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D.B Cooper
FBI accused of cover-up after 46-year-old “Cooper letter” surfaces
DB Cooper | 2017-11-21T06:35:26+00:00
Newsweek Magazine; by Christal Hayes, November 20, 2017
The notorious case of the mysterious plane hijacker known as D.B. Cooper just took another curious turn, which has some saying the anonymous criminal who parachuted out of a plane with $200,000 in stolen cash could still be alive.
An intriguing 1971 letter that was signed by Cooper was recently made public for the first time in a freedom of information lawsuit, in reference to the hijacking and the FBI’s cold case.
In the note—given to filmmaker and author Thomas J. Colbert, who is investigating the case with a 40-member team—Cooper said he “knew from the start that I wouldn’t be caught.” Colbert says the new letter, along with a suspicious memo, have led him to believe the Bureau has been hiding many aspects of the case, he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The writer goes on to say that he used putty makeup and a toupee that threw off investigators and artists who sketched wanted posters. After he boarded a commercial Boeing 727 under a fake name on November 24, 1971, he claimed to have a bomb, then demanded $200,000 and parachuted from the plane—disappearing into thin air. Literally.
Cooper was never found, but investigators did find some traces of his jump after-the-fact. Some of the $20 bills were located along the Columbia River in southern Washington State in 1980. Colbert and his team also recently found pieces of a strap and foam in the woods, which could be part of Cooper’s parachute. They sent the artifacts to the FBI, but the Bureau hasn’t said it plans to reopen the case, the SeattlePI reported.
Another internal document given to Colbert details the FBI’s examination of the letter, and poses the question of whether it was written on government stationery, mentioning “that it resembles the carbon copy of the airtel material used by the Field Offices.”
The letter is one of five 1971 notes sent by Cooper—or someone claiming to be Cooper—that haven’t been publicly released. That has caused many to question why the FBI didn’t cooperate until a lawsuit forced them.
“Frankly, I think there was a cover-up and continues to be a cover-up,” Colbert said.
The FBI closed the investigation last year, so it’s unknown if the public will ever find out what happened to Cooper—or if his actual name will ever be found. Some still believe he died after jumping from the plane.
While the earlier alleged hijacker letters were sent to newspapers along the West Coast, copies of this released note were forwarded to The NY Times and The Washington Post.
The FBI never talked about any of the five notes. It’s just the latest piece of evidence Colbert and his team have discovered in their six-year investigation.
Though it’s still a complete mystery as to who Cooper was or what happened to him, Colbert has his own theory about the case: “Credible” sources have told him that after Cooper landed in his drop zone, partners put him in a small aircraft, then they dumped some of his money near the Columbia River to throw authorities off.
Colbert told Fox News he believes a man named Robert W. Rackstraw Sr., now 74, is actually Cooper. But Rackstraw denies the notion and has said the accusation has ruined his life.
FYI: TJC doesn’t buy that. His team recently learned of a famous restaurant near the San Diego suspect that, until its 2015 closing, catered to famous fighter pilots, astronauts and stunt-pilots. A former customer and the retired owner of “Nieuport 17” both confirmed that Rackstraw hung there for decades and “knew every item on the menu.” Oh, and he also answered to D.B. Cooper.
© TJC Consulting LLC Copyright 2016
33
Investigators: Cooper documents confirm suspect and FBI cover-up
https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads ... t-Note.jpgplb
DB Cooper | 2017-11-19T23:52:43+00:00
It’s the case that won’t go away.
The only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history remains unsolved. But a small army of private investigators is confident they have identified the culprit, his co-conspirators, and new evidence that many believe was covered up by the FBI for decades.
Several things highlighted by the writer — a lack of fingerprints on the jet, suspicion of Cooper wearing a hairpiece and possibly makeup and more — were evidentiary puzzles during the ordeal that weren’t publicly released at the time, Colbert said. Add on that two of these five Cooper letters were mailed from near a remote mountain home of a former NORJAK “person of interest,” and things point squarely toward the team’s theory.
Colbert’s retired law enforcement officials, forensic experts and more than a dozen FBI agents have previously identified Robert W. Rackstraw Sr., a 74-year-old Vietnam veteran now living in San Diego, as their focus. He was a hijacking suspect in the late 1970s, but formal charges were never pursued.
Reached by phone on Wednesday, Rackstraw had little to say about the allegations, other than to suggest the reporter verify Colbert’s claims.
The four earlier Cooper letters, mailed to newspapers from several states, were also quickly collected by field agents. But this rediscovered fifth note, the only one typed and stamped “evidence,” was kept away from visiting researchers and authors, let along the media, for 46 years. To Colbert, that suggests the FBI worked to hide the evidence of the getaway for decades.
“And it continues to this day,” said the team organizer.
One member of Colbert’s team, a former FBI special agent named Ron Hilley, wasn’t ready to call the letter and other actions a cover-up, but said he believes the Bureau simply wasn’t ready to expend more resources on a case that old.
Mystery from the beginning
It all began on Nov. 24, 1971, when a man calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines from Portland to Seattle. Once aboard the Boeing 727, he slipped a note to the flight attendant saying he had a bomb and that he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes, as well as a refueling truck ready when they landed in Seattle.
In Seattle, the man exchanged the passengers for the ransom money and the plane took off, headed for Mexico. Somewhere over southwest Washington, Cooper jumped out the rear stair door of the plane and was never seen again.
The only verifiable evidence ever found was a small cache of $20 Cooper bills found near the Columbia River in 1980.
The FBI officially stopped pursuing the case in 2016, but said it would review any physical evidence of the parachutes or the money that turned up. It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the U.S.
Colbert and his team aren’t the only ones of course who have pursued the case independent of the FBI. But he and his group’s work was featured in a 2016 History Channel special, and that has drawn the most attention in recent years.
New evidence?
Last August, Colbert and a half-dozen forensic members headed to a digging site on private property in the Cascades (he isn’t releasing the location), following leads from a second-hand story that came to the team about Cooper’s secret getaway.
The escape tale’s details re-enforced Colbert’s belief that Rackstraw was the likely suspect, something he documented in the award-winning book, “The Last Master Outlaw,” and on the website he and his wife Dawna run together, DBCooper.com.
While digging in the remote mountain location, the team found bits of a strap and foam that they think were part of Cooper’s parachute and backpack
The Bureau wouldn’t comment on whether it’s taking any new action in the Cooper case, but it did reiterate its earlier commitment to review any physical or direct evidence brought forward.
The thing is, the FBI doesn’t seem to have made any moves at all.
FBI inaction?
“We gave them recovered materials, a credible dig site and two possible suspects,” Colbert said. “That was three months ago.”
Colbert claims this inaction isn’t an anomaly. He’s compiled a list of a dozen incidents that imply a larger evidentiary cover-up, including the following:
-Just before its court-ordered release, an agent’s old memo that claimed the fifth letter had “excited” the Bureau had its identifier “D.B. Cooper” redacted from the description;
-The FBI were forwarded personal stories and newspaper articles about a Swiss con artist that lived in two Oregon towns for several months, then vanished from a roommate’s couch the day before the hijacking. More than a dozen residents that recently viewed old news video and pictures of paratrooper Rackstraw adamantly believe he was their grifter;
-Court-released FBI field notes show agents interviewed a half-dozen farmers in La Center, Washington, who witnessed a small-plane pilot and two men in a truck on their remote fields, conducting nighttime take-offs and rendezvous in the rain — the day before and day of the hijacking. An out-of-town reporter talked to the same farmers after the FBI, and the storyteller who brought the team the getaway tale gave the same touch-and-go details and timetable. But when Colbert forwarded an escape summary last August featuring all three of these intertwining sources, the FBI had no comment.
-The college student who sat across from Cooper was responsible for providing the description for the most accurate FBI sketch. When Colbert tracked down the now 60ish-year-old passener for a professional “six-pack” mugshot test, he quickly picked Rackstraw out in a half-dozen photos. But when the video-taped conclusion was shown to an FBI liaison hired by History Channel, he described the result as “questionable at best.”
Colbert and many of his investigators now believe the FBI is trying to avoid being “shamed in court” by the team’s piecing together of the nearly five-decade-old case.
“It’d be a huge embarrassment that our volunteers were able to find evidence that they couldn’t,” said Colbert. “But this wasn’t what my wife and I set out to do. We worked hard to find 23 former feds the FBI would be comfortable working with. All we asked was, if they made an arrest, to thank the retired G-men on news conference day. But (former case agent) Curtis Eng rejected our face-to-face offer and all of their amazing evidence. It’s more than a year later, but it’s still very sad,” said Colbert.
Meanwhile, team member Ron Hilley still isn’t convinced Seattle Division is trying to cover things up.
“The FBI holds everything they have tighter than you’ve held anything in your life,” Hilley said. “My belief is that the FBI has closed the case…and they’re just not going to go back and do anything else.”
But the former polygrapher thinks the evidence assembled by their team will be rock solid once someone — the FBI or Colbert’s team — fully digs up the remote site and finds the rest of a parachute that can be proven to be Cooper’s.
While another member suggested Colbert may have gotten too focused on Rackstraw and so has found connections he wants to find to support his theory, Hilley saw it the other way around.
“When you get the right person…every piece of evidence will point at them because they did it,” Hilley said. “If you look at the entire investigation that Tom’s team has put in the book, there’s no way in hell that you could say it’s not (Rackstraw).”
© TJC Consulting LLC Copyright 2016
https://dbcooper.com/