Fighter Pilot Robert Rackstraw Cause Of Death Was Longstanding Heart Condition, Was He DB Cooper?

Robert Rackstraw died on July 9, 2019, at the age of 75. He had had a long-term heart condition that led to his death. Rackstraw was a helicopter pilot in the US Army. He was trained in explosives and psychological operations and served in Vietnam.

Robert Rackstraw died on July 9, 2019, at the age of 75. He had had a long-term heart condition that led to his death.

Rackstraw was a helicopter pilot in the US Army. He was trained in explosives and psychological operations and served in Vietnam.

The Arizona Republic wrote a long article about Rackstraw, 75, and their efforts to prove that they were the skyjacker from 1971 who disappeared after jumping out of a Northwest Orient plane in Oregon with $200,000 in bribe money and parachuting to the ground.

Rackstraw denied several times that he was the hijacker, but sometimes he said things that weren’t clear about the claim.

Robert Rackstraw’s Death Cause

Robert Rackstraw died of a heart condition that had been going on for a long time. He died on July 9, 2019, when he was 75 years old.

He was asked his whole life who the real DB Cooper was, but he never said. Before the Iranian Revolution, he was also a hired pilot in Iran. He spent more than a year in jail for stealing an airplane and passing fake checks.

He also had a lot of training as a paratrooper. The team of investors also thought that Robert was one of the most respected pilots when he was in Vietnam. Rackstraw came back from a 15-month tour of duty in Vietnam in 1970 with 50 awards, including 12 air medals.

Even though the public knew Rackstraw as the person “most likely to be D.B. Cooper,” he had built a successful life for himself after getting involved in crime in 1980.

The San Diego Union-Tribune says that he was elected to the board of his homeowner’s association and picked as the head inspector for the Riverside County building department. He also worked for the University of California, Riverside as an online teacher.

Fighter Pilot Helped DB Cooper Solve a Mystery

The true-crime documentary “D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?” is now available on Netflix. It brings up a lot of interesting questions. It tells the story of the D.B. Cooper hijacking, which is an interesting FBI case that hasn’t been solved yet.

After the hijacking, the FBI did a huge search for Cooper. Agents talked to tens of thousands of people, including Rackstraw.

Rackstraw was not thought to be a suspect at first because people thought he was too young. Cooper was thought to be between 35 and 45 years old by witnesses, but Rackstraw was only 28 years old at the time.

Years later, though, a filmmaker named Tom Colbert and his 40-person team of investigators, which included former FBI agents, found enough evidence to support the claim that Rackstraw was behind the hijacking. In 2016, the miniseries D.B. Cooper: Case Closed? on the History Channel gave Rackstraw another look as a suspect.

First of all, Rackstraw had the smarts and confidence he needed to pull off a hijacking. During his time in the Army, he learned how to use bombs and parachutes.

Is D.B. Cooper Robert Rackstraw?

Tom Colbert says that Rackstraw was D.B. Cooper. Even though there is a lot of evidence that he was the famous skyjacker, there isn’t any proof that proves it for sure.

Rackstraw probably knew this and teased reporters and investigators about the possibility over the years, but he never said anything about it. The first thing that makes Rackstraw a likely suspect is that he was in the military.

He was an army pilot who took part in the Vietnam War for a short time, so he knew a lot about flying and skydiving. When the D.B. Cooper incident happened, he had been out of the army for only five months. According to the Netflix documentary, he said that he might use the training he got in the army to become a tough opponent.

Later, he got himself into a lot of trouble, including being charged with stealing an airplane and having explosives on him. After being arrested for check-kiting in 1978, he tried to fake his own death with a plane that he had to borrow.

All of these things made the Feds interested in Cooper, but they were unable to build a strong case against him. At first, Rackstraw didn’t say whether he was D.B. Cooper or not. But in his later years, he made it very clear that he had nothing to do with the skyjacking.

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