The Hidden Code That Could Reveal D.B. Cooper's True Identity

Investigators examining documents supposedly sent by D.B. Cooper believe a secret coded message may finally have confirmed the true identity of the infamous airplane hijacker.

A nine-digit number typed at the bottom of a letter, supposedly sent by Cooper, could only have come from one person – a maverick Vietnam veteran from San Diego called Robert Rackstraw, former FBI agents claim.

The former serviceman, believed to be alive and well, may have included the coded message to signal to his co-conspirators that he survived the leap from a Boeing 727 over Southwest Washington.

Tom Colbert, the lead investigator of a 40-person cold case team, said a code-breaker working for him noticed the sequence and found corresponding versions in archived newspapers.

Combined, the codes refer to three covert military units that Rackstraw had ties to during the war.

While a former commander Rackstraw his told Colbert that he would have learned some basic encryption codes before being pulled from the unit because he didn’t qualify for security clearances.

A former FBI agent who worked on the case in the early 1980s, said the codes, if accurately translated, are significant.

‘I think the coding thing is remarkable, but I’m a hard skeptic,’ said Dorwin Schreuder, speaking to SeattlePI.

A nine-digit number typed at the bottom of a letter, supposedly sent by Cooper, could only have come from one person – a maverick Vietnam veteran Rackstraw

‘The circumstances of those codes being what Tom says they are, that he says nobody but him would know these units and these figures, if it’s true that’s pretty hard to argue against. Rackstraw might be his guy.’

The theory supports what Colbert has argued for some time – that the dare-devil heist was carried out by former soldier Rackshaw, now living in California.

In November he obtained his most recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) package, which pointed towards at him but revealed nothing definitive.

The letter, which was sent 17 days after the hijacking appears to contain information that was not released into the public domain until 13 years later.

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