Thomas Colbert is an investigative journalist, award-winning author, and producer. Since 1992, he has been responsible for discovering thousands of true stories for television, feature films, books, and streaming platforms. His real-life tales seek truth, identify role models, share lessons learned, and provide justice for crime victims. Colbert joined host Ian Punnett (Twitter) to discuss his work solving the D.B. Cooper case and the new D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?! Netflix documentary.
Colbert praised his 40-member cold case team comprised of experts from multiple disciplines, including forensics, law, and security, and with a combined 1,500 years of experience in their respective fields. Asked about criticisms of confirmation bias in his investigation, Colbert noted "confirmation bias is not our problem on the team - I've got left and right and every rainbow of color on the team." Colbert pointed out he was on the wrong suspect for eight months and abandoned that person when the evidence went elsewhere.
Colbert commented on the D.B. Cooper documentary, noting "Netflix knew exactly what their audience was... so they took a show and decided to do it all about characters, not about the evidence." They only used three of 106 pieces of evidence in the documentary, he revealed. Colbert pointed to strong evidence gathered by his team, such as DNA taken from a water bottle, recovered parachute remnants, matching handwriting samples, and codes in the Cooper letters. All of these and more point to suspect Robert Rackstraw as D.B. Cooper, he suggested.
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Open Lines followed in the latter half of the program. Tom from Bend, Oregon, told Ian he was camping with a buddy about 20 miles west of town in the Cascade mountains when they spotted something odd in the sky. "We saw something cut across the sky here... a solid beam of light, almost like you can connect between two stars, and it sat there and made its way down towards the Earth," he reported. Tom said his friend described it as "a dozen or so separate beams of light... sitting in unison and then slowly moving southward." Tom admitted he had no idea what the phenomenon could have been but claimed to have snapped a photo of it.
Blair in Phoenix commented on the recent photos captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and how these images have already shown there are billions more galaxies than earlier believed. "There's now estimated to be 10 times more than previously thought," he said. Blair guessed there could be 200 billion galaxies in our universe. Neil from Santa Monica discussed one of the reasons for the drought in the West. According to Neil, it's pure corruption regarding how water is allotted in his state. "What the truth is... 47 percent of all the water allocated to California is used for animal agriculture," he reported, noting it takes 2,050 gallons of water to produce a single gallon of cow's milk.