a Columbia River beach, found by a child who was looking for a place to build a campfire.
Everything else is theory.
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## What We Know, What We Don’t
It is worth being precise about the distinction between what is established by evidence and what remains open.