2019-09-04 The Hollywood Reporter

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 72 SEPTEMBER 4, 2019

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Michael London, Colbert’s

manager and a veteran of the

unscripted TV space beginning

with Unsolved Mysteries in the

1980s, backs him: “What I think

is happening is that the produc-

tion companies and channels that

do these types of shows believe

that in the future they’ll need the

cooperation of the FBI and they

don’t want to burn that bridge.”

To bolster his theory, Colbert

shares an seven-page docu-

ment, one of many he’d sent to

THR over a period of months.

The dense timeline of what he

terms the FBI “cover-up” is color-

coded. (“BLUE notes efforts to

quash related media stories or

to mislead public; RED refers to

secret or covered-up case facts,”

etc.) It tracks what he sees as an

extensive alleged suppression

campaign, from the J. Edgar

Hoover era through the cur-

rent administration of director

Christopher A. Wray, with what

Colbert deems an incriminating,

or at least disquieting, accumula-

tion of correspondence.

But an examination of Colbert’s

material reveals something more

mundane: the normal indignities

of Hollywood and media decision-

making. Decades of frustration

have transformed the soft no of

a development executive from a

banality to sinister intrigue.

T

here are no defini-

tive answers inside the

Coopersphere — only a

disorienting fun house of

doubt and bewilderment.

Given the mania that surrounds

its solving, today the crime can

now feel quaint. After all, nobody

died. But Cooper’s skyjacking long

ago transcended an individual

act to become an ever-expanding

multiverse of tales — that most

modern of Hollywood products.

Take that 2016 History doc,

which caught the eye of a

30-something Alabama machin-

ist who catfished (used a fake

virtual identity to lure people

online) in his spare time. He

targeted Rackstraw on Facebook,

posing as a 52-year-old nurse

named Kelly Young. Then he con-

tacted Colbert with the results of

his inquiry: “I’m poor as dirt,” the

man wrote Colbert of his obses-

sion with the hunt for Cooper.

“This is all I do and study sir. I

have no hobbies anymore, I’m

addicted to the chase.”

Though his relationship with

Colbert and his team proved

short-lived because the machin-

ist, in an apparent attempt to

better lure his mark, escalated

to racier messages, his catfish-

ing did yield fresh intelligence

from Rackstraw about his own

Cooper-related musings. They

include Rackstraw speaking with

authority about the river cash

(“I could be wrong, but I believe

that’s all that will be found”), his

own shadowy special-ops reputa-

tion (“Everything I did for our

government raised questions”),

his vexation with Colbert’s crew

both WME and CAA had reached

out, as well as other produc-

tion companies whose names he

couldn’t recall. (THR has con-

firmed they included Magical

Elves.) But by his own account, his

own hard bargaining had scared

them all away.

Rackstraw was most fired up

about Colbert, whom he regarded

as a mix of irritant, hellhound

and sheer comic relief. Rackstraw

said the catfishing was a Colbert-

initiated operation, and detailed

how he “reverse catfished him

with the help of a couple of lesbi-

ans who live near where I work.”

While Rackstraw had said he’d

think over speaking further, THR

heard from him only once more,

a short while later. He emailed

a warning of Colbert’s “numer-

ous attempts to dupe yet another

media source,” issuing a “formal

notice and injunction” from pub-

lishing anything about him.

After Rackstraw’s death in July,

THR talked with his attorney,

Dennis Roberts, who said that

Colbert’s investigation drove

Rackstraw “nuts” and insisted “it’s

all bullshit. He’s not D.B. Cooper.”

In Roberts’ next breath, though,

he said Rackstraw had been

responsible for one of the many

less-renowned copycat skyjackings

that had followed Cooper’s — and

this is why his client never sued

Colbert for defamation. “It would

“I don’t do conspiracies,” says Colbert, who nonetheless attributes

his run of bad Hollywood luck to the media’s collusion with the FBI.

(“what I’m concerned with is

those assholes beating me to a

movie”) and his frustrated desire

to finally take charge of his own

life story by writing a film script

about it. “I can’t get started until

the bills are paid,” he typed to

Kelly. “I’m already dead tired at

the end of six day work weeks. ...

I am looking for a place (office,

apartment whatever) to gather all

of my stuff and write.”

In mid-May, THR reached

Rackstraw by phone. Rackstraw

made it clear at the outset that he

wouldn’t speak about his connec-

tion to the Cooper saga — unless,

that is, he was paid on terms to

his liking. “I’m probably one of

the only people who can close the

case,” he said. As for Hollywood

interest in his story, he said that

have meant that [Rackstraw]

would have to admit the second

skyjack. He would have opened

himself to a deposition.”

Roberts either wouldn’t or

couldn’t provide the date of the

other skyjacking, although he

pinpointed it as between the date

of the Cooper flight, Nov. 24, 1971,

and that of another prominent

suspect in the Coopersphere,

Richard Floyd McCoy Jr., who

was caught after bailing out

of a Boeing 727 over Utah with

$500,000 on April 7, 1972.

Brendan I. Koerner, author of The

Skies Belong to Us, a history of U.S.

aircraft hijackings between 1961

and 1973, tells THR he doesn’t

know of any other unsolved cases

aside from the Cooper incident.

“That sounds highly implausible,”

of Rackstraw’s extended family

members may be “trying to cash

in with a tabloid or unethical

moviemaker.”

The perfect criminal eluded

the law. But order can still be

enforced on the D.B Cooper

narrative. As with so many

mysteries, truth is consigned to

play out as entertainment. The

Making a Murderer documentar-

ians, who like other darlings of

the new age of true crime have

seen their own facts and ethics

called into question, investi-

gated Steven Avery for a decade

before their work first aired on

Netflix. For Tom Colbert, who’s

spent eight years and counting

in the Coopersphere, the journey

continues. He still believes — and

he’s still pitching.

Rackstraw (center, in blue shirt) with

members of his family in June 1991.

he says. Colbert, later digesting

Roberts’ claim, is for once briefly

at a loss for words: “I don’t know

where to start. He’s carrying the

water for a dead man.”

As for the business with the

CIA, Roberts says he doesn’t know

about it, except that Rackstraw

did work in pre-revolution Iran as

a pilot “teaching the Shah’s people

how to fly helicopters.”

Maybe Rackstraw was a CIA

asset. Maybe he hijacked another

jet. Maybe he was in fact D.B.

Cooper. Or maybe he was just

another Cooperite obsessive

who enjoyed being taken for an

American antihero. More than

one of these things could be true,

or none of them. The only thing

known for certain is that Colbert’s

quest has remade the way he

understands the world.

W

hen Colbert received

word in July that

Rackstraw had died, he

turned into Paul Revere,

alerting the press, stay-

ing on-message: “we absolutely

believe he was Cooper.” Media

interest in his story spiked —

“Fox News limo’d us in; Shep

[Smith] did the interview” —

including a spate of podcasters.

Yet this post-passing period, in

which Rackstraw is out of the

mix, brings Colbert a new anxi-

ety. He’s now worried that some