Robert Rackstraw was a veteran of extensive military training, serving in the National Guard, Reserve, Army and serving in one of the United States Army’s most decorated combat divisions, the 1st Calvary Division, in Vietnam in 1969.
Seven years after the 1978 hijacking, he was first considered a suspect, with investigators saying “so many things” about him matching Cooper’s description.
The FBI’s suspicions about Rackstraw didn’t materialize, but Thomas Colbert officially pointed the finger at him in June 2018 with a letter sent to the Portland Oregonian newspaper at the time, stating that he was Cooper.
Robert Rackstraw (above), a military vet with a dark past full of fraud and scams, died last month and is believed to be legendary 1971 skyjacker DB Cooper
‘This letter is also’ [sic] let you know I’m not dead but really alive and just back from the Bahamas so your stupid troopers up there can stop looking for me. That’s how stupid this government is. I like your articles about me, but you can stop them now. DB Cooper is not real,” the letter reads.
“I want out of the system and saw a way through good old Unk,” he writes. ‘Now it’s uncle’s turn to cry and pay one of his’ [sic] own some money for a change. (And tell the footman police that DB Cooper isn’t my real name).’
Colbert said he got the letter after successfully suing the FBI for access to the Cooper files. He gave the letter to Rick Sherwood, a former Army Security Agency member, to decipher.
He previously decoded letters with the team of detectives into five different notes purportedly sent by Cooper linking him to Rackstraw.
“Nobody even knew about this letter,” Colbert told the Daily News. “When I got it, I noticed it was typed exactly like that (another Cooper letter), so I called a code breaker and showed it to him. He said, “Tom, you’re not going to believe it, but his confession is here,” Colbert said.
Sherwood identified four phrases that were used multiple times: “DB Cooper is not real,” “uncle” or “Unk,” which referred to Uncle Sam, “the system,” and “lackey cops.”
He used a system of letters and numbers to decipher those sentences and after about two weeks he translated “by good old Unk” into “by skyjacking a plane” and “And please tell the footman police” into “I am 1st LT Robert Rackstraw.’
Another member of the investigation team confirmed Sherwood’s findings.
A nine-digit number typed at the bottom of the letter could only have come from Rackstraw because it referred to three secret military units he had links with during the war.
Colbert revealed last February that his codebreaker had discovered the new hidden messages in four other harassing notes Cooper sent in the late 1970s, including the one above.
Colbert revealed last February that his codebreaker had since discovered the new hidden messages in four other taunting notes Cooper sent in the late 1970s.
One note, sent on November 30, 1971, read, “IF CATCH I AM CIA… RWR.”
Investigators believe the “RWR” in the coding is Rackstraw’s initials, and it also indicated that he was expecting an escape map from the Federal Espionage Service if captured.
Another note contained encryption that read, “CAN FBI CATCH ME…SWS,” which Colbert said Rackstraw harassed agents to track him down. He added that the SWS stood for Special Warfare School, where the veteran supposedly learned coding.
Colbert said two of the letters were sent within 30 minutes of Rackstraw’s old mountain town in California.
He added that the recent evidence supports what he has been claiming for some time – that the daredevil heist was carried out in a Rackshaw, who lives and lives well in California.
Investigators questioned Rackstraw about the Cooper case in 1978 and eliminated him as a suspect the following year. When Colbert first publicly mentioned and linked Rackstraw to the hijacking, the veteran’s attorney called the allegations “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
However, in a telephone interview last year following Colbert’s accusation, Rackstraw said, “There is no denial of any kind, my dear.
“On pain of perjury, have them sign that everything they said was true,” he added.
Rackstraw died of natural causes in July 2019 at the age of 75. Colbert believes Rackstraw took to the grave some secrets that we may never know about the November 24, 1971 hijacking.