The FBI closed their investigation into the D.B. Cooper hijacking last year. They had considered 800 suspects over the last 40 plus years, and they even considered that the hijacker died during his parachute jump over the rugged terrain of Washington State.
For those of you that don't know, D.B. Cooper hijacked an airplane, forced the pilots to fly towards Mexico, before jumping out of the plane with the $200,000 he had stolen. No body was ever found, and no one was arrested. Though some of the cash that he had stolen was recovered, albeit badly damaged.
The hijacking has become one of the greatest modern, unsolved mysteries. And the FBI just added fuel to the fire when they released a letter said to be sent from D.B. Cooper. Copies of the letter had been sent to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Times. The FBI released the letter that was sent to the Post, it was in an envelope with a Seattle postmark.
D.B. Cooper "sleuth," Tom Colbert had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to be able to get his hands on the letter, and he believes that the letter is definitely real and sent from Cooper himself. It's contents have posed more questions than answers though.
In the letter, the author states that he left no fingerprints on the airplane. This is critical towards authentication is because it is 100% accurate.
The FBI got its best lead in 1980 when a young kid found a bundle of rotten $20 bills near the Columbia River, in Washington. The serial numbers on those bills matched the ones stolen by Cooper. You can now even purchase some of these bills for your private collection.
Colbert and his team of 40 volunteer members of law enforcement believe that Cooper was really Robert Rackstraw, a 73-year-old man living around San Diego, though this has never been proven. Rackstraw has even sent letters to the court overseeing the Freedom of Information Act proceedings, asking the judge to stop this charade as Colbert's accusations have ruined his life.
We will likely never know the true identity of the infamous D.B. Cooper.
