Investigators Claim To Have Discovered The Identity Of Infamous Hijacker D.B. Cooper

August 10, 2018
Airplane, Flying, Black and White

It's one of the most famous unsolved mysteries of our time, and a group of amateurs claim to have finally cracked it.

In 1971, D.B. Cooper hijacked a plane on its way to Seattle, swiped $200,000 in ransom, parachuted out, and was never seen again.  Whether or not Cooper even survived the fall is unknown, and the majority of the ransom money was never recovered.  Simply put, nobody has any idea where, or even who, D.B. Cooper is.  

However, TV producer Tom Colbert, a Vietnam veteran named Rick Sherwood, and about 40 other amateur investigators have claimed to discover the true identity of Cooper, as a fellow Vietnam veteran named Robert Rackstraw.  Obviously, he would have had the necessary training to successfully pull off a parachuted jump like that, and Colbert and Sherwood believe they cracked code in letters Cooper supposedly sent to the media after the hijacking.  The men even believe Cooper names himself as Rackstraw in the jumbled characters nobody has been able to solve. 

Colbert and Sherwood began promoting the idea of Rackstraw earlier this summer, but they're so confident in their claims, they believe Rackstraw should be "extremely nervous" at the moment.  The FBI suspended their investigation into the mystery a couple of years ago, and the question still remains if Cooper even wrote those letters.  For the time being, Rackstraw might be ok.

Via AV Club