The man in the natty suit smoked a cigarette, ordered a bourbon and soda and carried a bomb in his briefcase.
He sat in the rear of the passenger cabin on Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, he slipped the flight attendant a note explaining his intention to hijack the plane. Calmly, he put on a pair of sunglasses, demanded $200,000 in ransom and directed the pilot to land in Seattle. Once on the ground, the hijacker let 36 passengers exit, accepted the $200,000 and instructed the pilot to fly to Mexico.
On Nov. 24, 1971, a man who had bought a ticket using the name Dan Cooper – and later was misidentified by the Associated Press as D.B. Cooper – parachuted mid-flight from the rear exit of Flight 305 and straight into American folklore. It is the only unsolved case of piracy in the history of U.S. aviation.
Today, 46 years after that Thanksgiving-eve skydive, three facts about the identity of D.B. Cooper are true:
1. A team of 40 volunteer sleuths (many of them retired law enforcement investigators) has named Robert Rackstraw of San Diego as the person they believe to be the fugitive.
2. The actual FBI has closed the case July 11, 2016 without reaching any conclusion.
3. Rackstraw has offered strange denials that raise more questions than they answer.
RELATED: How ‘D.B. Cooper’ hijacked a plane, took $200,000 ransom and escaped
One more thing about the mysterious world of D.B. Cooper, where over the years no fewer than 10 people have been suspected to be the hijacker: Both sides in this story need the other one.
The volunteer investigators need Rackstraw to be Cooper to be viewed as really good investigators. And Rackstraw needs to be coy about his identity to maintain the small amount of fame he has.
Rackstraw talked on the phone with the Southern California News Group three times recently. He never denied that he was D.B. Cooper.
“They say that I’m him,” said 73-year-old Rackstraw, who described himself as a retired, homeless, military veteran. “If you want to believe it, believe it.”
And then Rackstraw said this: “I think he (D.B. Cooper) is dead. But I don’t think he died in the jump. We were trained to jump into the forest through trees and stuff.”
Did he just reveal something in that denial?
How about this comment? “What they (the investigators) have is granules of truth … and then a Hollywood elaboration.”
If he wasn’t D.B. Cooper, how would he know “granules of truth” exist in the sleuths’ research?
Tom Colbert, a former CBS Radio researcher and current film producer who put the investigative team together, did not equivocate.
“I’m beyond objective, and I know he’s D.B. Cooper,” said Colbert, who said he lives in Ventura County, but would not give his city because he doesn’t want Rackstraw to be able to find him. “I’m positive.”
Rackstraw’s comment: “He can’t prove it.”
Colbert claims to have “102 pieces of evidence” linking Rackstraw to the hijacking. He has written a book (“The Last Master Outlaw”), produced a documentary film (“D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?”), maintained a website (DBCooper.com) and sued the FBI to unseal evidence.
In August, Colbert said his team unearthed material that may have been part of Cooper’s parachute and backpack. He would not reveal the location – other than saying it is in the Pacific Northwest. But the material was found where an unnamed source told him Cooper had landed after his infamous jump.
And, Colbert said he knows the names of three accomplices who worked on the ground to help Cooper escape. Those names have never before been released publicly. Colbert refused to name them for this story.
The pieces of evidence and the names of possible accomplices have been turned over to the FBI, Colbert said.
“Our job is to find evidence and hand it over (to the FBI),” Colbert said. “We’re there to help the FBI.”
Rackstraw said he plans to sue Colbert.
“There’s going to be a massive lawsuit,” he said. “It’s pretty much ruined my life, my son’s life, my grandson’s life.”
Rackstraw said he doesn’t have a home and is sleeping on the couches of friends. Rackstraw said Colbert’s team confronted him in 2016, and that meeting caused him to have a heart attack. He said he has lost his San Diego-based boat repair business because of Colbert.
“He (Colbert) convinced the property manager that I was D.B. Cooper,” Rackstraw said. “My business went belly-up.”
Since he became the focus of Colbert’s team in the past five years, Rackstraw said he is confronted “two or three times per week” by journalists, amateur sleuths and other interested people who ask him about the chance that he is D.B. Cooper.
Rackstraw also said he is cooperating with a film company which he claims has offered him $40 million for the right to tell his story, a number that would be, by far, the most money ever paid for film rights. He wouldn’t name the company. He also wouldn’t say if the company’s offer was contingent on Rackstraw admitting to being D.B. Cooper.
Why would someone offer to pay him if he wasn’t D.B. Cooper?
“I can’t get into the details,” Rackstraw said. “They’re paying me to tell the story they want to hear.”
Colbert, who went to Loyola High School in Los Angeles, said he first heard of D.B. Cooper when he was 14 years old and saw the newspaper headlines.
Colbert worked at CBS radio in the 1980s, developing sources in Southern California police and fire departments. Then he started his own business trying to develop true stories into television shows and films. Colbert has producer credits on “The Vow,” “The Princess and the Marine” and “Baby Brokers.”
In 2011, Colbert got a phone call from a guy who wanted to tell him about D.B. Cooper.
In the world of true crime, D.B. Cooper is the white whale. Whoever solves that case would surely get book and movie deals. Colbert was hooked from the beginning.
The first Cooper story Colbert heard was about a party in Oregon in 1980. A drug courier named Dick Briggs, who claimed to be D.B. Cooper, predicted that money from the Cooper case was about to be “discovered.” The theory was that Cooper wanted the money found so investigators would think he had drowned after the jump and the money had washed up down the river.
Five days later, a boy vacationing with his family outside Vancouver, Washington, found a bunch of tattered money floating in a section of the Columbia River called Tena Bar. The serial numbers of the $5,800 the boy found matched the money Cooper was given as ransom nine years earlier.
In 2011, Colbert began investigating the money story and found that Briggs didn’t match Cooper’s profile. Briggs had died in a car accident shortly after the discovery of the money in 1980.
“Briggs was a party boy,” Colbert said. “He never went to Vietnam. He wasn’t a pilot.”
Colbert said he spent eight months investigating Briggs.
It was Briggs’ friend that caught Colbert’s eye.
That friend was a decorated Army pilot who served in Vietnam. He had a long arrest record including possession of explosives and a charge of forging pilot licenses in Fullerton. And he had once been questioned by the FBI in the D.B. Cooper investigation.
Brigg’s friend was named Robert Rackstraw. As it turns out, Rackstraw has an uncle named Ed Cooper.
Colbert remembers telling his wife Dawna, “This could be it.”
Colbert began amassing a team. He says over the years he has worked with 13 former FBI agents, former U.S. marshals, former U.S. attorneys, former police detectives and journalists on this case.
They have been cagey about what they have discovered. Through a source Colbert will only identify as “Wally,” the team developed its theory of how D.B. Cooper pulled off his escape. By the way, Wally, like so many people involved in this case, is now dead.
Wally told Colbert that he was one of three men waiting for Cooper on the ground. Cooper, Wally said, was picked up by two men in a truck. They used three different airstrips and three small planes and, eventually, Cooper landed at Portland International Airport, where his original flight had begun, and walked through the terminal to escape.
This year, 46 years after the jump, Colbert used descriptions he learned from Wally to search the area where Cooper landed.
On Aug. 3, Colbert said his team found a strap that could have been from a parachute.
On Aug. 17, they found four pieces of foam material that could have come from the inside of a backpack.
Colbert thinks the FBI won’t re-open the case because they are afraid of looking like they botched it for all these years.
“The FBI’s pride is involved,” Colbert said. “It will make them look real bad.”
Colbert said two of the men who helped Cooper escape are war veterans and they are still alive.
“I hope the FBI knocks on those two doors,” Colbert said.
The FBI hasn’t budged. The Seattle field office released a statement in 2016.
“Following one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in our history, on July 8, 2016, the FBI redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities,” according to the statement. “Although the FBI appreciated the immense number of tips provided by members of the public, none to date have resulted in a definitive identification of the hijacker.”
Colbert is undeterred.
“My dad taught me to pursue the truth,” Colbert said. “We are brought into this world with talents, and hopefully we use them for good. This is mine.”
