The Elusive Airplane Hijacker: The Only Unsolved Case in US Aviation History

On a rainy day in Portland, Oregon on November 24, 1971, a man approached the Northwest Orient Airlines flight counter. He was wearing a dark cloak, a dark suit with a narrow black tie, a neatly ironed white shirt, and slip-on shoes (loafers). On inHe was over forty, almost six feet tall, with receding hairline, says the author of the channel "News" on "Yandex.Zen".

Photo: Shutterstock

“He looked like a business executive,” witnesses later said.

He, using the name Dan Cooper, used cash to buy a one-way ticket to Seattle on Flight 305. Cooper sat in the back row of a Boeing 727 with a black suitcase.

On a 30 minute flight, at 18C, he ordered a bourbon and soda. When the plane took off, he handed the cute flight attendant a note, which she slipped into her pocket and ignored.

A little later, when the stewardess walked past him, the man leaned over to her and whispered, “Miss, you better take a look at this note. I have a bomb. " Thus the legend of DB Cooper was born.

A few hours later, at the Seattle-Tacoma airport, Cooper, now wearing sunglasses, boarded a second plane without passengers and only with a crew. This happened after he showed the flight attendant of the first plane the bomb in his suitcase and she passed the contents of the note to the pilot. The instructions were followed. He now had four parachutes and a briefcase with $ 20 bills totaling $ 200 (he didn’t know that when the plane circled over the Seattle airport, FBI agents were taking pictures of the money.) It was night and the rain was getting heavier.

The pilot of the second plane had more detailed orders from Cooper: the plane was to fly southeast toward Mexico City at the lowest speed possible and a maximum altitude of 10 feet. During takeoff, the landing gear should have been left deployed, and the cabin should have been depressurized.

According to the FBI document in the case: "Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 20:00, the hijacker did the incredible: he jumped from the back of the plane with a parachute and ransom money." The people on the two planes following the airliner saw nothing.

As a result of careful searches on the ground, neither Cooper, nor his parachute, nor money was found. The FBI reports: “We interviewed hundreds of people, examined the plane for clues. By the 800th anniversary of the hijacking, we have reviewed more than XNUMX suspects and excluded from consideration all but two dozen. "

This is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in FBI history. Despite the theories outlined in books, documentaries, symposia, and enthusiastic websites, no one has proven the reality of DB Cooper's personality (the journalist mistakenly turned “Dan” into “DB,” and it stuck). None of the bills photographed appeared until 1980, when a boy accidentally discovered three packs of ransom in a creek near Vancouver, Washington.

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One of the most widely held theories was that Cooper was killed during his daring jump from an airplane. He had a parachute that could not be controlled, he jumped at night into a densely wooded area in the rain, in clothes that were clearly not suitable for such an action. On July 8, 2016, the FBI announced that it had "redirected resources allocated to the Cooper case to focus on other investigation priorities."

But at the end of January 2018, the media made a startling announcement: D.B. Cooper was actually a former CIA operative named Robert Raxtrow. He was seen alive and well, living in Southern California.

A team of private investigators hired by TV producer Tom Colbert, who has been working on the mystery for several years, say they have cracked the code proving the notorious carjacker is actually a man living in the San Diego area. His name is Robert Rackstraw, and he's still alive. Rackstraw is a decorated Vietnam War veteran and, according to investigators, a former CIA operative.

A letter dated December 11, 1971, which they said was sent by D. B. Cooper to several major news outlets, contained a code. It was a scoffing letter, which the newspapers did not publish at the time, and which officials called a prank, was received under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The letter, which was sent to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times and The Washington Post, contains strings of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page,” the Seattle Times reported.

The codebreaker on Colbert's team, Rick Sherwood, was able to decipher the letters and numbers and said they pointed to three army units that Raxtrow was associated with from 1969 to 1970 when he was in Vietnam.

The encryption was supposed to serve as a signal to those people in his units who knew the code that he was alive and well after the jump, Colbert said. He also mocked law enforcement by including SWS in the letter, which means "special military school."

In addition to claiming to have found the real Cooper, Colbert said he had strong evidence that the FBI deliberately worked to keep the hijacking case unsolved because of Rackstraw's ties to the CIA.

Although his work with the CIA is unconfirmed, the 74-year-old Raxtrow was by no means an angel. He was accused of killing his stepfather, but acquitted at the trial in 1978.

On one occasion, he reportedly tried to fake his own death. He was even arrested in Iran and deported back to the United States, which, of course, does not happen every day.

According to the Washington Post, “he was charged with aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud ... Colbert said that Raxtrow was convicted and spent over a year in prison before he was released in 1980. Raxtrow's lawyer said he could not confirm these details.

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Those who believe that D.B. Cooper was a polite mastermind who behaved like a business executive are not convinced that the man was Rackstraw, who appeared on lists of possible "Coopers" in the late 1970s.

When Rackstrow was tracked down by the film crew, he was asked if he was the real DB Cooper, to which he said, "What's the difference?" Rackstrow's lawyer said he denied any involvement in the case.

At the time of the hijacking, he was 28 years old, and one of the flight attendants, when shown pictures of Raxtrow, said that he did not look like the person she saw on the plane in 1971.

At a press conference in front of the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Colbert said: "The FBI can hold the strings, but Raxtrow holds the cable thanks to his coded letter."

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