By The Time NASCAR Figured Out This Driver’s Strange Motive, It Was Already Too Late

This story takes us back to the springtime of 1982 when racing enthusiasts were getting ready for the Winston 500. For a lot of people back then, the Winston 500 was the best race around. And to make things even more enticing that particular year, word had got out about some newcomer who fancied his chances.

On paper, L.W. Wright looked like the real deal. His stats suggested he’d gained a lot of racing experience over the years, plus he was sponsored by famous musicians T.G. Sheppard and Merle Haggard. These stars obviously trusted this up-and-coming racer, so expectations were now running high. Could Wright even manage to take first place on the big day?

Well, first things first, Wright had to enter a qualifying race so he could actually compete at the Winston 500. But despite all the buzz, this qualifier didn’t go as well as might have been expected. In fact, Wright only just scraped through it. Maybe he’d been having an off day?

Regardless, Wright had done enough and eventually the day of the Winston 500 arrived. He was about to drive in what some regarded as the greatest of all races — but something seemed a little off. People around Wright noticed his behavior was strange, almost like he wasn’t prepared. Was it nerves? Well, as the day unfolded, it became clear that Wright wasn’t quite the racer people thought...

Drivers need nerves of steel and a lot of experience if they want to do well on the Talladega Superspeedway. It’s not the type of course where you can just show up to and automatically expect to succeed. There’s a reason why the “’Dega” is considered to be among the best oval tracks in the world.

The ’Dega was the brainchild of NASCAR’s own founding father, Bill France Snr. Right from the off, France intended this track to be the biggest and best. And in the end, that’s what came to pass. Measuring 2.66 miles, this oval track was longer than the other great speedways, including Indianapolis and Daytona.

The ’Dega was constructed on the site of an old air base, situated roughly ten miles from the Alabaman city of Talladega. This 2,000-acre plot had been sitting idle for years after the Air Force had moved out. But in 1968 works got under way to breathe new life into this spot.

About $4 million was pumped into construction of the ’Dega, which in the ’60s represented an even more significant investment than it does today. France was pulling out all the stops for his new racing track. He wanted it to be the best and it was designed with spectators’ interests specifically in mind.

The ’Dega wasn’t initially known as the Talladega Superspeedway upon its completion in September 1969. It was originally called the Alabama International Motor Speedway, a moniker which would stick for two decades. Regardless, races were now being staged on the new track. The first was the Bama 400, followed by the Talladega 500.

Right from the off, the track’s potential was realized. Speed records were immediately broken there, with the quickest driver reaching a top speed just shy of 200mph. This must have been exhilarating for audiences, but the drivers had their concerns. They were afraid such extreme speeds would inevitably lead to dreadful accidents.

Even though some drivers were expressing their worries about the potential for disaster, races still went ahead. And in those early years, the track became a huge attraction for motorheads. Many of the races that took place there were extremely tight, with winners ultimately decided by the slightest of margins.

The speedway proved so competitive that leaders of a given race would change constantly. The most times this happened in a single race occurred in 1984 during the Winston 500 event. That year, the car at the head of the pack changed a whopping 75 times. Spectators must have been dizzy by the end!

As the years wore on, speed records continued to be broken. The 200mph mark was surpassed for the first time in 1982 and speeds were pushed higher and higher over the following years. By 1987 all cars racing on the track were maxing out at speeds in excess of 200mph, with the quickest breaching the 212mph mark.

With such high speeds becoming the norm for the ’Dega, arguably tragedy was unavoidable. With such close running in NASCAR races, losses of control were, aftr all, fairly commonplace. The first ’Dega death happened in 1973 when competitor Larry Smith lost control of his car. Another driver was killed two years later, with four more fatalities occurring in the decade or so between ’82 and ’91.

The ever-increasing speeds at the ’Dega were ramping up the peril for the drivers year on year. Eventually, something had to give. That happened in 1987, when a driver who had lost control was launched into the air, hurtling towards the crowd. Thankfully, a retaining fence did its job and the vehicle was repelled back towards onto track, sparing the spectators; the driver, too, emerged more-or-less unscathed. All the same, the episode made it crystal clear that the trend of climbing maximum speeds couldn’t continue.

Measures were introduced to keep speeds down after that near miss. Devices were installed in engines to reduce horsepower, meaning that speeds tend to average out at about 190mph nowadays. Still, this measure arguably carries its own dangerous pitfall: because all competitors now complete laps at roughly the same speed, cars can often become jammed together. And occasionally that can have disastrous consequences.

If up to 40 cars are all packed together in a line, one slip-up can trigger an horrific chain reaction. A huge number of drivers can be taken out in incidents like these — and they’re not uncommon. They’re so frequent that these types of crashes even have a special name, with people dubbing such an occurrence “The Big One.”

Disaster is never far away at the ’Dega, leading superstitious types to suggest the track is “cursed”. People have died there in crashes and other strange incidents, only adding to the venue’s mystique. Realistically, though, motorsport is a dangerous pursuit by its nature, so fatalities on racing tracks are hardly a surprise.

It’s fair to say, though, that the ’Dega has seen its fair share of strange stories over the years. But the weirdest of all was arguably the episode in 1982 when L.W. Wright showed up on the scene. He took NASCAR by storm that year — but not for the reasons you’d expect.

Wright’s name emerged ahead of the Winston 500 event, when a newspaper in Nashville reported on his intention to compete. This paper, The Tennessean, stated that Wright was 33 and had competed in 45 top-tier NASCAR races in the past. It also mentioned that he was being sponsored by country music stars Sheppard and Haggard.

All of this was impressive, but it begged a question: why did nobody know who this Wright figure was? Wasn’t it odd that he’d raced so often in the past, yet no one seemed to remember him? It was strange, certainly, but it didn’t matter much to NASCAR. So long as Wright could pay the fees to enter the Winston 500, then he’d be allowed to race.

Wright coughed up the money for the fees, so he was now in a position to enter the race. But before that could happen, he needed a car — and cars are expensive. So, he turned to a businessman named B.W. “Bernie” Terrell in the hope of getting the money out of him.

Terrell must have been won over by Wright’s past credentials as a racer, as he handed him over $30,000 for a vehicle. The businessman also gave Wright another $7,500 for additional expenses. Let’s not forget that this was back in the ’80s, meaning these sums would amount to something closer to $100,000 in today’s money.

With Terrell’s cash, Wright set out to look for a car. He met up with a driver named Sterling Marlin, who owned a Monte Carlo: he agreed to sell for a little over $20,000, most of which Wright provided in hard cash. And to top it off, Marlin also signed up to lead Wright’s crew on the day of the race.

So, Wright was now scheduled to compete in the Winston 500 — and he had a car and an experienced crew member to help. Now it was just a case of organizing the finer details, like obtaining spare parts and tires. Wright wrote some checks for these items, amounting to a few thousand dollars.

The new driver’s preparations had been going fairly smoothly up to this point, but now things started to unravel. Not long before the race, Wright was interviewed by the press. While chatting with a reporter he mentioned his sponsors Sheppard and Haggard, the two country stars. The thing is, though, when Sheppard was alerted to this interview he wasn’t happy about it.

Sheppard outright denied that he’d sponsored Wright, even stating that he had no links to the driver at all. The country musician’s tax attorney Gary Barker publicly reiterated this claim. In Barker’s words, “In fact, T.G. said he had never heard of the guy... Something mighty fishy’s going on somewhere.”

But when challenged, Wright simply answered that Sheppard just didn’t want to be hasty in announcing his involvement. The rookie was also asked about why nobody remembered him racing before, which led him to admit something. He allowed that he’d talked himself up a little bit, but he still maintained that he really did have some racing experience.

By now, of course, Wright had already paid his fees and been given the green light to compete. But that didn’t stop people from feeling suspicious, especially Marlin. And the pit crew chief’s concerns were only intensified by the fact that Wright really seemed to have no idea what he was doing — in fact, he didn’t appear to be an experienced driver at all.

That year, the standards at the Winston 500 were generally extremely high. In fact, it was the first year that someone passed the 200mph mark during qualifiers. Wright, though, only hit 187mph. He also had a minor crash, though it wasn’t serious enough to prevent him entering the actual race. Despite the question marks hanging over him, he was ready to go.

Wright lined up in 36th place for the race. And with that, he set off. For 13 laps, he managed to keep out of trouble. But then he blew his car’s engine, and was forced to retire. By this stage one of his fellow competitors had already succumbed to an accident, so Wright didn’t actually come last. In a way, then, it had been a successful effort.

But Wright didn’t stick around. In fact, right after the race, he vanished into thin air. Everyone was left scratching their heads — where had he gone? Why did he disappear right after the race? It didn’t take long, though, before the penny started to drop.

It soon emerged that all the checks Wright had written in the build-up to the race had bounced. And his debts weren’t just limited to car parts, either. The man also owed huge sums of money in rent and phone bills, too. The rookie driver was thousands of dollars in the red — and nowhere to be found.

Yes, L.W. Wright had been little more than a conman, albeit a talented one. Using only his cunning and persuasive nature, he’d managed to dupe various parties into giving him money to enter a race he had no real intention of winning. And when all was said and done, he disappeared with the leftover cash.

Naturally, many feathers were ruffled by Wright’s elaborate and devious scheme. A big hunt was organized to try and track him down, with those who’d been burned by the con determined to seek reparations. NASCAR itself backed the search effort, with the businessman Bernie Terrell also playing a major part.

But in the end, the search bore no fruit. To this very day, L.W. Wright — or whatever his real name is — has never been found. The conman disappeared without a trace, leaving investigators scratching their heads in his wake. It was almost as though he’d never existed.

If Wright is still alive today, he’d probably be in his 70s. It’s tempting to imagine him, wherever he might be, tuning in each year to NASCAR events at the Talladega Superspeedway, maybe having a giggle to himself. Remembering the time he somehow managed to race on the fastest track of them all.

You have to wonder, though, why Wright went to so much effort. He made some money, sure, but it wasn’t a huge amount — only a few thousand dollars, in the end. He actually could have made more if he’d taken the sponsorship money and disappeared right away, but he didn’t. He stuck around, bought a car, and entered the race. Based on that, you’d have to presume he just genuinely wanted the thrill of racing at the ’Dega.

Another theory about Wright’s underlying motive has actually gained a lot of currency. This idea states he actually concocted and pulled off his great scheme for the sake of a bet. Who knows? Maybe that’s the truth of it. No matter what, though, for better or worse the driver who never was has become a part of NASCAR folklore. He's also drawn endless comparisons to another high-profile criminal—one whose strange crime baffles experts to this day.

“I have a bomb.” It’s 1971, and those four fearsome words have just been scrawled on a note and handed to flight attendant Flo Schaffner. The man who wrote them – a passenger on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 – also reveals a briefcase seemingly filled with dynamite. Terrified, Schaffner sees no option but to help him secure a ransom of $200,000 and four parachutes. And when the cash is delivered, the thief makes a daring mid-air leap from the plane – never to be seen again.

The jaw-dropping hijack baffled experts and investigators the world over. But now, almost 50 years later, important new evidence has allowed researchers to crack a crucial component of the D.B. Cooper case. This latest discovery comes from citizen sleuth Tom Kaye, one of only a handful of regular people who’ve been permitted to see the case documents by the FBI. And against all odds, his work has unearthed a crucial new clue.

“Dan Cooper” – christened “D.B.” in the press – has been at large since November 24, 1971. At the time, there was nothing about the guy that singled him out as special or noteworthy. He simply walked up to the desk of Northwest Orient Airlines and purchased a ticket to Seattle, Washington. It’s a pretty low-excitement start to the country’s most daring heist.

The descriptions of D.B. Cooper weren’t very exciting, either. According to the FBI investigation, he was simply a middle-aged guy who was “nondescript” and “quiet.” Cooper was also dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie. So basically, he could’ve been just about any adult male boarding a flight in 1971… until he spoke to Flo Schaffner.

It happened a little after 3:00 p.m. Cooper had already enjoyed a smoke and a stiff drink – perhaps to calm any pre-hijack nerves. And when he slipped Schaffner the message, the flight attendant initially ignored it. She figured it was simply one more dude making a pass at her. Cooper demanded she look at it, though, and that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

Cooper told Schaffner to sit next to him and then issued his demands. He wanted $200,000 in cash plus four parachutes. He also asked for the plane to be refueled after they’d landed in Seattle. And if the hijacker didn’t get what he asked for? Well, then he’d blow up the craft. Faced with that terrifying threat, Schaffner had no choice but to be his messenger.

Flight 305 landed in Seattle a couple of hours after its scheduled arrival time. The FBI had Cooper’s money – and some snipers – ready and waiting. Cooper then traded the plane’s 36 passengers for his dough. But he didn’t wait around for the craft to finish refueling. Instead, he ordered the pilot to take off for Mexico City. Yet the daring hijacker never crossed the border.

In a staggering twist, Cooper leaped from the aircraft – according to the FBI – “somewhere between Seattle and Reno [in Nevada].” He was wearing a parachute and carrying the $200,000… and that was the last anybody ever saw him. Not for lack of trying, mind you. People have tried really hard to track down the mysterious hijacker – but they’ve been thwarted at every turn.

The day after the crime took place, the FBI poured into the area’s woods to look for any clue as to where Cooper could have gone. They found nothing. But the agents did put together a profile. They figured Cooper knew about aircraft and had knowledge of the region. The investigators also had a good idea of his character and appearance.

But it wasn’t enough. After five years of searching, the FBI had looked at and dismissed around 800 possible culprits. Only a handful were viable suspects, though, and no arrests were made. Yet there was one guy who continued to be singled out by those working on the case. This man’s name was Richard McCoy.

McCoy entered the picture several months on from the Cooper skyjacking. The reason? He had pulled off a heist in a very similar fashion to Cooper. Yep, parachutes, ransom money and all. This time, though, McCoy was captured shortly after his mid-air escape. Yet even though McCoy was convicted for his crime, the FBI eventually declared that he wasn’t the elusive D.B. Cooper.

Of course, the agents had to consider the possibility that Cooper had died during his escape attempt. This really was an incredibly risky skydive, after all. It was dark, Cooper’s parachute lacked any controls, and he was diving into territory filled with trees. All of this would have challenged a professional skydiver – and investigators didn’t think Cooper was one. But then came a breakthrough.

A boy named Brian Ingram was out with his parents in Vancouver, Washington, one day in 1980. He made a space for a fire close to the Columbia River – at Tena Bar – and came across a weird bump in the ground. “I wasn’t excited at all at first,” Ingram later told People magazine. “Then I brushed the sand off, and it was money!”

You guessed it: the stash was part of Cooper’s ransom money. The bills were damp and disintegrating – but their serial numbers proved they’d been among Cooper’s cash. This was a big deal, of course, and the FBI arrived soon after to hunt for further clues.

Unfortunately for the agents, though, they came up empty-handed. Yet the evidence still raised interesting questions. How did the $5,800 end up in this exact spot? And what did it mean for the hijacking case? Well, nobody ever offered any completely satisfying answers. But the money did provide investigators with three tantalizing theories.

The problem with the money was that it was found about 20 miles from where the FBI reckoned Cooper had landed. So if the investigators had their facts straight, how had the money traveled such a long way? One explanation was that the FBI was simply wrong about the landing site and the hijacker had in fact dropped down near the river. But not everyone was convinced.

Another theory suggested that the skyjacker – or perhaps some kind of accomplice – purposefully hid the cash there as a distraction. If that were the case, it certainly worked! Yet the most prominent explanation for the money ending up where it did came from Leonard Palmer, a Portland State University geologist. It’s called the “Washougal Washdown Theory.”

It’s got a catchy name, so you know it’s going to be good, right? Palmer’s suggestion is that Cooper did drop out of the plane around Ariel – as the FBI figured. But during the descent, Palmer said, some of his cash landed in a nearby stream. This money then followed the current and gradually made its way along the Columbia River to Tena Bar.

That’s all well and good… But it doesn’t tell us who D.B. Cooper was, does it? While the FBI continued to investigate the case, the experts never settled on a suspect – and the years continued to pass. The case grew cold. Then, in 2007, scientist Tom Kaye and his team got involved.

It was at this time that the FBI “reignited the case” of D.B. Cooper by asking the public for help. Kaye and his “Cooper Research Team” were then granted access to the case files and conducted several years of research. As we know, the work continues to this day – with Kaye’s latest discovery providing the most compelling clue yet.

The idea was to apply modern research techniques to a decades-old case. Kaye could take advantage of technology that didn’t even exist in 1971 to try to catch the criminal. And we should note that this most recent discovery is far from the first conclusion that the team has drawn.

You see, the team’s initial investigation focused on Cooper’s tie. The skyjacker had left it behind when he’d leaped from the plane. And one fact that Kaye uncovered, which he and his team published on CitizenSleuths.com, took “the number of potential suspects from millions down to hundreds.” What had he found? That Cooper had “worked at or had access to a plant that used titanium.”

Yet while this was clearly an exciting discovery, it didn’t result in the investigators finally getting their man. In 2016, in fact, the FBI officially closed the case, citing the need “to focus on other investigative priorities.” The door was still left open so that any new leads connected to the cash would be looked into, though. And Kaye’s recent discovery certainly is a striking piece of new evidence.

The discovery first came to the public’s attention in August 2020. Speaking to King 5, Kaye revealed that he’d taken a much closer look at the D.B. Cooper ransom money found in 1980. And using his trusty electron microscope, the scientist has seemingly made a big breakthrough in the case. So what’s the deal?

As we’ve already heard, the money has been the cause of much debate. Kaye’s team had even previously noted that the cash “continues to resist all natural explanations for how it arrived on Tena Bar.” But it seems that all the research so far had failed to consider the diatoms. And if you’re now wondering what we’re talking about, don’t worry: we’re going to explain.

Diatoms, it turns out, are algae. They’re pretty common, too. According to diatoms.org, these single-celled microalgae are actually responsible for about half of the oxygen we inhale. So perhaps that’s why Kaye and his team hadn’t paid much attention initially to the diatoms they’d found on the Cooper money more than a decade earlier. But then Kaye had an idea.

Kaye’s big moment came when he realized that the algae could reveal brand-new information. “We wondered if we could use these different species of diatoms that we found on the Cooper bills a long time ago to determine when the money got wet and when the money landed on [Tena Bar],” the scientist explained to King 5.

And that’s basically what Kaye did. He put the diatoms under the microscope and discovered that these little fellas only come out at a certain time of year. “[The diatoms] bloom in the spring. They do not bloom in November when Cooper jumped,” Kaye explained. This is an important find for several reasons.

For one thing, it throws a wrench into Palmer’s theory that the money floated into the Columbia River as Cooper parachuted toward the ground. Why? “The money was not floating in the water for a year, otherwise we would have seen diatoms from the full range of the year,” Kaye told King 5.

“We only saw [the diatoms] from the spring… the springtime bloom,” the scientist continued. “So this puts a very narrow range on when the money got wet and was subsequently buried on Tena Bar.” Okay, well, that puts an end to a 40-year-old theory. But what did happen?

According to Kaye’s research, Cooper’s cash could only have found its way into the water in either May or June. So this means that for at least five or six months after the dramatic hijack, the money was on dry land. But Kaye also reckons that it doesn’t indicate that the other popular theory is correct.

Remember when we mentioned earlier about Cooper or an accomplice burying the dough to throw off the investigators? At first glance, the new evidence could suggest that this is a workable theory. It’s certainly possible to say that the ransom money was buried for those elusive five or six months. Right?

Well, no. Kaye said that’s not the case. Presumably, this is because the scientist would’ve found evidence of a burial while investigating the diatoms. So that’s two workable theories thrown to the wind. All of which makes us return to the question of what actually happened on that day in 1971.

And even though Kaye’s discovery is significant, it probably doesn’t bring us much closer to solving the mystery. It just means that we now know how the money didn’t find its way to Tena Bar. But given that Kaye has been working on the case for so long, it’s probably okay to assume he has some sort of theory.

But you’d be wrong. Upon being pressed on the unresolved issues of the case, Kaye declared to King 5, “Cooper is still messing with us.” It’s probably not the answer that most people wanted, but it’s hard to argue with the man. Mind you, the case continues to generate interest – and another development cropped up in 2021.

This time it involves flight attendant Tina Mucklow. She was onboard Flight 305 and was an integral part of Cooper’s negotiations. Yet for all the years afterward, the flight attendant has refused to talk publicly about her experiences. And for some reporters and amateur detectives, this has made her the crucial link to solving the D.B. Cooper mystery.

So these folks must’ve been beside themselves with joy when, in January 2021, Rolling Stone released an interview with Mucklow. This is a woman who was up close and personal with D.B. Cooper, after all. Surely now they’d get the answers that they so desperately longed for?

Alas, while Mucklow no doubt had plenty of interesting things to say about the hijacking, none of them pointed the finger at a particular suspect. But perhaps the interview will help to get people off her back. “There have been many times when I’ve felt that people didn’t respect ‘no’ or ‘not interested,’” she explained.

And despite being accused by one Cooper obsessive of being a “wounded woman” who’s “traumatized” by the skyjacking, Mucklow has said that this simply isn’t true. “I went on with my life, pursued what I needed to do, had my own personal interests, likes and wants,” she told Rolling Stone. “I wasn’t defined by that hijacking.”

The FBI couldn’t find an answer to the D.B. Cooper mystery, then. And Tom Kaye couldn’t solve all of the case’s conundrums. Even flight attendant Tina Mucklow didn’t provide the insight so many people have been waiting for. So, will we ever find out who D.B. Cooper really is? We’ll just have to watch this space.