Her late husband, Duane, made a deathbed confession as he lay dying from cancer in 1995.
“I’m Dan Cooper,” he said. The name, unfortunately, meant nothing to Jo Weber.
Like most Americans, Jo would have instantly recognized the more famous alias, D.B. Cooper. Also like most Americans, she was unaware that “D.B.” was a misnomer. The hijacker of Northwest Flight 305 on 24 November, 1971—a hijacker that got away with $200,000 ransom and who has thus far gone officially unidentified—had actually given his name as “Dan Cooper.”
Duane Weber, an antiques dealer from Florida, apparently attempted to lay claim to that legacy. It was only later, as Jo began to examine facets of his mysterious life prior to their marriage, that the truth gradually became clear. When she learned of the “Dan Cooper/D.B. Cooper” confusion, she became convinced. A brief overview of the evidence:
· The FBI profile of the unknown skyjacker made a few assumptions: he was likely to have military experience, probably had a criminal record, and was certain to be familiar with the Pacific Northwest. Duane Weber served in both the Army and the Navy, and did time at a prison in Steilacoom, Washington—just 20 miles from SEA-TAC airport, where “Dan Cooper” received his ransom.
· Northwest flight attendants noted two things about the hijacker from seat 18C: he was a bourbon drinker and a chain smoker…two vices shared by Duane Weber.
· Not long before he died, Weber mentioned an old knee injury to his wife—an injury he said he got from jumping from a plane.
Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent who led the Cooper investigation from 1971 until his retirement in 1980, is as convinced as Jo Weber. The anecdotal evidence, the resemblance of Weber to the 1971 composite drawing, handwriting similar to Weber’s found in a library book on the Cooper skyjacking…all this has led Himmelsbach to strongly believe the case presented by Mrs. Weber. “The facts she has really seem to fit,” he says.
His open mind is not shared by today’s FBI. According to Jo Weber, they gave cursory attention to the information she provided, quibbled with her over her late husband’s service record, then ceased investigating—saying that the evidence was “inconclusive.”
(Pssst…FBI. No evidence will be found to be “conclusive” until you actually INVESTIGATE. Could it be that an agency that has been stung so consistently lately by its own bungling is more concerned with its `public image that its public duty? The path of least resistance, after all, is to let sleeping dogs lie and to let cold cases remain cold. And how embarrassed would the FBI be to admit that one of its most-wanted men had been living the quiet life of an antiques dealer all those years?)
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