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1:03

is an idea. A get-rich-quick

1:05

scheme, no experience at all.

1:12

On the day before Thanksgiving, in

1:14

1971, a man using the

1:16

name Dan Cooper bought a $20 one-way

1:19

ticket from Portland to Seattle. He

1:21

paid in cash. He

1:23

boarded the plane, sat towards the back,

1:25

and ordered a bourbon and soda. When

1:28

the plane took off, he handed the

1:31

flight attendant a note. She

1:33

put it away without looking at it. She

1:35

assumed he was trying to give her his number.

1:38

She was used to businessmen trying to flirt with

1:40

her. But when

1:42

the man saw that she didn't look at it,

1:44

he leaned over and whispered, Miss,

1:47

you'd better look at that note. I have

1:49

a bomb. The note

1:51

told her to sit down beside him, and

1:53

when she did, the man opened his

1:56

briefcase. Inside, there

1:58

were eight red cylinders. attached

2:00

to wires. The

2:02

flight attendant took the man's demands to the

2:05

pilot. When the plane landed, he

2:07

wanted $200,000 and four parachutes. Once

2:12

the plane landed, the man let

2:14

all of the passengers disembark. But

2:17

he kept the crew on as hostages.

2:19

He demanded that they take off again,

2:22

this time in the direction of Mexico

2:24

City. And 45

2:26

minutes into the flight, the man strapped

2:28

the cash to himself and jumped off

2:30

the plane. Search

2:33

parties looked for the man in the cash

2:35

for days. But they

2:38

couldn't find either. He had just disappeared.

2:42

It was all over the news, although

2:44

the hijacker pseudonym, Dan Cooper,

2:46

was misreported as D.B. Cooper.

2:50

He's still never been found. It's been 47 years.

2:54

Twenty-eight-year-old Martin McNally was driving with a

2:57

friend in Detroit when he heard about

2:59

D.B. Cooper on the radio. At

3:02

that particular time, I laughed very

3:04

loud, and I told my friend

3:08

that that's not a bad way to make

3:10

some money. Martin

3:12

thought, how hard could it be if

3:14

D.B. Cooper could do it? He could too. I

3:17

had no experience being on planes. I

3:20

never put on a parachute, and

3:23

I never owned a gun. Martin

3:25

was unemployed. He'd worked a

3:28

series of jobs after being discharged from

3:30

the Navy years earlier. He'd

3:32

tried a few small-time scams. Once

3:35

he got busted putting fake quarters

3:37

into a laundromat change machine. Nothing

3:40

had really worked out. So

3:43

he threw himself into trying to figure out

3:45

how to hijack an airplane. First,

3:48

he went to the local library. He

3:51

spent about five hours pulling

3:53

out books

3:55

on parachuting and World

3:57

War II adventures. in

4:00

flying and so forth. And

4:03

it took about four hours to

4:06

come across the calculation that

4:08

I wanted. And it was

4:10

an algebraic calculation to determine terminal

4:14

velocity. And

4:16

once I had that, I wrote

4:19

down the formula and

4:21

left and went home. Martin

4:24

did all of the calculations himself, figuring

4:26

out how high above the ground the plane

4:29

should be and how fast it

4:31

should be going for him to safely jump

4:33

out and open a parachute. He

4:35

was most concerned with how long he would

4:38

have after the jump before he needed to

4:40

open the parachute. He figured he

4:42

had about 15 to 20 seconds. The

4:45

next step was to find the right airport.

4:48

For five months, Martin scouted

4:51

airports across the Midwest. He

4:53

visited Indianapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and

4:56

Kansas City. He

4:58

finally chose St. Louis's Lambert

5:01

Airport. He thought it had the

5:03

worst security. He visited two

5:05

more times to prepare. He

5:07

bought a ticket with forged Navy

5:10

discharge papers under the name

5:12

Robert Wilson. And

5:14

on the afternoon of June 23, 1972, he

5:18

walked into the airport, went up to the

5:20

counter, gave the agent his ticket, and boarded

5:23

the plane. We didn't go through

5:25

any metal detectors at this time. If

5:27

there had been metal detectors, I

5:29

wouldn't have been on that plane, period.

5:32

So I was able to get on the plane and with a gun.

5:36

Yeah, with my, I

5:38

had a sort of rifle.

5:41

It looked like a World War II grease gun.

5:43

And I had a

5:45

pistol, and I had a smoke

5:47

grenade. And I was dressed like

5:49

a businessman suit and tie and

5:52

sport coat, sunglasses. Didn't

5:54

have my wig on at that time. Sat

5:57

down, and we took a look.

12:00

later described as a hippie-type

12:02

wig. Then he opened

12:04

the bathroom door and crouched down in the aisle

12:06

at the back of the plane. And

12:08

I was waving, waving to

12:10

the stewardesses, but no stewardesses could

12:13

see me, did see me,

12:15

for about three minutes. Finally,

12:17

a stewardess saw me and

12:20

came back, and she was a young

12:23

lady, and she said, don't hurt anybody. And

12:26

I said, young lady, I'm not here to hurt anybody.

12:29

I'm here to give the pilot a

12:33

message. And I

12:35

said, take this note, then up

12:38

to the pilot, and then come back here immediately.

12:41

So that's what she did. What did

12:43

the note say? Had you written it at home?

12:47

Yes, I typed it at home

12:49

on a typewriter. And

12:52

actually, I had the original and

12:54

the carbon copy. And by mistake,

12:56

I gave the stewardess the carbon

12:59

copy. And the

13:01

carbon copy didn't have

13:03

the red-bald type that

13:06

was on the original. So it's hard to read? Yeah,

13:09

it would have been a little harder

13:11

to read. But the pilot got the

13:14

gist of it. This is a skyjacking.

13:16

All I want is the money. Here's

13:19

the instructions that you need to do. Notify

13:21

the FBI. I want

13:23

$502,000. Why

13:26

the extra $2,000? Why not just making

13:28

an even copy? That's spending money.

13:31

That would have been pocket change. Martin

13:34

says his plan was to bury the

13:36

half-million-dollar package wherever he happened to

13:38

land after he jumped out of the plane and

13:41

use the extra $2,000 to get back home to Michigan, pick

13:44

up his car, and drive to Canada. He

13:47

would come back and dig up the half-million once

13:50

things had cooled down. But

13:52

first, he had to get the money. The

13:55

captain tells over

13:57

the intercom. Yeah,

28:01

they were looking at me. And

28:03

I wondered about that. So

28:05

I went into the bathroom, and I looked in the mirror,

28:08

and I looked a mess. I looked a

28:11

mess. Both eyes

28:13

were brown, and my chin was, uh, looked

28:17

like it had been ripped and a little bloody,

28:20

and my hair was a mess. So,

28:23

uh, yeah, I was, I, I

28:25

was messed up there. He

28:28

put water on his hair and combed it and

28:30

tried to clean off some of the blood. He

28:33

then went back into the bar and ordered a

28:35

hamburger and a beer. Around

28:37

midnight, he went to a hotel. The

28:40

hotel clerk was listening to radio reports

28:42

about the hijacker. She joked,

28:44

you're not the hijacker, are you? Martin

28:47

just smiled and went up to his room. I

28:50

was looking out the window, looking

28:53

down the street. There were

28:55

a lot of cars on the street, and there

28:57

were, uh, two men, uh,

28:59

walking, walking down the street. And

29:01

they weren't in suits. And

29:03

they were looking in, uh, windows.

29:07

And, yeah, they, I figured they were the

29:10

FBI. I

29:12

understand they had about 200 FBI agents,

29:14

uh, searching, plus

29:16

local police and so forth. The

29:19

money was soon found in

29:21

a field by a soybean farmer.

29:24

A couple of hours later, another farmer

29:26

ran over the gun with his tractor.

29:30

The search for Martin was intensifying. He

29:33

had a friend come pick him up and drive

29:35

him back to Michigan. He

29:37

didn't think anybody knew who he was, so

29:40

he just went home. And

29:42

immediately, he started making plans to

29:44

do it all again, without

29:47

losing the money this time. He

29:49

bragged to a friend about it, but

29:51

Martin didn't know that the FBI was

29:53

already watching his house. So,

29:58

you do end up getting arrested? Yes,

30:02

yes, I do. Almost

30:05

six days after Martin hijacked the plane, a

30:08

dozen FBI agents surrounded him as he

30:11

was walking home one night. They'd

30:13

found his fingerprints on the plane and

30:15

on the note that he'd handed to

30:17

the flight attendant. They'd

30:19

also searched his house and found ammunition

30:21

and parts of a gun. He

30:25

was charged with two counts of

30:27

federal aircraft piracy. Part

30:30

of his lawyer's defense was that the

30:32

jump Martin made was impossible. There

30:34

was no way anyone could have survived it. It

30:37

didn't work. Martin was

30:39

given two life sentences. And

30:43

in 1973, less than a year later,

30:46

airports started installing metal

30:48

detectors. I

30:50

wonder if you ever thought when

30:52

you were in the courtroom hearing the

30:54

two natural life sentences and thinking to

30:56

yourself, I didn't

30:58

even get the money. Yeah,

31:02

of course. I said,

31:05

I got two life sentences and it cost

31:07

me about two or three thousand dollars to

31:10

put the everything together.

31:13

This thing took about five months. I

31:15

did a lot of driving around and spending

31:18

a lot of time looking at airports and

31:22

seeing the sights and getting all

31:25

the equipment together, the gun. I

31:33

thought that I

31:35

got the life and it cost me

31:37

two grand. You

31:40

feel bad about it? Oh,

31:44

God, do I feel bad about it? I

31:48

really don't know what to say. I

31:50

don't feel bad about anything. I

31:55

don't feel bad about anything. Should I

31:57

feel bad? Martin

32:05

was sent to Leavenworth Federal

32:07

Penitentiary in Kansas, where

32:09

one day a fellow hijacker knocked

32:11

on his door. Knocked

32:13

on my door and he

32:17

said, can I come in? I said, yes, come on

32:19

in. I said, what's up? He

32:21

said, how would you like to leave this

32:24

place in a helicopter? And

32:26

I said, well, I

32:29

paused. Well, I don't know. We're

32:31

going to have to discuss this. We'll

32:33

have to discuss the details before I

32:35

make a decision on something

32:38

like that. But

32:40

yeah, let's look into this. To

32:43

hear that part of the story, listen to episode

32:45

101 of Criminal, The Fox. There's

32:49

a link in our show notes. Criminal

33:04

is created by Lauren Spore and me.

33:07

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie

33:09

Bishop is our supervising producer. Our

33:12

producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie

33:14

Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison,

33:16

Sam Kim, and Megan Knane.

33:19

Our technical director is Rob Byers, engineering

33:21

by Ross Henry. Julian

33:24

Alexander makes original illustrations for each

33:26

episode of Criminal. You

33:28

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33:32

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and Instagram at Criminal Underscore Podcast. Criminal

34:00

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34:02

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34:08

Discover more great shows

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at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm

34:13

Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. For

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