The FBI initially mistook Robert Wesley Rackstraw for DB Cooper, the infamous skyjacker. Exploration was important to Robert Rackstraw. He also liked conflict and danger.
Rackstraw died of natural causes on Tuesday in San Diego. He was 75. He is survived by his wife Dorothy, “many children, and grandchildren,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Is Robert Rackstraw DB Cooper? – Wikipedia
The Ohio native, Robert Rackstraw dropped out of high school, was born in 1943. He served as a distinguished U.S. Army paratrooper in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s before being expelled from the service for lying and other misdeeds. In the years that followed, he explored a variety of careers and pastimes, which led to legal issues.
He spent the 1970s committing crime after crime. He fabricated his military papers, faced domestic abuse charges, and used his wife’s identity fraudulently on a loan application. In addition, he wrote a ton of bad checks, stocked explosives, and was accused of killing his stepfather but was never found guilty.
Briggs was exposed as a lie by Colbert’s research. He had never even served in Vietnam. Colbert located a narc, who had previously known Briggs through his connections within the police. Colbert was pointed in the direction of Robert Rackstraw, Briggs’ former associate. This is how he was first noticed by Colbert.
At the US Army Airborne School in Ft. Benning, Georgia, Rackstraw underwent parachute training. He also studied microwave engineering and took scuba diving lessons in California. In the 1970s, Rackstraw obtained more than 30 criminal titles.
Meet Robert Rackstraw Wife And Family Members – Obituary
Robert W. Rackstraw was a married man. There is not much about his wife and family members but, we can see his wife’s photo on the web, who pins chopper wings on him. On his crime list, he was convicted as a wife-beater as well.
When Rackstraw passed away in his Bankers Hill apartment, he was also a target for amateur detectives looking into the case of D.B. Cooper, the infamous skyjacker who made history in 1971 by leaping from a Northwest Orient Airlines flight carrying $200,000 in cash.
Rackstraw passed away in the early hours of the morning in his residence to the west of Balboa Park, according to the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday, July 9, 2019. The 75-year-old Army veteran’s chronic cardiac ailment was declared the cause of his death.
Robert Rackstraw On Netflix Docuseries “DB Cooper: Where Are You?”
Robert Rackstraw’s story is on Netflix with the title “DB Cooper: Where Are You?.” Tom Colbert, a writer, and D.B. Cooper investigator is the source of the main hypothesis presented in the first part of the docuseries based on his research.

He concluded that Rackstraw was the one who pulled off the infamous D.B. Cooper airplane heist. A man in a suit and sunglasses took a plane hostage in exchange for $200,000, received the money, and then made off with it by parachute jumping.
What about Robert Rackstraw—was he D.B. Cooper?—and who is he? If you have all these questions in mind, D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! answers them all. The docuseries are made to untangle all the mysteries of Rackstraw and DB Cooper.