Cooper Sleuths: “Case Closed”

People Magazine; by Johnny Dodd; Sunday, July 10, 2016; Updated in 2024

Thanks to private investigators, the Skyjacking Mystery Man gets Featured on Both Netflix and History Channel

Over the past five decades, the so-called D.B. Cooper skyjacking case has captivated countless armchair detectives – not to mention teams of former federal agents – hoping to finally crack the nation’s only unsolved act of air piracy.

Now a California man, who has assembled a large team of professional volunteers, claims to have solved the case.

“In my 35 years, I’ve never seen so much evidence on any case I’ve worked on,” says Thomas J. Colbert, a former senior researcher for CBS News and law enforcement trainer out of Los Angeles. He assembled a team of retired investigators [including former FBI agents, U.S. Marshals and forensic experts] to re-examine the case. The result: more than 100 pieces of new evidence.

“The team is absolutely certain they’ve identified him. And frankly, they’ve never been wrong.”

The identity of the alleged culprit, who was confronted by Colbert’s armed investigators at one point in San Diego, is revealed as Robert W. Rackstraw – a former Vietnam veteran, parachutist and “black ops” pilot for the CIA.

The man who became known as D.B. Cooper first made headlines in November 1971 after he boarded a commercial flight in Portland and told a stewardess that he had a briefcase filled with dynamite. The plane was bound for Seattle, and by the time it landed, the authorities had delivered the $200,000 in cash he requested, along with four parachutes.

The hijacker then ordered the pilot to fly him to Mexico. But somewhere near the Washington-Oregon border, he strapped on a parachute and leaped from the jet into a rainstorm, never to be seen again – although $5,800 of the money was discovered by an 8-year-old boy on the edge of the Columbia River, nine years later.

The FBI, who did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for a comment on the case, has long maintained that Cooper probably didn’t survive the risky nighttime jump. Over the years, their case files have grown to more than 60 volumes.

“The D.B. Cooper case is a mystery, but there has to be an answer,” said Ron Hilley, who spent 24 years as an FBI agent and serves as a member of Colbert’s investigative team that re-examined the case, tells PEOPLE. “He [Rackstraw] certainly looks like the suspect to me. I would love to see the explanation that clears him.”

NO COMMENTS