Free Republic

They were certain they knew the identity of the long-missing hijacker known as D.B. Cooper, and now the self-appointed investigators wanted their man to turn himself in to the FBI and sign over his life rights for a book and movie project... Rackstraw watched the documentary, he said in an interview. He watched himself being ambushed. He watched the man whose son found the ransom money along the Columbia River deny that it had been planted there. He watched a Northwest Orient flight attendant examine an old photo of him and his decades-old NBC interview and repeatedly say she didn’t...

It’s a bombshell development in a 45-year-old cold case mystery. A commercial airplane hijacker escaped with a daring parachute jump in 1971 and was never seen again. A team of private investigators says it has cracked a code that it says shows the infamous hijacker who went by the name D.B. Cooper is, in fact, a man who lives in San Diego named Robert Rackstraw. Rackstraw is a former Stockton resident, whose family also lived in Calaveras County.

Parachute used by mystery hijacker to escape aircraft after stealing $200,000 goes on display for the first time It's one of America's most enduring crime mysteries, baffling authorities for more than 40 years. In 1971, a man who identified himself as Dan Cooper boarded Northwest Orient Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. FBI investigators have always argued that Cooper did not survive his risky jump, while at the same time maintaining an active case file. The mysterious hijacking has intrigued everyone from federal agents to amateur sleuths. After getting on the plane, he ordered a whiskey and lit a...

Gary Larson looked out his window the other day and glimpsed perhaps the oddest scene he's seen in nearly 40 years of living beside the Little Washougal River in Clark County. There on the opposite bank stood a tall, bearded man, fishing pole in hand. Attached to his line was a bundle of $1 bills that he cast into the water and carefully watched as the river current washed over it. Larson was witnessing the latest chapter in the search for the elusive D.B. Cooper. Tom Kaye takes measurements along the banks of the Columbia River. Here he attempts to...

MENA, Ark. -- An Arkansas man hopes to auction off some frayed $20 bills that he says could bring him thousands of dollars. Brian Ingram, 34, a Mena carpenter, says he was the boy on a family outing 15 years ago in Washington state who found money stolen by legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Sunday. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., in 1971, and parachuted out with $200,000 in ransom money. His fate remains unknown. Ingram says he has 17 of the bills plus torn pieces and is working with an attorney to...