Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

D. B. Cooper (Part III)

Statute of limitations

In 1976, discussion arose over the impending expiration of the statute of limitations on the hijacking. Most published legal analyses agreed that it would make little difference, as an interpretation of the statute varies considerably from case to case and court to court, and a prosecutor could argue that Cooper had forfeited immunity on any of several valid technical grounds. The question was rendered irrelevant in November when a Portland grand jury returned an indictment in absentia against "John Doe, aka Dan Cooper" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act. The indictment formally initiated prosecution that can be continued, should the hijacker be apprehended, at any time in the future.

Suspects

Between 1971 and 2016, the FBI processed over a thousand "serious suspects", which included assorted publicity seekers and deathbed confessors, but nothing more than circumstantial evidence could be found to implicate any of them, all being linked by no more than conjecture or crackpot claims of responsibility.

Kenneth Christiansen

In 2003, a Minnesota resident named Lyle Christiansen watched a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking and became convinced that his late brother Kenneth was Cooper. After repeated futile attempts to convince first the FBI, and then the author and film director Nora Ephron (who he hoped would make a movie about the case), he contacted a private investigator in New York City. In 2010 the detective, Skipp Porteous, published a book postulating that Christiansen was the hijacker. The following year, an episode of the History series Brad Meltzer's Decoded also summarized the circumstantial evidence linking Christiansen to the Cooper case.

Christiansen enlisted in the Army in 1944 and was trained as a paratrooper. The war had ended by the time he was deployed in 1945, but he made occasional training jumps while stationed in Japan with occupation forces in the late 1940s. After leaving the Army, he joined Northwest Orient in 1954 as a mechanic in the South Pacific, and subsequently became a flight attendant, and then a purser, based in Seattle. Christiansen was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking, but he was shorter (5 ft 8 in or 173 cm), thinner (150 pounds or 68 kg), and lighter complected than eyewitness descriptions. Christiansen smoked (as did the hijacker), and displayed a particular fondness for bourbon (Cooper's preferred beverage). He was also left-handed (evidence photos of Cooper's black-tie show the tie clip applied from the left side, suggesting a left-handed wearer). Schaffner told a reporter that photos of Christiansen fit her memory of the hijacker's appearance more closely than those of other suspects she had been shown, but could not conclusively identify him. (Mucklow, who had the most contact with Cooper, has never granted a press interview.)

Christiansen reportedly had purchased a house with cash a few months after the hijacking. While dying of cancer in 1994, he told Lyle, "There is something you should know, but I cannot tell you." Lyle said he never pressed his brother to explain. After Christiansen's death, family members discovered gold coins and a valuable stamp collection, along with over $200,000 in bank accounts. They also found a folder of Northwest Orient news clippings which began about the time he was hired in the 1950s, and stopped just prior to the date of the hijacking, despite the fact that the hijacking was by far the most momentous news event in the airline's history. Christiansen continued to work part-time for the airline for many years after 1971, but apparently never clipped another Northwest news story.

Research by internet web sleuths would later uncover proof that Christiansen did not pay cash for the house he bought after the hijacking, but instead had a mortgage on the house and took 17 years to pay it off. The same search would also uncover proof that Christiansen had sold off almost two dozen acres of land for $17,000 per acre in the mid-'90s, thus accounting for the large sum of money in his account at the time of his death.