[helicopter flying]
[news anchor 1] All these years later, they're still looking for D.B. Cooper.
[lilting piano music playing]
[news anchor 2] The area has been searched many times
by the FBI, the Army, and amateur fortune seekers.
[news anchor 3] A lot of people fantasize
about what may have happened.
Authorities still don't know whether he's dead or alive.
To them, he's a fugitive. To others, he's a legend.
Everyone picks an area that they want to look at.
Some people go after the money, some people go after the flight path.
Everyone's got their own take.
People really want the answers to these questions.
It's just human nature.
And, invariably, that takes people down a certain path.
We're throwing a lot of technology at these Cooper bills.
I'm determined to search where that money was found.
There's a lot of good reasons to think he's alive.
I never wanted to walk away from this case,
because… the treasure's too great.
It's too good a story. Just to say, "I don't want to do it,
I don't want to be involved anymore" is missing out.
You're sucked into the Cooper vortex.
[laughs]
So welcome aboard. We're going to go for a spin.
[jazzy scatting, funky music playing]
[news anchor] Today at the San Joaquin County courthouse,
Rackstraw is being kept in solitary confinement,
partly because the FBI still believes
he may be D.B. Cooper.
[interviewer] Are you willing to state whether or not you're D.B. Cooper?
I'm afraid of heights.
When we learned that the FBI looked at him in '78, '79,
we said, "Wow, they had him."
But they couldn't prove it.
When I hear about Rackstraw for the first time in 2011,
having all the talents we need, we said, "Let's make the team."
The Cold Case Team had me as the lawyer,
had some folks from the military, had a lot of law enforcement retirees,
and some intelligence officers.
[Colbert] We created a 40-member team.
What makes this team unique
is that most of our folks that are involved are over 50,
and that's when they retire from public service.
They love the passion of the hunt.
They look at it and say, "Hey, I may not be on the front line,
but I can provide my expertise."
And they believed the idea of, "There's something here."
[upbeat music playing]
I pretty firmly believe there's very few things that can't be solved.
Here, we've got this evidence of this guy, Robert Rackstraw.
If you look at Rackstraw's background,
he has the training, the capability, the attitude to pull this off.
This guy led an interesting life.
[Colbert] As a child, he was a troublemaker.
He was stealing, he was drinking.
But then he found the military.
Are you ready?
[men] Yeah!
Go!
His family told us, "The military saved Bob."
[bluesy rock music playing]
♪ Put your feet to the sole My friends ♪
♪ And remember those army boots ♪
♪ Jump around… ♪
[Sherwood] I arrived in Vietnam January, 1968.
Rackstraw showed up in 1969.
Rackstraw ended up being a replacement pilot.
He went through Ken Overturf.
I first met Robert Rackstraw in Vietnam.
I was recruiting pilots, and Robert volunteered for the mission.
The project was called Project Left Bank.
Left Bank was a top-secret radio direction mission
to locate the enemy target.
The hazards of being killed was probably the reason
why there were so few volunteers for that mission.
I believe for Rackstraw,
that was a thrill.
He was looking for excitement.
[Sherwood] He was crazy.
But, I mean, I guess you could call him gutsy.
You know, because he pulled off some… wild stuff.
[Overturf] While I was commander of the platoon,
we lost one aircraft,
and all four crew members.
[no audio]
I lost Jack Knapp, Boogle, Smitty, Heidi.
Uh…
Yes, those were four very good men.
[man] Aim!
-Fire! -[gunshots]
Aim!
-Fire! -[gunshots]
Aim! Fire!
[gunshots]
[Overturf] After Vietnam,
Rackstraw was assigned to the Army Aviation Training Center
at Fort Rucker, Alabama.
However, shortly after arrival, he had problems
when he was disciplined for domestic violence.
It was also discovered that he had falsified
many of his military records.
I was disappointed when I found out
that he was not quite what he presented himself to be.
[Sherwood] Rackstraw was drummed out of the military.
With all that training this guy had,
he was gonna make a career out of military, you could bet on it.
And he was not happy.
[Colbert] He wrote an angry letter to the military, where he says,
"I would hate to use the talents the Army gave me,
because I would be quite an adversary."
[Kunkel] Bob Rackstraw was my ex-husband.
We married in 1974.
I had just been divorced,
had two wonderful children.
He liked my children,
but we were married barely two years.
It was kind of a wild ride with him.
He wasn't the average Joe
that worked every day, came home, wanted dinner on the table.
He liked excitement.
He would take me to all those places,
like we were some rich people.
I trusted him.
Never asked about his salary.
But then he opened up a print shop in San Jose.
He had forged my name
so that he could get a loan for the print shop.
And of course, I did not know that at the time.
[dramatic music playing]
Robert Rackstraw is a fascinating character,
especially in the '70s.
When I started digging through the records that we had at the archives,
I found the court records for the murder trial.
[Immendorf] August of 1977,
I was contacted by a gentleman with a request to assist him
by trying to locate his missing brother, Philip Rackstraw.
He was quite sure that his brother Philip may have met with foul play.
[Van Zant] Robert Rackstraw had a few failed businesses,
and he came home to Valley Springs.
His mother had died of cancer.
The stepfather was going to help him out, and they went into business together.
Heavy equipment, construction, that type of thing.
[Colbert] Robert Rackstraw was cheating the father's clients.
His stepdad found out about it.
There were bags of receipts the dad was taking to an accountant,
and that evening, the bags were gone.
Rackstraw became a suspect
because he had told everybody, family members,
that his stepfather Philip had left for Hawaii.
[Immendorf] After a lot of thorough investigation,
it was pretty clear that Philip Rackstraw was not in Hawaii.
I tried to encourage them to start looking around
to see if they could find any evidence of a burial on the property.
Because the dogs, they would not leave the property there.
[Van Zant] There was an indentation, and so they went to investigate
on the family property, where they found his remains.
He had a bullet in the back of his head.
[ominous music playing]
[Van Zant] Robert Rackstraw would show up to court in a wheelchair
and claim Vietnam injuries, but none could be documented.
[Colbert] The visual of a man in a wheelchair,
sympathetic, verge of crying, getting up on the stand,
say, "I didn't kill him, but I'll find that killer."
The jury bought it, not guilty.
[Immendorf] When I met him for the first time face-to-face,
I remember being in the courtroom.
And if looks could kill,
I swear, he would have liked to have killed me on the spot.
I will never forget the stare that he gave me.
I believe Bob Rackstraw
could shoot his dad
and never turn his head again to look back.
I believe that.
[police sirens wailing]
The 1970s was a really elaborate decade for Robert Rackstraw.
After the murder trial,
he was awaiting the charges for keeping explosives,
and check kiting, and possible fraud.
[news anchor] Yesterday, Rackstraw was sentenced
for writing $46,000 in bad checks.
A jury convicted him of the charges after a three-week trial,
which cost San Joaquin County hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Part of the cost, the price of this car,
bought by the district attorney and deliberately blown up to show the jury
what a desperate man might do
with explosives police found in Rackstraw's possession.
This year, Rackstraw pleaded no contest
to charges of renting this plane in Stockton,
radioing a distress call from over the ocean just west of Monterey,
and then, while Coast Guard rescue planes searched the sea,
landing in Orange County,
where he repainted the plane and altered its identification numbers.
[Van Zant] He was trying to skip bail from the explosives charges.
He conned the whole thing.
[news anchor] When officers in Stockton raised the D.B. Cooper question,
Rackstraw invoked his right to have an attorney present,
and the inquiry stopped.
So at this point, he is simply an interesting possibility
facing trial on other charges,
while the FBI continues to investigate.
You think it's legit that you could be one of the suspects?
One of the thousands?
Oh yes, if I was an investigator, definitely so.
I wouldn't discount myself.
I wouldn't, no, or a person like myself.
Were you in the Washington area at that time?
I've been in the Washington area a number of times.
The FBI's verified all that. That's one reason they keep hounding me.
The FBI absolutely knew who Robert Rackstraw was,
and they suspected him for being D.B. Cooper,
and they got persuaded to go down another path.
They might have, for a good reason at the time, ruled him out,
but the reality is they missed their man.
And I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Why did the bureau do that?
[no audio]
Why would they protect somebody that they thought
quite possibly was the person that committed this crime?
[Overturf] We have information
that Rackstraw had associations
with the CIA
on black ops missions.
Very deep-cover missions.
[Edward] The Central Intelligence Agency is tasked
primarily with national security interest.
But most of their activity is overseas
although they do have a domestic mission as well.
To try to find spies.
There was a fellow that came into our company area one day,
driving his Jeep with machine guns mounted on the back.
He'd been in the jungle for quite some time,
needed some rest and relaxation.
He identified himself as CIA.
And he and Rackstraw just hit it off immediately.
After a couple of days, I observe Rackstraw
departing with the CIA fellow in his Jeep.
He was gone for at least three days.
I believe that may have been his opening in later years
for an association with the CIA.
[car horn honking]
[Van Zant] He did work for Bell Helicopter in Iran,
and I'm not sure, in the 1970s, how you could do that
without some sort of formal CIA clearance.
[Immendorf] This was just before the Shah of Iran
had been overthrown.
The Ayatollah was already in the area.
The Bell Helicopter people
were in the process of training the Shah's helicopter pilots.
[car horns honking]
[Colbert] He was there in Nicaragua
when Iran-Contra started.
He was involved in all that.
Some call it a scandal, others, a tragedy.
Today's startling revelation that up to $30 million
from the secret arms deal with Iran ended up in the hands
of anti-government forces in Nicaragua, the Contras.
The United States has not swapped boatloads and planeloads of weapons
for the return of American hostages, and we will not.
Let's face it, we're talking about a CIA operative,
not an employee.
He was hired to fly planes.
There must be a half-dozen women he bragged that he was in the CIA.
We have found police officers that were told in interrogation
for his local crimes, "You know, I'm CIA."
If we was an operative of CIA,
as many would suggest,
maybe the CIA just doesn't want to disclose that
for national security reasons.
[Overturf] CIA, within the hierarchy of the intelligence communities,
trumps the FBI.
CIA tells FBI,
"Don't prosecute this fellow,
'cause he will tell stories we don't want told."
[Christy] I went to one of my friends, who was a senior retired intel officer.
And I asked him, "Do you have any contacts with the CIA
that could tell you
whether he actually did fly for Iran-Contra?"
He said, "I asked my source and the answer came back,
'We cannot confirm.'"
Which is code for yes,
'cause the traditional response is, "We cannot confirm or deny."
But if you just say "confirm," "we cannot confirm,"
that's code for, "Yes, he did."
[Gray] In my opinion, I couldn't find any real reason
to believe that Rackstraw was a really strong suspect.
Unfortunately, we're missing the one piece of evidence
that could close the whole deal,
and the one piece of evidence is those cigarette butts.
[Ulis] When D.B. Cooper was on the flight,
he actually smoked eight cigarettes on the jet.
The FBI agents from Las Vegas had the cigarette butts.
And now we know that would be perfect for DNA analysis.
But the Las Vegas guys can't find it.
They did really fuck up in a couple of areas
that really put the truth out of reach.
[no audio]
[Schreuder] I think the FBI response was all they had at the time.
By that, I mean no stops were pulled.
I mean, cost was not an object, manpower was not an object.
We got things done,
I think, very efficiently.
[Gray] The first sketch that the sketch artist put,
the so-called Bing Crosby sketch,
created a ripple effect of paranoia throughout the country,
because the sketch was so basic.
If you looked at it long enough, it looks like nobody
and it looks like everybody.
Just an anonymous male.
Like a businessman.
Probably like 90% of people on a flight back then.
[no audio]
The FBI put this out to the public, and so many tips
came into their offices, they couldn't really find a good lead.
It was this canvas of paranoia,
people thinking their closest ones were D.B. Cooper.
[Mitchell] He was a hero.
It was a very bad economic time.
Everybody kind of looked at him in Robin Hood terms.
He was looked up to by everybody, except a few of us.
I don't know how many hundreds of pictures
amateur sleuths sent me
that that guy thinks that his brother's uncle's cousin's nephew's dad
on his deathbed said he was D.B. Cooper.
And they'd show me this picture and say, "Does that guy look like him?"
[Gray] He was your neighbor. He was your co-worker.
He was that person that you were in Vietnam with.
He was anyone you wanted him to be.
[Mendez] Every piece of this story is controversial.
Every fact that you think is a fact
is maybe not quite the fact that you think that it is.
When I was at CIA as Chief of Disguise,
we would reverse everything about you that we could reverse.
When I first looked at those sketches,
one of the first things I thought of: "Is that really what he looks like?"
Who says he wasn't blond? Who says his swarthy skin wasn't makeup?
He's in a suit and tie, but it's a great disguise
if you don't wear a suit and tie every day.
[Rymsza-Pawlowska] He just looks like an organization man.
He looks conformist.
You know, I mean, I'm sure if he had not been so clean-cut,
perhaps he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. I don't know.
One of the flight attendants I tracked down
said, "I knew he had makeup on."
We had a witness who said, "He has black hair like it's shiny."
He had dyed his hair.
There's room there for lots of interesting shenanigans.
One possibility is maybe there's a guy on the ground.
When you read the air traffic controller report, flares were seen.
Lit flares in the night sky on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.
Seeing flares on the same night of a hijacking,
to me, that's something that should be looked into, not be discounted.
So the question is, did he have an extraction team?
He got away with all his money, his parachutes, his bomb.
Because nothing's ever been found. And he really did it in a slick move.
Where's that stuff?
I think the person on the ground scooped it all up,
the parachute, the money, and D.B., and off they went.
Another option is that most of the money never left the plane.
$200,000 in $20 bills,
it weighed more than 20 pounds.
I wouldn't jump out of a plane with that.
But how did the money get to Tena Bar?
[news anchor] In 1980, on this sandy riverbank in Washington state,
an eight-year-old boy on a family outing found some of D.B. Cooper's loot.
[Mendez] Probably somebody walked over to that riverbank
and put the money in later.
Just a guess.
There's so many ways this could go.
[mysterious music playing]
[phone ringing]
[Russoniello] When I looked at the record Tom had,
I was convinced in my own mind that if I were the prosecutor on the case,
not only would I get an indictment,
but I'd be able to get enough evidence built up
in order to convict Rackstraw of the crimes
that were attributed to this D.B. Cooper.
[Zaid] I don't think there was anything
in almost the decade that I had been working on the case
that actually pulled us away from Robert Rackstraw.
It would just add on to each new piece of evidence against him.
Now, was it ever conclusive?
No, it was never conclusive in that way.
But "beyond a reasonable doubt"?
I would have been comfortable saying, "Yeah, I find Robert Rackstraw guilty."
Especially with understanding, as a lawyer, that, you know,
many murderers are convicted on circumstantial evidence.
-Mic on? Is it working? Test one, two. -[cameraman] Sounds beautiful.
Okay, great.
[Zaid] Tom's thought was always, "I'm going to turn this into a book."
"I'm going to turn this into a documentary."
And so he started to put together this film crew.
And Jim Forbes was to be sort of the face and voice
of what we were doing at the time.
-[cameraman] We're rolling. -We good?
[Forbes] Back in the summer of 2012, Tom Colbert approached me.
We had worked together at CBS back in the mid-'80s.
He was very persistent,
and said, "I really have something large that I'd like you to look into."
When I saw it was D.B. Cooper, I did an eye roll.
I'm certainly not a D.B. Cooperite, and never have been.
There was only one thing that attracted me to this story:
Robert Rackstraw.
There were a lot of interesting characteristics
about his background, about his personality, his whereabouts,
that intrigued me.
He just kept…
He was Charlotte, I was on the web.
He was dragging me in.
One of the most exciting moments for all of us was finding Linda Loduca,
Rackstraw's sister.
[Colbert] I had a sense they were estranged,
because I didn't see any communications between the two.
And I sent her a letter.
We got a four-hour interview with Linda in San Luis Obispo,
most incredible interview, on why she felt he could be Cooper.
She told me just before sitting down she had recurring cancer.
And I said, "We don't want to do this." And she said. "I have to speak."
It got to the point, for me, when he would talk,
and I would know that a lot of what he said was not true.
[Forbes] When it was first suggested to you by an FBI agent…
back in the late '70s that your brother might be D.B. Cooper, you chuckled.
Yeah, I guess I did.
-I mean, you didn't take it seriously. -Not really.
Now that you've read all the evidence we have,
what do you think now about the possibilities?
Um, I think they're strong.
I mean, thinking about the skill set and the…
He's just the type of person to do it, too, I mean, his personality.
He was angry at the time, and he would have planned this out
and done it just out of anger at the military
and everyone around him, um…
But I think there's a strong-- a very strong possibility
he's D.B. Cooper.
The one thing that has thrown me through this, when I'm looking at that,
is that the stewardess--
and again, there's nervousness when you're trying to describe,
but the one that saw him without dark glasses on
said he had brown eyes.
Bob did not have brown eyes.
And we've looked into that as well,
and I forget what the confusion is, and I won't-- Do you want to offer?
[Colbert] Just quickly, there is a green-brown context to his eyes.
Mm-hmm.
[Colbert] And the woman, who had only moments to look--
-Right. -She went off the glasses and said brown.
But-- and there are some pictures, he looked brown,
but there are also some, I showed you, the ones where he looks green.
-Yeah. -So it's how you catch him in the light.
Yeah, that's true. That's absolutely true.
So, you know, just kind of go, "Okay, he doesn't have brown eyes."
But, yeah, I understand.
[dramatic music playing]
In May of 2013, the decision was finally made.
They're going to approach Rackstraw directly.
That's it right there.
[Zaid] You know, they took a camera crew out there
to try and do, you know, a very on-the-cuff surprise interview.
[Colbert] I have surrounded myself
with powerful representatives of their fields,
from cameramen to investigative individuals.
I was counting on these folks to cover me out in the field.
[Forbes] My original reach-out to Rackstraw was via phone
in the first week of November of 2012.
And I painted the picture of what we were doing.
"We're doing a retrospective 41 years later on D.B. Cooper."
"I know you were one of the many suspects."
"I know you were exonerated,
or dropped as a suspect, if not exonerated."
"And I'd like to discuss that experience with you."
At the end of the conversation, I said, "We'd love to come do an interview."
He said okay. And he kept stalling.
And kept stalling.
So I finally said, "Tom, if you want to move forward,
we gotta get answers."
"We need to go down and talk to him."
If you can keep letting us know what's going on, that'd be great.
[walkie-talkie chirps]
[man on radio] Stand by, Jim.
[Forbes] Here he is. Here he is.
Target is at the place of business with the dog.
He's getting out of the car now.
Tom, you should be pulling up.
[Colbert] Dear God, give me strength.
Give me courage.
"Bob, look, I got a question for you."
"Hey, I got a question for you."
"I got a question for you."
Frankly, I've dreamed of the approach.
All these months and months and months, I couldn't get out of my head,
"I just want to face this guy
and tell him who he is, what he is, and what we want."
Thank God Jim Forbes and others convinced me
to be a little more objective in the approach.
I'm pretty comfortable with facing danger,
but I realize now with a family, as most of us,
you have to be cautious.
My primary mission was,
I was there to offer him a potential movie
and a book on his story that he could be involved with.
[Forbes] On the first day, Tom originally went and spoke with him.
He wanted to sit down with him.
Do a two-camera, eye-to-eye interview, as we are doing right now.
And peel back the layers of the onion.
And look in his eyes.
-I'm Bob. -Bob, nice to meet you.
You know, I've been wanting to meet you a long time.
Okay.
Oh for Christ's sake! Tom, yeah.
I wasn't going to let you stand me up for lunch, pal.
Got a second? Can we sit down?
Uh, yeah, let me take care of this gentleman here.
[whispering] Bob Rackstraw, your life's about to change.
Well, look, it's so great to meet the real guy, you know?
[laughing] Yeah.
I wanted to ask you, first, a question.
I kind of want to ask you why you're in the middle of this.
You remember Jim Forbes, right? You know I work with him now and then.
-Yeah. -Well, this is one of those times.
Jim has told me he has found 54 of your old friends
from San Francisco, to traffickers up in Portland,
to college classmates at OSU.
We've got ten hours of tape on these folks,
and they have told us a very intriguing story about you.
[Rackstraw] Wait a minute. Are you saying that 54 individuals
said that I was D.B. Cooper?
[Colbert] We have all these people onboard,
and we're about to go with a documentary.
That's the bad news, but there's good news.
And it starts with a $20,000 cashier's check
to get you to tell your true story.
And then it becomes your book,
it becomes your documentary, and it becomes your movie.
We've got a hotel room.
You sit down, you tell your story, you get this check.
Then you get between, according to my attorney in Hollywood,
between a quarter and half-million dollars by the end of the year.
The book's out, the documentary is out, causes a bidding war for the movie.
The price goes up, we all make more money.
And also, this is not just about Hollywood.
I've got two attorneys for you in DC.
Nobody's going to get a jury to convict a legend
who pulled a stunt where no one was hurt.
We're not here to make arrests--
You know that I wasn't D.B. Cooper, so what the hell is the story all about?
All your friends have given us information and we'd like to--
-you to straighten this out. -Is that the Google glasses?
-[Colbert] No, it's not Google glasses. -What are they?
-[Colbert] They're my glasses. -Oh, okay.
[Colbert] So anyway, we're going to set you up to sit down--
No cameras in there?
[Colbert] Cameras? Come on, Bob.
[laughs]
Jesus. You got cameras on?
-No, but if you feel more comfortable-- -I'll take 'em off.
You want me to take my glasses off? You want to see me?
-You want to see me? Okay. -Yeah.
[Rackstraw] But anyway, back to your contract offer.
When you're looking at that,
when I first looked at it, basically, it was: you wanted everything, uh,
that my name, and me as a person.
[Colbert] That's what a life story is in Hollywood.
You can't just pick a sliver.
Yeah, well, as far as I'm concerned, Hollywood can take a flying leap.
But the $20,000, that's two months rent.
If you can't cough up more than 25 grand, shit, what does it say about the rest?
[Colbert] I will tell you, if you're D.B. Cooper,
I'll pay you 20 grand.
[Rackstraw] No, I'm not. So, I'm not. I mean, get that in your head.
[Colbert] Yeah. Yeah.
[Rackstraw] They brought a stewardess into jail when they held me.
-And she said, "No, that's…" -Let me see if I can reach Jim.
That's when the FBI backed off.
[Colbert] I wasn't surprised with the way he acted.
I have lost my objectivity on this years ago,
and I know who he is in my heart, so I expected him to listen.
I wouldn't expect an innocent man to listen.
And he listened because he wanted to see how much I knew.
[Rackstraw] There's an upper level and a lower level.
[Ulis] Look at it from Rackstraw's perspective.
Here's a guy who obviously had a colorful past,
had a couple run-ins with the law,
but he did his time, so to speak.
And apparently lived very clean after he did his time.
So he's got decades of being a solid citizen.
And then years later, all of a sudden,
he's the subject of, you know,
drive-by kind of interviews and things of that nature.
In the processes of this whole thing being put together,
he was arguably harassed.
[Forbes] I said, "Bob, here's the deal. We'll come back tomorrow with cameras,
and let's sit down and do an interview."
"Because no one should tell your story except for you."
And he said, "Okay, I'll call you." I said, "You got to call by 9:00 tonight."
"We're gonna be here nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
"I'm telling you." And he said, "No, no, I will."
And we shook hands very firmly, and I looked him in the eye,
and I said, "You're not gonna call, Bob."
Okay, we're en route.
Okay, we're approaching the traffic circle.
The other half of the approach was Jim Forbes,
with the confrontation of the facts.
That wasn't my job.
My job was to convince him,
and I think it's more in my personality.
In my background, I hate…
what some people call ambush interviews.
There was no ambush, because we said we'd be there.
Sometimes you have no choice, especially with a public official
who's ducking asking pertinent questions.
Bob was a private citizen,
but he was a very public private citizen years ago.
Um…
And we had reason to believe there was the possibility
that he was D.B. Cooper.
-So if he draws, drop or punch him? -Yeah.
-Uh, well, it's up to you. -[both laugh]
-Depends how close you are to him. -Yeah, right.
[man] The thing with the…
-Are you guys rolling? -Yeah.
I got ten rounds now. I have two more clips.
-That's enough. -You're good. You know…
If I can't hit him in one round, two rounds never hurts.
Yeah, you know, you're better than that.
-You're trained. -Good to know.
[cell phone rings]
-Hello? -[man] I got him.
They should be there in about three minutes, four minutes.
Okay.
[dramatic music playing]
[Forbes] I see it. He's inside the box hanging out.
-[man] Which box? -[Forbes] You see the open box down there?
Bob, it's Jim Forbes.
Come on, Bob, let's do this the right way. Come out and talk to me.
Why are you hiding in a storage bin?
Innocent men don't hide in storage bins, Bob.
Just imagine the visuals of this, Bob.
I've got some easy questions…
and you're hiding in a storage bin to avoid them.
So do the simple thing
and come out and talk, and we're done.
All right, finally. He got the call from Tom, I guess.
-[Colbert] Did you talk to Tom, Bob? -[Rackstraw, on phone] That I did, yeah.
-Tom, I just-- -I'm not gonna argue with you.
I'm not either, so why don't we do this the right way?
Okay, well, you have your way, I have my way.
Well, I've been trying your way for the last six months.
No, you haven't, and I've also turned it on to the attorney,
and he said, "Don't talk to Jim. He's one of those--"
"He'll make up stories and do things sideways."
And I said, "Okay, I won't."
So without making up stories, let me ask you a simple question.
-Are you the person who boarded a flight… -What did I just tell you?
…on November 24th, 1971,
identifying yourself as Dan Cooper?
-Maybe I did. -Did you hijack the plane
when it was coming out of Seattle toward Reno?
-Did you jump out--? -Maybe I wasn't clear, Jim.
Maybe I wasn't clear.
-Are you that person? Are you D.B. Cooper? -Don't try and play junior Dan Rather.
Bob, do me a favor?
Go on in the shop and just lock the door. Do that for me?
Yeah.
Now? Go on.
[Forbes] Bob, are you D.B. Cooper?
Bob, we have eyewitnesses that have you in Astoria
and Corvallis, Oregon, from the time of your discharge in 1971
to the time of the hijacking. Were you there?
Bob, after your acquittal for murder,
why did you steal a plane?
Why did you run, Bob, if you're not guilty?
[Gray] This is one of the biggest manhunts
in the history of American law enforcement.
So you could say that the only more famous person than D.B. Cooper
is the person who finds him.
And with that fame and attention, come the glory and the gold.
[Forbes] I know we're driving you crazy and I don't mean to, and I'm sorry.
No, I don't. I have no--
Give me space or my fangs are gonna come out.
And I'll tell all four of you that.
[Forbes] I know you can see that it looks pretty bad
that he won't answer these questions and that he's hiding,
and he needs you to tell him to get out of here.
Just worried about his blood pressure, man.
He said… You probably heard about the blood pressure.
Man, I don't want to kill the fucking guy.
I'm worried about him.
It's hot. He has poor health.
Now, this is serious, and I'm really concerned.
I'm not here to cause him ill health.
It was a very unfulfilling exchange.
Not at all what I wanted.
It actually didn't close any doors, it opened others in my mind.
It didn't put out any flames, it ignited others in my mind.
He was crazy evasive.
[Colbert] What I was hoping for, what I had dreamed for,
for two years now,
and that is a sit-down with this guy where we could talk man-to-man.
And I feel as best as I could have expected came off.
We feel like we've solved this case.
It's now just for the posterity of saying, "Yes, we solved the D.B. Cooper case,"
but really to show that the methodology that we put together works.
We knew we had the right guy.
[Ulis] I'm of the opinion that a lot of what we've seen recently,
with respect to Colbert and his group and Rackstraw,
is tremendously flawed.
I think he just wants to be known as the guy
who solved the D.B. Cooper mystery.
The fame or whatever that comes along with it,
the cash, perhaps that's part of it. I don't know.
Maybe it's just the ability to be part of a Wikipedia page
that says, "This guy solved the case." I'm not really sure.
But I think, ultimately, that's what drives him.
That's my opinion. Ultimately, that's what has driven him,
and the problem is, it has clouded his judgment.
[interviewer] As you mentioned yourself,
your background suggests that you could have been D.B. Cooper.
Could have been.
[Zaid] Whether or not Rackstraw was D.B. Cooper,
he enjoyed the whole fantasy
that he is thought to be D.B. Cooper.
[Burrough] Look, everybody who starts down this path
starts with curiosity.
They come to their beliefs, whatever they may be,
and they invest more and more time perpetuating their beliefs.
And what you find, by and large, is that at some point,
they stop looking for answers and they're looking for confirmation
of their own beliefs that they have generated about this.
That's what confirmation bias is,
is looking for things that you believe confirm your notion.
There's too much evidence that lines up. It was definitely Rackstraw.
We're looking for the facts. That's what my team reminds me every day.
Not to get tied up in the hocus-pocus aspects of mysteries.
Focus on the facts.
I have people come up to me and say, "You're obsessed."
I'm driven.
[Gray] This case is a marathon, it's a sacrifice,
it's a gauntlet, it's a pit.
The closer you are involved in it, the harder it is to get out.
[dramatic music playing]