As reported by a recently posted Popular Mechanics article, as well as other outlets, an "amateur sleuth" named Eric Ulis claims that microscopic particles found on a necktie left by Cooper were traced back to the Pittsburgh Crucible Steel Company, a Midland, Pa. company that, as the article points out, had a connection to Boeing, the aviation giant behind the plane Cooper would famously hijack in 1971.
The mysterious figure known as D.B. Cooper has become a folk hero and a favorite of true crime enthusiasts in the decades since their 1971 stunt. As the legend goes, Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727 commercial aircraft and demanded $200,000 in ransom. After the plane landed in Seattle and the money was handed over, the passengers were freed, and Cooper instructed the flight crew to head for Mexico City. However, not long after takeoff, Cooper took their newfound wealth, parachuted out of the plane over Washington State, and disappeared.
According to a 2015 article by the Beaver County Times, Crucible operated in Midland, a borough located about an hour west of Pittsburgh, from 1911 up until the steel industry decline of the 1980s, providing valuable materials to military efforts in both World Wars. As Ulis explains, Crucible was also "a significant subcontractor" to Boeing throughout the 1960s, and "supplied the lion’s share of titanium and stainless steel" for the company's aircraft.
As Ulis explains in a Fox13 Seattle TV news segment, Cooper's discarded "skinny, black, clip-on" tie had particles of a type of metal made with titanium and stainless steel. Ulis calls the metal a "unique" product of a "heavy-duty, hardcore, mechanical process" used to "braid the stainless steel into the titanium." Over the last year and a half, he used U.S. patents to trace the material back to Crucible.
Photo: Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives
Pittsburgh Crucible Steel Company in Midland, Pa. circa 1941
Ulis believes the new evidence suggests that Cooper may have worked in "specialty metals" at Crucible, which gave them both access and insight into Boeing, the company that produced the hijacked aircraft. He even named a possible suspect in Vince Peterson, a titanium research engineer from Pittsburgh who died in 2002. (It's worth noting that Ulis previously identified another Peterson, with the first name of Sheridan, as a possible suspect.)
Ulis believes that Peterson makes for an intriguing suspect given that Crucible employees often traveled to Seattle, the base of Boeing's operations.
"I can put him in Seattle, I can put him at Boeing," said Ulis. "It's a compelling person of interest, and he's definitely somebody I'm going to continue to dig into."
As for whether or not the case will be reopened, Ulis told Fox13 that federal authorities "made it very, very clear that they don't want anything to do with this case at this point." However, he remains optimistic that the mystery of D.B. Cooper will finally be solved.
“I would not be surprised at all if 2024 was the year we figure out who this guy was," he said.
