Body Found At Home Owned By Earl Cossey

A woman checking on her father discovered him dead in a house owned by the man who had packed the parachute used by D.B. Cooper, who famously hijacked an airliner some 40 years ago and parachuted from the airplane with $200,000.

The house is owned by Earl Cossey. The 74-year-old former skydiving instructor had packed the parachute eventually used by Cooper after he hijacked the Northwest Orient airplane, demanding $200,000 and four parachutes. He let the passengers off the plane in Seattle, and demanded to be flown to Mexico. He bailed out of the aircraft near the Washington-Oregon border and was never found. Some of the money was discovered in 1980.

The woman called police Friday after she went to check on her father, who lived in the house Cossey owned, after having not heard from him in several days, according to a report in the Tacoma, WA, News Tribune.

Cossey had sold the parachutes to a skydive center in Issaquah, WA, shortly before the hijacking occurred. The chute used by Cooper was a military-issue 28-foot conical canopy.

Cossey said that every few years, the FBI brings him a parachute remnant in the hopes it may be the one used by Cooper. So far, he says, they haven't found it.

Cossey does not seem to be connected with the apparent homicide in any way other than owning the house in which it occurred.

(1972 FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper)

FMI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper