The classic tale of D.B. Cooper will always remain the only unsolved skyjacking in US Aviation history and among the country’s most discussed mysteries. After the D.B. Cooper incident, which shocked and intrigued the whole of the United States of America, the FBI built an extensive file and even maintained an active investigation for quite some time. But while many still believe that D.B. Cooper is alive and keeping his identity a secret, the FBI thinks otherwise.
D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!, follow Thomas J. Colbert and his team of modern-day sleuths in their endless pursuit of tracking down the man behind the D.B. Cooper mystery. Will we ever know who D.B. Cooper is?
Long Story Short
In 1971, an unidentified man hijacked the Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305. During the flight from Portland to Seattle, the hijacker informed a flight attendant his suitcase was armed with a bomb and demanded $200,000 in cash. He also requested four parachutes upon landing in Seattle, releasing the flight passengers but demanding that the crew members stay onboard.
After this, the hijacker instructed the crew members and the pilot to refuel the aircraft and depart to Mexico City with another refueling stop in Reno, Nevada. Thirty minutes after departing from Seattle, the hijacker opened the aft door of the aircraft and parachuted into the dark. The hijacker was never seen, identified, or heard from ever again.
Could Cooper Have Survived The Jump?
After an extensive investigation and much consideration, the FBI concluded D.B. Cooper would not have been able to survive the cold and bleak weather on the night of the hijacking. This was further supported by asserting that Cooper’s lack of skydiving equipment, his landing zone being a heavily wooded area, and his alleged lack of knowledge of the landing area makes it highly unlikely that he could have survived the jump.
However, the FBI interviewed skydiving experts who weighed their opinions on the matter. Many disagreed with the FBI’s statement and argued that hundreds or maybe thousands of parachutists could have pulled off the stunt and walked away. To support this theory, several parachutists even offered to make the same jump from the same Boeing 727 aircraft under the same weather conditions and wearing the same attire as D.B. Cooper. Regardless of any offer, the FBI had made up their minds and concluded the jump as “unsurvivable.”
The Man Who Claimed to be Cooper
A man named Dick Briggs came forward and claimed to be the infamous D. B. Cooper. His claim to be an expert in parachuting and having served the Army as a Special Forces soldier during the Vietnam War immediately made him a notable suspect as D.B. Cooper.
For a short while, author and self-made sleuth Thomas J. Colbert did believe that Briggs was D.B.Cooper as he fit the criteria and ticked most of the boxes that pointed towards him being D.B. Cooper. In 1980, however, Briggs died from a car accident, and shortly after, Colbert and the FBI officials and investigators confirmed that Briggs was not the man they were looking for.
“I spent eight months on that thread. I actually believed he was Cooper. But then I find out he's [Briggs] never been to Vietnam, can't parachute…He was a part-time weekend warrior for the Air Force, so he didn't have to go to Vietnam. Right at that point, I'm looking at this man and thinking, 'I got the wrong guy.” - Thomas J. Colbert
Who Is Thomas J. Colbert?
In the documentary, we listen to the story of Thomas J. Colbert, a man so intrigued and invested in the D.B. Cooper case that he started his own D.B. Cooper investigation and co-wrote a book on it. The book, titled The Last Master Outlaw: How He Outfoxed the FBI Six Times - but Not a Cold Case Team, details his and 40 other modern-day sleuths’ five-year cold case investigation of the D.B. Cooper case and Robert Rackstraw, the man they believe to be D.B. Cooper. The History Channel was aware of Colbert’s work and decided to make a two-part special that revolved around Colbert and his team’s efforts to track and locate the suspect. Colbert also became the executive producer of the documentary.
A week before Colbert and his team planned to turn in circumstantial evidence of Rackstraw as their lead suspect to the FBI, the FBI shelved the active investigation of the D.B.Cooper case and thereby would not accept any evidence in regard to the case. For this reason, Colbert decided to file a lawsuit against the FBI and demanded they make the D.B. Cooper investigation files available to the public.
Who Is Robert Rackstraw?
Robert Rackstraw served as a helicopter pilot for the US Army and earned multiple awards for completing chopper rescues during the Vietnam War. However, Rackstraw violated the rules and his commanders’ instruction by making unauthorized parachute jumps and lying about attending two universities. As a result, his seven-year career with the US Army came to an end.
After being laid off from the US Army, Rackstraw began showing reckless behavior and became a four-time felon, escape artist, and state prison convict. Later, the FBI considered Rackstraw a promising suspect after seeing his striking resemblance to the D.B. Cooper sketch and comparing his military skill sets and a criminal record which would determine the likeliness that he could be the guy they had been looking for. But after finding no evidence and any direct link between Robert Rackstraw and the D.B. Cooper case, the FBI eliminated Rackstraw as a suspect.
Could Robert Rackstraw Be D.B. Cooper?
Detailed in his book, Thomas J. Colbert and his team admitted to having found 93 pieces of circumstantial evidence that point to Robert Rackstraw as the man behind the D.B. Cooper persona. After being discharged from the Army in 1971, Rackstraw started to fly small planes for a real estate development company in the Washington and Pacific Northwest (believed to be where D.B. Cooper landed from the jump).
In one instance, Rackstraw even tried to fake his death by jumping out of a plane over Monterey Bay, leaving behind his ex-wife and children. Colbert stated, “The children hadn’t seen their daddy in one year, and when the doorbell rang it was the FBI looking for him…This guy is connected to 60 towns in 28 states, six careers, three families and so far, 16 identities.” After a lengthy investigation and finding circumstantial evidence which they believe links Rackstraw to the D.B. Cooper case, Colbert and his team are certain that Rackstraw is D.B. Cooper.
Cooper’s Physical Attributes
Tina Mucklow and Florence Schaffner were among the flight attendants and crew members who interacted most with D.B. Cooper. Mucklow and Schaffner were interviewed on the same night of the incident but in different cities. When asked to describe the hijacker’s physical attributes, they gave identical descriptions of the man: around 5 feet 10 inches (1.78m) tall, his mid-40s, combed back black hair, and of a darker or olive skin tone.
A passenger and student of the University of Oregon, Bill Mitchell, sat across Cooper for three hours. When asked to describe Cooper, Mitchell gave a near identical description to the two other flight attendants, except for Cooper being slightly shorter than 5 feet 10 inches. Another passenger, Robert Gregory, believed Cooper to be of Mexican-American or Native American-descent due to his complexion.
The D.B. Cooper Fan Club
Following the D.B. Cooper incident and the subsequent hype of the case, Cooper became perceived as an American folk legend and hero. The D.B. Cooper fans attend and gather around the annual CooperCon event, where they praise and discuss Cooper’s bold escape, such as whether he could have survived the jump, his whereabouts if he survived it, and other factors which played a part before and after the jump.
Fans of Cooper have written and devoted songs to him and even put his infamous criminal sketch on several merchandise items such as t-shirts and caps. Bars and pubs around the United States have also named their signature drinks after D.B. Cooper. Cooper’s entity and what he represents have been compared to the likes of Billy the Kid, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, “Baby Face” Nelson, and John Dillinger, all of whom are glorified, notorious bandits and bank robbers.
“The guy, evidently, really took a lot of time to plan the whole thing out,…And I respect a man who takes his time to do a job well done. He's one of the slickest cats to ever walk on the face of the Earth.” - Old clip of a news broadcast featured on Netflix’s ‘D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?’
Who Were The Other Suspects?
Robert Rackstraw and Dick Briggs weren’t the only ones suspected of being the mysterious D.B. Cooper. The FBI had considered more than 800 suspects throughout the D.B. Cooper investigation. For a brief period of time, Richard McCoy became a favorite suspect of the FBI because he committed a copycat hijacking just five months after the D.B. Cooper incident, where he leaped from the aft stairs of another Boeing 727 flight with a $500,000 ransom. However, McCoy escaped prison and was later killed in a shootout with law enforcement. Army veteran Duane Weber became a nother suspect when he told his wife, “I’m Dan Cooper,” on his deathbed, and she later learned of his criminal past.
Another woman, Marla Cooper, suspected that her uncle could have been the hijacker as she recalled his “secretive conversations” and, on the day of the hijacking, came covered with blood after “turkey hunting.” Though all the suspects and their stories seemed substantial, none could provide incriminating evidence that they were D.B. Cooper.
The D.B. Cooper Case Remains A Mystery
After the Cooper incident, the FBI conducted a lengthy investigation to determine the hijacker's identity. However, it seems that the hijacker committed a near-perfect crime because, despite many filed reports of who D.B. Cooper might be or confessions from people who claimed to be him, there was ultimately no incriminating evidence that could conclude the identity of D.B. Cooper.
As Colbert and his team believed Robert Rackstraw to be D.B. Cooper, they made several attempts to entice Rackstraw to fess up. And while it was clear that Rackstraw enjoyed the media attention on him as the possible perpetrator of the hijack, he continued to deny that he was D.B. Cooper. And unfortunately, in 2019, Rackstraw passed away from a long-term heart condition and never did confess to being D.B. Cooper.