PHOENIX — "It just started as a passing interest," Eric Ulis said, with a black clip-on tie sitting on a table in front of him.
It's not the actual tie he's looking for. But his "passing interest" has led him to seek out a specific brand of clip-on tie, from a specific batch of clip-on ties, produced more than 50 years ago.
And it's led him to sue the FBI over evidence of a famous case.
"The guy with the suit, the tie, drinking a bourbon and soda, smoking the cigarette," Ulis said.
It's the description of an iconic man, one that no one has ever claimed to know or even met.
D.B. Cooper.
In 1971, a man calling himself D.B. Cooper boarded a Northwest Orient Boeing 727 jet in Portland. Once in the air, he handed a note to a stewardess, saying he had a bomb in his briefcase.
He wanted $200,000 in exchange for not blowing up the plane. He wanted the plane to land in Seattle and the money and four parachutes delivered to him.
The plane did land in Seattle, the passengers unloaded, and the money and parachute were brought to him.
When the plane took off, it was only the flight crew and D.B. Cooper, who revealed nothing about himself. South of Seattle, he told the stewardess to go to the front of the plane while he went to the back.
That model of Boeing 727 had stairs at the back that could lower to board the plane. Cooper lowered the stairs with the plane at altitude...and jumped.
He was never seen or heard from again.
"Everything we know about the guy took place during that five or six hours that he was on the jet," Ulis said.
And the only thing he left behind, besides some cigarette butts, was the clip-on tie.
The FBI did test it for DNA, but that was years ago. They found no matches in their databases.
But Ulis believes there's a part of the tie that they didn't test, one that they probably never even knew about.
When you open the clip of the tie, there's a small screw top underneath it. It doesn't just hold the tie on, however, it also unscrews to adjust the knot of the tie.
Ulis is betting that D.B. Cooper adjusted that tie at some point, leaving skin cells behind.
"That DNA would still be there today," Ulis said.
The FBI also found traces of rare earth minerals on the tie. Those minerals, back in 1971, were even more rare. In today's technology, they're used in many applications. But in 1971, they were used in far fewer places.
Other D.B. Cooper investigators found that Boeing in Seattle was working with the minerals on a supersonic transport plane project that was canceled before the skyjacking. They, and Ulis, think D.B. Cooper was an engineer associated with that project.
Ulis even has a specific engineer he believes is Cooper.
"Getting some of that DNA," Ulis said, "I can compare that with his DNA and see what we come up with."
Ulis said he plans to run the DNA profile, if there is one, through genealogical databases to find relatives. Relatives might lead him to the man known as D.B. Cooper.
But first, he needs access to the tie.
This is why he's suing the FBI, claiming it's a public record under the Freedom of Information Act. The court case is still playing out.
It's been 52 years since D.B. Cooper jumped from that plane. If he survived, which may have been extremely unlikely, he almost certainly died of old age before now.
Ulis said he's not looking to put anyone in jail, he just wants the mystery solved. And he thinks the tie will help him do it.
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