Suspect in the D.B. Cooper Case Dies at 94

Sheridan Peterson, long considered a suspect in the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case, died Jan. 8 in northern California, according to memorials website Legacy.com. He was 94.

The California native served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and later worked as a technical editor at Boeing, the aerospace manufacturer based in Seattle.

He also was an experienced smokejumper. He loved skydiving and taking physical risks, even reportedly “experimenting with homemade bat wings.” These were keys reasons his name has flitted for years around internet message boards devoted to the D.B. Cooper case, the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.

A man using the name Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland on Nov. 24, 1971. He parachuted out of the plane with $200,000 in ransom -- and disappeared. This led to the skyjacker becoming a folk hero. The case has inspired books and documentaries and even a feature film starring Treat Williams.

Phoenix entrepreneur Eric Ulis spent years trying to figure out if Peterson was the famous criminal, ultimately becoming “98%” convinced he was.



Ulis believes Peterson’s experiences in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War “radicalized” him, prompting him to undertake the skyjacking.

FBI agents working the case showed an interest in Peterson soon after the 1971 crime. In the years that followed, Peterson often would be coy about whether he was in fact D.B. Cooper.

“Actually, the FBI had good reason to suspect me,” he wrote in a 2007 issue of Smokejumper, a magazine published by the National Smokejumper Association. “Friends and associates agreed that I was without a doubt D.B. Cooper. There were too many circumstances involved for it to be a coincidence.”

Peterson, when pressed by FBI agents, insisted he was in Nepal at the time of the skyjacking.

The FBI never detained or arrested Peterson in connection to the case. The federal law-enforcement agency didn’t even interview him until 2004.

https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2021/01/charming-db-cooper-suspect-sheridan-peterson-dies-at-94-spent-years-dedicated-to-political-causes.html

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