This was the second song I wrote for “Missing.”
I was living in Oregon in 1971, going to high school in Corvallis, when a man called “D.B. Cooper” by a news reporter hijacked a flight from Portland to Seattle, demanding $200,000 and four parachutes. After letting all the passengers off at Boeing Field in Seattle, he told the pilot to fly to Mexico City, but at no higher than 10,000 feet and at a limited speed. Somewhere northeast of Portland, over the Washington Cascades he jumped out of the back of the 727. He was never found, and in 2017 the FBI closed the case. We don’t know his real name.
One late November afternoon in ‘71
In the City of Roses where two rivers run
He said his name was Dan Cooper
He bought a one-way fare
A short hop to Seattle and he’d be there
He chose 18 E, the very last row
Ordered bourbon and soda and lit up a smoke
Once they cleared the great Columbia
To blue skies they rose
He smiled and gave the stewardess
A handwritten note
They flew over the mountains
But he came down to an uncertain fate
In that rugged Ring of Fire
Where mysteries of old and late
Beneath the mountains wait
He said “I’ve got a bomb in my briefcase here”
He showed her then made his demands very clear
Two hundred thousand in American bills
Four parachutes and a truck to refuel
On the Seattle tarmac the ransom was brought
He got the chutes and the cash
And let the passengers off
The captain climbed slowly into skies of black
Flying low to the south with only Cooper in back
CHORUS
At ten thousand feet in a freezing rain
Cooper lowered the stairs
And he leapt from that plane
O’er Washougal, Amboy or Ariel
Somewhere he came to earth, but no one heard
Decades have passed but not a clue can they find
Despite all the efforts of the FBI
Except an eight year old boy some nine years on
Found three packets of bills
But with two hundred gone
CHORUS
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