READ: Original Flight Crew Audio From the D.B. Cooper Hijacking Made Public

More than fifty years after the fact, a rare piece of the D.B. Cooper mystery has surfaced. A 12-minute audio recording, pieced together from tapes made on the day of the hijacking, has been released to the public. It captures real-time communications between the flight crew and airline officials during one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in U.S. history.

The hijacking took place on November 24, 1971, when a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, he passed a note to a flight attendant stating he had a bomb and that the plane was under his control.

After landing at Tacoma International Airport, Cooper released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. Once airborne again, he strapped the money to himself and jumped from the plane somewhere between Seattle and Reno. He was never found.

The newly released audio comes from the period when the aircraft was still on the ground and Cooper remained onboard. The voices heard include Captain William Scott, Co-Pilot Bill Rataczak, and Paul Soderlind, Northwest Airlines’ Director of Flight Operations. The recording also references Al Lee, the Seattle-based chief pilot coordinating the ransom.

The audio doesn’t solve the case, but it offers something rare: a direct, unfiltered look at the tense moments before Cooper disappeared into history.