THE DB Cooper mystery could finally be solved by the end of the year following a rapid succession of breakthroughs in the decades-old case, an investigator believes.

Eric Ulis, who has been probing Cooper’s unsolved 1971 skyjacking for the last 13 years, told The U.S. Sun that 2024 could well be the year the infamous crook is unmasked once and for all.

“Considering the rapid pace at which the DB Cooper enigma is being unraveled, I would not be at all surprised if this case is solved this year,” said Ulis.

“The investigation is evolving and moving very quickly and has been for the last few years.

“We are definitely sniffing in the right neighborhood. There’s no doubt about it at this point.”

Ulis’s confidence in cracking the decades-old cold case came after he announced a new development in his independent investigation on Wednesday.

A previously unidentified particle found on a clip-on tie left behind by Cooper on Northwest Orient Flight 305 was identified as pure titanium smeared with stainless steel.

The discovery was made by scientist Tom Kaye, who analyzed Cooper’s tie in 2013 and found thousands of particles believed to be linked to the aerospace industry, including titanium, high-grade stainless steel, aluminum, and other rare elements.

The latest particle to be identified may hold a crucial key in helping to finally identify Cooper, Ulis believes.

A press release announcing the discovery read: “The particle […] has served as an enigma in that it has been difficult to explain the environment in which such a particle could have been formed given the enormous amount of pressure required to abrade 400 series stainless steel (the hardest steel) into titanium.

“Recently, noted DB Cooper investigator and researcher Eric Ulis determined that the particle came from a process known as ‘cold rolling.’

“This process involves rolling a sheet of titanium between two stainless steel rollers under extremely high pressure for the purpose of thinning the titanium sheet and enhancing its strength.

​”Cold rolling titanium is only done in a specialty metals facility. The process is almost exclusively used to craft parts for aerospace applications.”

Noting the rarity of “cold rolling” during the 1960s, Ulis believes the particle’s existence on Cooper’s tie points to him being a likely employee of a now-defunct specialty metals facility in Pittsburgh called Crucible Steel.

Crucible Steel was a major supplier of titanium and stainless steel parts for Boeing during the 1960s and 70s, Ulis says.

The plane Cooper hijacked was a Boeing 727, and it’s long believed he had ties to the aerospace industry because of his near-constant use of aviation jargon during the heist and his seemingly intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the 727.

Ulis called the identification of the titanium particle very significant in an interview with The U.S. Sun on Wednesday afternoon.

He said Crucible had two US Patents for the kind of titanium identified by Kay, making the specialist plant ground zero for where DB Cooper likely worked.

“There are very few places where titanium would’ve been cold-rolled, particularly in the 1960s,” said Ulis.

“And Crucible Steel is ground zero as far as where DB Cooper came from – at least in my mind – primarily because these particles only really came from there.

“The other thing is they were also a significant subcontractor for Boeing. In fact, they had the lion’s share of business across the United States.

“They were the premier company for producing parts for the aerospace sector; so everything points to DB Cooper having come from Crucible Steel.”

KEY SUSPECT: VINCE PETERSEN

The earlier discovery of other elements found on Cooper’s tie by Kay led Ulis to a new potential suspect in the case in late 2022.

That suspect is a man named Vince Petersen, a former engineer at Crucible.

Petersen, who died in 2002, would’ve been 52 at the time of the skyjacking.

He was identified by Ulis as a potential culprit after the investigation painstakingly went through a spreadsheet of more than 100,000 particles yielded from the tie in search of anything that seemed out of the ordinary.

There he found several rare aerospace-related particles he was able to link back to Crucible.

Wednesday’s discovery further fortifies his belief that Petersen could’ve been Cooper, Ulis says.

“The particles on the tie are exceptionally rare and there’s a significant amount of them, north of 100,000, and there’s just very few places Cooper could’ve picked these things up.

“And when you consider the age of DB Cooper, his height, and things of this nature, it’s very easy to winnow down the field pretty quickly.”

During his investigation, Ulis was able to make contact with a former supervisor at Crucible, who, when informed of Cooper’s likeness and attributes, pointed him in the direction of Petersen, whom he deemed the only likely match.

According to Ulis’s source, there were only eight engineers employed at Crucible in the years preceding the skyjacking, in addition to a dozen assistants.

All eight of the engineers wore ties, Ulis said, while the assistants did not.

“We’re dealing with a very small universe of people,” said Ulis.

“I know there are others who have combed through north of 100 men [who] worked for Crucible and other similar facilities but nobody checks the Cooper boxes like Vince Petersen.

“That doesn’t prove he was DB Cooper, of course, but it is compelling.

“Given time, I think I’ll come up with something that’s going to seal the deal one way or the other.

“There’s just no doubt about that at this point.”

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Another particle discovered on the tie that Ulis found intriguing was a trace of a commercial kind of salt.

According to Ulis’ research, Vince Petersen studied extensively and even wrote an academic paper on the effects of salt on titanium.

He took his findings to Petersen’s son a few years ago but he didn’t believe his father was DB Cooper, Ulis said.

The next stage in Ulis’s investigation is to gain access to Cooper’s tie to conduct further testing.

He believes the Bureau may have overlooked a key feature of the tie that could still hold the skyjacker’s DNA.

That feature is a small clasp built into the knot of the tie that spins and enables the wearer to adjust the knot to their desired size.

If Cooper ever adjusted the tie, Ulis believes the hijacker’s DNA will still be preserved in the spindle.

Ulis recently discovered the clasp after analyzing US Patent and Trademark documents for the tie.

He told The U.S. Sun that he asked two former FBI investigators who worked the Cooper case if they were aware of the spindle apparatus at the time, to which they responded they were not.

Last spring, Ulis sued the FBI to force them to release the tie for testing and settle the case once and for all.

However, his quest to finally unmask Cooper received a considerable knock after a judge granted the government’s motion to dismiss his case last month.

In the ruling, US District Judge Jia M. Cobb wrote: “Regardless of the intrigue and mystery that shrouds the case of D.B. Cooper, [the Freedom of Information Act] only compels production on ‘records,’ not tangible objects. At the very least, not this tangible object.”

The judge pointed to various case laws, including a similar suit filed in 1971 to gain access to several items related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“A necktie – even a necktie that might contain DNA of a prominent figure like D.B. Cooper – struggles to find a place within the common understanding of ‘record’ is incapable of replication or copying and this is not ‘reproducible,’ and is seminal if not identical in kind to the physical items that court have already rejected as beyond the scope of FOIA.

“Indeed, if the shirt and coat worn by President John F. Kennedy during his assassination do not qualify, then certainly the necktie of rogue hijacker D.B. Cooper warrants the same treatment.”

In her ruling, the judge conceded the DC Circuit has yet to specifically determine what is and isn’t considered record.

“For this case, however, it suffices to say that to call a clip-on necktie an ‘agency record’ is not reasonable,” added the judge.

Ulis voiced disappointment about the judge’s decision in a statement issued to The U.S. Sun but vowed to appeal the dismissal.

On Wednesday, he reiterated his intentions to appeal the ruling, adding, “I am working a couple of angles right now to see if I can get access to the tie because getting our hands on that will be the Holy Grail.

“We have a significant amount from what we already know about it, but uncovering DNA would be the home run we need.”

AN ENDURING MYSTERY

DB Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971, during a short trip between Portland and Seattle.

Shortly after take-off, Cooper handed a note to a flight attendant sitting behind him, informing her he had a bomb in his briefcase.

In exchange for the lives of the 36 other passengers and six crew on board, the mild-mannered highjacker demanded $200,000 in stacks of $20 bills and four parachutes.

When the flight landed in Seattle, the cash and parachutes were exchanged for all of the passengers and some of the crew.

Following Cooper’s instructions, the Boeing 727 was refueled and took off for a second time – this time in the direction of Mexico City.

But around 8 pm, somewhere over southwest Washington, a light flashed up on the instrument panel in the cockpit, indicating the rear exit door had been opened.

With that, Cooper was gone, parachuting out into the stormy night sky with his ransom in tow.

Virtually all traces of Cooper vanished therein.

The only item left behind on Flight 305 by Cooper was a black, clip-on JCPenney tie with a gold pin.

Investigators later yielded a DNA sample from the tie and other items of evidentiary value, but they don’t believe the DNA sample belonged to Cooper.

After forensically analyzing the tie in 2011, FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt told ABC News, “It’s possible that the DNA sample taken off the tie was not from the hijacker. There are questions about the tie. It may have been borrowed or purchased used. The DNA may be from someone else.

“The tie had two small DNA samples, and one large sample lifted off in 2000-2001. It’s difficult to draw firm conclusions from these samples.”

The only other trace yielded of Cooper since came in 1980 when a young boy digging along the banks of the Columbia River in Tena bar unearthed $5,800 in $20 bills buried in the earth.

The serial numbers of the bills matched those issued to Cooper during the skyjacking but the discovery failed to yield any new leads.

More than 800 potential suspects were eyed by the FBI in the years after the heist, though none were deemed a compelling match.

Today, the incident remains the only unsolved skyjacking in US history.

The FBI officially closed its investigation into DB Cooper for good in 2016.

But Ulis refuses to give up, telling The U.S. Sun he’s confident the case will be solved within the next few years.