D. B. Cooper (Part IV)

Robert Richard Lepsy

Robert Richard Lepsy was a 33-year-old grocery store manager and married father of four from Grayling, Michigan, who disappeared in October 1969. His vehicle was found three days later at a local airport, and a man matching Lepsy's description was reportedly seen boarding a flight to Mexico. Authorities concluded that Lepsy had left voluntarily and closed their investigation.

Two years after the Cooper hijacking, family members noted that Lepsy's physical features resembled those in the Cooper composite drawings, and asserted that Cooper's clothing was described as very similar to Lepsy's grocery store uniform. Lepsy was declared legally dead in 1976. One of Lepsy's daughters submitted a DNA sample to the FBI in 2011, with unknown results.  Although Lepsy was proposed as a Cooper suspect in a 2014 book, there is no record of public comment on him from the FBI.

John List

List was an accountant, World War II and Korean War veteran who murdered his wife, three teenage children, and 85-year-old mother in Westfield, New Jersey, fifteen days before the Cooper hijacking, withdrew $200,000 from his mother's bank account, and disappeared.  He came to the attention of the Cooper task force due to the timing of his disappearance, multiple matches to the hijacker's description, and the reasoning that "a fugitive accused of mass murder has nothing to lose."  After his capture in 1989, List admitted to murdering his family, but denied any involvement in the Cooper hijacking. Although his name continues to crop up in Cooper articles and documentaries, no substantial evidence implicates him, and the FBI no longer considers him a suspect.  He died in prison in 2008.

Ted Mayfield

Theodore E. Mayfield was a Special Forces veteran, pilot, competitive skydiver, and skydiving instructor who served time in 1994 for negligent homicide after two of his students died when their parachutes failed to open.  Later, he was found indirectly responsible for thirteen additional skydiving deaths due to faulty equipment and training. His criminal record also included armed robbery and transportation of stolen aircraft.  In 2010, he was sentenced to three years' probation for piloting a plane 26 years after losing his pilot's license and rigging certificates.  He was suggested repeatedly as a suspect early in the investigation, according to FBI Agent Ralph Himmelsbach, who knew Mayfield from a prior dispute at a local airport. He was ruled out, based partly on the fact that he called Himmelsbach less than two hours after Flight 305 landed in Reno to volunteer advice on standard skydiving practices and possible landing zones.

In 2006, two amateur researchers named Daniel Dvorak and Matthew Myers proposed Mayfield as a suspect once again, asserting that they had assembled a convincing circumstantial case.  They theorized that Mayfield called Himmelsbach not to offer advice, but to establish an alibi; and they challenged Himmelsbach's conclusion that Mayfield could not possibly have found a phone in time to call the FBI less than four hours after jumping into the wilderness at night.  Mayfield denied any involvement, and repeated a previous assertion that the FBI called him five times while the hijacking was still in progress to ask about parachutes, local skydivers, and skydiving techniques.  (Himmelsbach said the FBI never called Mayfield.)  Mayfield further charged that Dvorak and Myers asked him to play along with their theory, and "we'll all make a lot of money". Dvorak and Myers called any inference of collusion a "blatant lie".  The FBI offered no comment beyond Himmelsbach's original statement that Mayfield, who died in 2015, was ruled out as a suspect early on.

Richard Floyd McCoy, Jr.

McCoy (1942–1974) was an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, first as a demolition expert, and later, with the Green Berets as a helicopter pilot.  After his military service he became a warrant officer in the Utah National Guard and an avid recreational skydiver, with aspirations, he said, of becoming a Utah State Trooper.

On April 7, 1972, McCoy staged the best-known of the so-called "copycat" hijackings (see below).  He boarded United Airlines' Flight 855 (a Boeing 727 with aft stairs) in Denver, Colorado, and brandishing what later proved to be a paperweight resembling a hand grenade and an unloaded handgun, he demanded four parachutes and $500,000.  After delivery of the money and parachutes at San Francisco International Airport, McCoy ordered the aircraft back into the sky and bailed out over Provo, Utah, leaving behind his handwritten hijacking instructions and his fingerprints on a magazine he had been reading.  Later, a handwriting expert compared the note found on the plane with McCoy's writing on military service records and determined that McCoy had written the note.  He was arrested on April 9 with the ransom cash in his possession, and after trial and conviction, received a 45-year sentence.  Two years later he escaped from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary with several accomplices by crashing a garbage truck through the main gate.  Tracked down three months later in Virginia Beach, McCoy was killed in a shootout with FBI agents.

In their 1991 book, D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, parole officer Bernie Rhodes and former FBI agent Russell Calame asserted that they had identified McCoy as Cooper. They cited obvious similarities in the two hijackings, claims by McCoy's family that the tie and mother-of-pearl tie clip left on the plane belonged to McCoy, and McCoy's own refusal to admit or deny that he was Cooper.  A proponent of their theory was the FBI agent who killed McCoy. "When I shot Richard McCoy," he said, "I shot D. B. Cooper at the same time."

Although there is no reasonable doubt that McCoy committed the Denver hijacking, the FBI does not consider him a suspect in the Cooper case because of significant mismatches in age and description; a level of skydiving skill well above that thought to be possessed by the hijacker; and credible evidence that McCoy was in Las Vegas on the day of the Portland hijacking, and at home in Utah the day after, having Thanksgiving dinner with his family.

Robert Rackstraw

Robert Wesley Rackstraw (1943 – July 9, 2019) was a retired pilot and ex-convict who served on an army helicopter crew and other units during the Vietnam War. He came to the attention of the Cooper task force in February 1978, after he was arrested in Iran and deported to the U.S. to face explosives possession and check kiting charges. Several months later, while released on bail, Rackstraw attempted to fake his own death by radioing a false mayday call and telling controllers that he was bailing out of a rented plane over Monterey Bay.  Police later arrested him in Fullerton on an additional charge of forging federal pilot certificates; the plane he claimed to have ditched was found, repainted, in a nearby hangar.  Cooper investigators noted his physical resemblance to Cooper composite sketches (although he was only 28 in 1971), military parachute training, and criminal record, but eliminated him as a suspect in 1979 after no direct evidence of his involvement could be found.

In 2016, Rackstraw re-emerged as a suspect in a History Channel program and a book.  On September 8, 2016, Thomas J. Colbert, the author of the book, and attorney Mark Zaid filed a lawsuit to compel the FBI to release its Cooper case file under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit alleges that the FBI suspended active investigation of the Cooper case "in order to undermine the theory that Rackstraw is D.B. Cooper so as to prevent embarrassment for the bureau's failure to develop evidence sufficient to prosecute him for the crime."  In January 2018, Tom and Dawna Colbert reported that they had obtained a letter originally written in December 1971 and says that the codes it contains were deciphered and matched to three units Rackstraw was a part of while in the Army, and the FBI refused to acknowledge the findings because "it would have to admit that amateur sleuths had cracked a case the bureau couldn't."

One of the Flight 305 flight attendants reportedly "did not find any similarities" between photos of Rackstraw from the 1970s and her recollection of Cooper's appearance.  Rackstraw's attorney called the renewed allegations "the stupidest thing I've ever heard", and Rackstraw himself told People.com, "It's a lot of [expletive], and they know it is."  The FBI declined further comment.  Rackstraw stated in a 2017 phone interview that he lost his job over the 2016 investigations.  When approached by Colbert about claims that he was D. B. Cooper, "I told everybody I was (the hijacker)," Rackstraw said, before explaining the admission was a stunt.

A June 2018 article circulated claiming private investigators "decoded" a previously publicly unknown letter on file with the FBI, which purportedly includes a disguised confession.

Rackstraw died on July 9, 2019 from a heart condition.

Walter R. Reca

Walter R. Reca (1933–2014) (born Walter R. Peca) was a Michigan native, a military veteran and original member of the Michigan Parachute Team. He was proposed as a suspect by his friend Carl Laurin, a former commercial airline pilot and expert parachuter himself, at a press conference on May 17, 2018.  In 2008, Reca confessed to being D.B. Cooper to Laurin via a recorded phone call.  In July 2018, Principia Media released a four-part documentary detailing their investigation.

Reca gave Laurin permission in a notarized letter to share his story after he died in 2014, aged 80. He also allowed Laurin to tape their phone conversations about the crime over a six-week period in late 2008. In the over three hours of recordings, Reca gave new details about the hijacking that the public had not heard before. He also confessed to his niece, Lisa Story.  Using his years of training to determine the location of the jump, Laurin concluded that D.B. Cooper landed near Cle Elum, Washington.

According to written testimony, Jeff Osiadacz, a Cle Elum, Washington native, was driving his dump truck near Cle Elum the night of November 24, 1971, when he saw a man walking down the side of the road in the inclement weather. He assumed the man's car had broken down and was walking to get assistance. He did not have room in his truck to pick him up, and continued toward his destination, the Teanaway Junction Café just outside Cle Elum. After ordering coffee, the man from the side of the road also entered the café looking like a "drowned rat", according to Osiadacz. The man sat next to him and asked if he would be able to give his friend directions if he called him on the phone. Osiadacz agreed to this and spoke with the man's friend, giving him directions to the café. Shortly after that, Osiadacz left for the Grange Hall to play in a band. The man offered to pay for his coffee, and the two amicably parted.

Laurin began his search for the witness, after Reca described the landscape he saw while on his way to the drop zone: two bridges, some distinct lights; and his description of the exterior and interior of the café, as well as his encounter with Osiadacz. He described Osiadacz in detail, recalling that he was wearing western gear and had a guitar case. He dubbed him "Cowboy".

Laurin consulted a map to find these landmarks and began making phone calls about the "Cowboy who had driven a dump truck." Laurin was put in contact with Osiadacz, who recalled meeting a man that night, described what he was wearing and what he looked like, and confirmed his identity as Reca after seeing a photo Laurin sent him.  In addition to the taped confession, Laurin also has a confession written by Reca and long underwear allegedly worn by Reca under his black pants during the hijacking.

In 2016, Laurin took the information to publisher Principia Media, who consulted with Joe Koenig, a forensic linguist.  He evaluated all documents, including passports, identification cards, photographs, and newspaper clippings. Koenig found no evidence of tampering or manipulation and deemed all documentation authentic and contemporaneous. After comparing Laurin's research to the available FBI records, he found no discrepancies that eliminated Reca as a suspect. He also thought it particularly significant that Osiadacz's statement of events on the night of November 24, 1971, was identical to the account that Reca made five years earlier. Koenig publicly stated at the Principia Media press conference on May 17, 2018, that he believes that Walter R. Reca was D.B. Cooper.  On January 8, 2019, Koenig published a book on Cooper, titled Getting the Truth: I Am D.B. Cooper.

William J. Smith

In November 2018, The Oregonian published an article that identified William J. Smith (1928–2018), of Bloomfield, New Jersey, as a possible suspect. The article was based on research from a U.S. Army data analyst who sent his findings to the FBI in mid-2018.  Smith, a New Jersey native, was a World War II Navy veteran and would have been 43 at the time of the hijacking. After high school he enlisted in the Navy and volunteered for combat air crew training, citing his desire to fly. After the Navy, he worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and was impacted by the Penn Central Transportation Company bankruptcy in 1970, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history up until that time. The article theorized that the loss of his pension created a grudge against the corporate establishment and transportation industry. It also created a sudden need for money due to that loss of pension. In Smith's high school yearbook, a list of alumni killed in World War II lists an Ira Daniel Cooper, possibly the source for the hijacker's given name of "Dan Cooper."  The analyst stated that Smith's Naval aviation experience would have given him knowledge of planes and parachutes, and that his railroad experience would have helped him find railroad tracks and hop on a train to escape the area after his jump.  The U.S. Army analyst stated that his research began after he made connections between William J. Smith and the 1985 book D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened by Max Gunther.

The Oregonian article states that particles such as aluminum spiral chips found on the clip-on tie could have come from a locomotive maintenance facility. Furthermore, it states that Smith's information about the Seattle area may have come from his close friend from the railroad, Dan Clair, who was stationed at Fort Lewis during World War II. Smith and Clair worked together in Newark, New Jersey, at the Oak Island Yard, with Smith retiring as a Yardmaster for Conrail. The article also noted that a website devoted to the Lehigh Valley Railroad contained a picture of Smith, and stated that "the resemblance to the wanted-poster sketches was remarkable."  The FBI responded to media requests on Smith by saying it would be "inappropriate" to comment about specific suspects.

Duane Weber

Duane L. Weber was a World War II Army veteran who served time in at least six prisons from 1945 to 1968 for burglary and forgery. He was proposed as a suspect by his widow, based primarily on a deathbed confession: Three days before he died in 1995, Weber told his wife, "I am Dan Cooper." The name meant nothing to her, she said; but months later, a friend told her of its significance in the hijacking. She went to her local library to research D.B. Cooper, found Max Gunther's book, and discovered notations in the margins in her husband's handwriting.

She then recalled, in retrospect, that Weber once had a nightmare during which he talked in his sleep about jumping from a plane, leaving his fingerprints on the "aft stairs".  He also reportedly told her that an old knee injury had been incurred by "jumping out of a plane". Like the hijacker, Weber drank bourbon and chain smoked. Other circumstantial evidence included a 1979 trip to Seattle and the Columbia River, during which Weber took a walk alone along the river bank in the Tina Bar area; four months later Brian Ingram made his ransom cash discovery in the same area.

The FBI eliminated Weber as an active suspect in July 1998 when his fingerprints did not match any of those processed in the hijacked plane, and no other direct evidence could be found to implicate him. Later, his DNA also failed to match the samples recovered from Cooper's tie, though the bureau has since conceded that they cannot be certain that the organic material on the tie came from Cooper.

Copycat hijackings

Cooper was not the first to attempt air piracy for personal gain. In early November 1971, for example, a Canadian man named Paul Joseph Cini hijacked an Air Canada DC-8 over Montana, but was overpowered by the crew when he put down his shotgun to strap on the parachute he had brought with him.  Cooper's apparent success inspired a flurry of imitators, mostly during 1972.  Some notable examples from that year:

·         Garrett Brock Trapnell hijacked a TWA airliner en route from Los Angeles to New York City in January. He demanded $306,800 in cash, the release of Angela Davis, and an audience with President Richard Nixon. After the aircraft landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, he was shot and wounded by FBI agents, then arrested.

·         Richard Charles LaPoint, an Army veteran and "New England beach bum", boarded Hughes Airwest Flight 800 at McCarran airport in Las Vegas on January 20. Brandishing what he claimed was a bomb while the DC-9 was on the taxiway; he demanded $50,000, two parachutes, and a helmet.  After releasing the 51 passengers and two flight attendants, he ordered the plane on an eastward trajectory toward Denver, and then bailed out over the treeless plains of northeastern Colorado. Authorities, tracking the locator-equipped parachute and his footprints in the snow and mud, apprehended him a few hours later.

·         Richard McCoy, Jr., a former Army Green Beret, hijacked a United Airlines 727–100 in April after it left Denver, Colorado, diverted it to San Francisco, and then bailed out over Utah with $500,000 in ransom money. He landed safely, but was arrested two days later.

·         Frederick Hahneman used a handgun to hijack an Eastern Air Lines 727 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in May, demanded $303,000, and eventually parachuted into Honduras, his country of birth. A month later, with the FBI in pursuit and a $25,000 bounty on his head, he surrendered at the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

·         Robb Dolin Heady, a paratrooper and Vietnam veteran, stormed a United Airlines 727 in Reno in early June, extorted $200,000 and two parachutes, and jumped into darkness near Washoe Lake, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Reno. Police found Heady's car (sporting a United States Parachute Association bumper sticker) parked near the lake and arrested him as he returned to it the next morning.

·         Martin McNally, an unemployed service-station attendant, used a submachine gun in late June to commandeer an American Airlines 727 en route from St. Louis to Tulsa, then diverted it eastward to Indiana and bailed out with $500,000 in ransom.  McNally lost the ransom money as he exited the aircraft, but landed safely near Peru, Indiana, and was apprehended a few days later in a Detroit suburb.

In all, 15 hijackings similar to Cooper's — all unsuccessful — were attempted in 1972.  With the advent of universal luggage searches in 1973, the general incidence of hijackings dropped dramatically.  There were no further notable Cooper imitators until July 11, 1980, when Glenn K. Tripp seized Northwest flight 608 at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, demanding $600,000 ($100,000 by an independent account), two parachutes, and the assassination of his boss. A quick-thinking flight attendant had secretly drugged Tripp's alcoholic beverage with Valium. After a 10-hour standoff, during which Tripp reduced his demands to three cheeseburgers and a head start on getting away, he was apprehended.  But on January 21, 1983—while still on probation—he hijacked the same Northwest flight, this time en route, and demanded to be flown to Afghanistan. When the plane landed in Portland, he was shot and killed by FBI agents.

Aftermath

Airport security

The Cooper hijacking marked the beginning of the end for unfettered and unscrutinized commercial airline travel. Despite the initiation of the federal Sky Marshal Program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972; 19 of them were for the specific purpose of extorting money and most of the rest were attempts to reach Cuba.  In 15 of the extortion cases, the hijackers also demanded parachutes.  In early 1973, the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple lawsuits charging that such searches violated Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, federal courts ruled that they were acceptable when applied universally, and when limited to searches for weapons and explosives.  Only two hijackings were attempted in 1973, both by psychiatric patients, one of whom intended to crash the airliner into the White House to kill President Nixon.

Aircraft modifications

In the wake of multiple "copycat" hijackings in 1972, the FAA required that all Boeing 727 aircraft be fitted with a device, later dubbed the "Cooper vane", that prevents lowering of the aft airstair during flight.  As a direct result of the hijacking, the installation of peepholes was mandated in all cockpit doors. This made it possible for the cockpit crew to observe people in the passenger cabin without having to open the cockpit door.

Subsequent history of N467US

In 1978, the hijacked 727-100 aircraft was sold by Northwest to Piedmont Airlines where it was re-registered N838N and continued in domestic carrier service.  In 1984 it was purchased by the now-defunct charter company Key Airlines, re-registered N29KA, and incorporated into the Air Force's civilian charter fleet that shuttled workers between Nellis Air Force Base and the Tonopah Test Range during the top-secret F-117 Nighthawk development program. In 1996, the aircraft was scrapped for parts in a Memphis boneyard.

Earl Cossey

In late April 2013, Earl Cossey – the owner of the skydiving school that furnished the four parachutes that were given to Cooper – was found dead in his home in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle. His death was ruled a homicide due to blunt-force trauma to the head. The perpetrator remains unknown.  Some commenters alleged possible links to the Cooper case, but authorities responded that they have no reason to believe that any such link exists.  Woodinville officials later announced that burglary was most likely the motive for the crime.

Cultural phenomena

Himmelsbach famously called Cooper a "rotten sleazy crook" but his bold and adventurous crime inspired a cult following that was expressed in song, film, and literature. Restaurants and bowling alleys in the Pacific Northwest hold regular Cooper-themed promotions and sell tourist souvenirs. A "Cooper Day" celebration has been held at the Ariel General Store and Tavern each November since 1974 with the exception of 2015, the year its owner, Dona Elliot, died.

Cooper has appeared in the story lines of the television series Prison Break, The Blacklist, NewsRadio, Leverage, Journeyman, Renegade, Numb3rs, 30 Rock and Drunk History, as well as the 1981 film The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, the 2004 film Without a Paddle, and a book titled The Vesuvius Prophecy, based on The 4400 TV series.