Synopsis
"Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper" by Geoffrey Gray is a gripping exploration of one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries—the 1971 hijacking of a Northwest Orient Airlines flight by a man known only as D. B. Cooper. The book begins with a vivid recreation of the crime itself, which unfolded on November 24, 1971, when a mild-mannered passenger handed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner stating, “I have a bomb here and I would like you to sit by me.” From there, the man, who identified himself as Dan Cooper (later misreported as D. B. Cooper), calmly demanded $200,000 in ransom and four parachutes. After the plane landed in Seattle, where his demands were met, he ordered the Boeing 727 to take off again, bound for Mexico, only to parachute out of the aircraft somewhere over the rugged Pacific Northwest wilderness with the money, never to be seen again. Gray’s narrative captures the audacity and mystery of this act, setting the stage for a decades-long obsession that has captivated law enforcement, journalists, and amateur sleuths alike.
Gray, a contributing editor at New York Magazine with a background in covering crime and sports, dives into the story with a journalist’s tenacity and a storyteller’s flair. His investigation begins with a tip from a private investigator pointing to a promising suspect—a Northwest Airlines employee and trained paratrooper who bore a striking resemblance to the hijacker’s description. This lead propels Gray into the murky depths of the case, granting him unprecedented access to the FBI’s confidential Cooper file, a treasure trove of documents that had previously been off-limits to the public. Through this access, Gray uncovers fresh leads and reexamines the stories of key figures tied to the investigation, including Ralph Himmelsbach, a relentless FBI agent who watched in dismay as Cooper morphed into a counterculture folk hero; Karl Fleming, a respected journalist whose career unraveled after falling for a fraudulent Cooper scoop; and Barbara Dayton, a transgender pilot who claimed to be Cooper herself. Gray’s exploration is as much about these characters and their obsessions as it is about the hijacker, painting a portrait of a case that has driven its pursuers to extremes, from financial ruin to emotional collapse.
The book weaves together two parallel narratives: a detailed reconstruction of the hijacking and its immediate aftermath, and Gray’s own journey into the subculture of “Cooperland,” a world populated by fanatics, conspiracy theorists, and dreamers fixated on solving the puzzle. He situates the crime within the turbulent context of the early 1970s—a time of Vietnam War unrest, frequent hijackings, and a growing distrust of authority—which helps explain both Cooper’s audacious act and his transformation into a modern-day Robin Hood figure. Gray’s writing is propulsive and rich with detail, delving into unexpected tangents like the early history of gender reassignment surgery (in connection to Dayton’s story) and the origins of modern airline security protocols sparked by Cooper’s exploit. His style, shaped by his experience as a boxing writer for The New York Times, is punchy and immersive, often presenting decades-old interviews as if they’re unfolding in real time, though this literary device occasionally feels jarring in a nonfiction context.
Despite his exhaustive research and dogged pursuit of the truth, Gray doesn’t deliver a definitive answer to the question of Cooper’s identity or fate—a point that has frustrated some readers but aligns with the book’s broader themes. Instead, "Skyjack" becomes a meditation on the allure of mystery and the human impulse to chase the unknowable. Gray’s findings remain inconclusive, reflecting his acceptance, or perhaps resignation, that the case may never be solved. He explores multiple suspects, poking holes in their stories while acknowledging the gaps in his own understanding, and ultimately suggests that the mystery’s persistence is part of its power. The book is both a true-crime thriller and a cultural history, capturing the paranoid zeitgeist of the 1970s and the enduring fascination with a man who pulled off the impossible and vanished into legend. For Gray, and for readers drawn into his obsessive hunt, the journey itself—full of quirky characters, wild theories, and tantalizing dead ends—proves as compelling as any resolution.