Nov. 30, 2025
"THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE: 54 YEARS OF D.B. COOPER SUSPECTS - PART 2"
Reid Carter concludes the D.B. Cooper special with the parade of suspects who haunted the FBI for five decades. Richard Floyd McCoy pulled an identical hijacking five months later—same plane, same method—but didn't match the description. Kenneth Christiansen worked for Northwest Orient, bought a house with cash, and on his deathbed told his brother there was 'something you should know.' Robert Rackstraw faked his own death, wore a D.B. Cooper t-shirt to Cooper Day, and died denying everything. Duane Weber whispered 'I'm Dan Cooper' as he took his last breath. After 54 years and a thousand suspects: Who was D.B. Cooper?
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WEBVTT
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Caalarogu Shark Media. Good morning, I'm read Carter Sunday, November thirtieth,
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twenty twenty five. Yesterday we covered the hijacking November twenty fourth,
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nineteen seventy one Dan Cooper two hundred thousand dollars, four parachutes,
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one jump into darkness, never seen again today. The suspects,
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and there have been hundreds of them. Between nineteen seventy
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one and twenty sixteen, the FBI investigated over a thousand
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serious suspects. Some were publicity seekers looking for attention. Some
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were deathbed confessors clearing their conscience or seeking one last
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bit of fame. Some were fingered by family members with
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grudges or genuine suspicions. The FBI eliminated them all, no arrest,
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no conviction, no definitive identification, but a handful of suspects
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and out men whose backgrounds, skills, and behavior made them
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more plausible than the rest men who might actually have
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been D. B. Cooper. Richard Floyd McCoy, Vietnam veteran helicopter
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pilot expert skydiver. Five months after Cooper's hijacking, McCoy pulled
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an almost identical heist same type of plane, same demands,
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same parachute escape, got caught, died in a shootout with
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police after escaping prison. His children now claim he was Cooper.
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They found a parachute in his storage shed. Kenneth Christiansen,
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former Army paratrooper, worked for Northwest Orient Airlines, the very
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airline Cooper hijacked. Knew the Boeing seven twenty seven inside
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and out. One year after the hijacking, bought a house
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with cash on a flight attendant's salary. On his deathbed
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in nineteen ninety four, told his brother, there is something
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you should know, but I cannot tell you. Robert Reckstraw,
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Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot con man faked his own death
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in nineteen seventy eight, had parachute training physically resembled the
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composite sketches. Amateur investigators spent years building a case against him.
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He attended D. B. Cooper Day celebrations wearing a T
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shirt that said I'm dB Cooper. Died in twenty nineteen,
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denying everything. Dwayne Weber, career criminal ex convict in nineteen
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ninety five, on his deathbed, whispered to his wife, I'm
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Dan Cooper She didn't understand the reference until months later.
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Then she started connecting dots. Old injuries he claimed came
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from a plane jump trips to the Pacific Northwest. He
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couldn't explain a hidden criminal past. Today we dig into
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each of these suspects. We examined the evidence, we weigh
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the theories, and we answer the only question that matters,
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is D. B. Cooper alive or dead? I'm Reed Carter.
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This is Celebrity Trials, Part two of two. Richard Floyd
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MCA April seventh, nineteen seventy two, less than five months
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after dB Cooper's hijacking, a man traveling under a fake
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name boards United Airlines flight eight five five from Newark
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to Los Angeles. Shortly after takeoff, he hands a note
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to a flight attendant, claims he has a bomb, actually
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a hand grenade and a pistol. Demands five hundred thousand
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dollars and four parachutes. Sound familiar. The plane lands in
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San Francisco. The hijacker releases the passengers, gets his money
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in parachutes, orders the crew to fly toward Utah Somewhere
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over Provo. He lowers the rear stairs of the Boeing
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seven twenty seven, same model Cooper used and jumps with
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the cash strapped to his body. Unlike Cooper, this guy
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gets caught. Two days later, FBI agents arrest Richard Floyd McCoy,
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Junior at his home in Provo, Utah. In a search
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of the house, they find skydiving equipment, an electric typewriter
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with impressions matching the hijacking instructions, and four hundred ninety nine,
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nine hundred seventy dollars of the ransom money. McCoy was
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twenty nine years old, Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot, National Guard member,
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expert skydiver with dozens of jumps, married with two children,
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Sunday school teacher, law enforcement student at Brigham Young University.
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He was convicted of air piracy sentenced to forty five
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years in federal prison. But here's where it gets interesting.
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August tenth, nineteen seventy four, McCoy and two other inmates
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hijack a garbage truck and escape from the federal penitentiary
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in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania. Three months later, FBI agents tracked McCoy
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to a house in Virginia Beach. In the ensuing shootout,
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McCoy is killed. The similarities between McCoy's hijacking and Cooper's
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were striking. Same type of aircraft, same demands for money
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and parachutes, same method of escape, jumping from the rear
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stairs over remote terrain. McCoy clearly studied Cooper's playbook, which
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raises the obvious question was McCoy also Cooper. The FBI investigated,
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and they said no. The flight attendants and passengers from
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flight three oh five who saw Cooper up close said
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McCoy didn't look like him. Cooper was described as mid forties,
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olive complexion, brown eyes, dark hair. McCoy was twenty eight
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at the time of Cooper's hijacking, almost twenty years younger,
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with light blue eyes and a different facial structure. Cooper's
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composite sketches showed a middle aged man. McCoy looked like
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a college student. The FBI also checked McCoy's alibi. On
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November twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one, the day of Cooper's hijacking,
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McCoy was supposedly in Las Vegas with his family celebrating Thanksgiving.
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But alibis can be faked, especially family alibis. The case
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against McCoy as Cooper seemed closed until twenty twenty. That's
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when McCoy's adult children, Chante and Richard the Third, contacted
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amateur investigator Dan Grider, who'd been re searching the Cooper
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case for over twenty years. The siblings said they'd waited
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until their mother, Karen died before coming forward. They had
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something to show him. In a storage shed on the
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family's North Carolina property, Grider found a heavily modified parachute
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rig that had been hidden for decades. The siblings also
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produced a logbook they claim places their father in the
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Pacific Northwest around the time of Cooper's hijacking. More significantly,
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the children said their mother, Karen had confessed on her
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deathbed that she helped plan both of his heists, both
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not just the nineteen seventy two hijacking. McCoy was convicted
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of both. The evidence was compelling enough that the FBI
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reopened the Cooper case file in late twenty twenty four
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after officially closing it in twenty sixteen. Is Richard McCoy
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dB Cooper The physical description doesn't match the eyewitnesses said no,
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but the method was identical. The skills were there and
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now there's physical evidence his family kept hidden for fifty years.
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My take McCoy was clearly inspired by Cooper. Whether he
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was Cooper is still unproven, but if that parachute matches
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the type used in the nineteen seventy one hijacking, we
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might finally have an answer. Smart enough to plan two hijackings,
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too stupid to avoid getting caught on the second one.
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Classic Kenneth Peter Christiansen born nineteen twenty six died nineteen
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ninety four, Army paratrooper during World War II, made training
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jumps while stationed in Japan during the post war occupation.
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Left the military and joined Northwest Orient Airlines in nineteen
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fifty four, first as a laborer, then as a flight attendant,
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then as a purser. Northwest Orient, the airline Cooper hijacked.
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Christiansen worked for the company for decades. He knew the
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Boeing seven twenty seven inside and out. Knew about the
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rear airstairs, knew the procedures, the roots the crew schedules.
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In two thousand and three, Christiansen's brother Lyle was watching
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a television documentary about the Cooper hijacking. Something clicked. He
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became convinced his late brother Kenny was d B. Cooper.
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The evidence was circumstantial but intriguing. Christiansen was a smoker,
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so was Cooper. Christiansen drank bourbon, Cooper ordered bourbon and
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soda on the flight. Christiansen was a trained paratrooper with
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dozens of jumps. Cooper clearly knew how to use a parachute.
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Most significantly, in nineteen seventy two, one year after the hijacking,
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Kenneth Christiansen, a flight attendant earning a modest salary, bought
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a house with cash. Where did the money come from?
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When Lyle confronted his brother about the cash purchase years
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before Kenny died, he got evasive answers, something about good investments.
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Then there was the deathbed moment. In nineteen ninety four,
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Kenny was dying, Lyle was at his side. Kenny looked
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at him and said, there is something you should know,
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but I cannot tell you. Those were among his last words,
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and Lyle became obsessed with finding out what Kenny couldn't
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tell him. Lyle spent years trying to convince the FBI
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to investigate his brother. He contacted private investigators. He reached
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out to journalists and filmmakers. In twenty ten, private investigator
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Skip Portius published a book making the case that Christensen
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was Cooper. A twenty eleven episode of the History Channel
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series Brad Meltzer's Decoded examined the theory. Flight attendant Florence Schaffner,
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who sat next to Cooper and saw him up close,
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was shown photographs of Christensen. She said the photos fit
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her memory of the hijacker's appearance more closely than any
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other suspect she'd been shown, but she couldn't make a
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definitive identification. After forty years, memory is unreliable. The FBI
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looked at Christiansen, but never named him a prime suspect.
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The problems Kenny was forty five years old in nineteen
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seventy one, which matched Cooper's apparent age, but he was
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shorter than eyewitness descriptions five foot eight versus Cooper's estimated
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six feet. He was also thinner one hundred fifty pounds
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versus Cooper's estimated one hundred seventy to one hundred eighty,
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and there was no physical evidence, no parachute, no money,
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no confession beyond those cryptic deathbed words did Kenneth Christiansen
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hijack his own airlines plane, steal two hundred thousand dollars
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and then go back to work like nothing happened. It's
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possible he had the knowledge, the skills, and apparently the cash,
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but proof none. There is something you should know, but
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I cannot tell you. Kenny took whatever that something was
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to his grave. Robert Wesley Rackstraw born nineteen forty three
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he died twenty nineteen. Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot, parachutist, con man,
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and for two decades the most controversial dB Cooper suspect.
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Rackstraw's life reads like a crime novel. Served in Vietnam
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as an Army helicopter crew member, claimed to have worked
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with the CIA, a claim that may or may not
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have been true. After the war, he got into trouble
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check kiting fraud, possibly murder. He was tried and acquitted
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for the death of his stepfather. In nineteen seventy eight,
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Rackstraw faked his own death. Radioed a false May Day
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call claiming he was bailing out of a rented airplane
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over Monterey Bay. Police found him months later in southern California.
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The plane he supposedly ditched was sitting in a nearby
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hangar repainted. He went to prison for check fraud and
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aircraft theft, got out kept running scams. The FBI investigated
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Rackstraw as a Cooper suspect in nineteen seventy eight. He
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physically resembled the composite sketch, even though he was only
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twenty eight at the time of the hijacking, younger than
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witnesses estimated. He had military parachute training, he had aviation experience,
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He was clearly capable of elaborate schemes, but the bureau
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eliminated him in nineteen seventy nine no direct evidence of involvement. Then,
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in the twenty tens, amateur investigator Thomas Colbert and his
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team of retired law enforcement officers built a new case
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against Rackstraw. They obtained FBI files through freedom of information requests.
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They analyzed letters allegedly sent by Cooper to newspapers after
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the hijacking, letters, some dismissed as hoaxes, but which Colbert
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believed contained coded messages implicating Rackstraw. The team found what
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they claimed was an old parachute strap in the Pacific Northwest.
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They tracked Rackstraw for years. Published a book in twenty
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sixteen titled The Last Master Outlaw, naming him as Cooper.
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Rackstraw denied everything, called the allegationations the stupidest thing I've
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ever heard. Claimed he lost his job because of the publicity,
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but he also seemed to enjoy the attention. He attended D. B.
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Cooper Day celebrations in Ariel, Washington, the annual folk festival
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honoring the Hijacker, bought a T shirt that said, I'm
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dB Cooper made cryptic comments that weren't quite confessions, but
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weren't exactly denials either. I told everybody I was the hijacker.
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Rackstraw once admitted to Colbert, then clarified it was just
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a stunt. Flight attendant Tina Mucklow, who spent hours with
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Cooper on the plane, was shown photographs and video of Rackstraw.
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Decades later, she said she didn't find any similarities between
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his appearance and her recollection of the Hijacker. Rackstraw died
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of heart failure in twenty nineteen. He never confessed. The
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FBI never charged him. Was Robert Rackstraw D B. Cooper.
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He had the skills, he had the temperament. He loved
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the notoriety, but he also loved line saying about everything.
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His whole life was a con. Maybe the biggest con
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was convincing people he might be Cooper when he wasn't.
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Or maybe the biggest con was convincing people he wasn't
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when he was. Either way, he took the truth with him.
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We'll be right back with a deathbed confession that haunted
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a widow for years, and the question we've been asking
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for fifty four years? Did D. B. Cooper survive? The
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parade of suspects never stopped. Dwayne Weber, career criminal, ex convict.
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In nineteen ninety five, dying of kidney disease, he turned
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to his wife Joe and whispered, I'm Dan Cooper. Joe
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didn't understand Dan Cooper. Who's Dan Cooper? Months later the
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connection hit her. D B. Cooper's real alias Dan Cooper,
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the name on the airline ticket. She started remembering things.
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Dwayne had a knee injury he claimed came from a
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plane jump. He'd made unexplained trips to the Pacific Northwest.
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He'd once taken her to the Columbia River and walked
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along the bank in an area near where Cooper's money
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was found, muttering about an old business transaction. Dwayne Weber
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physically matched the composite sketches. He had a criminal history,
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including forgery and fraud. He'd been in the Pacific Northwest
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in nineteen seventy one. Joe reported his confession to the FBI.
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They investigated couldn't confirm it. Weber's claims were circumstantial. No
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physical evidence linked him to the crime. The confession could
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have been the ramblings of a dying man seeking one
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last moment of significance, but it was never definitively ruled
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out either. Lynn Doyle Cooper, his niece Maria, came forward
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in twenty eleven, claiming that in nineteen seventy one she
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heard her uncle say, we did it. Our money problems
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are over. We high jacked an airplane. The FBI investigated
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ruled him out. Lynn Doyle Cooper died in nineteen ninety
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nine without ever being charged. Walter Rica, former military paratrooper,
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in two thousand and eight recorded phone conversations with his
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friend Carl Lauren, claiming to be the hijacker, gave what
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he said were inside details about the crime. Died in
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twenty fourteen. His friend went public in twenty eighteen. The
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FBI declined to confirm or deny his claims. Sheridan Peterson,
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former Boeing employee who worked in the department that wrote
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flight manuals for the seven twenty seven, the exact plane
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Cooper hijacked, accomplished Skydiver, fell under suspicion within a week
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of the hijacking, but wasn't interviewed by the FBI until
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