Barbara Dayton was a librarian, a highly-skilled recreational pilot, and a parachutist who served in the US Merchant Marine and later in the Army during World War II. Assigned male at birth, Dayton underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1969 and claimed to have staged the hijacking two years later.
According to Kay Melchisedech Olson's 2010 book, "DB Cooper Hijacking: Vanishing Act," Dayton claimed that she staged the hijacking to "get back" at the airline industry for rules and conditions that prevented her from obtaining a commercial pilot's license. She said she later hid the ransom money in a cistern a few miles south of Portland. When she realized that the hijacking charges could still be brought, she recanted her statement. The FBI has never seriously acknowledged Dayton, who died of pulmonary disease in 2002, as an official suspect in the DB Cooper case.
