Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

D. B. Cooper (Part IV)

John List

List was an accountant, World War II, and Korean War veteran who murdered his wife, three teenage children, and 85-year-old mother in Westfield, New Jersey, fifteen days before the Cooper hijacking, withdrew $200,000 from his mother's bank account, and disappeared. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force due to the timing of his disappearance, multiple matches to the hijacker's description, and the reasoning that "a fugitive accused of mass murder has nothing to lose." After his capture in 1989, List admitted to murdering his family but denied any involvement in the Cooper hijacking. Although his name continues to crop up in Cooper articles and documentaries, no substantial evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect. He died in prison in 2008.

Ted Mayfield

Theodore E. Mayfield was a Special Forces veteran, pilot, competitive skydiver, and skydiving instructor who served time in 1994 for negligent homicide after two of his students died when their parachutes failed to open. Later, he was found indirectly responsible for thirteen additional skydiving deaths due to faulty equipment and training. His criminal record also included armed robbery and transportation of stolen aircraft. In 2010, he was sentenced to three years' probation for piloting a plane 26 years after losing his pilot's license and rigging certificates. He was suggested repeatedly as a suspect early in the investigation, according to FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who knew Mayfield from a prior dispute at a local airport. He was ruled out, based partly on the fact that he called Himmelsbach less than two hours after Flight 305 landed in Reno to volunteer advice on standard skydiving practices and possible landing zones.

In 2006, two amateur researchers named Daniel Dvorak and Matthew Myers proposed Mayfield as a suspect once again, asserting that they had assembled a convincing circumstantial case. They theorized that Mayfield called Himmelsbach not to offer advice, but to establish an alibi; they challenged Himmelsbach's conclusion that Mayfield could not possibly have found a phone in time to call the FBI less than four hours after jumping into the wilderness at night. Mayfield denied any involvement and repeated a previous assertion that the FBI called him five times while the hijacking was still in progress to ask about parachutes, local skydivers, and skydiving techniques. (Himmelsbach said the FBI never called Mayfield.) Mayfield further charged that Dvorak and Myers asked him to play along with their theory, and "we'll all make a lot of money". Dvorak and Myers called any inference of collusion a "blatant lie". The FBI offered no comment beyond Himmelsbach's original statement that Mayfield, who died in 2015, was ruled out as a suspect early on.

Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr.

McCoy (1942–1974) was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert, and later, with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot. After his military service he became a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and an avid recreational skydiver, with aspirations, he said, of becoming a Utah State Trooper.

On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called "copycat" hijackings (see below). He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000. After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading. Later, a handwriting expert compared the note found on the plane with McCoy's writing on military service records and determined that McCoy had written the note. He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession, and after trial and conviction, he received a 45-year sentence. Two years later he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate. Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents.