Niece of a Man Called "L.D. Cooper" Comes Forward To Claim She's Solved The Mystery of D.B. Cooper

The FBI thinks this is a good suspect. I'm thinking it'll turn out to be nothing.

The niece's memories are sketchy, from when she was eight years old, and only now does she say she's put the pieces together and figured out he was probably the folk-hero hijacker.

Here's her account:

"My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous. I was watching them using some very expensive walkie-talkies that they had purchased," she said. "They left to supposedly go turkey hunting, and Thanksgiving morning I was waiting for them to return."

A day later, Northwest Orient flight 305 was hijacked, and her uncle L.D. Cooper came home claiming to have been in a car accident.

"My uncle L.D. was wearing a white t-shirt and he was bloody and bruised and a mess, and I was horrified. I began to cry. My other uncle, who was with L.D., said Marla just shut up and go get your dad," she said.

Marla Cooper is now convinced there was not a car accident, but that her uncle was injured crashing to earth in a parachute. She says that she also remembers a discussion about the money that day.

"I heard my uncle say we did it, our money problems are over, we hijacked an airplane," she said.

It later became clear, however, that there was no money. It is believed that the hijacker lost much of the cash as he came crashing down.

So, he had no actual money. The only interesting bit here is the timing of the car accident, but that could simply be... a car accident. It's hard to fathom why a man called "L.D. Cooper" would choose, as his alias, "D.B. Cooper."

I think it's more likely this struck the niece as a telling clue (even though it shouldn't have) and she's putting together mis-fit puzzle pieces now.

And maybe confabulating that admission.

The FBI is looking at some objects he was known to have touched (like a hand-made guitar strap) to find fingerprints, to match those against the partial prints of D.B. Cooper.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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