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

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.

Comments

discovered is easy, demonstrated ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Strange dialogue around this guy

[bluefoxlucid]

One theory claims D.B. Cooper must have died because he took a parachute that was a dummy parachute, and so would have had just a stuffed backpack when he jumped. People believe this despite obvious questions like "why would you have something like that on a commercial airplane?" and "where is the body?"

Re:Strange dialogue around this guy

[squiggleslash]

The reason why it was on the plane was because the parachutes were procured from a local flying school, and the dummy was included by accident.

The overwhelming evidence is that Cooper knew absolutely nothing about parachuting, which means this guy isn't DB Cooper. There have been plenty of candidates before for which there was far more evidence, and no dealbreakers proving it couldn't have been them (just check the Wikipedia page), but thus far the problem is nobody has been actively proven to be Cooper. In this case, not only have they not made a stronger case that it is him, but unless Cooper was suicidal, they've contradicted something key to his identification.

NEXT!

Re:Strange dialogue around this guy

[Anonymous Coward]

The parachutes weren't on the commercial plane to start with; commercial passenger planes do not have parachutes because it is not realistic that people will parachute from them. At least not survive parachuting from them!
The parachutes came from a Seattle parachuting club, I think. They were put on the plane because Cooper demanded it. Among these chutes was one training chute with the reserve sewn shut. This was the one Cooper used for his jump. So a real parachute, just without a working reserve chute.
My main argument for that he survived is that if he didn't, the parachute would have been left laying about in the terrain, and could easily have been seen by searchers from planes. The area where he jumped did not have any snow, so a white parachute would likely have been visible. It is also not a totally uninhabited area, lots of farms and houses, so people (or their dogs) could easily have found him. But if he survived he could have removed evidence.
Another possibility, of course, is that he did die, someone found him and hid the body and evidence and pocketed the money.

Re:Strange dialogue around this guy

[vux984]

People believe this despite obvious questions like "why would you have something like that on a commercial airplane?" and "where is the body?"

The parachute was not on the plane. It was one his demands to release hostages.

So its entirely plausible that he'd be given a dummy parachute.

However, he requested multiple parachutes as part of his hijacking demands. So the idea that the police would have deliberately given him a dummy parachute is pretty much unthinkable, because asking for multiple parachutes was precisely to raise the possibility of him having a hostage from the plane jump with him... as insurance against the parachutes being sabotaged.

Further if he'd been deliberately given a dummy parachute, I expect that would have come out by now.

So you are right, but not for the reason you gave.

He's been debunked multiple times

[jfdavis668]

Main reason, he was too young.

Two words: Duke Lacrosse

[Noishkel]

Yeah, because Rolling Stone magazine has such a sterling history of conducting deep in depth investigations. Just ignore the fact that they had to pay about $1.65 million when they published a scandalous accusation of rape in a fraternity when the case against them collapsed due to serious credibility issues with the accuser.

Confirmation bias?

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

Settled, at last!

[DutchSter]

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.

Re:Settled, at last!

[Vreejack]

Also decoded: "Vreejack is the True King of Slashdot. Long May He Reign." They left that bit out of the article, but you can decode it from the D.B. Cooper letters at your leisure.

Re:Proof 9-11 was an inside job

[jnaujok]

You do realize that the thermite reaction (Fe2O3 + 2 Al 2 Fe + Al2O3) has no vapor byproducts. The alumina is a solid, and the iron comes out as a liquid. i.e. There's no smoke from a thermite reaction.

Nonsense

[GoRK]

Am I missing something in that there is no evidence presented around the actual message coding except for pictures of letters and then apparently the secret messages which have been conveniently 'decoded' from them?

Considering it's rather trivial to produce an enciphering scheme that will transliterate any plaintext into any other the designer desires (not that the "investigators" even bothered in this case) I find the whole thing pretty suspect.

Re:Decoding?

[wardrich86]

I thought the same thing. Both sentences were way off. They should have really explained how they managed to squeeze that statement out of the sentence...

Known for a while now

[Bruce Perens]

Mr. Rackstraw has been the main suspect for a while, based not on anagrams in this letter but the presence of particles of aerospace materials in a tie that he left. The suspect had to have worked where such materials were machined.

Re:Just pardon whoever did it.

[WolfgangVL]

Because he's made fools of the police, the FBI, and pretty much the entire media- for decades. Add to that the fact that he's become sort of a folk legend/hero and there is absolutely no chance of pardon.

If he was to come forward they would nail him to the wall for all to see, and then go after his family for the 200k adjusted for inflation with interest and tax evasion and everything else they can come up with.

If he lived, I expect he a doddering old mastermind at this point. I'm hoping his dying breath spills the beans while he flips them the bird.