One of the clues that I chased was that Dan Cooper, whoever he was, found an old magazine story called "How to Leave Your Life." And followed the directions on how to leave your life, and just went to the beach one day with his wife and kids, and said he needed to go to the bathroom, and went to the restroom at the beach and never came home.
We're attracted to bad guys, and we like to follow bad guys, because they do things that we want to do but just don't do, for whatever reasons.
"Mad Men" - it seems like they try to capture this glamorized version of the '50s and '60s advertising culture.
One of the things, universally, that psychologists found with hijackers in the early '70s was that they all struggled with women.
Not only was Dan Cooper likely an alias, but many people suspected at the time were people living under assumed names. The '50s and '60s were a time when some people were desperate to leave their lives. They felt trapped in their marriages or their jobs, and they were seeking freedom. And one of the ways to do that, because technology wasn't advanced as it is today, was just to take over somebody's name.
There's an obsession, within our culture, with the genteel thief. Somebody who commits a crime, but does it in a classy way.
