Original subtitles

Tonight, the only unsolved skyjacking case in history.

WALTER CRONKITE: Today, after hijacking

a Northwest Airlines jet,

the description on one wire service, "master criminal."

The perpetrator leaps from a moving plane

with $200,000 cash and is never seen again.

JOHN TEFFT: There's a lot of variables.

When did he jump out of the plane?

How long did he wait before he pulled the ripcord?

What was the wind speed?

People don't just disappear. He has to have gone somewhere.

Now, we explore the top theories

behind the world's most elusive hijacker.

Investigators are looking at a former cocaine dealer.

TRACY WALDER: He's an ex-paratrooper,

looks a lot like the D.B. Cooper sketch.

DREW BEESON: There are millions of Caucasian men with dark hair,

but there's only a few hundred thousand

that would have worked in that kind of environment.

Can new evidence finally reveal his true identity?

This is a better lead than they could have ever anticipated.

Who is D.B. Cooper, and will he ever be caught?

[music]

November 24th, 1971,

Portland International Airport.

A man named Dan Cooper boards Northwest Orient Airlines

Flight 305 to Seattle.

JOHN: The flight crew and the passengers

describe him as an unremarkable guy.

He's a Caucasian male,

he's got on a dark suit,

black tie, carrying a briefcase.

DARREN SCHAEFER: He's one of the last to board the plane,

sits in the last row in 18E.

He orders a bourbon and soda

and dons a pair of sunglasses.

LAURENCE: The plane takes off at 2:50 p.m.

DREW: The flight from Portland to Seattle

is a milk run flown several times a day.

It's about an hour in the air.

This time around, the plane's

carrying 36 passengers

and six crew members.

JOHN: Everything's going to plan,

everything's on schedule, until the man

seated in the last row, Cooper, hands a note

to the flight attendant, Florence Schaffner.

She doesn't read it at first, she puts it in her pocket.

And then Cooper says to her, "You might wanna read that."

DARREN: The note says "I have a bomb

and I'd like you to sit next to me."

Florence Schaffner understandably sort of loses it,

but she does comply and follows his instructions.

LAURENCE: Cooper opens his briefcase

revealing a makeshift bomb.

Schaffner describes the contents

of the briefcase

as something that looks like

eight sticks of dynamite,

a battery, and a bunch of wires.

DREW: Cooper has her attention. She knows he's serious.

He demands four parachutes and a ransom of $200,000

when the plane lands in Seattle.

LAURENCE: Schaffner relays the hijacker's commands

to Captain William Scott.

But since it's such a short flight,

ground forces need more time to react.

So, air traffic control keeps the plane

circling around for two hours

until they can gather the money and the parachutes.

JOHN: Investigators write down the serial number of every bill

and then bundle it up into a bank bag.

LAURENCE: The plane finally lands in Seattle at 5:46 p.m.

JOHN: Captain Scott parks the plane

away from the buildings.

Cooper sends out a different flight attendant,

Tina Mucklow, and she goes out

and interacts with the authorities.

There, she collects the money and the parachutes,

and returns to the plane.

She also brings printed instructions

on how to use the parachutes,

but Cooper tells her he does not need them.

DREW: Cooper agrees to let the passengers off the plane.

Two flight attendants, Florence Schaffner

and Alice Hancock, also ask to leave,

and Cooper allows them to.

LAURENCE: But the ordeal isn't over

for the rest of the crew.

JOHN: Cooper wants the 727 to take off again

and start to head towards Mexico City.

He's going to keep the four remaining crew members

as hostages--

the flight attendant, the flight engineer,

the first officer, and the captain.

LAURENCE: For this second flight,

Cooper makes more demands.

TED YESHION: Cooper wants the pilots to fly

with the wing flaps in an unusual configuration--

a downward position.

Now, that's how a plane

normally takes off, but then

they raise the flaps.

You wouldn't fly a long haul

with the flaps down, because it creates

enormous drag and means it can't go very fast,

something like 200 miles per hour.

JOHN: Cooper also asks that they keep the landing gear down

and fly below 10,000 feet.

He wants them to be going super slow and super low.

TED: The pilots tell Cooper it can't be done.

They're afraid the plane might just fall out of the sky.

But the hijacker is adamant that it will work,

and they need to comply.

LAURENCE: At 7:40 p.m., the plane takes off

for Mexico City.

But 20 minutes into the flight,

Cooper does something completely unexpected.

DREW: He lowers the plane's rear airstair.

The 727 has a set of stairs that can be lowered

out of the back of the airplane.

The pilot gets a warning light when this happens.

Once Cooper lowers the aft stairs

around 8:00 p.m., he puts on his parachute,

grabs his $200,000, and jumps out.

LAURENCE: The hijacker is never seen again.

JOHN: At 11:02 p.m., the pilot safely lands the plane in Reno.

At this point, the flight crew has stayed in the cockpit,

and they're not sure if Cooper's still in the plane or not.

But when the FBI searches the plane,

Cooper is definitely gone.

LAURENCE: Almost immediately, the story spreads like wildfire.

REPORTER: D.B. Cooper bailed out of a Northwest Airlines jet

going 200 miles an hour at about 10,000 feet.

The best guess is he jumped

almost exactly over La Center, Washington.

LAURENCE: The FBI takes the lead on the case,

with assistance from sheriffs and state troopers

in Washington, Oregon, and Nevada.

They have very little to go on.

This guy has committed an incredibly well-planned crime.

LAURENCE: Authorities need to begin somewhere.

They start with his name.

They know he bought a ticket under the name Dan Cooper.

JOHN: The FBI doesn't really suspect that's his real name,

but criminals often choose an alias

that's very close to their real name.

TED: So, they run this idea by the Portland police,

and as luck would have it, they know of a petty criminal

who goes by D.B. Cooper.

LAURENCE: D.B. Cooper lives about an hour and a half

from Portland, in The Dalles, Oregon.

TED: And he's got a minor record,

so police have him in the system.

DREW: It's a long shot, but they know

they have to start somewhere.

And they're hopeful they can nab him on his way home

with $200,000 of stolen money.

TED: A police officer drives to D.B. Cooper's house

on the night of the hijacking, planning to stake it out

until Cooper comes home, and catch him red-handed.

LAURENCE: But as soon as the officer arrives,

he sees Cooper's already home.

DARREN: It seems unreasonable that D.B. Cooper

would have committed the skyjacking,

jumped out of the plane, and made it back home

to his house in The Dalles that night.

TED: The timeline doesn't fit in any way, shape, or form.

So, despite having a similar name

and a criminal record, D.B. Cooper is quickly ruled out

as the hijacker.

LAURENCE: Police may be done with D.B. Cooper as a suspect,

but history isn't done with his name,

thanks to an innocent error.

TRACY: A reporter named James Long

for the Oregon Journal is covering this story.

In all this chaos,

no one knows what's happening,

and Long makes a mistake.

JOHN: The hijacker actually identified himself

as Dan Cooper, but Long puts the hijacker's name out

as D.B. Cooper, and it's immediately picked up

by all the wire services.

TRACY: And just like that, D.B. Cooper becomes the name

on everyone's lips.

LAURENCE: From that moment on,

the case is known as the D.B. Cooper mystery.

Meanwhile, at Reno Airport,

authorities race to gather evidence on the plane.

TED: Inside the plane, FBI agents

find 66 latent fingerprints, but can't identify any of them.

They also find Cooper's black clip-on tie and tie clip,

some cigarette butts, and two of the four parachutes.

That's it. That's all they have.

TRACY: In 1971, we don't have fingerprint databases

like we do today.

We also don't have DNA at this time.

JOHN: The tie clip and the tie are pretty unremarkable,

so they're gonna be hard to trace.

There's nothing on the plane that immediately tells us

who the hijacker is.

LAURENCE: With little to go on, a large-scale manhunt begins.

TRACY: The FBI knows that he jumped out of the plane

somewhere between Seattle and Reno,

and now they need to know where to look.

But it's hard to determine Cooper's landing zone

because they don't know exactly when and where he jumped.

There's so many variables involved.

What was the wind speed?

When did he pull the ripcord?

When and where was the plane exactly when he jumped?

TED: It's next to impossible to establish

an accurate search area,

but they start with a massive section

of really thick forest north of Portland.

JOHN: This is a huge deal.

The Air Force actually loans them an SR-71 Blackbird

to help them photograph the entire flight area

in hopes of developing a clue.

LAURENCE: Though the Blackbird retraces

the hijacked plane's flight path five times,

their search turns up empty.

DREW: The Oregon National Guard brings out helicopters

to search for Cooper.

They find some plastic and broken tree limbs,

but it turns out it has nothing to do with the crime.

JOHN: And then, 200 U.S. Army soldiers

search the forest on foot.

DARREN: There's also a private salvage company

that searched Lake Merwin with a submarine

looking for evidence of Cooper at the bottom of the lake.

They don't find anything.

LAURENCE: Despite all this effort,

no trace of Cooper is found.

DAVE: People don't just disappear.

He has to be somewhere.

The FBI wants to get his face out to the public,

hoping someone has seen him.

LAURENCE: With no actual photo to go on,

the FBI enlists the help of a sketch artist.

TED: They talk to people who were at the Portland airport

who saw him buy his ticket,

and people who were on the airplane.

Both sets of witnesses give

a near identical description of the man.

TRACY: He's a Caucasian man in his mid-40s

with a somewhat dark olive complexion.

He has a receding hairline, short dark hair,

and is wearing a dark suit and sunglasses.

JOHN: This sketch, which has become world-famous,

comes out about a week after the hijacking

on November 28th, 1971.

It generates hundreds, if not thousands of tips.

LAURENCE: Tips that will soon break the Cooper case wide open.

LAURENCE: When the FBI releases a sketch

of the unidentified hijacker known as D.B. Cooper in 1971,

a flood of names begins to pour in.

On April 8th, 1972,

one in particular grabs their attention.

A concerned citizen called the FBI tipline.

He said that him and his friend were talking over a beer,

and his friend outlined a detailed plan

on how to hijack an airplane.

LAURENCE: The friend's name is Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr.

DREW: At first, it may seem like

another one of these fake,

"My friend is D.B. Cooper" stories.

But as investigators dig deeper into McCoy's background,

they realize, "This might really be our guy."

DAVE: Richard McCoy's a former student

at Brigham Young University in Utah.

He drops out, he joins the Army,

he serves two tours in Vietnam.

TRACY: He was a helicopter pilot and demolition expert.

After his time in Vietnam,

he served with the Utah National Guard,

where he became a skydiver.

JOHN: Based on his background,

FBI agents believe he has some

of the skills that Cooper has.

DAVE: He knows bombs, he knows planes,

and he's a skydiver.

JOHN: There's a lot more to it than that,

because according to the tipster,

McCoy has just gotten away with another hijacking.

LAURENCE: On April 7th, 1972,

the day before the caller's tip,

United Flight 855 from Denver to Los Angeles is hijacked.

This hijacking occurred just five months

after the D.B. Cooper hijacking,

and the similarities are uncanny.

JOHN: This hijacker uses the name of James Johnson

to buy his ticket.

Like Cooper, he gives the flight crew a note

announcing his intentions.

He gives very specific instructions to the pilot.

DARREN: He asked them to fly

to San Francisco, and he has

a specific runway picked out--

19-Left.

TED: He wants $500,000

and four parachutes.

And if he gets that,

he'll let the passengers go.

It's just like D.B. Cooper,

right down to the number of parachutes.

LAURENCE: The parallels don't end there.

Johnson gets the cash, he lets the passengers off,

and the plane goes in the air.

He tells them to fly low and slow at 16,000 feet.

Then he takes the cash. straps on a parachute,

and jumps out the back stairs.

LAURENCE: But the Johnson hijacking has something

the Cooper case doesn't-- a prime suspect.

JOHN: The first thing the FBI does

is a handwriting and fingerprint analysis

of the note used in the Johnson hijacking.

Both samples are a positive match to McCoy.

And then, the FBI conduct a search of McCoy's home,

and they find a duffel bag full of cash--

$499,970.

DARREN: McCoy is caught red-handed

for the James Johnson hijacking,

and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

LAURENCE: But is McCoy also D.B. Cooper?

DAVE: Unfortunately, unlike the Johnson hijacking,

there's no evidence that ties McCoy

to the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

TRACY: First of all, none of his fingerprints

match the 66 latent prints that were found

off of the D.B. Cooper hijacking airplane.

JOHN: Eyewitnesses are shown photos of McCoy,

and they say it does not match Cooper.

TRACY: Also, McCoy claimed to be in Las Vegas at that time,

and that alibi was actually verified,

in that his signature appeared on receipts and forms.

JOHN: None of this rules out McCoy,

but it makes it a lot less likely

he is the Cooper suspect.

LAURENCE: But there's one piece of evidence

that could tie McCoy to the crime.

DREW: McCoy's family's asked to look at the tie clip

that D.B. Cooper left behind on Flight 305.

According to the family,

that tie clip belongs to Richard McCoy.

LAURENCE: Unfortunately, the FBI is never able

to interview McCoy about the Cooper hijacking case.

On August 10th, 1974,

soon after he's sent to prison, McCoy escapes.

DREW: When he's found, he's shot and killed

in a shootout with the FBI,

and that kind of closes the case on McCoy.

TRACY: The evidence against McCoy is thin,

so in order to ID him as D.B. Cooper,

they would need a confession,

which they're never going to get now that he's dead.

JOHN: But the FBI agent, Nick O'Hara,

who shot McCoy, was quoted as saying,

"When I shot McCoy, I shot D.B. Cooper."

LAURENCE: But without more concrete evidence against McCoy,

it's impossible to make a definitive ID,

and so the FBI keeps investigating.

DREW: At this point, there's not a lot

the FBI can do on their own.

They find themselves mainly running down tips

from the public, and there are a lot of tips.

TRACY: You have to understand,

D.B. Cooper almost becomes a legend.

There's kind of a Cooper mania surrounding him.

He's kind of like a Jesse James or a Billy the Kid,

this kind of common man who beats the system.

And in the 1970s,

that's the coolest thing you can do.

DARREN: Claiming to be D.B. Cooper,

especially in the Pacific Northwest,

is just a way to get your 15 minutes of fame.

JOHN: This is a nightmare to these poor investigators,

'cause they have to sift through all these false confessions.

After a few years, many agents speculate

that they will never really find the real Cooper.

LAURENCE: The Bureau continues its work for decades,

investigating some 1,000 serious suspects,

but none are proven to be Cooper.

Eventually, the fame surrounding this case

gets the public interested in solving this case as well.

DARREN: It spawned all these armchair detectives

and independent investigators

to look at this case for themselves.

LAURENCE: Among them, news researcher Tom Colbert

and his team called the Case Breakers.

In 2011, they announce a surprising new suspect.

TED: Colbert has spoken to an informant

named Ron Carlson.

In the late '70s and '80s,

Carlson said he worked in the cocaine business

with Dick Briggs, and apparently Briggs used to brag all the time

about being D.B. Cooper.

JOHN: One night in 1980, Carlson stated that Briggs

threw a party at Hayden Island,

which sits in the middle of the Columbia River.

There, once again, Briggs brags that he is D.B. Cooper.

LAURENCE: This time, party guests

ask Briggs to prove it.

Carlson says that Briggs

points out a couple at the party.

Their names are Dwayne and Patricia Ingram.

Briggs says, "If you don't believe me, just watch.

They're going to find the Cooper money in five days."

JOHN: Five days later, Ingram's son Brian

finds two bundles buried in the sand

on the banks of the Columbia River.

Inside these bundles was $5,800 in decomposing cash.

My son ran up and said, "Wait a minute, Daddy."

So, he raked a place out in the sand there,

and there it was, it kinda tumbled up on the top.

DARREN: The bills have deteriorated quite badly,

but the serial numbers on the bills

match the ones given to D.B. Cooper.

JOHN: This is most definitely the Cooper ransom money,

and it's found exactly as Briggs described it.

LAURENCE: This remains the only physical evidence

ever found outside the plane.

TED: And the FBI tries to process the money

to lead them back to the hijacker.

Unfortunately, the bills are falling apart,

and there are no fingerprints

or any other evidence to tie back to Cooper.

LAURENCE: At the time of the discovery in 1980,

the FBI has no reason to suspect Dick Briggs.

The whole Briggs connection doesn't come to light

until the Case Breakers bring it up.

LAURENCE: By then, the FBI can't further investigate.

DARREN: Dick Briggs dies in a single car accident

December 12th, 1980, and it's unlikely

that this drug dealer was Cooper,

but with him gone, we'll never really know.

TRACY: Once again, we're left

with more questions than answers.

How do Briggs, the money, and D.B. Cooper add up?

DARREN: Did Briggs plant the money?

Did he know about the couple going to find it?

Fortunately, the Case Breakers aren't done digging yet.

LAURENCE: It's November 2011, and while the FBI

has investigated over 1,000 suspects

in the D.B. Cooper case, none have panned out.

But a team of amateur researchers

called the Case Breakers have uncovered

a new person of interest.

JOHN: The Case Breakers have been looking

at a former cocaine dealer

named Richard Briggs who bragged

that he was D.B. Cooper.

Now, Briggs has been dead for 30 years,

so there's no way to prove his claim.

Plus, there's always been some problems

about Briggs being the suspect.

TED: First, he doesn't look that much

like the D.B. Cooper sketch.

Second, there's no known records

of him having any parachute training.

DARREN: This isn't the end of the story for Briggs though,

because the Case Breakers find one of his associates,

former paratrooper Robert Rackstraw.

When they look at the picture of Rackstraw

and compare it to the sketch,

they think maybe this guy

could be D.B. Cooper.

This guy checks all the boxes.

He's an ex-paratrooper,

looks a lot like the D.B. Cooper sketch,

and was even investigated as a suspect in the late '70s.

LAURENCE: The Case Breakers dig deeper into Rackstraw's past.

DREW: Robert Rackstraw joins the Army in 1969,

and he's assigned to

the First Cavalry

Airmobile Division in Vietnam.

JOHN: In the service, he gets extensive training

on skydiving, use of explosives, and how to fly a plane.

He makes a name for himself,

and quickly rises to the rank of First Lieutenant.

TED: But this guy is a total rulebreaker.

At one point, he even steals his own commander's jeep.

In 1971, just five months before the Cooper hijacking,

Rackstraw finally gets kicked out

of the Army for insubordination.

LAURENCE: From there, his bad behavior continues.

JOHN: In the 1970s he racks up a lot of charges,

everything from check forgery to domestic violence.

At one point, he's actually charged

with killing his own stepfather.

He actually is acquitted of that,

but still faces other charges when he disappears.

DAVE: While out on bail, he fakes his own death.

He rents a small plane and he fakes a mayday call

saying he's going down

in Monterey Bay.

DREW: Investigators find the plane intact,

repainted in a nearby hangar.

Rackstraw's eventually rearrested a few months later

and receives a short sentence.

All this attention with law enforcement

has an unintended consequence.

It puts him right on the radar

for the D.B. Cooper investigation.

TED: In 1978, two Stockton, California detectives

look at Rackstraw.

They look at his background and criminal record,

and they can't help but notice

his similar appearance to the Cooper sketch.

LAURENCE: The detectives find too many connections to ignore.

TRACY: He knows bombs, he knows skydiving.

He runs scams with airplanes, he knows fake identities,

and by all accounts, he has nothing to lose.

LAURENCE: The Stockton detectives tip off the FBI.

DAVE: Rackstraw gives a jailhouse interview

to the Stockton, California newspaper, The Record.

In it, he says he identifies with the spirit of D.B. Cooper,

a guy who challenged the legal system and beat it.

In the interview, Rackstraw switches to first person,

and he says, "I think I stand for the American people."

JOHN: Journalists find some more circumstantial links

between him and D.B. Cooper.

He admitted to being in the Pacific Northwest

during the time of the hijacking.

They also learn that he was introduced to skydiving

by his favorite uncle, Ed Cooper.

TED: In another sit-down interview,

Rackstraw is asked if he thinks he's a good suspect

for D.B. Cooper.

He says, "If I was an investigator, definitely so.

I wouldn't discount myself or a person like myself."

LAURENCE: Based on all this evidence,

the Case Breakers' Tom Colbert and Tom Szollosi

publish a 2016 book

identifying Rackstraw as D.B. Cooper.

But their biggest bombshell has to do with the reason

that Rackstraw was never caught.

DARREN: Colbert and Szollosi believe that Rackstraw

was protected by friends in high places,

possibly the CIA.

Colbert and Szollosi have discovered evidence

that Rackstraw worked for the CIA.

TRACY: Court records show that Rackstraw

flew for CIA's Air America in Laos

shortly after the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

LAURENCE: And he may have also been a pilot

during the CIA's Iran-Contra Affair.

TRACY: Colbert and Szollosi believe that because Rackstraw

knows CIA secrets, he is shielded

from the FBI investigation into D.B. Cooper.

LAURENCE: Despite this new evidence,

the FBI doesn't further investigate Rackstraw,

because they officially close the Cooper case

just days after this revelation in 2016.

The FBI has spent 45 years, countless man hours,

and millions of dollars investigating this case,

and they don't have any firm evidence

against any particular suspect.

He didn't kill anybody,

there's no families clamoring for justice,

and at the end of the day, he really only stole $200,000.

They really can't justify spending all these resources

on this case anymore.

DREW: Robert Rackstraw never confirms or denies

he's D.B. Cooper.

For the rest of his life after the theory comes out,

he seems to like people making their own assumptions.

JOHN: Maybe he was a CIA operative,

maybe he wasn't, or maybe he's just some old guy

having a bit of fun.

We'll never know either way, because on July 9th, 2019,

he died of a heart condition and took those secrets with him.

When the FBI officially closes the D.B. Cooper investigation

in 2016, the government assumes the public

will finally lose interest.

But in 2018, a new book reveals a shocking new theory,

one that captures the world's attention

and reignites speculation about the case.

DARREN: At this point, the FBI case

has been closed for just over two years,

so the only new suspects

are coming by the way

of amateur investigators.

LAURENCE: One in particular comes from author Carl Laurin

in his book "D.B. Cooper and Me:

A Criminal, a Spy, My Best Friend."

DARREN: He alleges that his friend

and former spy Walter Reca

is D.B. Cooper.

When this theory comes out,

it makes huge headlines.

DARREN: Carl Laurin and his publisher Vern Jones

start a full-scale media blitz

to get their suspect's name out there.

JOHN: They make a documentary,

and they contact the lead investigator

in the Jimmy Hoffa investigation

and ask him to write a book about this case.

This book comes to the same conclusion

that D.B. Cooper is Walter Reca.

LAURENCE: It all starts with a phone call.

JOHN: According to Laurin, in 2008 Reca calls him.

Laurin can tell that he has something

he wants to get off his chest.

And his best friend tells him, "I am D.B. Cooper."

Reca is getting older,

he wants to share his story with someone.

Why not his best friend?

DARREN: Carl wasn't surprised by this.

In November of 1971 when he first heard the news

of the skyjacking, he said out loud,

"I bet that's Walt."

DREW: He knows Reca's a trained former paratrooper.

They were even on a skydiving team

together in the 1950s with

the Michigan Air National Guard.

LAURENCE: Other details line up as well.

In 1971, Walt would have been 37 years old.

He looks similar to the hijacker

and was living in Washington State at the time.

JOHN: Laurin thinks that Reca has the personality for it.

He describes his friend as fearless and brash.

Laurin states, "I knew Walter Reca was D.B. Cooper,

because he was D.B. Cooper."

LAURENCE: Before sharing more details,

Reca asks Laurin to sign a notarized letter

stating he'll only release the information

after Reca's death.

DREW: Laurin signs the letter, and then they can begin.

Reca agrees to let Laurin tape record

all their phone conversations,

where he will finally reveal everything.

DARREN: There's three hours of recordings

where Walt confesses to the crime

and describes exactly how he did it.

If these tapes are true, there are details in here

that only the skyjacker would know.

LAURENCE: Most importantly, Reca describes

precisely where he jumped and landed.

TED: Reca says he leapt from the plane

about 50 miles southeast of Seattle

just on the edge

of the Cascade Mountain range.

JOHN: He chose a spot where there was a highway

running through it for an easier escape.

LAURENCE: In order to verify Reca's claim,

Laurin goes to this location and begins to ask around.

TED: There, he's amazed to find an eyewitness

named Jeff Osiadacz, a former cop

who claims to have seen Reca

the night of the infamous hijacking.

JOHN: He stated that in the small town of Cle Elum,

he saw Reca walking down a road near a café.

Reca is wearing a black suit, he's soaking wet,

and carrying a raincoat wrapped up under his arm.

TED: Reca seems disoriented and asks where he is.

He calls an unidentified friend

and has Osiadacz give the friend directions to their location.

DARREN: Before Osiadacz leaves, Reca offers to pay

for his coffee, and that's the last of their encounter.

LAURENCE: According to Osiadacz, he didn't notify authorities

because he didn't think this could be Cooper.

JOHN: Osiadacz sees the news about the hijacking,

but from what he saw,

the hijacker jumped out in Oregon, not in Washington.

Plus, he didn't think Reca

looked anything like the composite sketch.

DARREN: Reca had a much rounder face,

a little bit thicker build, and a more crooked nose

than what was observed in the sketch.

LAURENCE: Despite the claims in Laurin's book,

the FBI doesn't reopen the case to investigate Reca.

Besides the sketch, the location

also doesn't add up to investigators.

Reca supposedly walks to a town in Washington

called Cle Elum.

LAURENCE: The town is over 150 miles northeast

of the hijacked plane's flight path.

Also, the only evidence they have

that may implicate Reca is hearsay.

DARREN: The FBI isn't interested in reopening the case,

so it's just another deathbed confession.

LAURENCE: But Laurin says there's another reason

the FBI steers clear of Reca.

According to Laurin's book, shortly after the hijacking,

two government agents come knocking on Reca's door.

They give Reca a choice-- come work for U.S. intelligence

or spend a long time in jail.

LAURENCE: Laurin claims that Reca then begins working

as a spy for the CIA, as well as Israel's Mossad,

and even allegedly the Soviet KGB.

Laurin has evidence for this, 'cause Reca gave him

a bunch of passports, some of which have fake names.

DREW: He also has a variety of covert identity cards

from spy agencies like MI6,

and a diary chock full of assassinations

and covert operations.

TRACY: I suppose that all of these documents

could be forgeries, but they really don't answer

the question of if he's D.B. Cooper.

We'll probably never know the answer to that question.

LAURENCE: When the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper

disappears with $200,000 in 1971,

he leaves behind almost no evidence.

DREW: The only things we know for sure

that are left on the plane

is the black clip-on tie

and the tie clip.

TED: You may be surprised

that he would leave some things behind.

But back in the '70s,

nobody knows about DNA,

and nobody can test for it.

Criminals are mainly concerned

with not leaving behind hairs or fingerprints,

neither of which are found on the necktie.

LAURENCE: But 50 years later in 2011,

technology evolves enough to make a breakthrough.

JOHN: Back in 2009, a paleontologist named Tom Kaye

assembled a group of scientists to investigate.

They dub themselves

as Citizen Sleuths.

Their plan is to use the up-to-date

scientific techniques

that have not been used in this case.

In 2011, they're allowed by authorities

to test the black clip-on tie.

Kaye and his team feel that the tie

is a great piece of evidence for one specific reason.

You don't usually wash ties.

DREW: There's a chance that this tie was worn

in many different situations, picking up various particles

and fibers along the way.

LAURENCE: The team uses an electron microscope,

allowing them to look closer at the tie than ever before.

DARREN: They're shocked to find rare Earth minerals on it.

Specifically, these are cerium, strontium sulfide,

and pure titanium.

These aren't just lying around your house.

These elements are used for very specific situations.

TED: Of course, they were hoping for a lead,

but this is a better lead

than they could have ever anticipated.

LAURENCE: In 1971, these materials

would only typically appear in aerospace maintenance facilities

or cutting-edge electronics labs.

DREW: This narrows things down tremendously.

There are millions of Caucasian men with dark hair,

but there's only a few hundred thousand

that would have worked in that kind of environment.

DARREN: Was D.B. Cooper an engineer or a scientist?

Did he sweep up the lab at the end of the day?

LAURENCE: After the team releases its findings,

engineer Bill Rollins joins the hunt.

TRACY: Rollins goes through the records

of people who were employed by these companies in the 1970s.

He compares these with thousands of persons of interest

that the FBI looked at.

DREW: He believes he finds the perfect candidate

for D.B. Cooper, a production supervisor

at an electronics factory names Joe Lakich.

TED: Joe Lakich is a retired U.S. Army Major and war veteran.

And at the time of the hijacking,

he works at a technology plant

in Nashville, where he could easily

come in contact with the rare earth elements.

LAURENCE: But there's something else

that catches Rollins' eye.

TRACY: He thinks Lakich committed the hijackings

not for money, but for revenge.

LAURENCE: When the FBI originally questions

flight attendant Tina Mucklow in 1971,

she mentions a conversation that investigators

don't pay much attention to at the time.

TRACY: She asked Cooper why he's hijacking the plane.

"Do you have something against Northwest Orient Airlines?"

He responds, "I don't have a grudge

against your airline, Miss, I just have a grudge."

LAURENCE: For Rollins, that grudge

is a critical detail.

Rollins believes Lakich has a serious grudge

against the FBI.

In 1971, the same year as the hijacking,

Lakich's daughter Susan dies in a tragic accident

involving the Bureau.

TRACY: Susan is kidnapped by her estranged husband George.

He drags her on board a private plane

against her will at gunpoint in Nashville.

TED: He demands the pilot fly them to the Bahamas,

but this requires a refueling stop

at Jacksonville International Airport.

DARREN: The FBI is waiting for them in Jacksonville,

and they end up shooting the tires out on the plane.

But before they can rush on board,

George has killed everyone on board, including himself.

LAURENCE: Lakich files a wrongful death suit

against the Bureau.

TRACY: And just two months later,

D.B. Cooper hijacks the plane,

creating a years-long headache for the FBI.

TED: For Rollins, the timeline of Susan's murder

and the Flight 305 hijacking

points directly to Lakich as a suspect.

TRACY: In some warped sense of justice,

he decides to stick it to the FBI

by hijacking a plane himself.

DREW: And Lakich seems to be one of the few suspects

who was ever on the FBI's radar

who could have had access to the rare metals

found on the tie.

LAURENCE: Unfortunately, Lakich dies

before Rollins can question him.

TRACY: But Rollins hasn't given up.

He's still trying to track the ransom money,

which he believes will lead

to Lakich's home town of Nashville.

Maybe if he finds it, we'll finally know

D.B. Cooper's true identity.

LAURENCE: As amateur investigators continue to study

the D.B. Cooper case in the late 2010s,

some focus on one detail--

that he's a man with a grudge.

DREW: At some point during the flight,

flight attendant Tina Mucklow asked D.B. Cooper

if he had a grudge against her airline.

And Cooper's response was no,

that he just had a grudge.

Now, if we could just figure out

exactly what D.B. Cooper's grudge was,

it would be a huge clue to ultimately solving this case.

LAURENCE: In 2018, a reporter

for the Oregonian newspaper,

Douglas Perry, announces he's found the answer.

The reporter has been handed

a treasure trove of research

that an army analyst had put together.

The analyst wants to remain anonymous,

and is hesitant of the publicity

that the case might bring him.

He's right-- it makes international headlines.

The analyst has done years of research, and shares it

with both Perry and the FBI.

LAURENCE: According to him, D.B. Cooper didn't act alone.

He believes there's a co-conspirator.

The analyst claims his research began

in the early 2000s.

The analyst reads an obscure book

that was written in 1985.

The book was titled "D.B. Cooper:

What Really Happened."

In the book, the author, Max Gunther,

claims that he received a phone call from D.B. Cooper,

and later, D.B. Cooper's widow.

TRACY: These people outline to Gunther

the real story of what happened,

and the name they give him is Dan LeClair.

DREW: The book gives further details

such as biographical information and birthdays,

so the analyst is able to connect Dan LeClair

with a very real former Army veteran

named Dan Clair.

He thinks that's who called Gunther.

LAURENCE: Clair died in 1990,

and he doesn't resemble the Cooper sketch.

But a colleague of his does.

JOHN: The analyst looks into Clair's family and friends,

and while doing so, he believes he's come up

with a match, a man named William J. Smith.

Smith is a manager at Clair's railyard.

LAURENCE: Smith is a New Jersey native

who graduates high school early to join the Navy.

TRACY: Smith trains as an aerial gunner

and photographer.

His job is to take reconnaissance pictures.

He gets an honorable discharge in 1947,

where he makes his way home to Jersey City

and begins his job at Lehigh Valley Railroad.

In the 1960s, he befriends Dan Clair.

LAURENCE: After working for the railroad

for over 20 years, Smith is eventually promoted

to the position of yard master.

JOHN: It's a management position.

It oversees everything that's going on in the railyard.

TED: There are two key reasons why this is important.

First, Smith would have worn

a tie to work.

Second, he would have been

wearing that tie near the exotic metals

present in the railroad's repair facilities.

This could explain the rare materials

found on D.B. Cooper's tie.

LAURENCE: Could the duo's work with railroads

motivate Cooper's alleged grudge?

In the late 1960s and early '70s,

the railroad industry is in shambles.

The rise in airplane travel and air freight

has crushed their bottom line.

Railroads nationwide are plagued

with wage reductions and furloughs.

DREW: In 1970, this comes to a head

when Smith and Clair's railroad files for bankruptcy.

It ends up being the biggest bankruptcy

in history up till that time,

until the Enron collapse in 2001.

TRACY: Thousands of people lose their jobs,

and many of them lose their life savings and pensions.

LAURENCE: The analyst believes this incites the hijacking.

TED: He doesn't believe Smith and Clair got laid off,

but he does believe that seeing all their coworkers

get laid off did inspire their revenge.

JOHN: They decide to attack the air industry

because that's what's ruining their business.

LAURENCE: The analyst suggests that Smith and Clair

planned the hijacking together.

TED: He thinks they make D.B. Cooper's so-called bomb

out of railroad flares.

These could look a lot like dynamite

when they're wrapped in wire.

LAURENCE: Then, they study rail maps

of the Pacific Northwest to plan the hijacking route.

DREW: It's possible D.B. Cooper chose that flight path

due to his knowledge of where the railroad tracks were

to make an easy getaway.

JOHN: Smith and Clair prep together,

and Smith is the one that actually does the crime,

based on his aviation training.

Smith does look a lot like the sketch of D.B. Cooper.

He may be one of the closest resemblance

of all the suspects.

Maybe even Clair is out there on the night of the hijacking

helping Smith escape.

The analyst noted that Clair retired

a year and a half after the hijacking,

and he was only 54 years old.

Maybe he got his share of the ransom money.

LAURENCE: When Perry writes his story,

he asks the FBI for comment.

The FBI has received the analyst's file

on Smith and Clair, that much we know.

But as far as how seriously the FBI takes them as suspects,

we actually have no idea,

because they give a strangely cryptic response.

They officially close the investigation in 2016,

so they could have just said that,

"We're not looking into them."

Or, like many candidates before him,

they could say Smith isn't the guy,

that he's not D.B. Cooper.

DREW: But that's not what they say.

Instead, they said, quote, "It would be inappropriate

to comment on tips related to Smith."

What does that mean? That's usually the language

used in an active investigation.

TRACY: Sadly, it turns out that Smith died

in January of 2018,

just 10 months before the article was published.

So, we may never know the truth.

DAVE: Maybe the FBI is still looking at William Smith.

Or maybe it's just another red herring

in a case full of red herrings.

The unsolved case continues

to captivate the public

five decades after

the skyjacking took place.

Perhaps someday, one of the many passionate sleuths

still investigating this mystery

will help us discover D.B. Cooper's real name.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."