military classified cooper

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VANCOUVER—The arbitrary hijacking of a commercial airline 40 years ago Thursday is the only unsolved hijacking in the United States, but a detective believes a Canadian connection and $200,000 in stolen cash may solve the mystery.

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The grand theft broke the front pages of the newspapers Galen Cook made as a child and an Alaska lawyer says the case has not left him, leading him to follow a trail over the years that he now believes leads to Vancouver.

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Cook believes the robber stashed some of his money in the city's banks days after the hijacker jumped off the back ladder of the 727 with nothing but money and two parachutes.

The day before American Thanksgiving, Nov. 24, 1971, when a man on a Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle, Wash., slipped a letter to the flight attendant saying he had a bomb.

The 36 passengers were freed when Seattle authorities met the man's demands of $200,000 and four parachutes.

The plane was headed for Mexico City with a refueling stop in Reno, but about 45 minutes after taking off from the Seattle airport, the pilots noticed an increase in atmospheric pressure.

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This is believed to be when DB Cooper lowered the ladder under the tail of the plane and flew into the rainstorm.

"This is one of the most interesting unsolved crimes," Cook said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Over the decades, Cook narrowed his list of suspects down to one man; William Gossett, a US military veteran, who died at the age of 73 in 2003. Gossett was a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars and had experience in parachuting, Cook said.

His suspicions began when one of Gossett's sons contacted Cook after hearing him talk about the DB Cooper case on a radio show.

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He described his father as a gambler, womanizer, soldier, lawyer and Catholic priest who one day invited Greg to the basement for a chat.

Gossett said his father took an FBI sketch of DB Cooper out of a locked file drawer and asked if Greg recognized the picture.

Gossett said he told her his father looked like him. His father, he said, introduced himself as DB Cooper.

Gossett said he was so shocked, he could only answer one question: "What did you do with the money?"

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The elder Gossett replied that he had put it in a safe deposit box in Canada and then showed his son the keys - the keys that Cook had been trying to find for years.

Another Gossett son told Cook that he and his father traveled to Vancouver in 1973.

"(That was) the year that Mr. Gossett retired from the military. The son had the sense to use a brand new 8 mm film camera and record the whole thing," Cook said.

Greg Gossett said his brother was a boy who didn't have a close relationship with his father and was excited to hear that he would be vacationing in Canada with his father.

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"So they went to Canada, went into a hotel room. My father said 'Stay here, I'll be back in a few hours.' He comes back a few hours later and says 'Okay son, we're going back to America,'" Gossett said.

"As it turned out, my father told her he only brought her there because it seemed like the best cover to have a child with her."

Cook spent hours watching old movies and convinced Gossett to deposit his money in a safe deposit box at a bank in Chinatown.

Although Canada has set guidelines for unclaimed funds in bank accounts, the rules for handling unclaimed deposit boxes vary by institution.

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Police knew the serial numbers on the coins and none of them came up after the kidnapping, however, about $5,900 in torn and torn money was found in 1980 by an eight-year-old boy who stumbled upon the money in Columbia banks. A river in Washington state.

Cook was convinced for some reason that Gossett or DB Cooper were in Vancouver a few days after the kidnapping.

A photograph of a letter sent to The Province, a Vancouver newspaper, in 1971 was published on top of an Associated Press story about the hijacking with the headline "Is this the Gray Cup Hijacker?"

In the letter, the author complained that the composite sketch of the suspect provided by the FBI was not a good example.

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Vancouver police told Cook they no longer have the letter. A police department spokesman could not be reached for comment on the letter or Cook's theory.

While Cook hopes to get a DNA match from the letter, he keeps the letter that adds more evidence to his claim that Gossett was in town after the kidnapping.

The Calgary Stampedes defeated the Toronto Argonauts in the 59th Gray Cup game played on Nov. 28, 1971 at Vancouver's Empire Stadium, four days after the kidnapping.

"I believe I've found the real DB Cooper," Cook said with a smile as he pulled a photo copy of the newspaper article from a file.

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But as the DB Cooper story continues to grow, the FBI is reluctant to pursue further discussions about the case, including commenting on Cook's allegations.

FBI public affairs specialist Ayn Sandalo Dietrich said media coverage of the sensational case appears to have generated "huge" new interest, disproportionate to the resources they have on the case.

"It's an open investigation, but it's not a job," he said. "We, a long time ago, did all the necessary searches, collected all the evidence that needed to be collected and interviewed all the witnesses."

Because the case is open, if credible tips come to the FBI, they will investigate, Dietrich said, adding that he understands the curiosity surrounding the case.

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The FBI said earlier this year it had a good lead on the suspect. In August, DNA tests on a necktie failed to link Lynn Doyle Cooper to the kidnapping.

Cook, who is writing a book about his investigation, said he spoke to FBI investigators over the years about his theories and said they agreed to hear from him, and Greg Gossett said he was also interviewed by investigators.

"When he passed away, I was looking at some of his pictures and I saw this picture that I thought was similar to the FBI sketch," Greg Gossett said.

"I took the pictures, looked at the drawing online, put them side by side and it sent chills down my spine."

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Gossett says he's not too concerned with the safety deposit box in Canada, the missing keys or the truth about his father's secret identity.

He said he had long ago decided that his father was the famous kidnapper, a belief based on childhood memories.

"It (the kidnapping) happened on Thanksgiving Day 1971. I was four years old then because I'm 44 years old now. Thirty days later it was Christmas Eve. It was the first Christmas Eve that I really remember," he said. Gossett.

"My father has no money. He never had a coin. It evaporated in his hand. For him to have $20 is unbelievable. So he shows up on Christmas Eve and has a weird feeling about him. I remember even when I was four years old. And he said I want to show you something. And he began to pull out bundles and bundles of money. I've never seen any kind of money, let alone handfuls and blocks of money."

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Gossett said as a child, he didn't know what to do. But he stopped and the pieces of the puzzle fell to him after his conversation with his father in his father's basement.

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Robert Rackstraw is a wonderful man. He also embraces risk and confrontation. For a time, the FBI suspected him of being the famous diver known as D.B. Cooper.

Rackstraw died Tuesday in San Diego of natural causes. He is 75. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and "several children and grandchildren," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Born in