Richard McCoy Jr.

Documents released in 2020 via the Freedom of Information Act revealed that as late as 2004 the FBI had still not completely cleared McCoy as a Cooper suspect and were attempting to discreetly obtain a DNA sample from McCoy's family.

In 2006, a radio station in Utah did a series of interviews with FBI agents involved in the McCoy and Cooper cases, many of which were the last public interviews of the FBI agents before they died.

Mrs. McCoy accepted settlements in 1994. The book's publisher, the University of Utah Press, paid Karen McCoy $20,000. Taylor was ordered to pay her $100,000. The two authors' settlements are confidential.

1991 saw the publication of D. B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, by Chief Probation Officer Bernie A. Rhodes, Jr. and FBI agent Russell P. Calame. Both authors investigated McCoy's skyjacking case, and their book posits that Cooper and McCoy were really the same person.

McCoy claimed innocence, but was convicted of the hijacking and received a 45-year sentence. Once incarcerated at the Federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, McCoy used his access to the prison's dental office to fashion a fake handgun out of dental paste. He and a crew of convicts (Joseph Havel, Larry L. Bagley, and Melvin Dale Walker) escaped on August 10, 1974 by commandeering a garbage truck and crashing it through the prison's main gate. Joseph Havel and Larry L. Bagley were captured three days later following a shootout after a bank robbery.

Three months later the FBI located McCoy in Virginia Beach, Virginia. News reports stated that on November 9, 1974, McCoy walked into his home and was met by FBI agents Nick O'Hara, Kevin McPartland, and Gerald Houlihan; he fired at them, and all agents opened fire, killing McCoy. Melvin Dale Walker tried to run away in their getaway car but he was apprehended after a short car chase by FBI Agents Richard Rafferty and Henry Bolin, Jr.

On April 7, 1972, McCoy boarded United Airlines Flight 855, a Boeing 727-22C (Registration: N7426U) en route from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, California, with 85 passengers and a crew of six piloted by Captain Jerry Hearn, under the alias "James Johnson" during a stopover in Denver, Colorado. The aircraft was a Boeing 727 with aft stairs (the same equipment used in the D. B. Cooper incident), via which McCoy escaped in mid-flight by parachute after giving the crew similar instructions as Cooper had. McCoy had obtained a $500,000 cash ransom, and carried a hand-grenade and a pistol.

After the book's publication, Karen McCoy, McCoy's widow, filed suit against the authors, the publisher, and her former attorney, Thomas S. Taylor. She claimed they misrepresented her involvement in the hijacking for which McCoy was convicted, and also misrepresented later events from interviews done with Taylor in the 1970s. She sought an injunction against publication and distribution of the book.

In 1965, McCoy returned to BYU, where he met Karen Louise Burns. They married in August 1965 in Raleigh. By 1971 they had two children, Chanti and Richard.

Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. (December 7, 1942 – November 9, 1974) was an American aircraft hijacker. McCoy hijacked a United Airlines passenger jet for ransom in April 1972. Due to a similar modus operandi, McCoy has been proposed as the person responsible for the November 1971 hijacking of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, attributed to the still-unidentified "D. B. Cooper".

McCoy was born December 7, 1942, in the town of Kinston, North Carolina, to Richard Floyd McCoy Sr. (1916–2008) and Myrtle Helen McCoy, who were first cousins. He grew up in nearby Cove City. In 1962 McCoy moved to Provo, Utah, and enrolled at Brigham Young University before dropping out to serve a two-year tour of duty in the Army. He served in Vietnam as a demolition expert and pilot and was awarded the Purple Heart in 1964.