After years of trying to figure out the identity of D.B. Cooper, a team of private investigators think they have the answer, thanks to a letter they decoded from the hijacker. The team, led by documentary filmmaker Thomas Colbert, says the letter was sent to The Portland Oregonian Newspaper and contains a confessions from Army veteran Robert Rackstraw. The letter was sent months after a man identified as Cooper hijacked a Seattle-bound flight and said there was a bomb in his briefcase. He gave a flight attendant a note that demanded money. He then parachuted out of the plane. He took $200,000 with him and was never seen or heard from again.
“This letter is too [sic] let you know I am not dead but really alive and just back from the Bahamas, so your silly troopers up there can stop looking for me. That is just how dumb this government is. I like your articles about me but you can stop them now. D.B. Cooper is not real,” the letter reads, according to Fox News. “I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk. Now it is Uncle’s turn to weep and pay one of it’s [sic] own some cash for a change. (And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name).”
Colbert received the letter after suing the FBI for the files and when he received it, realized that it was written in a similar fashion to a separate letter. A codebreaker was called in to help decipher it.
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