SEATTLE — He smoked Raleigh cigarettes, wore a black clip-on tie and drank whiskey, and when zero hour came, he was one cool cat....

...D. B. Cooper hijacked the plane, later parachuting out of it and into the unknown. His body was never found. Mr. Cooper became a folk hero, and the case remains the only unsolved hijacking in American history....

Now, 40 years later, comes what seems like a tantalizing new tip. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has a new suspect, one whose name has never surfaced in the ocean of tips that has washed in over four decades.

Fred Gutt, a special agent in the Seattle office of the F.B.I., told The New York Times on Monday that the suspect died 10 years ago. He said the tip came from a retired law enforcement officer who knew a witness who “had an association with” the suspect from long ago....