RobberyUnsolved

The D.B. Cooper Hijacking

Portland, Oregon, United StatesNovember 24, 1971

On the evening of November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper purchased a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. Mid-flight, he handed a flight attendant a note claiming he had a bomb in his briefcase and demanding $200,000 in cash and four parachutes upon landing. After the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers in exchange for the ransom and two parachutes. The plane then took off again bound for Mexico City. Somewhere over the forests of southwestern Washington, Cooper opened the rear stairs and jumped into the night. He was never seen again.

The FBI launched one of the longest investigations in its history — code-named NORJAK — interviewing hundreds of suspects over more than four decades. In 1980, a young boy found a small bundle of deteriorating $20 bills along the Columbia River that matched the serial numbers of the Cooper ransom. No other trace of the money or the man was ever found. The discovery raised more questions than it answered about the direction of his jump and whether he survived.

Over 800 suspects were investigated without a conclusive match. In 2016, the FBI announced it was suspending active investigation of the case to redirect resources, though it remains technically open. Numerous individuals have come forward over the years claiming either to be Cooper themselves or to know his identity, and investigators periodically revisit new DNA evidence and physical analysis of the retrieved bills. The case remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in American commercial aviation history.

D.B. Cooper — a name mistakenly applied by a wire service reporter and permanently stuck — has become a folk antihero celebrated in books, films, songs, and an annual festival in Ariel, Washington. The romantic appeal of the audacious heist, the clean disappearance, and the total evasion of justice has made Cooper one of the most mythologized figures in American crime history. Whether he survived his parachute jump into the November wilderness remains officially unknown.

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DisappearanceUnsolved

The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

Bloomfield Township, Michigan

Jimmy Hoffa was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the most powerful labor union leaders in American history, and a man whose connections to organized crime were well-documented by the FBI and the Kennedy administration. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa left his home in suburban Detroit to meet with two organized crime figures at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township. He was seen in the restaurant parking lot that afternoon. He was never seen again. Hoffa had recently been released from prison after a pardon from President Nixon, and was attempting to reclaim the Teamsters presidency from his successor Frank Fitzsimmons, who had developed comfortable relationships with the mob. The mob leadership, satisfied with Fitzsimmons and alarmed by Hoffa's attempt to return, had motive to eliminate him. The FBI investigated intensively, focusing on several figures from the Detroit and New Jersey mob, but no one was ever charged with Hoffa's disappearance or murder. Theories about the location of his remains have proliferated for decades. The most persistent claim for years was that he was buried beneath the end zone of Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a theory never supported by physical evidence. Other sites — fields in Michigan, a property connected to a mob figure — have been excavated on the basis of tips or deathbed confessions, consistently without finding remains. In 2013, a man on his deathbed claimed Hoffa's body had been buried under a driveway in a Detroit suburb, leading to an excavation that produced nothing. Jimmy Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982. The FBI has never officially closed the case. His disappearance became a byword in American culture for the most enduring unsolved mob murder, and periodic claims to know the truth have become a recurring feature of American criminal mythology. Whoever killed Hoffa — and most historians believe it was the mob — did so with such efficiency that nearly fifty years of investigation have produced no physical confirmation of what happened to him.

RobberyUnsolved

The Gardner Museum Heist

Boston, Massachusetts

On March 18, 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers knocked on the door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and told the night security guard they were responding to a disturbance. Once inside, they handcuffed the two guards and spent 81 minutes cutting 13 works of art from their frames, including three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet, five Degas drawings, and an ancient Chinese bronze cup. The haul — worth an estimated $500 million today — constitutes the largest art theft in history. No alarm was triggered and no evidence of the thieves' identity was left behind. The investigation, involving the FBI, Interpol, and private investigators hired by the museum, has never produced an arrest. Investigators developed leads pointing to Boston organized crime figures, including possible connections to the Patriot's Day celebrations that had attracted large crowds — providing cover for the theft. James "Whitey" Bulger's Winter Hill Gang was among the organized crime networks investigated over the years. The FBI has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the works. The stolen frames remain hanging empty in the Gardner Museum — a deliberate choice by the institution in honor of the museum's founding deed, which specified that nothing in the galleries could be moved. In 2013, the FBI announced it had identified the thieves but declined to name them. A 2015 investigation focused on a deceased Boston art thief named Robert Gentile, who denied involvement until his death in 2014. The Gardner heist remains unsolved and the paintings remain missing, making them simultaneously the most sought and most valuable art objects in the world. The museum offers its $10 million reward on an ongoing basis. Theories about the location of the works — in private European collections, in organized crime storage, or destroyed — continue to circulate. The empty frames hanging in the Gardner serve as the most eloquent possible symbol of the loss.

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