Unsolved murder spotlight: Earl Cossey, the man who packed D.B. Cooper’s chute

Unsolved murder spotlight: Earl Cossey, the man who packed D.B. Cooper’s chute

May 30, 2014 5:02 PM


In a story that may well have conspiracy theorists buzzing for decades, the April 2013 murder of the man believed to have packed the chutes for infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper, is still unsolved and, according to a representative of the King’s County Sheriff’s Office, there has been no movement on the case.

On April 26, 2013, the body of Earl J. Cossey, 74, the sky diving instructor who reportedly packed and delivered the chutes to FBI agents that D.B. Cooper used to jump off a plane and disappear forever, was found in his rural Woodinville, Washington, home. His daughter had gone to check on his after not hearing from him for a few days, and found Cossey in the garage. She called police, who found his death by head trauma suspicious from the start. By the next morning, deputies were calling it a homicide.

According to Cossey’s former brother-in-law, “I will be very, very surprised when they figure out what happened has anything to do with the D.B. Cooper thing because it’s so old. It’s really in the past, a long time ago,” said Bowyer. “I know he got real tired of hearing about it.”

The strange case of D.B. Cooper began on November 12, 1971, when a passenger calling himself Dan Cooper told a stewardess on Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 to Seattle that he had a bomb in his briefcase. He demanded $200,000 in U.S. currency, 4 parachutes and a re-fuel in Seattle before having the plane fly him to Mexico. In a surprise move, he bailed out in mid-flight somewhere near the Oregon border and many despite intensive searches over the years, was never heard from or seen again. Most believe that he died in that jump. According to the FBI, the case remains open.

The unsolved case of D.B. Cooper has resurfaced several times since it first went cold. The most significant break came in 1980 when a boy found three bundles of old, weathered $20 bills that bore the serial numbers of some given to Cooper. In 2008 some children playing found a parachute in the area of Cooper’s jump, but when FBI presented it to Cossey, he said it was not Cooper’s. Apparently he had been shown several chutes over the years, none of which were Cooper’s and grew tired of that game, so to reporters who called him on April Fool’s day he confirmed that the parachute was indeed Cooper’s. Regarding the prank Cossey reportedly said, ‘I’m getting mixed reviews,but I’m having fun with it. What the heck.’

According to author Gunther Max, who wrote D. B. Cooper: What Really Happened, Earl Cossey has told some sources that three of the four chutes were returned to him, a primary and the two backups. The FBI maintains that only two parachutes were found on the plane, a primary and a cannibalized reserve. Was that Cossey’s sense of humor again? Perhaps. Cossey also maintained that due to his choice of chute, Cooper was not an expert skydiver. The Mountain News, however, reports that documents recently released by the FBI show that a Kent, Washington, pilot named Norman Hayden owned and delivered the packed chutes, not Cossey. His credibility came under scrutiny and many began to question his conclusions.

Cossey worked as a teacher, was recently divorced and lived alone. He was last seen alive on April 22 when he went to a movie with a family member.

Police have so far not drawn any connections between Cossey’s murder and the D.B. Cooper case.