Original subtitles

(seagulls cawing)

MAN: Yeah, we'll open that up.

Let's take an inventory of the items

that we're gonna send back to headquarters.

When you're thinking of the holy trinity

of missing persons in America,

it's Amelia Earhart,

it's Jimmy Hoffa

and it's D.B. Cooper, and the crazy thing

about D.B. Cooper is-is that we don't even know who he is.

First item I have, this is 1B7...

NARRATOR: On November 24, 1971,

a man dressed in a suit and tie...

AGENT: This is the black necktie

with the attached tie clip.

NARRATOR: ...hijacked a commercial airplane.

AGENT: 1B21--

the original airline ticket

that Dan Cooper purchased.

FLORENCE SCHAFFNER: He said to me,

"All I have to do

"is attach this wire

"to this gadget here

and we'll all be dead."

NARRATOR: He then parachuted into the night with $200,000--

the equivalent of 1.2 million today...

AGENT: 1B5-- the salmon-pink chest parachute.

NARRATOR: ...never to be seen again.

Well, he either got away or else he sure

made a big hole in the ground up there.

NARRATOR: A folk hero to some...

I think he's one of the slickest cats that ever,

you know, walked on the face of the Earth right now.

NARRATOR: ...an outlaw to others.

RALPH HIMMELSBACH: My words for him are

"sleazy, rotten criminal."

NARRATOR: ...and an enigma to all.

The mysterious D.B. Cooper...

...D.B. Cooper, the legendary hijacker.

You remember D.B. Cooper?

AGENT: I'll do a quick inventory

of the original notes taken by Florence Shaffner.

NARRATOR: For over 45 years,

the FBI tried to crack the case.

TOM FUENTES: Probably 600 subjects

have been eliminated by the FBI

over the last four decades.

We don't know why.

NARRATOR: But now, two citizen sleuths and their team

of investigators are wrapping up a secret five-year investigation

and are ready to reveal their findings.

TOM COLBERT: My name's Tom Colbert

and I was a newsman for 30 years.

Almost five years ago, I get a call

from a guy I've trusted for 20 years,

who claims to have a Cooper story.

And I'm going, "Really? Cooper?"

He says, "You got to listen to this story."

And that's where it began.

I was working on this case for years,

but I got to a point I needed a partner.

And the right partner for this, it's Jim Forbes.

I'm Jim Forbes and I'm a journalist.

Most of my career has been involved

with investigative reporting.

When Tom approached me,

the first thing I saw was...

D.B. Cooper.

And I literally did an eye roll.

This is different.

It is fool's gold.

Anybody who's ever got into the case, uh,

comes up with a dead end and burns a lot of time doing it.

I wouldn't have given it ten seconds

if it weren't for Tom

and my history with Tom

and knowing what a thorough researcher he is.

My job is to find the raw facts.

What if it's not him?

I've put countless hours, years of my life

and a lot of my own money into this.

We have now 36 members on a cold case team.

Retired detectives, archivists,

investigative journalists, forensics and surveillance.

It's like running your own police department.

Tom believes to his core that he's got D.B. Cooper.

COLBERT: It's him.

I'm not wrong.

Even if it is not...

...it is one hell of a story.

What I do believe,

what we do have nailed...

Mm.

...is that our guy had the means.

-He had the skill set. -Yep.

-He had the opportunity. -Right.

-And he had a motive. -Yep.

NARRATOR: Tom Colbert has been

investigating his case since 2011.

COLBERT: I actually took it to the FBI already.

In 2012, when we had 33 pieces of evidence.

But they said they couldn't get involved.

They had other priorities. I was frustrated.

I just felt it was not professional.

And I said, "All right, well, we're not gonna have

a investigation unless we do it."

NARRATOR: Over the next four years,

Colbert, Forbes, and their team amassed

what they believe is enough evidence

to convince the FBI

that they have solved this 45-year-old mystery.

COLBERT: We know other people think they've got Cooper.

So do we, but we want to prove it.

NARRATOR: But Colbert and Forbes

first have a big hurdle to clear.

Standing between them and the FBI are two independent veterans

in the field of criminal investigation--

men brought in by History and assigned the task

of vetting Colbert's and Forbes' theory and evidence.

FUENTES: I have 40 years in law enforcement.

Also was a member of Interpol's executive committee

and worked cases internationally for decades.

NARRATOR: Tom Fuentes is a former assistant director

of the FBI, and at one point,

the number-five ranking agent at the Bureau.

It's great to have an opportunity

to look at the case now, because

when you run a major investigation,

especially if it has a-a historical significance,

you know there are not gonna be people around

ten years from now, 30 years from now,

50 years from now that can give you an eyewitness accounting

of what that, uh, event was like, at the time.

(latch clicks)

NARRATOR: Tom Fuentes's partner is Billy Jensen,

an award-winning journalist and respected authority

on unsolved crimes.

He's also an advocate for amateur sleuths

and their potential value in cracking cold cases.

JENSEN: Ever since I could remember, I just,

uh, had this hatred for the guy that got away with it.

And that's what fuels me.

After 45 years, people look on it as a victimless crime.

But inside that cockpit,

there was a very real palpable fear

that this bomb was going to go off.

FUENTES: You know, for me, my career choice,

uh, journalism would've been my next choice

if it wasn't law enforcement.

It would be conducting investigations

and-and having the ability to resolve mysteries.

That's why I personally have so much respect

for professional journalists.

I think if I hadn't been a journalist,

I'd be a law enforcement officer,

so that's definitely one thing that we've got in common.

NARRATOR: Though they have a baseline understanding

of the D.B. Cooper case, Fuentes and Jensen are

setting out on a comprehensive fact-finding mission.

Once they've gathered enough background,

they will head to Los Angeles,

where Colbert and Forbes will reveal

the identity of their suspect

and the details of their case.

FUENTES: I deliberately did not do

an excessive amount of research preparing for this,

because we're going to talk

to individuals directly involved at the time.

I want to learn about this man--

re-interview everybody that we can

to get the fullest picture of what happened that night,

on that plane, 45 years ago.

(car horn honks)

NARRATOR: It's the day before Thanksgiving, Portland, Oregon.

37 people board the Northwest Orient Flight 305,

bound for Seattle.

20-year-old Bill Mitchell is on his way home from college.

MITCHELL: 15 minutes of fame

-that lasted 44 years. -Yeah.

I sat in the back, middle seat on the left side.

I recall this guy sitting on the, in the back

on the right, in the middle seat.

He-he had a real skinny tie and a white shirt.

He had sunglasses on.

It was getting dark, but the sun was low and it was

coming in the plane window.

And so I kind of thought, "Well, sunglasses on,"

but then he kept them on, so that was a little weird.

And he had the, a briefcase

in the right seat, and I recall him

putting his hand in and out of this briefcase.

The flight attendant, she sat in the aisle seat,

right across from me,

and she was doing nothing but paying attention to him.

And I'm thinking, hey, I'm a 20-year-old sophomore.

I couldn't believe that she wasn't

at least acknowledging my existence.

NARRATOR: What Mitchell doesn't know is that the man in the suit

is in the process of hijacking the plane,

and he wants stewardess Florence Schaffner

to deliver the news to the cockpit.

Terrified, Florence Schaffner stays in the cockpit.

She takes notes while 22-year-old flight attendant

Tina Mucklow relays the hijacker's

specific demands to the flight crew.

PILOT: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the captain speaking.

MITCHELL: The pilot came on and said, uh,

that we have engine trouble and we're just

gonna run out some fuel.

PILOT: We'd like for you to be comfortable.

MITCHELL: He then said that

anybody who wants, can come up to first class.

So everybody had moved up front.

ROBERT FUHRIMAN: Over the loudspeaker comes

the announcement, "Attention all agents,

there's been a hijacking."

Robert Fuhriman was one of the first FBI agents

called to the scene.

And those of us there looked at each other,

"A hijacking?"

We never had any hijacking.

All the hijackings we were familiar with

were on the East Coast,

people wanting to go to Cuba.

And then they said, uh, basically,

"All agents report to the airport."

NARRATOR: As the FBI scrambles

on the ground to meet the hijacker's demands,

Flight 305 circles over Puget Sound.

AGENT: Okay, how many parachutes do you have?

NARRATOR: Two and a half hours after takeoff...

...Flight 305 touches down in Seattle.

(tires squeal)

NEWSCASTER: A bus picked up the passengers,

but the crew had to stay on board.

FUHRIMAN: I got caught up then, you know,

being assigned to go to

the bus when they were bringing the passengers from the plane.

And, uh, took a-a roll call

of the passengers.

MITCHELL: And the first name they called

was William Mitchell.

So I say, "I'm here."

Then they say "Dan Cooper?"

No answer.

FUHRIMAN: Came back, said "Dan Cooper" again.

No response.

That's the first time that we felt we probably had

the potential suspect.

We take a bus into the terminal

and go into a Northwest VIP room.

MALE PASSENGER: Nobody knew, uh, anything was happening.

REPORTER: When did you find out?

After we landed, when they brought the money aboard.

You saw the exchange of money?

We saw them bring the money aboard.

NARRATOR: When a jet's flaps are in the down position,

it slows the plane...

which can cause the engines to stall.

The only way to keep them going

is to apply more power to the engines,

but that burns more fuel.

So if Flight 305 is going to make it to Mexico

with its flaps down,

it's going to have to refuel somewhere between Seattle

and Mexico City.

NARRATOR: After nearly two hours,

with the plane on the tarmac in Seattle,

the hijacker finally agrees

to a refueling stop in Reno, Nevada.

He also agrees to release flight attendants

Florence Schaffner

and Alice Garley Hancock.

The co-pilot said...

"You better get the hell out now."

So I left without Tina,

and that's when he decided...

to keep her because he was getting s...

suspicious at everything.

(engines powering up)

NARRATOR: At 7:40 p.m., Flight 305 takes off from Seattle.

Just two minutes into the flight,

the hijacker instructs Tina Mucklow

to join the flight crew in the cockpit.

NARRATOR: On a 727, there's a set of stairs

located in the back,

for passenger boarding and deplaning.

(alarm beeping)

NARRATOR: For the next 30 minutes,

Flight 305 continues to fly

at about 180 miles per hour

at an altitude of 10,000 feet,

with the aft stairs in the down position.

(alarm wails)

NARRATOR: The oscillations last just seconds, then stop.

(alarm and beeping stops)

Almost three hours later...

...Flight 305 makes its planned refueling stop in Reno.

With no word from the skyjacker,

the pilot, Bill Scott,

leaves the cockpit to inspect the plane.

WALTER CRONKITE: When he got on a plane

in Portland, Oregon, last night,

he was just another passenger

who gave his name as D.A. Cooper.

But today, after hijacking a Northwest Airlines jet,

ransoming the passengers in Seattle,

then making a getaway, by parachute,

somewhere between there and Reno, Nevada--

description on one wire service: "Master criminal."

How audacious the actual hijacking,

parachuting out of a plane in flight like that.

You know, he's John Dillinger with an airplane.

JENSEN: This guy was on our radar.

He was part of our lives for five hours.

And we're still talking about him today.

This is a big, big mystery,

and it's something that

I think we have the capacity to solve,

and I'm hoping that's what we'll do here.

JENSEN: So this could be the drop zone, right?

Potentially?

NARRATOR: Crime writer Billy Jensen

and former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes

are in Woodland, Washington.

JENSEN: There's no streetlights.

In the middle of the night, you're not gonna see anything.

NARRATOR: The men are doing a crash course

on the D.B. Cooper case--

the only unsolved skyjacking in U.S. history.

How thick were the woods 44 years ago?

JENSEN: There's that, too.

Maybe he mapped it out in his head,

or he maybe had a map with him.

Maybe he knew this area well.

NARRATOR: Soon they will head to Los Angeles to hear

and evaluate a secret case

prepared by two veteran newsmen...

-That was interesting. -NARRATOR: ...who believe

they've I.D.'d the infamous skyjacker.

The big headline was "Solved."

TIP KINDEL: It was from these steps,

at the rear of the 727, that the FBI believes

the skyjacker used his parachute

to bail out somewhere

between Seattle and Portland.

Earlier, it was felt that he perhaps bailed out

someone nearer to Reno,

but all search efforts

in this area now have been discontinued.

GARY TALLIS: I got a call that

I was going to be one of the agents

to come down here to Woodland,

'cause that's where they believed he had jumped.

NARRATOR: Agent Gary Tallis was one of the first

to go up in a helicopter for the search

in the southwestern corner of Washington state.

He distinctly remembers what happened here 45 years ago.

TALLIS: And so I was down here

probably by 10:00 in the morning,

on Thanksgiving Day, the 25th.

NEWSMAN: It was foggy and rainy most of the time today.

Despite that, four helicopters went up,

and 30 men searched on the ground.

TALLIS: I'm 24 years old, you know, a rookie.

And I'm out looking for this guy that's the most original crook

known to man, to date, you know, and...

-Yeah. -...I'm excited, you know?

I mean, I can't help it.

And I was just focused on, "I'm gonna find that guy."

JENSEN: So Tom just went up in the helicopter

to search the drop zone from the air.

We're gonna do this the old-fashioned way.

Gonna drive out into the woods, get out,

and search on foot, and see what we can find.

NEWSMAN: This is the area lawmen were looking in--

rugged, sparsely-populated terrain in mountain foothills,

25 miles north of Portland, Oregon.

As they organized the search this morning,

lawmen had a number of handicaps.

They really didn't know if the hijacker parachuted around here.

They probably wouldn't know him if they saw him,

and he had a big head start.

JENSEN: I've never jumped out of an airplane before.

I don't ever intend to.

But... if I was gonna choose a place,

it certainly would be something

that was a little bit more flat land than this.

You try to jump into this,

you could get impaled on one of these trees.

Can you imagine even trying to land?

Did anybody think, at the time,

that it was just going to be hopeless to find him?

-That just the idea that... -TALLIS: No.

No, we thought we were going to find him.

JENSEN: One of the various theories is

that he jumped near Lake Merwin

because there were a lot of lights by the dam,

so that gave him a point of reference.

Once he saw the lights

of the Merwin Dam, that's when he decided to jump.

Even if he happened to land on flat surface...

...the only lights would have been coming from there.

He could have stumbled anywhere else.

(sighs)

NEWSMAN: They were looking for a parachute, hung up in a tree.

They were looking for residents of the area

who might have seen something.

They were looking for all those things, and the hijacker,

but, so far, have found none of them.

TALLIS: We really were surprised we didn't find the parachute.

Um, I mean, I was, personally.

I didn't go up there thinking that he was gonna be dead.

I was just went up there thinking

that we were gonna find him.

FUENTES: For years, I think there was a general

belief that Cooper jumped over dense forest

and was probably killed in that jump.

But you would think, four decades later,

that something would have turned up.

Did he really, really think he would jump out that aircraft

and live to tell about it?

TALLIS: I think he just did a hop and hope.

Right.

TALLIS: It was so cold and ugly,

he could have landed and still died of hypothermia.

EUGENE COTTON: Right at this point, uh,

probably a... a slim chance

of actually finding him in this area,

but at least we may develop some information

that'll give us some leads as to where to go next.

-All right, move your... -Hey, Tom...

(overlapping, indistinct chatter)

(cameras clicking)

NARRATOR: 36 hours after the skyjacking,

the flight crew faces the press,

giving reporters and the nation

a firsthand account of their experience.

He was not nervous.

He seemed rather nice and...

other than he wanted certain things to be done,

he never tried to harm myself.

And although he was impatient a few times,

he was never cruel or nasty or, um,

impolite to me in any way.

We felt, in this specific situation,

that we had his confidence.

We felt he... was assured that we were honoring his requests.

And therefore, we made no attempt to impede his...

uh, the completion of his, uh, mission, if you will.

NARRATOR: After the news conference,

flight attendants Florence Schaffner and Tina Mucklow

meet with the FBI, and provide details

of the suspect's physical appearance.

Two sketches, the only images of the skyjacker,

are then released to the public.

REPORTER: He is middle-aged,

wearing a business suit, relaxed and courteous.

NARRATOR: As for the evidence,

the FBI gathers the few items Cooper left behind:

a skinny clip-on tie, a mother-of-pearl tie clip,

the Raleigh cigarette butts discarded in the ashtray,

two parachutes he left behind,

and thousands of latent fingerprints.

REPORTER (on radio): Today the plane was searched,

thoroughly.

The man, the money,

and two of the parachutes were gone.

In mid-morning, the crew came back to their plane,

looking somewhat the worse for wear.

NARRATOR: In the middle of the media frenzy,

a wire service mistakenly identifies the hijacker,

who boarded the plane under the name Dan Cooper, as D.B. Cooper.

By the time the mistake is corrected, it's too late.

The name D.B. Cooper sticks.

There's a huge manhunt on in the state of Washington

for the middle-aged man who hijacked a jetliner,

got $200,000 in ransom money, then escaped by parachuting

into the night from the hijacked plane.

NARRATOR: The search in southern Washington

lasts for close to a week.

After authorities comb 20 square miles

in heavily wooded terrain, they come up empty.

POLICE OFFICER: Well, he either got away,

or else he sure made a big hole in the ground up there.

NARRATOR: By the end of November,

authorities begin to wonder if their manhunt

is actually a recovery.

I feel that the odds are, uh, are better than 50/50

that he didn't make it.

NARRATOR: But harsh weather conditions

force them to suspend their efforts.

MAN: Let these cattle through here.

(man imitates cattle mooing)

NARRATOR: Three-and-a-half months later,

in March 1972, teams of National Guard troops,

agents from the FBI, and state and local police,

comb the same terrain for another three weeks.

MAN: Move out.

MAN 2: Move a little bit this way.

NARRATOR: Once again, they find nothing.

The search is called off.

OFFICER: Hold it up!

NARRATOR: D.B. Cooper, and his $200,000 haul,

have simply disappeared.

A child has led the FBI to the start of a trail

it hopes will help them solve the eight-and-a-half year old

mystery of skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

In 1980, eight years after the authorities scrubbed

Clark and Cowlitz counties in southern Washington,

the first real clue finally turns up.

NEWSMAN: No sign of Cooper,

but some of his loot did turn up.

What appears to have been bundles of $20 bills,

now partially decomposed,

were discovered on the north bank

of the Columbia River last Sunday.

The finders were the Ingram family,

with their eight-year-old son, Brian.

Well, we were going to make a campfire,

and I had some wood in my arm,

and I got ready to set it down,

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

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

and we found it.

It was partially on top of the ground, you know.

JENSEN: How did this bit of money wind up

on this beach?

And where's the rest of the money?

It was certainly really far away from the drop zone.

It just adds such a strange new wrinkle to this case.

NARRATOR: The FBI digs for days,

but nothing else is found--

no additional money, no parachutes, no body.

JENSEN: I'm interested to talk to this guy.

This guy knows a lot.

NARRATOR: Fuentes and Jensen are on their way to meet Tom Kaye.

Kaye is an associate researcher

at the Burke Museum of Natural History

in Seattle, Washington.

FUENTES: It's interesting that he was involved

in so many aspects, from the dig out here,

to looking at the other physical evidence.

JENSEN: Right.

Hi, I'm Billy Jensen.

NARRATOR: Kaye was tapped by the FBI, in 2007,

to reexamine the Cooper cash.

So the original story that came out of the original jump

was that Cooper died in the woods.

The money was in a bag or something, rolled into a river.

Uh, it rolled down that river for years,

ended up upstream, in the Columbia River...

rolled down the Columbia River,

and then was either floated up onto the beach here,

or it was dredged up by dredging operations

that happened in 1974.

JENSEN: All right, so, how the money got here--

what's your best guess?

It's 20 miles that way that Cooper jumped.

And we know that pretty well.

KAYE: How do you get money 20 miles here?

It's crazy.

If you look for rivers that get you from Ariel

to upstream in the Columbia, there aren't any.

You can't get there from here.

But the rubber bands were the most interesting part.

It describes Brian Ingram

pulling the money out of the sand,

and the rubber bands were still attached,

and they crumbled to the touch and they fell off.

The question is how long do rubber bands last in the wild?

And what we found out was that no matter where you put

the rubber bands outdoors,

they don't last more than six months.

So let me stop you right there.

What you're saying is, is that

you believe that the bundle was buried here.

I can, I can rule things out.

-I can't rule things in. -Okay.

I can't say somebody buried the money here.

What I can say is,

the fact that the rubber bands

were still intact speaks to the fact that

they had to end up here within a year.

So, yeah, there's a possibility that somebody took bundles,

and then re-wrapped them in rubber bands years later.

And somehow they got here,

but that would require human intervention.

JENSEN: I don't know what to think; I don't know, I mean...

do I think the money had been there the whole time? No.

FUENTES: I still think it's a mystery.

Uh, it certainly didn't get there in,

uh, in 1971, and sit there that close

to the top of that beach.

And there's suspicion

that maybe somebody put it there.

Maybe the original, uh, Cooper, survived,

put it there on purpose, for some reason,

thinking it would be found some day.

I don't-- I still don't know.

JENSEN: Do you think he survived the jump?

In 40 years, they've never come up with a body.

Even if the body was decomposed and gone,

the harness and all the metal fittings from the harness

would still be there.

So for him to die in the jump,

he would have had to not been able to open the parachute,

'cause once you open up that streamer, you know,

you've got a big flag showing where you are if you're dead.

So that didn't happen.

And there's still no body

and still no evidence.

And the fact that the money

is now 20 miles away here,

kind of tells me the idea

that he died in the jump is very unlikely.

COLBERT: Hello, is this Bill?

Bill, my name is Tom Colbert,

and I'm working with someone

that I believe you used to know in Santa Cruz.

NARRATOR: Investigative journalists

Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes

are putting the finishing touches

on a secret case they've been pursuing

for five years.

He had a stellar reputation in Vietnam,

but he had some different, uh, things happen after that.

NARRATOR: They believe that, along with their team

of 36 investigators,

they have cracked the 45-year-old D.B. Cooper mystery.

Did you know he was a Cooper suspect?

This is not the first time

I've gone full-bore.

But I have never seen

more evidence,

more arrows pointing in the right way.

I think the American public's going to compare

all the different suspects and say,

"This one sticks out."

-Thank you, take care. -MAN (on phone): Good-bye.

Okay, let's get to other friends quick

'cause that phone's going to be buzzing right away.

NARRATOR: While Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes

work the phones, chasing leads...

JENSEN: This is a 727, and obviously,

Cooper picked it because of the stairs.

MAN: Yes.

NARRATOR: Former FBI investigator Tom Fuentes

and veteran crime journalist Billy Jensen

continue their ground game.

JENSEN: Cooper had asked the pilot

to drop the flaps at 15 degrees.

What does that look like?

MAN: Let's go to 15 degrees flaps.

NARRATOR: The men are at the community college

in Everett, Washington,

learning everything they can about the crime

before they take a hard look

at the case being prepared by Colbert and Forbes.

MAN: Are we at 15?

-MAN 2 (on radio): We are at 15. -MAN: Copy.

Aviation instructor Stephen Thomas is giving them

a first-hand look at a 1971 Boeing 727,

the exact same model as Northwest Flight 305.

-That's 15 degrees... yes. -This is 15 degrees right here.

So what would this do?

This would slow the plane down,

uh, and hold it in the air at a slower speed,

which would be what D.B. Cooper would want

in order to get off the plane without a lot of turbulence.

JENSEN: So this is it?

THOMAS: This is the pressure bulkhead.

Once you go past here, you're not in the pressurized area.

And so you'd want to have the aircraft down,

preferably below 12,000 feet.

FUENTES: I can see the box here for stair control.

JENSEN: "Lower stairs."

Would this be the similar stair control

that D.B. Cooper had?

The same.

-The same one. -It's the same.

It hasn't been changed for years.

-FUENTES: So go ahead. -JENSEN: All right.

(clank, hiss)

Would he have had-- would he have had difficulty

going down the stairs and hanging on,

or would it be trying to pull him out?

There would be a slight pull, probably,

but I doubt it would be--

if the plane were going slow enough,

and the stairs are down to provide a...

area of low turbulence.

So if we were flying, right now, at 10,000 feet,

and a 200-pound man climbed down the stairs,

and jumped off, we would feel that pulse

-throughout the plane. -Yes.

JENSEN: So this is what it would be like, right?

FUENTES: Yep.

So you can just imagine...

standing out here in the wind and the rain,

150, 200 miles an hour.

FUENTES: So the question I'm asking

is if he got to about this far,

lost his balance or slipped on the steps--

he's not wearing a helmet,

he's not wearing any protective gear--

he easily could have got flipped backwards

-and smashed his head in the stairs... -Sure!

...and then gone down,

either unconscious or dead.

There's so many variables that could have happened.

And then never be able to open that chute.

So many variables that could happen right here.

FUENTES: Well, I think at the point

you get down here, there's probably

-no going back. -Yeah.

FUENTES: At that point...

you're gonna have to jump,

-whether you like it or not. -JENSEN: Yeah.

What happened?

Why couldn't they find anything?

NARRATOR: The question of what happened has been burning

ever since that fateful Thanksgiving Eve in 1971.

For some, the mystery is a curiosity

and the criminal is a cult hero.

I think he's one of the slickest cats ever,

you know, walked on the face of the Earth right now.

And this just, uh, blows everyone's minds.

It's a... he's a folk hero.

I think he got away.

I like the idea that he got away.

NARRATOR: But for many,

the case is an obsession.

One that has led to decades of research and analysis.

JENSEN: You can find a ton of Cooperites,

all with different suspects,

and odds are most of them are wrong,

but the work that they have done, and the work of profiling,

and the work of trying to figure out what this guy was like,

that doesn't go for naught.

There's important information there.

-Mark, Tom Fuentes, nice to meet you. -Tom, I'm Mark Meltzer.

-Pleased to meet you. -NARRATOR: Fuentes and Jensen

are meeting with two

top Cooper theorists.

Mark Meltzer is a master skydiver

with an intimate knowledge of the case.

JENSEN: Well, this is Tom Fuentes.

-Hi, Tom -Hi, nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: And Bruce Smith is

a former investigative reporter

and a leading authority

on the D.B. Cooper case.

Bruce maintains one of the most thorough Web sites

on the subject and he disagrees with the FBI's conclusions.

BRUCE SMITH: The FBI did a flip-flop.

They went from calling D.B. Cooper a master criminal

who really knew what he was doing

to, nah, Cooper didn't make it.

He was a no-pull.

He cratered into the ground somewhere.

He didn't know what he was doing, you know.

He picked a lousy parachute and...

uh, if he really was good,

he would have picked the civilian chute that had...

had, uh, uh, a sleeve

design and nice padded straps and was a steerable chute.

That was cuckoo.

That-that-that was not true.

He chose the right canopy.

The one he jumped was a C-9 canopy

packed in an NB-8 container.

C-9 is the toughest canopy ever made.

I've jumped and I've got over 100 jumps on C-9s.

They are just the pit bull of all parachutes.

If I had to do a high-speed jump where I was worried

about, possibly, the parachute failing during opening,

if I had any parachute in the world to pick,

it would be the C-9.

MELTZER: A lot of the newspaper accounts

and, uh, presumably,

it was fueled by FBI commentary,

said the jump out was almost certainly fatal

under those conditions.

You know, a night jump in winter...

not survivable,

and we, as skydivers,

knew that was absolutely untrue.

That was a very survivable jump.

FUENTES: Did people talk like it had

to be somebody with military training

or did they think it was a, uh,

hobbyist jumper that did it?

Well, there's a lot of dispute about that.

I collect aircraft manuals.

I have a Boeing 727 manual.

There's nothing in this very large, multipage manual

that indicates that the plane could be jumped.

It's... uh, nothing that indicates it can be flown safely

with the door down.

Nothing that indicates the door

can even be opened in flight.

Well, it turned out that Boeing had

investigated that, at behest of the government,

and had conducted tests that showed that the door

could be opened and that-that materials could be airdropped

from a Boeing 727.

MAN (in film): The Boeing 727 can be adapted

for aerial deliveries.

NARRATOR: This 1971 Boeing documentary,

Flying Men Flying Machines, was produced in an effort

to portray the U.S. airline

Air America as a humanitarian operator

in Southeast Asia.

MAN (in film): Upon arrival at the drop zone

the cabin can be depressurized, the ventral exit opened,

and after the drops are accomplished, the cabin can

again be pressurized for return to base

at jet altitude.

NARRATOR: It is now widely known

that Air America was a CIA front

that existed to perform

top-secret missions under the guise

of civilian air traffic.

We all thought if you deployed immediately,

uh, from a high-speed 727 exit,

it would be extreme opening shock.

Well, it turns out not to be true.

The canopies did what we call squidding

and they open, they look like a squid:

a very elongated, not fully inflated body

and the tentacles are the suspension lines,

and it's a very gentle opening.

It's not at all a-a-a whack and a shock.

It indicated to me if-if Cooper really wanted a safe exit,

one where he wouldn't tumble,

he would stand on the bottom of the stairs

and he'd pull the rip cord.

The pilot chute would pop out.

It would pull you off the stairs and you'd get

a squidding, gentle opening into the night,

and it would definitely deliver you to the ground alive.

SMITH: How smart was D.B. Cooper?

He knew more about the 727 than the pilots.

He knew more about how the 727 could function

in flight, with the aft stairs down.

He knew more than flight operations for Northwest Orient.

This was really top-top secret stuff.

So, D.B. Cooper was on the inside.

JENSEN: So, this is 1971.

Obviously, there's no Internet.

Even... and even if there was an Internet,

it-- nobody really would've known that you could

jump out of this airplane.

MELTZER: Well, h-here's the thing:

Who would you have to be

to be a-a good candidate, uh, for D.B. Cooper?

Well... you could have worked at Boeing

and known about the tests.

You could have worked for Air America

and known about the drop tests that were time-lined on a 727.

Those would be things that would point towards,

at least, candidacy.

JENSEN: Air America was classified, and it was only

declassified in the years after the investigation first started.

If this information was only known to very few people,

then that really does narrow down the keyhole.

Do you consider D.B. Cooper a terrorist?

If he just wanted to be personally famous,

u-uh, whether he lived or died,

and just jump out an aircraft with $200,000,

uh, even if he was suicidal,

it doesn't necessarily make it terrorism.

NARRATOR: Former FBI agent Tom Fuentes

and crime journalist Billy Jensen

are on a fact-finding mission.

They're investigating

the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking case.

If he was trying to scare the world, scare the public,

tell everybody aviation

-is unsafe, then... -Right.

...then it becomes a terrorist act

and since we don't have him,

then you really can't say.

NARRATOR: The men are preparing

to vet a new theory, one put together

by Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes...

That's bizarre.

-Isn't that weird? -NARRATOR: ...two veteran

journalists who believe

they've cracked the 45-year-old case.

But before Fuentes

and Jensen hear and question that case,

they're diving into the deep end of the suspect pool.

JENSEN: The reports say that

there were 1,200 Cooper suspects,

and 900 people actually confessed to the crime.

We can't talk to all of them.

We can't look at all of them...

but we can look at the most prominent ones...

and I think looking at them

will be able to give us at least

a little bit of an idea of who this Cooper guy was.

FUENTES: So, really happy to meet you.

Really, uh, glad to have an opportunity to talk to somebody

that's right in the middle of this case.

NARRATOR: Nick O'Hara is a retired FBI agent

and the last man to confront one of

the FBI's prime suspects...

Richard McCoy.

ANCHORMAN: The FBI today

arrested this man for the hijacking

of a United Airlines passenger jet

and the extortion of a half a million dollars.

He is Richard Floyd McCoy.

McCoy, a skydiver, was believed to have parachuted

from the United flight Friday night, with the ransom money,

near his home of Provo, Utah.

NARRATOR: In April, 1972,

five months after Cooper's skyjacking,

Richard McCoy did exactly what D.B. Cooper did:

He skyjacked a 727 and parachuted out.

Only he got caught.

Two years later, he broke out of prison

and came face-to-face with Agent O'Hara

and his partner, Dick Rafferty.

O'HARA: The front door opens.

He's backlit.

We don't know who it is,

just a silhouette.

So, I said, "FBI."

Bam, he shoots...

and we return the fire.

-He says, "I'm killed." -So, the first

-thing he said was, "I'm killed"? -O'HARA: Yup.

"I'm killed." He-he disappears.

Goes out and they find him laying in the bushes out here.

And Joe says, "Get a towel. He's bleeding to death."

And I said something else that wasn't very nice.

Um...

JENSEN: What did you say?

I said, "(bleep) him, he just tried to kill us."

And, uh, that was it.

JENSEN: The guy you shot...

Was McCoy.

JENSEN: Right.

Yup.

When you did get

the, uh, the McCoy case, did you go back

and look at his hijacking and how he did

the hijacking at all?

The Cooper and McCoy cases had been

pretty much investigated, uh, which I had nothing to do with.

And if you look at McCoy's background,

he was a parachutist, Special Forces,

demolition expert, he was the kind of guy in the military--

Green Beret, Purple Heart-- he was actually a hero,

and took a left turn somewhere.

I don't know if McCoy did the Cooper job,

but there's-there's an awful lot of similarity between the cases.

JENSEN: Yeah.

And, of course, we wonder

how much had become public.

How much could a copycat

learn about what had been done?

You could probably learn a lot,

but the depths of... the similarities between them,

you'd have had to have a... you'd almost

had to have our reports.

-Right. -Terms he used.

JENSEN: "Funny stuff"?

JENSEN and O'HARA: "No funny stuff."

JENSEN: Yeah.

Put all the passengers up front.

There's so much that's similar.

W-Who were the actual people that place him not in the area?

Well, uh, his wife

and, uh, I think at least one friend,

place him at their home on Thanksgiving Day,

which was, I think, the 25th.

I've read a lot about the case,

but I haven't seen anything that really satisfies me

to eliminate McCoy.

With that much

of a similarity, from this person

and this incident to that person and that incident,

there's so much there that

is probative to the case...

Right.

...that I don't know how

you'd really walk away from that

saying absolutely not.

I wish we knew.

-Yeah, we wish we knew, also. -Yeah.

-(all laugh) -FUENTES: If there was any doubt

that McCoy was, uh, not Cooper,

then why would the case stay open for 45 years?

Why would all of these resources continue to be expended?

And the incentive would be, more importantly,

they could clear the Cooper case and say,

"Yeah, we solved it. It was him."

-Good morning. -Good morning. -Good morning.

-I'm Tom. -I'm Ron. -Ron, nice to meet you.

NARRATOR: Pat and Ron Forman are pilots from Washington state.

This is our friend Barb Dayton.

Her ashes are in here.

-All right. -So that's actually hers from the mortuary.

-Great. -I take her flying with me quite often,

when we go to different air shows and stuff like that, so...

NARRATOR: They believe that D.B. Cooper

was their now-deceased friend Barb Dayton.

RON: We handed over all our stuff to the FBI,

but because she's a woman,

they just kind of disregarded her as a suspect.

PAT: But the FBI didn't understand

that she used to be a man.

RON: She was the first woman to have a sex change

in the state of Washington in 1969.

Well, we met Barb in, uh, 1977.

She was out here working on her airplane,

and she didn't have any friends out here,

and we used to try to get her to come to our house, but...

she just wouldn't, uh... wouldn't come.

RON: We finally convinced her to come,

and after that, she would come to our house

every Sunday, after we did our flying.

We knew her about a year,

and then, she came to our house one day,

and she said, "I've got something to tell you."

She says, "I am D.B. Cooper, and

I'm gonna give you all the details of it."

PAT: She said she had flown over the area in her small plane

before the job, and had found places

along the Victor Airway that would just be perfect

for-for the landing.

She described the dynamite.

It was two five-pound charges.

And I asked her, I says, "Was it really...?

Was it real dynamite, Barb?"

She says, "I don't do anything phony," she says.

"Okay, Barb."

PAT: She said that she had timed the jump

by going down a little bit on the stairs,

when the doors open,

and looking for the lights of Portland.

RON: She told us, you know,

it was free-fall from 10,000 feet.

She opened the chute about 1,000 feet by the ground.

And she said she tied the money up in a certain way.

She was a merchant marine. She knew...

she was very good at knots.

PAT: And, uh, she said

that she didn't, uh, do it for the money.

She just did it because

she was so bitter with everything that happened.

She had gone through so much

trying to fit into society-- she never could.

But she told us about, at the age of four,

she felt that she was in the wrong body,

and she spent her whole life

being as-as mean of a man as she could be.

RON: She would go into a tavern as a merchant marine overseas,

and if she saw a marine or a navy person,

she would just spit on their shoes to start a fight.

And she said she literally could take about eight guys at once,

'cause she had a black belt, she said.

As a man, she was definitely a mean son of a gun.

As a merchant marine,

she was in Vietnam, on the Mekong Delta.

At the time, it was kind of top-secret,

from what we gathered.

That was one of the reasons why

I didn't believe her story

about D.B. Cooper, because, um, I thought,

you know, nobody could go through all these things.

PAT: Okay. Yeah, bye.

Glad you stopped by.

RON: Barb died at age 76.

(speaks quietly)

-PAT: Yeah, bye. -Bye.

PAT: When we started doing the research

and getting the records from the merchant marines

and found out that all of the stories were panning out...

RON: They all checked out.

PAT: That's why we believe that she was D.B. Cooper.

JENSEN: You can see how people find suspects,

that they start to really fall for.

You know, 'cause after hearing that story,

I really want it to be Barb Dayton, you know?

That's a great story.

That's a pretty confident individual

to have that Rambo personality

and be walking down the street in a dress.

JENSEN: And when you think about

D.B. Cooper stepping out in the rain

and saying, "Wait a minute.

Is this, uh... is this not a good condition to jump?"

-Barb Dayton would have jumped. -Right.

Let's take a look at who we've got here.

We've heard a lot about Richard McCoy.

He did two tours in Vietnam.

And he was a member of an elite special operations group.

He was an avid recreational skydiver,

and he survived nearly an identical hijacking,

jumping out of a United 727 with $500,000 strapped to his body.

We've heard a lot about Barb Dayton.

Barb Dayton was an experienced pilot and skydiver.

She lived and flew near the drop zone,

and she confessed to several friends that she was Cooper.

She was born Bobby Dayton.

She had the first gender reassignment surgery

in the state of Washington,

just two years before the Cooper skyjacking.

Let's check out some of the others.

Kenny Christiansen got a lot of attention a few years back.

He worked for Northwest Orient.

And he had a grudge, but it was actually against the airline.

Friends and family say he came into cash,

shortly after the hijacking.

And his brother claims a cryptic deathbed pronouncement

was actually a Cooper confession.

After the hijacking, he went

and kept on working for the airlines for years, so...

Spending another $20 each day

-in the cafeteria at Northwest Orient. -Yeah.

Yeah. Are you trying to say that, you know,

if he worked at the airlines, and nobody

would've said, "Oh, yeah, it was Kenny

-that-that did the hijacking." -Right.

-It just doesn't make sense. -No.

JENSEN: And this is Dwayne Webber, career criminal.

Served time in six prisons between 1945 and 1968,

for burglary and forgery.

He was a World War II paratrooper.

His wife claims he confessed on his deathbed

to being Dan Cooper.

At the time, she didn't know who that was.

She did some research, and realized

Dan Cooper was D.B. Cooper.

His wife, Jo Webber, contacted Bill Mitchell

and said, "My husband was D.B. Cooper who had passed away."

And Bill Mitchell looked at this picture

of him and said, "Lady, there's no way that this is him.

I would have remembered those ears."

And Mitchell is one of three people that would remember.

The two flight attendants and-and Mitchell,

-across the aisle from him. -Yeah.

NARRATOR: Although all of these suspects

were experienced parachutists,

none of them had any known ties to Boeing

or the CIA's Air America program.

If Cooper theorists Mark Meltzer and Bruce Smith are correct,

that specific lack of Air America experience

excludes them from being D.B. Cooper.

(doorbell rings)

-Sheridan? -Well, hello!

-How you doing? -So good to see you.

Billy Jensen.

JENSEN: Sheridan Peterson was in Cambodia

right before Pol Pot came to power.

He was there right when the Shah was deposed in Iran.

I got fired at in Saudi Arabia.

JENSEN: He was in the South

during the Civil Rights Movement.

He was in China during the Tiananmen Massacre.

PETERSON: Crossing the Himalayas.

JENSEN: I mean, this guy has been in some real hot zones

and international history.

PETERSON: I was the most obvious, uh, PETERSON: I was the most obvious,

uh, suspect of anyone.

I mean, everything pointed to me.

Everything.

NARRATOR: Former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes

and investigative crime writer Billy Jensen are questioning

Sheridan Peterson, one of the FBI's original prime suspects

in the legendary D.B. Cooper skyjacking case.

JENSEN: How long were you smoke jumping for?

PETERSON: Just two years.

But I think most smoke jumpers don't become skydivers.

-Right. -I may be wrong.

You know what they become, smoke jumpers?

I ran into 'em in Vietnam.

CIA.

-HUH. -Over in... at Air America.

-I ran into guys I knew. Huh. -So, you know

a lot of people think that the...

that D.B. Cooper possibly could have been a smoke jumper

who then went into Air America.

Because that's the combination of being able to jump into

a wooded area, as well as jumping out of a 727.

That's not possible.

Why is that?

Well, no smoke jumper's gonna

jump with a pair of, uh..

-What kind of...? Loafers. -Yeah.

And a suit. And no coat.

Are you... are you pretty familiar

with-with how he did it?

-Like... -Yeah.

When the FBI came to my apartment, she said,

"Would you have survived?" I said, "Absolutely."

I'd have made it, man.

Yeah, I would have picked the right chute.

And I would have had boots,

and I had gloves, and I had a coat.

He didn't have any of that stuff.

Did she flat out ask you, "Are you D.B. Cooper?"

(laughing)

-PETERSON: I'm a nice guy. -Mm-hmm.

-Yeah, you're definitely a nice guy, sure. -(laughs)

I had to let 'em,

uh, take my DNA, so they have my DNA now.

NARRATOR: The FBI has never elaborated on any DNA

they may have collected from the Cooper evidence,

so there's no telling

if Sheridan Peterson's sample was ever compared.

To many Cooper amateur sleuths,

he remains a fascinating subject.

JENSEN: His alibi was that he was in Nepal.

He had children in 1970 and 1972.

You know, the idea that in between

the births of those children that he came back

to the Pacific Northwest and pulled off this caper and then

flew back to Nepal-- it doesn't really add up for me.

COLBERT: I'm calling to ask you some background,

uh, to see if you remember him and maybe...

NARRATOR: In Los Angeles,

journalists Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes

believe they have found D.B. Cooper...

and he's alive.

NARRATOR: The men continue to chase leads and gather evidence,

knowing that if they're going to get their chance

to present their findings to the FBI,

they will first have to convince Fuentes and Jensen

that their case is solid.

FORBES: One of the things

that's really driven me, throughout this,

is Tom's conviction,

and-and-and I can't discount that.

So if Tom wasn't as passionate as he was, if he didn't

have the conviction and belief that he did,

I'd have been out of here long ago. See ya.

My reputation is on the line as much as Tom's.

I mean, he's got a big enough footprint.

You'll have no problem tracking him down, right?

It'll be easy, it'll be easy.

Okay, cool, cool.

This is nowhere near close to being over.

NARRATOR: Tom Fuentes and Billy Jensen's look

at the prime D.B. Cooper suspects

has landed them in Atlanta, Georgia.

They're here to talk to the niece

of one the FBI's most promising suspects in recent years.

The last time the D.B. Cooper case was in the national media

was when Marla Cooper went on a media blitz tour.

Well, I'm certain he was my uncle.

My uncle... Uncle L.D.

L.D. Cooper.

NARRATOR: L.D. was a paratrooper in the Korean War.

His brother, Dewey, worked at Boeing.

In 1971, when Marla was eight, she recalls L.D. and Dewey

showing up for Thanksgiving

at her grandmother's house

in Sisters, Oregon.

I remembered the scene on the driveway.

They insisted they were just out in the woods turkey hunting.

I ran to the side of the car, looking for a turkey

and instead what I saw was L.D. in a white T-shirt

that was bloody, he was a mangled mess.

It was as if they were playing mental "keep away" with me,

like they had a big secret that they weren't really sharing

but they were just calling the secret "a turkey hunt."

I went to visit my father, Christmas of 1995,

and I said,

"Dad, what do you think ever happened to Uncle L.D.?"

And he said, "Marla, don't you remember?

He hijacked that airplane and Dewey helped him."

I do know Uncle L.D. was a hijacker.

NARRATOR: Former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes,

and crime journalist Billy Jensen,

are meeting with Marla Cooper.

Cooper claims that her Uncle L.D.

was the infamous skyjacker, D.B. Cooper.

So, two brothers, uh, worked together, uh,

to do the hijacking.

One of the things that I witnessed

preceding that Thanksgiving was

my two uncles went out into the woods.

I walked with my Uncle L.D.

Dewey went off in another direction,

and they were testing the bandwidth of a set

of walkie-talkies they were using,

and were really happy that they could hear each other

from about a mile apart, through the woods.

The following school year, when I was in the fourth grade,

we moved to Sisters, and lived

directly behind my grandmother and

he shared memories of being a paratrooper.

So he had military training in jumping out of an aircraft.

-Yes, and... -FUENTES: When you're interviewing someone

like Marla Cooper, and you're hearing the story,

so you go A-B-C, all the way to X-Y-Z.

I believe that there was

collaboration between the FBI

and the airlines to hire somebody

to get on an airplane and hijack it.

FUENTES: Well, when you get to X-Y-Z

and the person starts telling you

something that's completely nutty...

The transcript's been spliced

and there's a four-minute pause.

FUENTES: Does that mean A-B-C aren't true?

It was the FBI who sewed his parachutes shut.

Somehow, a computer knew

the hijacker had been arrested for drunkenness.

FUENTES: Does that automatically

disqualify the entire story, if toward the end,

it gets a little bit... outrageous even.

It didn't make any sense to me but it did make sense.

JENSEN: With Marla, there was definitely, you know,

other ideas that kept on coming out.

This is smoke and mirrors.

JENSEN: And how much of that-that stuff that

really did happen?

That's not something for me to really say.

NARRATOR: Marla maintains

that the FBI believed her story

and it's been reported that she was given a lengthy

lie detector test and passed.

The FBI, as with all Cooper suspects,

has yet to reveal specific reasons why

her uncle isn't D.B. Cooper.

As for L.D. Cooper, he died in 1999.

The FBI today was back to that line

in the ballad of D.B. Cooper.

"Where are you now?"

NARRATOR: Since 1971,

many FBI agents have worked the elusive case,

but none have solved it.

This is the tie, uh, that the person who was D.B. Cooper

wore the night he jumped.

Uh, it's a JCPenney, uh, clip-on tie.

NARRATOR: In 2007, Agent Larry Carr

took over the case.

CARR: This is, uh, D.B. Cooper's, uh, ticket.

Back in 1971, it cost $18.52 to fly from Portland to Seattle

with a $1.48 tax for a total of $20.

NARRATOR: Stumped by a lack of new clues

and handcuffed by budget issues,

Carr tried a new approach.

He went online, directly with the general public,

to share the evidence.

His hope?

That it would spark a substantial new lead.

Uh, this is a map that was created, the early '70s,

and i-it's, uh, an outline of what the flight path was,

or the believed flight path.

If we could find resolution to the case

without allocating resources,

without sending FBI

manpower to the investigation, but come up with an answer,

then why wouldn't we do that?

NARRATOR: Carr's plan wouldn't lead to an arrest,

but it fueled the engine that still drives

the citizen sleuths in the community

of so-called Cooperites.

You can't help but admire this guy.

JENSEN: The D.B. Cooper case may be

the ultimate citizen sleuth case.

But this is a double-edged sword.

When you have citizen sleuths,

and you have thousands and thousands of people

that are using the Internet in order to come up

with different theories about a specific case,

you have so much noise out there,

and you have to sift through fact and fiction.

FORBES: Think of the possibility.

What if it isn't him?

What then?

There's absolutely no way that we have this amount

of coincidences and not having the right guy.

-Hey. Hey, guys. -JENSEN: How you doing?

-Billy Jensen. -Jim Forbes.

-How are you? -Billy.

-Yeah. -Love your writing.

NARRATOR: After four weeks of preparation,

fact-finding, and research,

the citizen sleuths meet the independent investigators

for the first time.

COLBERT: Well, you guys, make yourself at home.

-JENSEN: All right. -Sure.

NARRATOR: For the next three days,

journalists Colbert and Forbes

will present their theory and identify the man

they believe to be D.B. Cooper.

They hope to convince Fuentes and Jensen

that their case is strong enough

to be taken to the FBI.

FORBES: Tom has been at this for four and a half years.

I've been at it for three plus; he brought me in.

I actually took it to the FBI already,

in 2012, when we had 33 pieces of evidence,

but they said they couldn't get involved;

they had other priorities.

I was frustrated and I said, "All right, well,

"we're not gonna have a investigation

unless we do it,"

and that's what we did.

We brought in 36 members

for a cold case team, across the country.

Our cold case team is made up of former law enforcement

and they helped turn our 33 pieces of evidence

into 93 pieces of evidence.

We need your help.

We're hoping you guys can take us back to the Bureau.

Now's the time to go.

The fact that this is

the only air piracy case in Bureau history

that's not been solved, you know, is something

that matters to a lot of people.

They have a specific suspect in mind

and this could be just one giant rabbit hole

that these two gentlemen have gone down,

but I'm going in there with an open mind.

Are the new pieces of evidence compelling reasons Are the new pieces of evidence compelling reasons

for the FBI to relook at what you have?

We think we have a lot of new stuff

for them to get excited about.

NARRATOR: Retired FBI Assistant Director

Tom Fuentes,

and veteran crime writer Billy Jensen,

are about to hear evidence

from a secret five-year investigation

into the infamous D.B. Cooper skyjacking case.

According to investigative journalists

Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes,

they believe they've solved the 45-yeard-old mystery.

Okay, convince us.

FORBES: Let's go for it.

COLBERT: All right.

I ran a tip service,

around the country, for local reporters.

Some of those sources still call me.

That's how I got this story.

This came from a cameraman in Vegas

by the name of Rich Kashansky.

I've known him 20 years,

and he said, "I got a guy

that claims he knows who Cooper is."

Rich sat this guy down, Ron Carlson, a former drug runner.

He filmed this interview and sent it to me

and that's what caught my attention.

I'm here today to, uh,

tell my story of meeting D.B. Cooper.

I met him, quite frankly, uh,

he was my cocaine supplier.

His name was Dick Briggs.

Uh, almost from the time we met,

he was telling us that he was,

in fact, D.B. Cooper.

The guy that was his supplier

of cocaine is D.B. Cooper?

FORBES: Correct.

A guy by the name of Dick Briggs.

He's-he's Dick Briggs, but he's D.B. Cooper.

Ron surprises me after we start talking and he says,

"I want to be honest with you guys, I didn't buy it, either,

when I first heard it."

Something changes.

Something convinces

Ron Carlson he could be Cooper.

He kept saying, "You don't believe me, do you?"

And, uh, he said, "Well, I'm gonna tell you

something that'll prove to you who I am."

We actually went to a party and, uh,

he says, "All right, you see that couple over there?"

We said, "Yeah."

He says, "They and their son..."

they were a hippy looking couple,

"...are the ones that are gonna find my money."

And we left, probably Sunday morning,

and we'd been up for three or four days.

I drove as far as I could, which happened to be Reno.

When we got there, immediately, we all went to bed

and so I woke up, about maybe 10:00 at night

and the TV was on and, all of a sudden,

this news alert come by and it said that they had found,

I believe it was, like, $6,000 or something

of D.B. Cooper's money, buried in the sand

on the north side of the Columbia river

out of Vancouver, exactly where he said.

And when they showed the people who found the money,

it was that same couple that was at the party.

COLBERT: When I heard this, I said,

I got to find out who this guy is.

I'm presuming you haven't heard this before?

I have not heard this before, no.

I like the way that they started.

They started with the money find.

You're not starting where

everybody thinks you might start--

from right before the plane or on the plane.

And who were really these people that found this money?

What were they doing on the beach?

There might be something else there.

So here we are. We went down

to Mena, Arkansas, and met with Dwayne Ingram

and also his son Brian.

FORBES (on TV): So take me to that

February Sunday in 1980.

So the girls-- they started getting things out

for a little picnic deal, you know,

and I said, "Come on, bub."

This was my shadow.

Uh, I said, "Let's build us a fire here and burn some dogs."

He said, "Yeah, okay, Poppy."

He was always one of them, you know, "Yeah, Daddy."

So anyway, I grabbed up some driftwood, right?

And so I'm standing there

and looking around and stuff, and he runs up,

and he gets on his hands and knees, and he thinks

I'm gonna drop it right there.

He said, "Let me clear us a place, Daddy."

And I said, "Not right there."

It was too close to a log or something.

I don't know. You know what I mean?

And I said, "Let's do it right over there."

He said, "Okay."

I say, "You see them two little sticks over there?"

I said, "Let's do it right there."

So I walked over there, he got down.

He went like that, and three little driftwoods tumbled up.

And it was the cleaning off, though,

we realized what they were, wasn't it?

Needless to say, I picked it up, and I go to looking and stuff,

and I says, "It's not driftwood.

It's-it's money."

And the more I looked at the dates-- 1971 and older--

then I thought, this could be Cooper's money.

So, next morning, I went to a pay phone,

and I called the FBI in Portland.

And I said, "I'm gonna give you three or four serial numbers,

"and I'm gonna call you back in about 15 minutes.

"You tell me if they mean something to you,

or if they don't."

Well, 15 minutes later, I called back, and

Ralph Himmelsbach-- he gets on there, you know.

And he said, "It's Cooper money."

And he said, "If you really have this,"

he said, "There is over $200,000 reward money up."

Which for a struggling family, you dangle that

in front of their eyes, and it looks good.

I said, "All right, you know, we're getting somewhere."

Anyway, I took it over there to him, Ralph Himmelsbach.

He said, "Oh, I forgot to mention that, uh,

the rewards are expired."

FUENTES: The question is, how did that money get there?

From the beginning, it really centers on

who found it and what were the circumstances of the find.

Tell me more.

FORBES: Here we are, and we had spoken

extensively prior to this,

but I'm sitting there and showing him Ron Carlson.

Let me get my glasses on here. Looks like you, bub.

This is the-the individual with the information.

His name is Ron.

And he kept saying, "You don't believe me, do you?"

And, uh, he said, "Well, I'm gonna tell you

something that'll prove to you who I am."

Says, "All right, you see that couple over there?"

We said, "Yeah."

He says, "They and their son"--

they were a hippy-looking couple--

"...are the ones that are gonna find my money."

And we left, probably Sunday morning,

and we'd been up for three or four days.

I drove as far as I could, which happened to be Reno.

When we got there, immediately,

we all went to bed, and shut all the blinds.

It was the middle of the afternoon.

And so, I woke up, around maybe 10:00 at night,

and the TV was on, and all of a sudden,

this news alert come by.

And it said that they had found,

I believe it was like $6,000 or something,

of D.B. Cooper's money, buried in the sand

on the north side of the Columbia River,

out of Vancouver, exactly where he said,

and when they showed the people who found the money,

it was that same couple that was at the party.

(Brian chuckles)

Any thoughts?

Guy was tweaking.

FORBES: Explain that to me.

DWAYNE: He already did.

You let a drugster go three or four days,

sleep deprivation and all that.

He got no idea what he's talking about.

And that'd be my observation of him.

He may have known D.B. Cooper.

I don't believe that man ever knew me, though. No.

FUENTES: What struck me in it

is, as the video is running,

-when he looks away. -COLBERT: Mm-hmm.

It's like, you know, all of a sudden,

I don't want any part of this.

His body language was trying to remove himself.

So am I detecting correctly

that you're not really buying Dwayne?

Yes.

Uh, Billy, you on the same wavelength as Tom?

(sighs) Him looking away definitely is weird.

And you always hear that about,

you know, if somebody's lying, they're gonna...

they're gonna look away.

I just... I really want to get

more clarity and more ideas

on what the motivation would be

for Briggs to hide this money for him to find it.

So as soon as they said, they and his son, you saw him

take off his glasses, shake his head.

FUENTES: Taking off your glasses is a symbolic

gesture of being prepared to fight.

FORBES: Hmm.

That's normally, "Okay, we're gonna go at it."

So, right when he takes those glasses off,

I can tell right then his face is...

-You see the muscles in his face tighten up? -FORBES: Mm-hmm.

-He's preparing for a battle. -JENSEN: Yes.

-Intriguing. -Even if it's verbal battle, he's preparing.

When they say "hippy-looking couple,"

that's where he shakes his head.

CARLSON: They were a hippy-looking couple.

JENSEN: So that's not necessarily

him saying "We weren't there."

That's him saying, "We weren't a hippy-looking couple."

-FUENTES: "You're calling me a bad name." -Yeah.

FORBES: We're in acknowledgment

that there's something screwy about the money find.

Definitely.

FUENTES: You know, all of the theories

of how the money got to that beach on that day--

I still think there's not enough, uh, direct evidence

that someone put that there.

But it certainly didn't get there in 1971

and sit there that close to the top of that beach.

There's suspicion that maybe somebody put it there,

and you know, I would like to have more evidence

that that's exactly what happened.

Not only does it get us into the case, but brings us Dick Briggs. Not only does it get us into the case,

NARRATOR: Journalists Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes

have waited five years for this moment.

The men believe they've finally solved the D.B. Cooper mystery.

They're now revealing their evidence,

for the first time,

to retired FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes

and veteran crime writer Billy Jensen,

hoping they'll deliver

the investigative report directly to the FBI.

And what we find is this larger-than-life,

criminal figure, that is well-known in Portland,

who damn well could be D.B. Cooper.

So we wanted to get a sense of Briggs,

and we went up to Portland, and met

with two of his drug-running associates back in the '70s.

And one guy was Ron Carlson.

You remember this is where the story began.

This is the guy who told us the money plant story.

The other guy wants to stay anonymous.

That's why we shot him a certain way.

MAN: Uh, if he was... if he was your friend,

he was your friend for life, but if you pissed him off

and he said he knew it,

you might as well move to a different city.

That's really the way it was.

Here in this town, if you needed something done,

as an enforcer, that's who you went to.

Somebody, one of these guys,

made a comment about Dick's ex-wife.

And whatever it was, Dick just went berserk,

and literally threw this guy through a plate glass window.

Wow.

Briggs was one scary son of a bitch.

CARLSON: This guy used to take... I mean

did these parlor tricks,

and he'd take this hat pin this long,

stick it through the forearm and bring it out,

and pull it out, and not a drop of blood.

When he would talk to you, you know,

he'd give you that look like, "Don't (bleep) with me.

-Oh. -You know.

I mean, and you didn't.

You have to understand the world that Richard walked in.

He wasn't like you and I, okay?

He'd lived on a... he lived on the edge, big-time.

FORBES: Why is Dick Briggs out there saying he's D.B. Cooper?

MAN: I have no idea.

COLBERT: I'm calling all sorts of other people.

I'm not talking to just traffickers here, guys.

I'm calling friends and family. They're laughing in my face.

He's just out-of-control, crazy,

loved the idea of being a drug dealer,

but, no, couldn't plan anything.

FORBES: Briggs was a weightlifter,

he was a wrestler, he was a frigging fire plug.

-Yeah. -Short, squat, strong as hell.

JENSEN: Well, this guy, Dick Briggs, certainly doesn't look

-like the sketch of D.B. Cooper. -COLBERT: Right.

I started hearing that his skill sets didn't match,

uh, he's not the right height, he looks totally different.

FORBES: So Tom's eight months into this,

and he's running up a dead end.

And he's ready to quit, and at the eleventh hour,

somebody suggests to him to call Pudgy Hunt.

COLBERT: Pudgy Hunt and his wife Connie

absolutely love Dick Briggs.

Uh, he was a fun guy, but he was out of control.

CONNIE: Briggs would show up at the East Bank Saloon

with this briefcase,

and you never knew what was gonna be in there.

And he would open it up, and there could be guns,

cocaine, jewels, whatever.

And that was just...

You know, every time he showed up,

it was like what was gonna be in the briefcase?

COLBERT: When I called you about this, you just said,

"He couldn't be Cooper. He's a party boy."

and then you said...

I know a guy that could be D.B. Cooper

that I introduced Briggs to,

which was Bob Rackstraw.

I knew Bob's background.

He did have all the talent to do all these things.

Mm-hmm.

This is our suspect, Robert Wesley Rackstraw.

FORBES: Has that name come up to you, at all?

-Well, it will now. -It will.

So who is Robert Wesley Rackstraw?

Back in 1979,

uh, at least a half-dozen different FBI agents

identify Rackstraw as a Cooper suspect.

So the question is why was he a suspect in the first place?

Elite military training, Vietnam vet.

All the skills necessary to pull off the heist.

But before all that, listen to this response.

Back in 1979.

Eight years after the jump,

when he's asked directly, are you D.B. Cooper?

NEWSMAN: Are you willing to state, one way or the other,

whether or not you're D.B. Cooper?

I'm afraid of heights.

NEWSMAN: You have, uh, parachute training,

and, uh, as you mentioned yourself,

your-your background suggests

that you could have been D.B. Cooper.

Could have been.

Could have been.

You don't want to commit yourself one way or the other.

No, I, uh, I can't commit myself on something like that, Warren.

It's, uh, like I say, uh,

primarily, I'm afraid of heights.

And, uh, there's a matter there, too,

you... you say, well, with a story like that,

should it be fiction or should it be fact?

And it's primarily up to the, uh, American people,

uh, someday, how that comes out.

If it's going to be a fictional story or factual story.

We're about to tell you

a lot about Robert Wesley Rackstraw.

NEWSMAN: Your background suggests

that you could have been D.B. Cooper.

Could have been. Could have been.

NARRATOR: Investigative journalists Tom Colbert

and Jim Forbes are just beginning

to reveal the evidence they believe

proves that one-time FBI suspect Robert W. Rackstraw

may be D.B. Cooper after all.

NEWSMAN: You don't want to commit yourself

one way or the other.

No, I, uh, I can't commit myself on something like that.

NARRATOR: The men are presenting their theory

to former FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes,

and crime journalist Billy Jensen,

who were brought in by History

to pressure test the Colbert-Forbes claims.

I'd like to bring in somebody

who's been a great help with us in doing this: Don Ray...

is one of the most incredible journalists

you will ever meet-- Don is a Vietnam vet.

He's also an expert in public records

and archives that nobody else can find.

The bigger picture, obviously, of crime,

is you need, at least three elements,

on a, a crime like this.

You need the means, the opportunity and the motive.

So let's start with the means.

So Tom turns to Don

to look into Robert Wesley Rackstraw's

Vietnam history.

It's a routine, get somebody's military record.

I've done hundreds and hundreds of them,

and when I took a look (laughs) at the copies of his file,

I remember shaking my head and saying, "whoa."

I'd never seen one that had-had so much in it.

He went from National Guard to Reserve, to regular Army.

Then he goes to Vietnam, in 1969, with the 1st Cav.

JENSEN: So he's with 1st Cav, that's the whole...

-Uh-huh, right. -JENSEN: Apocalypse Now.

-Yes, it is, yeah, right. -Wagner.

He was a private; he was a corporal.

Then, all of a sudden, he's a warrant officer,

'cause he went to flight school, and later becomes a lieutenant.

He's gone the whole spectrum.

He, uh, went to infantry jump school,

so he indeed, uh, had jump training.

He went to demolition school.

He went to helicopter school.

Special Forces Ops, survival skills, Psy Ops.

Now I see his awards, and they jump right out.

Distinguished Flying Cross, well, he's got two of them.

I've never seen anybody that had two

Distinguished Flying Crosses.

And then a Silver Star to go with it,

which is another remarkable thing.

This guy was amazing.

It's like he found the way to go

to every possible school you could go to.

Like a hybrid of a Navy SEAL, an Army Ranger,

-Special Forces, Delta Force. -Absolutely.

REPORTER: Pilot's license, explosives.

Engineering contractor, amateur scientist,

specialist in underwater explosives,

demolitions, underwater operations,

air, sea, land, that's right.

REPORTER: They say... some people say it adds up.

RACKSTRAW: Oh, certainly.

He can fly, he can jump... what can't he do?

Absolutely, he's got the skill set.

He could have done it.

Knowledgeable of how to survive the jump,

and how to operate the parachutes that he was provided,

and then survive it and live to, uh, take the money and run.

When did he get out of the army?

Well, he got out in, uh, '71, as a matter of fact.

Rackstraw was forced to resign his commission,

because he had falsified his background,

claiming to have gone to two separate colleges,

when in fact, he was a high school dropout.

To us, that was a motive.

JENSEN: I'm probably jumping ahead.

But I'm thinking of the quote,

on the plane, when Cooper was asked,

"Do you have a grudge against Northwest?",

and he said, "I don't have a grudge against Northwest,

but I do have a grudge."

FORBES: Absolutely. He's been in the army for seven-plus years.

This has become his career.

It's the first thing he's had stable in his life,

and it's suddenly snatched from him.

And we believe, very strongly,

that the motive was, "Oh, yeah, you gave me all this training,

well, let me show you what I can do with this training."

JENSEN: This would certainly be a big grudge.

Having devoted your life to the military,

have you put your life on the line,

having done all of this training,

and then just this one lie that you didn't go to college,

being discharged for that,

that would give anybody a grudge.

In addition to his military records,

Don pulled a photo

taken 14 months before the hijacking.

JENSEN: Hmm.

Looks a little like someone we know.

COLBERT: We do not know if these photos

were pulled by the FBI

when he was investigated in the '70s.

And these are family pictures, too,

so that you're going to see some variations.

FUENTES: One of the biggest difficulties in this case,

it's too bad we don't have a photograph to compare, you know.

No cameras in the airport,

-no cameras at the ticket counter. -Sure.

Uh, and the sketch, we've been told,

was a composite of several people's contributions.

And the problem with a composite is that,

let's say, in this photo, where you see

how protruded the ears are.

Well, what if one of the witnesses

said his ears were sticking out,

the other one said they laid flat,

so they went in between?

So as a result of the composite,

it's not as close a match that it might have been

to an actual photograph of Rackstraw.

JENSEN: Of all the people that we've seen,

he definitely looks

the closest to these sketches, I would say.

FUENTES: Yeah.

FORBES: It certainly doesn't mean that's him,

but it certainly doesn't preclude it

from being him, either.

-It doesn't dismiss it. -Yeah.

JENSEN: Rackstraw as a suspect.

He definitely has my interest.

It's not out of the realm of possibility

that he could have been

the same guy in the composite sketch.

COLBERT: In addition to his military records,

Don pulled a photo

taken 14 months before the hijacking.

Hmm.

This is certainly something that, uh,

looks a little like someone we know.

NARRATOR: Investigative journalists Tom Colbert

and Jim Forbes believe they've identified

the man known as D.B. Cooper.

We do not know if these photos were pulled by the FBI

when he was investigated in the '70s.

And these are family pictures, too,

so that you're going to see some variations.

NARRATOR: According to Colbert and Forbes,

Robert W. Rackstraw had a brilliant military career.

But they say military records show that, in 1971,

he was unceremoniously discharged

for lying about his education.

Commander Ken Overturf commanded Rackstraw in Vietnam.

They were in a unit called Project Leftbank.

Project Leftbank was the army version of the NSA in choppers.

Highly sophisticated unit;

in fact, it wasn't revealed for over 20 years.

When I called the commander and asked if he could talk about it,

his first statement was,

"Well, can I talk about it."

It was that secret.

And did he have any questions about Rackstraw?

Oh, yeah-- he remembered Bob Rackstraw.

KEN OVERTURF: Good afternoon, gentlemen.

I can't thank you enough for joining us.

Pleasure to join you.

FORBES: It was great when Tom contacted you

that you do have such a clear

memory of Robert Wesley Rackstraw.

I remember a number of soldiers,

but none as distinctly as Rackstraw.

He is a very gregarious, outgoing fellow.

Cordial and friendly,

but he was also very independently minded,

and devoid of any need

to follow rules and regulations.

Colonel, when Tom called you,

was that the first that you heard

of his name being linked to being D.B. Cooper?

Most certainly was.

I thought, gee, that's very possible.

Rackstraw had the attitude

and was fearless enough

to actually do that.

So two things, is one: he could control the drop,

and two: he could spot

where he wanted to land.

Oh, yes, yes.

I believe it's a very reasonable theory

that D.B. Cooper did survive

and had well-prepared for the operation.

A military parachutist

is trained in tactical operations.

When you land,

you bury your parachute,

and all equipment that you won't be using on the mission.

Reflecting on the Robert Rackstraw you knew,

what are the chances, in your mind,

that Robert Wesley Rackstraw is D.B. Cooper?

I believe Rackstraw had the intellect

to plan and execute that.

FUENTES: Playing devil's advocate,

during the era of Vietnam, at that time,

how many people would have had enough of a skill set

to carry out that jump?

I would say at least hundreds, sir.

All right.

But I believe

that he could have, and, uh,

lack of any other

more likely suspects,

I do.

Wow.

NARRATOR: Tomorrow night,

on the conclusion of D.B. Cooper, Case Closed?

When police come to arrest him, he's gone.

NARRATOR: Tom Colbert and Jim Forbes

reveal the rest of their theory.

FORBES: We think he ran

because the FBI was closing in on him

as a Cooper skyjacking suspect.

NARRATOR: More evidence.

FORBES: So during the course of our investigation,

we sit down with the half-sister.

It's the only interview she ever gave.

If you form a theory in an investigation too early,

then you subconsciously

are trying to prove yourself correct.

We want them to prove us wrong.

NARRATOR: From a small town on the Oregon coast...

WOMAN: He said he was a baron from Switzerland.

MAN: Why nobody else thought

this guy was D.B. Cooper, I have no idea.

JENSEN: Are you trying to say that this guy

is going to pull off the caper of a lifetime?

And he decides to take on

this flamboyant character?

Thoughts.

The shape of the face is correct.

Eyes are the same.

NARRATOR: ...to a global manhunt that ends in Iran.

FORBES: Here's where we're going to take

one of the most bizarre twists of the entire case.

There are so many coincidental and circumstantial events

that prove that he could be,

but to go so far as to say it's him,

uh, you know, I'm not ready to make that jump.

NARRATOR: To a face-to-face encounter

with a man Colbert and Forbes

believe could be D.B. Cooper.

FORBES: Come on, Bob.

Come on out and talk to me.

NARRATOR: Then...

JENSEN: So this is going to be exciting.

We actually finally get in.

NARRATOR: Tom Fuentes and Billy Jensen head to the FBI.

MAN: This is the first time I've ever spoken to the media

about anything in the FBI.

NARRATOR: To get the answers Colbert and Forbes are seeking.

What would you consider a worthy lead?

Ultimately, the bottom line would be the money,

or-or the parachute.

My job as an agent is not to

help somebody confirm their theories.

My job is to bring prosecutable cases

to the Assistant United States Attorney's Office.

NARRATOR: And there's a revelation.

MAN: We're about to make an official transition in the case.

So is this case closed?

NARRATOR: That leads to the final interview

with the one person who hasn't spoken

in 45 years--

the last person to see D.B. Cooper before he jumped.

JENSEN: Have you ever seen this guy's picture?

Or does he look like this could have been the guy

that you were sitting next to?

NARRATOR: After this...

the case of D.B. Cooper will never be the same.

COLBERT: This is the Big Kahuna of whodunits.

This is the story everybody wants to solve.