What the 2016 announcement was not: a declaration that the case had been solved. It was not a declaration that Cooper had been identified. It was not a declaration that Cooper was dead, or alive, or that the FBI had reached any conclusion about his fate. It was an administrative decision about resource allocation, made at a time when the bureau had other priorities and no active leads that warranted continued investment.
The 2016 suspension generated considerable coverage at the time, and it is sometimes described in popular media as the FBI “closing” the case. This description is imprecise. The formal closure of a case typically involves a resolution—an arrest, a prosecution, a death of the suspect, a determination that the crime did not occur. None of those conditions was present in 2016. The Cooper case was not closed; it was deprioritized.
The practical effect was that the FBI’s decades-long active pursuit of Cooper’s identity ended as an organizational commitment. The case remains in the files. The serial numbers of the ransom bills remain on record. If someone were to present credible physical evidence—a recovered parachute, additional ransom money, DNA that could be matched to the profile from the tie—the FBI indicated it would follow up.
Since 2016, no such evidence has been presented or verified.
—
## The Parachute Found in 2018
In September 2018, children playing in the woods near Amboy, Washington—a community in Clark County—discovered a parachute buried in the ground. The find was initially reported as a potential D.B. Cooper parachute, and the story received widespread coverage.