Who Is Robert Rackstraw on Netflix’s ‘D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!’

It’s a mystery that has confounded professional and amateur investigators for 50 years: who was D.B. Cooper? He remains the only airplane hijacker to not only go uncaught, but to go unidentified — until now? That’s the mystery within a mystery that Netflix’s new docuseries D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! aims to untangle. Did a team of cold case sleuths uncover Cooper’s real identity years ago? And if they did, why is this mystery still, well, a mystery? And before you mention it, no, D.B. Cooper was not Loki — although the sketch does look like Tom Hiddleston.

The main theory posited in the first half of D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! comes from author and D.B. Cooper investigator Tom Colbert. His own research led him to the conclusion that a man named Robert Rackstraw actually pulled off the infamous D.B. Cooper airplane heist, wherein a man in a suit and sunglasses held a plane hostage for $200,000, which he then received and escaped by jumping out of the plane with a parachute. So, who is Robert Rackstraw and was he D.B. Cooper? If you’re halfway through D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! and you need to know right now, keep on reading.

Who is Robert Rackstraw?

Robert Rackstraw is one of the many individuals suspected of pulling off the D.B. Cooper hijacking. The primary reason? Rackstraw’s a skilled pilot and a dishonorably discharged Vietnam veteran, giving him the skills and motive to pull off a stunt that’s kind of an elaborate middle finger to authority. The guy spent the 1970s jumping from crime to crime: he falsified his military records, was charged with domestic violence, forged his wife’s name on a loan application, wrote tons of bad checks, stockpiled explosives, and was charged with — but not convicted of — murdering his stepfather.

Is Robert Rackstraw D.B. Cooper?

The FBI sure thought he could be. Rackstraw was seriously investigated by the FBI as a D.B. Cooper suspect back in 1979. That’s just one of the many reasons why Tom Colbert and his cold case crew think Rackstraw could be the hijacker.

Of course, how Colbert came to suspect Rackstraw in the first place sounds comical. A friend of Colbert’s heard from a friend of a friend who knew a gambler who claimed they knew D.B. Cooper. The gambler turned out to know Dick Briggs, a cocaine supplier and criminal who claimed to be Cooper back in the ’70s and died in 1980. Colbert’s research proved Briggs to be a liar; he’d never even served in Vietnam. So using police connections, Colbert found a narc who knew Briggs back in the day. The narc directed Colbert to Briggs’ old partner, Robert Rackstraw.

One reason why Colbert and others believe the FBI was never able to pin the crime on Rackstraw is the suspect’s rumored ties to the CIA. While there’s nothing official to suggest Rackstraw worked with the CIA, there are a number of coincidences that indicate he could have flown planes for the organization in the 1980s — possibly even during the Iran-Contra Affair. If Rackstraw knew CIA secrets, then the CIA would presumably protect him from the FBI.

As for whether or not Rackstraw is Cooper, Rackstraw won’t say. He always answered or avoided the question with a wink and a smile, seemingly relishing the fact that he was getting away with something or fooling people (or both, or neither). And for every member of Colbert’s 40-person cold case squad who believes Rackstraw is Cooper, you can find one or more Cooper sleuths who think Rackstraw’s a dead end and that someone completely different fits the mystery hijacker’s profile.

Where is Robert Rackstraw today?

Robert Rackstraw passed away on July 9, 2019 due to issues with a heart condition. Unlike other suspects who made deathbed confessions about being D.B. Cooper, Rackstraw remained coy all the way to the end.