1971 was the year and the icy winds of a frigid Thanksgiving night in the Oregon wilderness is the place where D.B. Cooper parachuted to. Or did he? Did he die while parachuting due to those 200 mph icy winds from a 727? Why was money later found 40 miles away from the projected parachute jump? Questions linger as we encounter three different possibilities. One involves a con man named Duane Weber who made a confession on his deathbed that he was Dan Cooper. His wife Jo had no idea what he was talking about yet she pieced together information from one happy photo where Duane had proclaimed victory over something, though it is not clear what exactly. Jo tells how he would pass the woodsy areas by car, an area he was overly familiar with. Did he find his money that he had buried somewhere and not share it with her or what?
Another involves an uncle who stopped coming over for family dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas named L.D. Cooper. The niece Marla (who says she is often seen as a Laura Palmer-lookalike, you know the dead girl from "Twin Peaks") is certain without a doubt that he is the D.B. Cooper because her uncle allegedly discussed some plan before Thanksgiving while actively hunting for turkeys! Could Marla be wrong, though it turns out her father admitted the uncle was the man himself?
Another involves a transgender woman who admitted she was D.B. Cooper to Ron and Pat Forman, or least expressed concern over any criticism of the Cooper man. The Formans met this transgendered woman on an airstrip - her car would often be parked in the middle of it which raises lots of questions. She turns out to be an accomplished pilot so who knows.
"The Mystery of D.B. Cooper" does an excellent job of setting up the skyjacking itself along with interviews of flight stewardesses and airline pilots who lived through this hijacking (the college kid who observed Cooper sitting across from him is a fascinating bit of business and there is something eerie about his observations). Then it segues to the claims made by seemingly broken families about the real D.B. Cooper. Any one of these stories could be true (not to mention Richard McCoy, Jr. who hijacked a plane a few months after Cooper did yet got caught, escaped from prison a few times and later died in a shootout. He bares a likeness to D.B. yet it turns out the FBI ruled him out as the suspect). What gives the doco a major push towards some semblance of credibility is that director John Dower allows these alleged claims to come alive - any one of them could be a separate subject for a whole documentary. Whether you believe these people or not is not nearly as important as how they are conveyed - these are real people who have possibly encountered an extraordinary individual.
I found no fault with "Mystery of D.B. Cooper." The film has a charge of urgency to it, of something potent about this unusual crime that still remains unsolved. Its potency is partially derived from its pre-9/11 context in its depiction of the ease by which passengers used to be able to board a plane (heck, Dan Cooper might not even have been this guy's name). Ultimately, the film is about searching for something, to prove one's worth and perhaps that is why there is such an indelible impression made by someone who everyone could identify with, if not necessarily the crime itself. Notable author and D.B. Cooper expert Bruce Smith ("DB Cooper and the FBI – A Case Study of America’s only Unsolved Skyjacking") says that we all want to be Cooper, to be tough enough to get away with it because there isn't much in the way of opportunity. Or as another writer puts it: "It gives us all a chance to believe in something."
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