A mysterious fugitive, a hijacked commercial jet, and a daring mid-air escape. This is the extraordinary, real-life tale of one of the greatest unsolved heists in American history and a case that has haunted and taunted the FBI for decades.

It’s a story of taking that just keeps on giving. The tale has been trawled by numerous cable TV shows and was the subject of a fairly forgettable feature film back in 1983.

Now, a new documentary, THE MYSTERY OF D B COOPER re-examines the case focusing on four possible suspects.

Stranger than fiction, THE MYSTERY OF D B COOPER has talking head testimony of a troupe of loopy witnesses who all have some stake in the identity and disappearance of the parachuting purloiner.

Filmmaker John Dower, who directed and co wrote Louis Theroux’s My Scientology Movie, collates these to camera testimonies, and inter-cuts them with archive footage and stylised dramatic re-enactments to create individually plausible but collectively contradictory theories about this enigmatic sky pirate.

The scenarios are as plausible as digital tissue paper but the cavalcade of eccentrics that bear explanation are a treat, a goofy gallery of widows, wives, amateur sleuths and neighbours with notoriety knives to grind.

A master of disguise master criminal or cross dressing trans gender aviatrix, THE MYSTERY OF DB COOPER remains just that, a legend encrusted with the barnacles of blarney, a myth that morphs with every passing year.