In 1995 Jo Weber's husband,seventy-year-old Duane Weber,lay dying in hospital. During one of her visits to the hospital,Duane told his wife that he wanted to tell her a he was talking about one of America's most famous unsolved crimes: the hijacking of a passenger plane in 1971.
On the afternoon of 24 November 1971,a man claiming to be Dan Cooper arrived at Portland International Airport. The man boarded a flight to Seattle. Once the plane was in the air,he told one of the flight attendants that he was carrying a bomb. He asked for a ransom of US$200000 and four parachutes. When the plane landed in Seattle,the parachutes and money were brought onto the plane. Cooper allowed the other passengers to leave,and then told the pilot to take him to Mexico.
As the plane flew over Washington state,Cooper asked to be left alone. At around 8.00 p.m., a warning sign in the cockpit indicated that one of the aircraft's doors had been opened. A flight attendant checked the plane and discovered that Cooper was missing. He had taken the money and one of the parachutes and jumped 3 kilometres into the forest below. Police searched the forest for five months,but they never found Dan Cooper or the money.Was Dan Cooper's real name Duane Weber? The police cannot be sure. Perhaps only Duane Weber knew the truth.