Thanksgiving Eve, 1971. Drama aboard Northwest Orient #305, a passenger airliner outbound from Portland, Oregon, heading for Seattle, Washington. An unremarkable man, wearing business attire, a black overcoat, dark sunglasses, and carrying a briefcase tells one of the flight attendants he has a bomb. He demands $200,000 and four parachutes when the airplane lands in Seattle.
With his demands met, the unidentified man releases the passengers and some of crew. He instructs the airplane to fly low and slow toward Mexico. Somewhere over the rugged mountains of Southwest Washington, this man parachutes into legend.
Nearly all of the ransom money and the man has been missing ever since. The crime remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in American aviation history.
This individual, now known only as "D.B. Cooper," is part of the lore and legend of the Pacific Northwest, along with Sasquatch, flying saucers—a term coined in Washington State—and the cataclysmic destruction of a once dormant volcano, Mt. St. Helens.
In the few short hours from the initial threat until D.B. Cooper disappeared forever, much confusion ensued as many individuals across multiple agencies communicated with each other, hoping to resolve a tense situation. And there were personal conversations between Cooper and one of the flight attendants aboard Flight #305, Tina Mucklow, as they had a moment.
This Re-Imagined Radio performance of The Skyjacker by Dan Wyatt, Jr. presents and imagines those conversations in an epic radio drama.
Coronavirus caution prevents us from offering The Skyjacker as a live performance. Instead we are making plans for it to be broadcast by local radio stations.
We're working out the details now, so, as they say, "stay tuned." As soon as possible we will share the details about when, what time, and how to tune in our Re-Imagined Radio performance of The Skyjacker.
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