An artist's sketch of skyjacker D.B. Cooper (AP)

He didn't want to get involved.

But the crime and his suspicions were too big to pass up. So, fueled by an unlikely lead and a hunch, the data analyst started digging early this year.

Soon enough, he found a man with a plethora of potential links to D.B. Cooper, possibly breaking wide open the only unsolved skyjacking case in U.S. history.

Over the summer, he organized all of his research and sent it off to the FBI. "I am an analyst," he wrote to the bureau, "and in my professional opinion, there are too many connections to be simply a coincidence."

As he waited for a response, he kept digging -- and slowly pieced together a fascinating tale of lives turned upside down by hard times, an unusual workplace friendship, and a daring plan to make a big statement.

Don't Edit

The hijacked Northwest Airlines jetliner refueling at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (AP Photo)

***

For the uninitiated: On Nov. 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland and demanded money -- a lot of it. "Do you have a grudge against Northwest?" a flight attendant asked Cooper during the skyjacking.

His response: "I don't have a grudge against your airline, Miss. I just have a grudge."

The polite, well-dressed criminal eventually parachuted from the Boeing 727 somewhere over the Pacific Northwest, with $200,000 in ransom strapped to his body. He disappeared into the popular imagination.

Little is definitively known about the skyjacker. Not his real name, not his occupation, not what led him to attempt such a daring crime, not what happened to either him or the vast majority of the stolen loot.

Don't Edit

What we have are two police sketch-artist portraits that have fascinated true-crime aficionados for decades. The late journalist Darrell Bob Houston became obsessed with "the beautiful blandness of Cooper's face." Offered author Geoffrey Gray: "What a face! ... The thin lips. The sloped forehead. The perky ears. The smile -- that mischievous smile."

Over the years, the hunt for the Flight 305 perpetrator has surfaced dozens of suspects. And, as it turned out, widespread interest in the case sparked back to life when the FBI officially abandoned the investigation in 2016. In just the past 12 months, various determined sleuths have argued, in turn, that the one true Dan Cooper -- popularly known as D.B. Cooper -- is a slippery Vietnam War veteran named Robert Rackstraw, long-time skydiving daredevil Sheridan Peterson, and late self-proclaimed spy Walter Reca.

The data analyst does not believe any of those men is the notorious skyjacker. Because he's convinced he has figured out who really is -- and it's someone no one else has ever identified as a suspect.

Don't Edit

An image showing the rear staircase of a Boeing 727 (AP)

***

Our researcher is publicly remaining anonymous for now. A U.S. Army officer with a security clearance, he has a solid professional reputation -- and he wants to keep it that way. He's worried that his colleagues and supervisors will think he's gone 'round the bend. He is not one of the so-called "Cooperites," the dismissive name given to the amateur investigators who endlessly devote their free time to the case, and he doesn't want to be identified as such.

Former investigative reporter Bruce Smith, author of the 2015 book "D.B. Cooper and the FBI," thinks the data analyst has nothing to be ashamed of. He spoke with the Army officer at length last spring, shortly after the man had begun his research.

"He's a legitimate guy," says Smith, who, like The Oregonian, knows the man's identity. "He's done substantive work. I told him to go for it."

The data analyst started his research because, simply enough, he had stumbled upon an obscure old book called "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened," by the late author Max Gunther. Gunther wrote that he was contacted in 1972 by a man who claimed to be the skyjacker. The man soon cut off communication, and the author moved on. But a decade later, a woman calling herself Clara got in touch and insisted she was the widow of "Dan LeClair," the man who had told Gunther he was D.B. Cooper. Gunther's resulting book is Clara's story about Cooper's getaway and the love affair between Clara and Cooper.

Don't Edit

An artist's sketch of D.B. Cooper (AP)

"D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened" was largely dismissed by both critics and Cooper fanatics when it came out in 1985. Schuyler Ingle, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called it a "dumb book that falls somewhere in between nonfiction and speculation, depending on what the reader cares to believe."

Others called it straight-up fiction, and for good reason. A key subplot of the book -- LeClair and Clara's meet-cute experience in a small, unnamed Northwest town the day after the skyjacking -- is obviously untrue. This could be because Clara attempted to keep her real identity hidden from Gunther.

Another interpretation: Gunther just made it all up.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach with a copy of his memoir (The Oregonian)

Gunther interviewed retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach for hours while researching "D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened." More than 30 years later, Himmelsbach, who led the Cooper investigation for almost a decade, rejects the book.

"I think [Gunther] was highly unprofessional," he told The Oregonian in August. "I would be leery of anything reported by him. I wouldn't count on anything he wrote."

But our researcher, Anonymous, saw something in Gunther's tome. Yes, the author played with the truth, purposely or not, turning a real-life crime mystery into an unreal romance for our times. But the data analyst was convinced that someone did contact Gunther in 1972 claiming to be D.B. Cooper. And he wanted to find out who it was.

Using the name "Dan LeClair" and various details from the book, as well as information from the FBI's D.B. Cooper case files that have become public in recent years, Anonymous tracked the bread crumbs to a very real man named Dan Clair, a World War II Army veteran who died in 1990.

The connection that made him realize he actually might be onto something: Dan Clair's second wife, the data analyst learned, was born March 2.

In the book, Gunther writes that "LeClair," with his careful initial correspondence, instructed the author to place an ad in The Village Voice on March 2 wishing his wife Clara a happy birthday. (Such an ad was indeed published in the New York newsweekly on March 2, 1972. So if Gunther's book, published 13 years later, was all a hoax perpetrated by the author, it was a very long con.)

Don't Edit

A 1976 search of the area D.B. Cooper might have parachuted into five years before (AP)

The researcher -- and, later, The Oregonian -- made multiple attempts to contact Gunther's children, hoping to get ahold of the author's research notes or letters from "LeClair." Perhaps recalling the shellacking their father took from critics when the book was released, they did not respond.

Continuing his research, our anonymous Army officer eventually determined that Clair probably was not D.B. Cooper. More likely the skyjacker was a friend and co-worker of Clair's, a native New Jerseyan by the name of William J. Smith, who died in January of this year at age 89. (Smith's 1946 high-school yearbook includes a list of alumni killed in World War II. Among those memorialized: a man named Ira Daniel Cooper.)

Clair and Smith worked together at Penn Central Transportation Co. and one of its predecessors. For a while, they were both "yardies" at the Oak Island rail yard in Newark. It appears they bonded in the 1960s as Penn Central struggled to adapt to a changing economy.

The data analyst says the two men's military backgrounds -- Smith served in the Navy -- and long experience in the railroad business would have made it possible for either of them to successfully parachute from a low-flying jetliner, find railroad tracks once they were on the ground, and hop a freight train back to the East Coast. Poring over a 1971 railroad atlas, the hijacked plane's flight path and the skyjacker's likely jump zone, he determined that no matter where D.B. Cooper landed, he would have been no more than 5-to-7 miles from tracks.

Don't Edit

Cooper sketch (left) and a photo of William J. Smith (AP/courtesy of Anonymous)

"I believe he would have been able to see Interstate 5 from the air," he says, adding that one rail line ran parallel to the highway.

As all of this was coming together, the researcher found a 1980s photograph of Smith on a website devoted to the defunct Lehigh Valley Railroad -- and he sat up with a start. That mischievous smile! The resemblance to the wanted-poster sketches was remarkable.

The data analyst theorizes that Smith probably used his friend's life story to hide his real identity when corresponding with Gunther in 1972, and that his wife, Dolores, took over communication a decade later when Smith decided once again to tell his tale.

"I would bet money it was Bill and Dolores making the calls and sending the letters to Gunther," he says.

He believes Smith and Clair may have been in on the skyjacking together. He notes that Clair, who spent his career in relatively low-level jobs, retired in 1973 when he was just 54 years old.

Don't Edit

William J. Smith (Courtesy of Anonymous)

Then there's his theory about the "grudge" the skyjacker famously mentioned to the Northwest flight attendant: It's about the two men's employer, Penn Central, which went belly-up in 1970. At the time, it was the largest American corporate bankruptcy ever. Thousands of workers lost their jobs in the 1960s as a series of railroad companies consolidated into Penn Central. With the bankruptcy, the pensions for many thousands more were seriously threatened, prompting years-long court action.

The data analyst is convinced that Smith and Clair were "mad at the corporate establishment" in the U.S. and wanted to do something about it.

***

Ultimately, Anonymous' theory hinges not on direct evidence of the crime but on the narrative of a fanciful, 33-year-old book linking up with both Dan Clair's life and information about the skyjacking that the FBI only recently released to the public. In the letter he sent to the FBI, the data analyst listed the key connections between the book's D.B. Cooper and the real man whose life he believes the real Cooper used when talking to Gunther.

Don't Edit

FBI agents near Vancouver, Wash., in 1980 search for remains of the $200,000 ransom (AP)

Both Gunther's LeClair and the real Clair:

-- Were born in Canada and ended up settling in New Jersey.

-- Had no siblings.

-- Served in the military during World War II. (Clair spent time at Fort Lewis in Washington state. The FBI concluded that Cooper likely was familiar with the Seattle area.)

-- Had two children, both born in the decade after World War II.

-- Had a first wife who cheated on him. (Here the data analyst admits he's making a supposition. In Gunther's book, LeClair's wife "grasped at love affairs" as her marriage and her husband's career unraveled, becoming "less and less discreet." The real Clair and his first wife Carolyn, public records indicate, divorced the same year that Carolyn's second husband broke up with his first wife.)

-- Had a second wife who was divorced with no kids. (And, as mentioned above, both the book's Clara and Clair's second wife, Jeanne, were born March 2.)

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

The Northwest Orient crew talk to reporters on Nov. 26, 1971 (AP)

The researcher has made various other interesting links and observations as well, including:

-- Gunther's book mentions that LeClair "had a scar on his left hand. It was a straight scar running from the knuckle at the base of the index finger to the fleshy part of the thumb." Bill Smith's Navy records, in which he lists a "desire to fly" on his enrollment forms and applies for "combat aircrew training," show that he had a long scar on his right palm.

-- About a year ago, the group Citizen Sleuths tested the clip-on tie D.B. Cooper left behind when he parachuted from the Boeing 727 and found that it contained microscopic particles of metals such as titanium, aluminum, bismuth and stainless steel. This has led to speculation that the skyjacker worked for Boeing. In his letter to the FBI, the data analyst pointed out that railroads, of course, have maintenance facilities that contain exotic metals and that a clip-on tie "would be required for a manager working near a [rail yard's] repair facility." Smith was a manager -- a yard master -- in the latter part of his career.

Don't Edit

William Smith in his high-school yearbook (Courtesy of Anonymous)

-- In Gunther's book, LeClair goes to a skydiving facility near Los Angeles in the summer of 1971. FBI case files, not available to the public until 2017, show that investigators believed the skyjacker likely visited the Elsinore Skydive Center near L.A. in 1971.

The researcher acknowledges he could be wrong about all of this, or that Smith or Clair could have contacted Gunther but were pulling an elaborate prank. But he doesn't think so.

More pertinent: What about the FBI? Do they take this new theory seriously?

We don't know. The bureau hasn't responded to the Army officer. And it offers only a boilerplate statement when the media asks about potential D.B. Cooper suspects. Commenting about specific tips, the FBI says, would be "inappropriate."

Don't Edit

FBI memo from D.B. Cooper case file

The data analyst hopes that, by going public with his research, a surviving family member, friend or coworker will recall something potentially relevant that one of the men did or said, leading that person to contact the FBI.

He'd like to see the 47-year-old case solved, but he's also found himself thinking about what led him down the D.B. Cooper rabbit hole in the first place. Is the skyjacker a hero -- or just a not-very-common criminal? He's decided there isn't a straightforward answer.

"If I was on that plane, I wouldn't have thought he was a hero," he says. "But after the fact, I might think, 'OK, this took balls,' especially if I knew he was an ordinary guy, a working man worried about his pension going away. That he wasn't some arch-criminal. I would want to talk to that guy. I certainly wouldn't [support] him over the FBI -- that's not who I am. But he is a kind of folk hero."

-- Douglas Perry

Don't Edit

Coming up: A free, day-long D.B. Cooper Conference, organized by case researcher Eric Ulis, will take place in Portland on Nov. 24. Find out more.

Don't Edit

D.B. Cooper's $20 plane ticket (AP)

More D.B. Cooper coverage

-- Ultimate D.B. Cooper hunter wanted adventure, not outlaw's capture

-- D.B. Cooper revealed real identity in 1972 letter to The Oregonian?

-- D.B. Cooper 'secret ciphers' released; cryptology experts cast doubt

-- New D.B. Cooper sleuth challenges long-held beliefs about skyjacker

-- As evidence upends Cooper case, the (un)usual suspects fuel legend

Don't Edit