Robert Rackstraw

Rackstraw, a former Army helicopter pilot who had been awarded a Silver Star for valor, didn't surface as a suspect until the late 1970s, according to news reports. He'd been arrested on charges of murdering his stepfather, but was acquitted in a trial in 1978. The following year, he faced charges of aircraft theft, possession of explosives and check fraud, according to news reports. Rackstraw was convicted and spent more than a year in jail before being released in 1980. He was a high school dropout and U.S. Army paratrooper trained in explosives and psychological operations. He also worked as a pilot for hire in pre-revolution Iran. He became subject for amateur sleuths investigating D.B. Cooper, the legendary skyjacker who jumped from a Northwest Orient Airlines jet somewhere over southwestern Washington in 1971 with $200,000 in cash and into history. Rackstraw, whose Army photo bore some resemblance to the notorious mastermind and had many of the skills required to pull off such a feat. In 2011, Thomas J. Colbert, a Los Angeles-based television and film producer, organized a 40-member team to investigate Rackstraw and figure out whether he may have been D.B. Cooper. In July 2016, a History Channel documentary detailed Colbert's quest to figure out whether Rackstraw was the notorious hijacker.