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Investigators Claim They've Discovered D.B. Cooper's Identity (rollingstone.com)

Posted by msmash on from the or-so-they-think dept.

A team of former FBI investigators is claiming to have proof of the real identity of D.B. Cooper, the notorious airplane hijacker who has remained at large since he parachuted out of a Seattle-bound plane with $200,000 in November 1971. From a report: According to filmmaker and author Thomas Colbert -- who has led the independent investigation into the cold case for the last seven years -- the real Cooper is a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran named Robert Rackstraw. And the proof is hidden in a series of letters allegedly written by Cooper in the months after the hijacking and his disappearance. Rackstraw -- a former Special Forces paratrooper, explosives expert and pilot with about 22 different aliases -- was once a person of interest in the case, but was eliminated as a suspect by the FBI in 1979. His elimination was controversial amongst the investigating agents, and he remained, for many, the most viable suspect in what remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the United States. In 2016, the FBI announced they were ending their investigation into the case.

3 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. discovered is easy, demonstrated ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Conclusively demonstrating the identity is much harder than developing a hypothesis.

  2. Confirmation bias? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So they decided Rickshaw was the guy after analyzing the information they had; then, when they got the last two letters, were able to decode them to conclusively prove he did it? They even were able to decode his name in the letters? He may have been a prime suspect, per TFA, but absent physical evidence such as a parachute or a stack of bills from the hijacking I would not consider that conclusive. If Rickshaw is a narcissist who needs to prove he was smarter than everyone else I would think he'd save proof that he was in fact D. B. Cooper an not yet another imposter.

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  3. Settled, at last! by DutchSter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The first sentence, "I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk," was decoded to, "I want out of the system and saw a way by skyjacking a jet plane."

    And the second sentence, "And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name" was decoded to "I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw, D.B. Cooper is not my real name"

    Well. That settles it I guess. Fine work, fellas. Roll commercial!

    Good old Rolling Stone, always light on specifics and heavy on unverified claims made by interview subjects.