DB Cooper is one of those figures who everyone thinks they know. A mysterious, suave, charming figure who, in 1971, hijacked a plane, demanded $200,000 and four parachutes, then took the money and leapt from the aircraft, never to be seen again. It is a myth that has been referenced in pop culture for more than 50 years, in shows from Breaking Bad to Loki to Mad Men.
But what do we know about Cooper other than the legend? What does anyone know about him? This is the thrust of DB Cooper: Where Are You?!, an entertaining new Netflix documentary series. And it is a testament to the legend that you’re going to leave the show feeling simultaneously much more – and much less – enlightened than you were at the start.
Where Are You?! comes out of the gates like the clappers. The opening chapter is devoted to retelling the story of Cooper, which retains all the punch it did back in the 1970s. Often a show like this will bust a gut to belabour the relevance of an old crime, by drafting in ropey sociopolitical contexts or spurious parallels to contemporary events. But there is really no need here, because the DB Cooper story is eternally irresistible. A master criminal gets on plane, nabs a load of government money and then parachutes off without hurting a soul. It’s the sort of thing that makes you a folk hero. It is the sort of thing that can make a person obsessed.
And this is important. To make a four-part documentary about DB Cooper, you ultimately have two options. You can either come armed with incontrovertible evidence that you have – without a shadow of a doubt – located his true identity, thereby putting to bed a mystery that has baffled amateur and professional detectives alike for half a century. Or you can take the easier option and make a show about how wild DB Cooper drives people. For better or worse – and it is genuinely a toss-up – DB Cooper: Where Are You?! goes for the latter.
As the documentary wears along, we are introduced to all manner of potential Coopers. Disgruntled Vietnam veterans. Airline staff. A transgender person by the name of Barb. All, in one way or another, are seized upon and vetted. But gradually, one name keeps returning to the surface: Robert Rackstraw. Rackstraw looked the part, matching the official (frustratingly vague) police portrait. He had all the necessary skills. He seemed to delight in dancing on the gossamer thread between confirming his identity and denying it. All signs suggest that Rackstraw is Cooper – but he died in 2019 a free man.
This is what gives the series all its heft. Aside from a few cursory interviews with relatives and acquaintances, we end up knowing almost as little about Rackstraw as we do Cooper. But that’s the point, because Rackstraw isn’t really the subject of Where Are You?! Instead, the real focus is the thrumming DB Cooper industry. The main character of the series ends up being Tom Colbert, a man who made it his life’s work – at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars – to prove that Rackstraw is Cooper. He approaches Rackstraw wearing a ridiculous pair of Google glasses to try to force a confession. He chases down every lead and hunch, convincing himself harder and harder that he’s got his man.
As the focus shifts to Colbert, the series becomes the Netflix true crime equivalent of Zodiac. It might start off as a grabby crime thriller, but as it drags along it transforms into something more shapeless and unsettling. It’s the tale of what happens when you can’t let go.
This line of storytelling reaches a climax in the third episode, where we’re thrown fully into what obsessives term “The Cooper Vortex”; a dark morass of conspiracy theories that sucks people in thanks to the case’s total refusal to be solved. Did Cooper have anything to do with the French Canadian comics industry? Why did he have one molecule of titanium on his tie? A bafflingly long stretch of the documentary is given over to numerology, as we watch one poor subject scribble out strings of numbers that appear to prove beyond all doubt that Rackstraw is DB Cooper. It is fascinating to watch, like staring into an unhealed wound, but the moment is undercut by another talking head politely pointing out that, using the same methodology, you could very easily prove that SpongeBob SquarePants is DB Cooper.
If you’re expecting to sit down in front of DB Cooper: Where Are You?! and learn new blockbuster evidence that will end the mystery for good, the actual contents of the series are bound to frustrate you. But if you’re content to view it as a study of human nature, of our desperate need to make sense of things that linger beyond our grasp – even at the cost of our sanity – it is a brilliant, messy watch.
