Why the FBI recorded the serial numbers on D. B. Cooper’s cash
The FBI recorded the serial numbers on Cooper’s ransom bills. Nine years later, those numbers identified cash found on a Columbia River sandbar.
In 1971, D. B. Cooper hijacked a plane and collected two hundred thousand dollars. Before the cash was handed over, the FBI recorded the serial numbers on the bills. That record would later help investigators identify some of the money.
The cash on the sandbar
Cooper parachuted away. Nine years later, a boy found bundles of cash buried on a Columbia River sandbar. Investigators had the serial numbers the FBI had written down before Cooper received the money, so they checked the bills against that record.
The numbers matched. The bundles were part of Cooper’s ransom.
What the bills could not show
The match showed where some of the money had gone: it had ended up buried on the sandbar. But the bills gave investigators no clue where Cooper went after he parachuted away.
His identity remains unknown.
