Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper - Softcover

Gray, Geoffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307451305 ISBN 13: 9780307451309

Publisher: Crown, 2012

Synopsis

The true story of the unsolved 1971 Northwest Orient airplane hijacking, Skyjack reopens one of the greatest cold cases of the 20th century.

“I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.”
 
That was the note handed to a stewardess by a mild-mannered passenger on a Northwest Orient flight in 1971. It was also the start of one of the most astonishing whodunits in the history of American true crime: how one man extorted $200,000 from an airline before parachuting into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again.

Starting with a crack tip from a private investigator, author Geoffrey Gray plunges into the murky depths of the decades-old mystery to chase down new clues and explore the secret lives of the cases's cast of characters and most promising suspects, including Ralph Himmelsbach, the most dogged of FBI agents, who watched with horror as a criminal became a counter-culture folk hero; Karl Fleming, a respected reporter whose career was destroyed by a D.B. Cooper scoop that was a scam; and Barbara (nee Bobby) Dayton, a transgendered pilot who insisted she was Cooper herself.

The case of D.B. Cooper is a modern legend that has obsessed and cursed his pursuers for generations. Now with Skyjack, Gray obtians a first-ever look at the FBI's confidential Cooper file, uncovering new leads in the infamous case and providing readers with explosive new information.

About this title

Review:

Guest Reviewer: Benjamin Wallace on Skyjack by Geoffrey Gray

© David Fields

Benjamin Wallace is a contributing editor at New York Magazine and the author of The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine.

It seems like all the good mysteries are gone. We know who Deep Throat was. We know where Thomas Pynchon lives. The missing 18 minutes on the Nixon tapes have proved unrecoverable. But then, winking at us like one last taunting fossil from the violent, paranoid 1970s, there’s the baffling case of D.B. Cooper.

On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727, demanded $200,000 and parachutes, and jumped out over the Pacific Northwest. At a time when the country was beset by war, assassinations, riots, a faltering economy, and the Nixon presidency, Cooper was heralded as a Robin Hood of the sky. Enormous investigative resources were marshaled. Ballads were written. Cooper was never heard from again.

Forty years later, Geoffrey Gray dives chute-less into the swirling abyss of Cooper mania and lands with a true non-fiction novel, with characters too eccentric to be invented and a hurtling pace rarely found in the world of fact. The writing is stylish. The reporting is unstoppable. Gray is sympathetic and funny and saucer-eyed--even, at times, unhinged. He wants to solve the unsolvable, and remarkably, for a famous cold case, his spadework turns up fresh material.

As much as Skyjack is about D.B. Cooper, it is also a searing group portrait of those who even today find meaning in his mystery, a travelogue through a tumultuous era in American history, and a study of the paranoid style in American obsession. Most indelibly, it is an exploration of the mystery within the mystery, the puzzle of why these unfilled blank spots in our past have such a haunting grip on our imaginations.

About the Author:

GEOFFREY GRAY writes about crime, politics, sports, travel and food. He is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, covered boxing for The New York Times and for programs like This American Life, writes for other newspapers and magazines, and once drove an ice-cream truck. SKYJACK is his first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0307451305
• ISBN 13: 9780307451309
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328