Seattle Post-Intelligencer; by Daniel DeMay, Nov. 19, 2017

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.

The 40-member cold case team, led by filmmaker and author Tom Colbert, has been hot on the Cooper caper for a half-dozen years. And after a recent suit to obtain public records, the team got its hands on a startling letter from the alleged daredevil, the fifth in a series of taunting notes sent to newspapers in the weeks after the incident.

The released letter — copies of which were originally mailed to The Seattle Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the New York Times — and FBI memos about it reveal that it was considered a serious clue by the Bureau, and agents believed the skydiver was still alive. Upon study, Colbert’s team feels certain facts in it could have only been known by Cooper himself.

“I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be caught,” the letter begins.

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.

Colbert said the evidence falls within the parameters of what the FBI said it would review, so last summer, he turned in a total of five unknown materials. He was told agents would be following up with the lab work, the dig site itself and two potential Cooper co-conspirators the team uncovered through research.