In our final, decisive flight of 2025, Carrie and MawMaw are strapping on detective hats and analyzing technical blueprints to close the year on the most audacious acts of air piracy in American history. We’re stepping away from typical horrors to explore a brief, terrifying era when the sky became a frontier for high-stakes criminals—and one aircraft, the Boeing 727, became the perfect getaway vehicle.

In this episode, we dissect the three archetypes of the skyjacking era:

• The Legend (D.B. Cooper): The man who turned Seat 18C into a heist scene, vanishing into a 1971 storm with $200,000 and leaving behind nothing but a J.C. Penney tie and 60 volumes of FBI mysteries.
• The Copycat (Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.): A Green Beret who pulled off a "perfect" $500,000 jump only to be undone by a deposit slip and... a sandwich?
• The Ghost (Wilhelm Specht): The chaotic precursor who proved the human will to escape is absolute, using a simple pen knife to cut his way out of a pressurized cabin at 24,000 feet.

From the physics of "Exit Trauma" and the forensic secrets hidden in titanium particles, to Carrie’s theory on a ground accomplice, we are unraveling why the mystery of D.B. Cooper still haunts the Pacific Northwest 54 years later.

Plus: We share an incredible listener fact from dragongirl15dragon94 regarding our Sodder Children investigation!

In This Episode:

• The Technical Trap: How the "Cooper Vane" ended an era of crime.
• Forensic Deep Dive: The microscopic particles that might finally name a suspect in 2026.
• The Suspects: Analyzing Robert Rackstraw vs. Kenneth Christiansen.
• The IRS Footnote: Why the government still wants its taxes from a man who vanished.

Thank you for an incredible 2025! We’ll see you in 2026 as we kick things off with a town terrorized by a mysterious writer.

Listener Discretion is Advised: This episode contains topics and language that may not be suitable for all listeners and may be triggering for some.

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