Getty/FBI Ted Cruz (l) and DB Cooper.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has copped to one of the most mysterious crimes of the last century. He says he’s DB Cooper.
Of course, it’s a joke. Cruz is not DB Cooper. He’s also not the Zodiac Killer, in case you’re wondering (if you really need an explanation of that one, you can check out this story, which reveals Cruz tweeted out Zodiac-like coding as a Halloween joke in 2018). Cooper jumped from the plane in 1971. Ted Cruz was born on December 22, 1970. Do the math.
Ted Cruz was also born after one of the Zodiac’s killings, by the way. Neither Cooper nor Zodiac has ever been definitively identified, of course.
People thought Cruz’s tweet was pretty funny, though. “Has anyone seen Ted Cruz, the Zodiac Killer, and DB Cooper in the same place at the same time? Coincidence?” wrote one.
Cruz retweeted a post from the FBI on November 24, 2019, which read, “#OTD in 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted from a plane he had just hijacked, clutching a bag filled with stolen cash. Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? What happened to the stolen money? Read about this unsolved mystery.”
“I did it,” Cruz responded.
What gives? Apparently some people think Ted Cruz looks like the police sketches of D.B. Cooper. The joke has been around for some time. “DB Cooper is Ted Cruz,” a person declared on Twitter back in January 2019. “ted cruz is db cooper,” another person joked on Twitter in 2018. That same year, another guy wrote, “I need (other Twitter pages) to team up on a emergency factual unsolved mystery: the origin of ‘Ted Cruz: The Real Zodiac Killer’ obv. He’s not, but what’s the origin of this myth and why does he look more like the DB Cooper sketch?”
Judge for yourself. Here’s DB Cooper:
DB Cooper police sketches.
Here’s a picture of Ted Cruz:
GettySenator Ted Cruz has a net worth of $3.8 million.
Here’s what you need to know:
DB Cooper Represents One of the Greatest Unsolved Mysteries in FBI History
The FBI website that Cruz retweeted explains how, on the afternoon of November 24, 1971, “a nondescript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington. Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.”
The FBI says that Cooper “was a quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-40s, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt. He ordered a drink—bourbon and soda—while the flight was waiting to take off. A short time after 3:00 p.m., he handed the stewardess a note indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.” (That’s right – he was already in his mid-40s at a time that Ted Cruz was 1 years old.)
DB Cooper’s tie.
“The stunned stewardess did as she was told. Opening a cheap attaché case, Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of wires and red colored sticks and demanded that she write down what he told her. Soon, she was walking a new note to the captain of the plane that demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills,” the FBI wrote.
When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker “exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes. Cooper kept several crew members, and the plane took off again, ordered to set a course for Mexico City,” according to the FBI.
“Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: He jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money. The pilots landed safely, but Cooper had disappeared into the night and his ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day.”
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