Possible new evidence turns up in Cooper dig

Daily Astorian, by Elleda Wilson; August 18, 2017

Maybe the D.B. Cooper mystery will finally be solved, after all.

In case you don’t remember, D.B., or Dan Cooper, hijacked a Boeing 727 on Nov. 24, 1971, demanded a $200,000 ransom, got it, then jumped out of the plane with the cash and into infamy. He disappeared, and so did most of the money ($5,800 was found along the Columbia River). The FBI officially stopped investigating in July 2016.

But that hasn’t stopped the questions or the attempts by others to get the answers, a recent Fox News story reported.

A Pacific Northwest team of volunteer cold case investigators, assembled by law enforcement trainer and author Thomas Colbert, and his wife, Dawna, have been looking for D.B. Cooper evidence for years (https://dbcooper.com). The couple confirmed to Fox News recently that they’ve discovered “potential evidence” of what some believe is “a decades-old parachute strap or pin-cover flap.”

The 18-inch long piece of material, hopefully belonging to the hijacker’s parachute, was found “right where a credible source claimed the chute and remaining money are buried.”

By the way, the Colberts and more than a dozen elderly Astoria witnesses claim that D.B. Cooper is Robert W. Rackstraw Sr. — a disgraced vet who also posed as a Swiss baron named “Norman de Winter” while staying here in the early 1970s. This paper published two 1972 columns about the baron, and his alleged grifting of thousands of dollars from prominent citizens, shortly after his sudden vanishing.

As of Monday, Colbert turned the dig evidence over to the FBI and gave up the location of the secret site where it was found. Colbert told an agent, “the site is yours.”

“… I can reassure you that the FBI’s Seattle Field Office will review any physical items possibly related to the parachute or money taken by the NORJAK hijacker,” Ayn S. Dietrich-Williams of the FBI’s Seattle office told Fox News. “Based on that review, the FBI will take any appropriate action.”

Like reopening the official investigation, perhaps?

Get the full story on the D.B. Cooper investigation – Award winning book “The Last Master Outlaw“ available on Amazon: