Mark Zaid, a D.C. attorney with the team, accused the FBI of “dropping the ball.” So does author and police trainer Thomas J. Colbert, the man who organized the six-year hunt. They and the committed 40 investigators believe San Diegan Robert W. Rackstraw Sr., a Vietnam vet with all the hijacker’s skill sets, is the fugitive. They even released an ambush interview they did with him in 2013, in which he never actually denied he was DB Cooper.
It was November of 1971 when a man that actually wrote his named “Dan Cooper” boarded a Northwest Orient jet, hijacked the plane for $200,000 ransom (a million in today’s money), and parachuted out of the plane into woods over Washington state, never to be seen again.
In 1980, $5,000 of the money was found by a family along a river in Washington state.
Members of the team, on Thursday, said that river family was connected to a seven-year crime partner of Rackstraw’s that allegedly “planted” that money. Even more proof, they say, that Rackstraw is Cooper.
