Good Morning Gang,
So I was watching this two part special on cable entitled "D.B. Cooper: Case Closed?" It really went into the mystery behind the mythical hijacker who flew under the alias "Dan Cooper". I feel the two part special missed the mark. Towards the end of the special, too much attention I think was given to DB Cooper suspect Robert Rackstraw. Obviously, DB Cooper was one Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. who pulled off a similar skyjack caper less than a year later, and was killed in a shootout with FBI agents not long thence.
The reasons McCoy was ruled out boil down to hearsay and eyewitness testimony. But the eyewitness testimony in my humble opinion is suspect. In my estimation it is entirely possible DB Cooper had help from at least one stewardess and maybe the pilot, based on the strange comments attributed to plane crew. The cable special also featured eyewitness testimony of a passenger who witnessed the initial meeting between DB Cooper and the flight attendant. The meeting was peculiar and made the passenger suspicious, seemingly of both Cooper and the attendant. That was supposed to be the moment Cooper passed the ransom note to the flight attendant.
If the flight attendant was in on it, why would she correctly identify Cooper? She wouldn't. She would rule Floyd McCoy out.
In my humble opinion, Floyd McCoy is the only suspect that actually looks like the DB Cooper composite sketch. He also possessed the training and criminal history to not only be able to pull off such a hijacking, but the criminal history of actually having successfully done so.
For those unfamiliar with the subject, Wikipedia summarizes the crime below:
"D. B. Cooper is a media epithet popularly used to refer to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971, extorted $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to $1,170,000 in 2015), and parachuted to an uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and protracted FBI investigation, the perpetrator has never been located or identified."
