The FBI said Tuesday that a weathered parachute found in Washington state last month by children is not the one used by infamous plane hijacker D.B. Cooper.
"From the best we could learn from the people we spoke to, it just didn't look like it was the right kind of parachute in any way," said FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs.
FBI investigators spoke with parachute experts, including Earl Cossey who packed the parachutes provided to Cooper on the day in 1971 when he jumped out of a plane over the Pacific Northwest.
Cossey said one of the differences was that Cooper's parachute was made of nylon, not silk like the one found.
The hijacker who identified himself as Dan Cooper, but was later mistakenly identified as D.B. Cooper, hijacked a Northwest Orient passenger jet from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, Wash., on Nov. 24, 1971.
At the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for a ransom of $200,000 and four parachutes, then asked to be flown to Mexico.
Somewhere around the Oregon line, he jumped out of the back of the plane. His fate is unknown to this day, though investigators doubt he survived.
Children who found the tattered parachute while playing near a recently graded road urged their father to call the FBI about the discovery after seeing a news story about the 1971 hijacking.
Cossey said this was the third time the FBI asked him to examine a parachute to determine whether it was Cooper's.
One found a long time ago ended up being a "pilot chute" — used to pull the main chute of the pack.
The second time, in 1988, it was a parachute found by a Columbia River diver seeking clues to Cooper's fate.
"They keep bringing me garbage," Cossey said. "Every time they find squat, they bring it out and open their trunk and say, 'Is that it?' and I say, 'Nope, go away.' Then a few years later they come back."
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