Pre-Intermediate Reading Exercise

The Unsolved Mystery of D.B. Cooper

On November 24th, 1971, a quiet man bought a plane ticket in Portland, Oregon. He used the name "Dan Cooper," and he has since become a legend in American crime history. While the plane was flying towards Seattle, Cooper gave a note to a member of the cabin crew. The note said that he had a bomb in his briefcase. He was hijacking the plane.

Cooper's demands were very specific. He demanded $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. When the plane landed in Seattle, he exchanged the 36 passengers for the money and the parachutes. The crew, however, had to stay on board. He then ordered the pilot to take off again and fly towards Mexico City, but at a low speed and altitude.

While the plane was flying over a dark, stormy, and remote forest area between Seattle and Reno, Cooper did something incredible. He went to the back of the plane, opened the rear door, and jumped out into the night with the ransom money. He was never seen or heard from again.

The FBI immediately started one of the biggest investigations in its history. They searched the forest area, but they found no sign of Cooper or his parachute. Over the years, they investigated more than 800 suspects, but they never found the man. The only piece of evidence ever discovered was a small amount of the ransom money, found by a young boy on a riverbank in 1980. Did Cooper survive the jump? Nobody knows for sure. After 45 years, the FBI officially closed the case in 2016, leaving the mystery of D.B. Cooper unsolved forever.