D.B. Cooper update, in case you wanted to know.

New D.B. Cooper suspect revealed through lab analysis of skyjacker’s tie, just in time for CooperCon https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2022/11/new-db-cooper-suspect-revealed-through-lab-analysis-of-skyjackers-tie-just-in-time-for-coopercon.html

This much you can say about Eric Ulis: he doesn’t give up.

The true-crime investigator, who organizes the annual CooperCon in Vancouver, believed for years that a man named Sheridan Peterson was the celebrated skyjacker D.B. Cooper. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2019 he was “98 percent” certain Peterson was the pseudonymous criminal who’s inspired songs, countless books and even a feature film.

But unlike many other dedicated “Cooperites” trying to bust open the only unsolved airline hijacking in U.S. history, Ulis is willing to reevaluate his assumptions when the evidence doesn’t quite line up.

He abandoned the late Peterson as a suspect about a year ago when he couldn’t find anyone in the former smokejumper’s long life who knew him to puff on cigarettes. The skyjacker, who bought a $20 plane ticket at Portland International Airport on Nov. 24, 1971, under the name Dan Cooper -- and later jumped out of Northwest Orient Flight 305 with $200,000 in ransom – smoked cigarette after cigarette while onboard the Boeing 727 that day.

But while Ulis gave up on Peterson, he didn’t give up on the Cooper case.