Are you a little fuzzy on the details of the infamous D.B. Cooper plane heist that has law officials, and the rest of the world, stumped? Here’s a quick rundown:
In November 1971, an unidentified man held a passenger plane hostage mid-flight between Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Wash. This is the man we call D.B. Cooper, based on the plane ticket he purchased under the name “Dan Cooper.” He demanded $200,000 in cash, or else he’d set off a bomb he had placed in his suitcase (suddenly the TSA lines don’t seem so annoying now, do they?).
Once Cooper got the cash (obtained by FBI agents), he parachuted out of the plane into the unknown.
He was never accurately identified and the whereabouts of the cash remain unknown. People love trying to solve this mystery, as it remains the only unsolved case of commercial airline piracy in history.
That’s where ex-Army code breaker and construction worker Rick Sherwood comes in. He made the case that a former paratrooper named Robert Rackstraw was the real D.B. Cooper, based on a series of encoded letters Cooper (or someone claiming to be Cooper) sent to newspapers in the mid-'70s. While the letters are all written in plain English, Sherwood and others working on the investigation claim that there are hidden messages within the letters that point to the hijacker’s true identity.
One of the letters said, “So your silly troopers up there can stop looking for me. This is just how dumb the government is. I like your articles about me, but you can stop them now. D.B. Cooper is not real.”
Using an alphanumeric system of code breaking where A=1, B=2 and so forth, Sherwood spent hours decoding the letters, eventually revealing a hidden message where the letter writer had stated, “I’m LT Robert W. Rackstraw.”
Sherwood learned this method of coding at the Army’s Project Left Bank program, which Rackstraw also knew.
Sherwood further studied the letters and claimed that Rackstraw had the military training to pull off parachuting and that his letters contain information related to Rackstraw’s military units in Vietnam. Rackstraw was a suspect in the case, but was ruled out before 1980.
Now 74 years old, Rackstraw is still alive and well and is living in San Diego. Sherwood said of Rackstraw, “If I were him, I’d be extremely nervous.”
What does the FBI think? A spokesperson said, “In order to solve a case, the FBI must prove culpability beyond a reasonable doubt, and, unfortunately, none of the well-meaning tips or applications of new investigative technology have yielded the necessary proof.”
So for now, the case remains up in the air (much like an airplane, no?).