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On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. After takeoff, Cooper indicated to a flight attendant that he had a bomb, demanding that $200,000 and four parachutes await him upon arrival. After authorities complied and the plane took off again, at Cooper's instruction, for Mexico, he jumped from the aircraft and vanished.

The crime remains unsolved—but not, perhaps, for long. In 2008 the FBI assembled a volunteer team, now called the Citizen Sleuths, in hopes that they might drum up new clues. Scientific illustrator Carol Abraczinskas—whose eye for detail helps her render dinosaur fossils for the University of Chicago—was eager to participate: "Who wouldn't find this interesting?" she says.

Abraczinskas helped pinpoint the exact location where some of the ransom was found, and through an obscure French-language comic book, whose hero was named Cooper—revealed a possible blueprint for the hijacking. "Was Cooper a Francophone?" she asks. "The questions keep coming."

This May, Abraczinskas even joined the FBI Citizens' Academy to better understand the bureau's work. "This case is the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history," she says. "For me, it's all about the experience."

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