For tenner , both the FBI and amateur investigator have been preoccupy with the identity of “ Dan Cooper , ” a mysterious passenger mistakenly reported by journalist as " D.B. Cooper " who board a flight of steps from Portland to Seattle on November 24 , 1971 . Without appearing frenetic or violent , Cooper informed the crew he had a dud and demanded $ 200,000 in ransom . After making the pilot stop for fuel and then lift off again , the skyjacker collected his money and parachuted out of the plane , never to be seen or pick up from again .
According to one Cooper lover , that might not be precisely true . Tom Colbert has led a team of recreational tec take care into the example and made headline last year after grow some of the unopen fortune of the FBI ’s file via a freedom of info case . According to Colbert , a letter of the alphabet supposedly compose by Cooper and send to theOregonianshortly after the crimerevealsa “ confession ” obscure in computer code . The man ’s identity , Colbert title , is that of Robert Rackstraw , a Vietnam veteran who is now 74 year one-time and living in San Diego .
“ I need out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk , ” the letter read . “ Now it is Uncle ’s bout to weep and pay one of it ’s [ sic ] own some hard currency for a change . ( And please narrate the ass-kisser cops D.B. Cooper is not my material name ) . ”
Colbert showed the varsity letter to Rick Sherwood , a former codebreaker for the now - defunctArmy Security Agency . Sherwood maintains the repetitive verbiage ofUnkand other countersign match with a simple varsity letter - to - number codification that , when fail , break the condemnation “ I am 1st LT Robert Rackstraw . ”
Another letter uncovered in the FBI ’s files earlier this year contains a mathematical sequence that Colbert ’s team aver they havematchedto codes used by Rackstraw ’s Army whole in Vietnam . That letter ’s author — who Colbert believe to be Rackstraw — claimedhe used a toupe and a putty nose to mask his show on the plane .
Rackstraw was at one time considered a defendant by the FBI but was later cleared in 1979 . Afterinitially teasingthat he might be the culprit , Rackstraw endorse off those claims and insisted the charge was without merit . The bureau formally exit the case in 2016 , citing a want of strong pencil lead . In February 2018 , Colbertclaimedthe FBI was n’t acknowledging his work out of plethora .
