D.b. Cooper
She thought he was giving her his phone number, so she slipped it, unopened, into her pocket. Cooper leaned closer and said, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb." In the envelope was a note that read: "I have a bomb in my briefcase.
You are being hijacked."
The note also provided demands for $200,000, in unmarked bills, and two sets of parachutes—two main back chutes and two emergency chest chutes. The note carried instructions ordering the items to be delivered to the plane when it landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; if the demands were not met, he would blow up the plane. When the flight attendant informed the cockpit about Cooper and the note, the pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma air traffic control, who contacted Seattle police and the FBI. The FBI contacted Northwest Airlines president Donald Nyrop, who instructed Scott to cooperate with the hijacker. Scott instructed Schaffner to go back and sit next to Cooper, and ascertain if the bomb was in fact real.
In assembling the cash demands, FBI agents followed Cooper's instruction for unmarked bills, but they decided to give bills printed mostly in 1969 (although some were older or newer), that mostly had serial numbers beginning with the letter L, issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The agents also ran all of the 10,000 $20 bills quickly through a Recordak device to create a microfilm photograph of each bill and thus record all the serial numbers. Authorities initially intended to obtain military-issue parachutes from McChord Air Force Base, but Cooper said he wanted civilian parachutes, which had manually operated ripcords. Seattle police were able to find Cooper's preferred parachutes at a local skydiving school. Meanwhile, Cooper sat in the airplane, drinking a cocktail of bourbon whiskey and lemon-lime soda, which he would offer to pay for.
Tina Mucklow, a flight attendant who spent the most time with the hijacker, remarked Cooper "seemed rather nice," and thoughtful enough to request the crew be brought meals after the jet landed in Seattle. However, FBI investigators for the Cooper case claim the hijacker was "obscene," and used "filthy language." At 17:24, airport traffic control radioed Scott and told him that Cooper's demands had been met. Cooper then gave Captain Scott permission to land at the flight's intended destination, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) near Seattle, Washington.
He instructed air traffic control to send one person to deliver the $200,000 and four parachutes, unaccompanied. The person chosen, a Northwest Orient employee, drove to the plane and delivered the cash and parachutes to flight attendant Mucklow, via the aft stairs. Pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, First Officer Bob Rataczak and flight engineer H.E.
Anderson were not permitted to leave the aircraft.
The FBI was puzzled regarding Cooper's plans, and his request of four parachutes. The agents wondered if Cooper had an accomplice on board, or if the parachutes were intended for the four crew members who were still on the plane. Up to this point in history, nobody had ever attempted to jump with a parachute from a hijacked commercial aircraft.