The man who packed the parachutes that D.B. Cooper used in his now infamous jump from an airplane more than 40 years ago has been identified as the victim of a homicide by authorities in Washington State.
Authorities say they have no reason to believe there is any connection between the death of Earl Cossey, 71, and the Cooper case, which remains unsolved.
Cossey died on April 23 of blunt force trauma to the head, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office, who spoke to ABC on Tuesday. His daughter discovered his body on Friday when she went to visit him at his Woodinville home, according to King County Sheriff's Sgt. Cindi West.
"We have no information that leads us to believe that this case has any relation to the Cooper case," West wrote in e-mail.
In November 1971, a man going by the name Dan Cooper, who would later be wrongly identified as D.B. Cooper, hijacked a small passenger plane that took off from Portland, Oregon, on the way to Seattle. Upon arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and four parachutes, and asked to be flown to Mexico.
The plane took off as requested with some crewmembers still on board. When the plane was near Oregon, Cooper jumped from the rear stairs. No one knows what happened to him.
Investigators doubt he would have survived the jump. It was nighttime and the weather was poor, with freezing rain falling. A boy was later found with some of his money on the Columbia River in 1980.
The parachutes used by Cooper came from a skydive center in Issaquah, which had recently purchased them from Cossey. Since the jump, when parachutes would be discovered in the area near Cooper's jump site, the FBI would seek help from Cossey in identifying them.
"They keep bringing me garbage," Cossey told the Associated Press in 2008. "Every time they find squat, they bring it out and open their trunks and say, 'Is that it?' and I say, 'Nope, go away.'
"Then a few years later they come back," Cossey said.
Cossey was last seen by his family on April 22, according to the sheriff's office. Investigators are asking anyone who saw him that night or has any information to contact them.
A reward of up to $1,000 was being offered for information leading to an arrest.
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