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ABC News Reports D.B. Cooper Exclusive: Has Niece Provide Key Evidence Solving Mystery?

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Lost in a sea of debt ceiling sturm and drang is another news story that has been overlooked by many in the press, a potentially resolved mystery that has captivated the nation’s attention and has even been the focus of a feature film in the earlys’80s. It’s the story of D.B. Cooper, the alleged skyjacker of a commercial flight in the early 70s, who has been a legend of mythic proportions and, thus far, an unsolved case. Until now, perhaps, thanks to a Marla Cooper, who is the niece of Lynn Doyle Cooper, who she believes is the real D.B. Cooper.

Pierre Thomas reports:

A woman claiming to be the niece of infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper has spoken to ABC News in an exclusive interview about her role in the recently re-ignited 40-year-old cold case that has haunted the FBI for years.

Marla Cooper told ABC News that she has provided the FBI with a guitar strap and a Christmas photo of a man pictured with the same strap who she says is her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper.

After clarifying her childhood memories surrounding the incident and more recent conversations with her parents, she is now sure that her uncle is in fact the notorious man who hijacked and threatened to blow up a commercial plane flying to Seattle in 1971, then parachuted to the ground with $200,000 in hand.

“I’m certain he was my uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper. Who we called L.D. Cooper,” she told ABC News.

The story that she tells is compelling, though (SPOILER ALERT) the man that she believes was the known as D.B. Cooper died in 1999.

Watch the exclusive report from ABC News below:

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  • Anonymous

    Next to the Black Dhalia this is one of the top unsolved mysteries in American crime history. Excited to see if we finally get a conclusion to this case.

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  • Anonymous

    Fact: Real old stuff here. Cooper has been the man for decades.

  • Anonymous

    Yawn!

    So D.B. is so capable that he eludes the Feds for 40 years but he used his real name on the ticket?

    Don’t buy it.

    Also, if you have read the books on this case, it is readily apparent that no one could have survived that jump from the plane.

    In addition, like in the case of the the Zodiac killer, numerous people have been thought to have been D.B. but none has passed muster.

  • http://twitter.com/RemiBernard Remi Bernard

    According to the author of the new book about this case, that type of plane was used to drop paratroopers in Vietnam. He could have survived the jump.

  • http://www.storminsmorningjava.blogspot.com/ stormin1961

    going to have to disagree with you on the “couldn’t survive the jump” theory. there’s been two very recent stories of individuals who have survived parachute jumps with failed chutes. one was just highlighted on NATGEO of a man who survived a 15,000 ft fall after his chute failed to deploy.

  • Anonymous

    In Northeast November temperatures,with a below freezing wind-chill, in the dark, from the back of a 727 in heavily wooded forest area?

    Don’t think so.

    This has nothing to do with a parachute not working.

  • Indy

    Two comments:
    1) The FBI has had this information for over a year and has not been able to discredit anything Marla Cooper has said – that only is interesting. 

    2) I grew up in Portland, Oregon as did my Dad.  In speaking with my dad last night, he remembered how bad the the weather was the day of the hijacking.  He was driving from Seattle to Portland that evening and rememebered it was some of the worst weather he had seen – freezing rain, wind, etc. This would have been in the same area of jump zone.  IF this was the guy, he had to have help on the ground given the weather conditions.  The walkie talkie theory would make some sense – but again how did he hold on to the walkie talkie and not the suit case of money when jumping?

  • Anonymous

    Why doesn’t Hussein Obama like catching hijackers? His Muslim roots don’t allow it, apparently.

  • Anonymous

    Useful point of comparison:

    (1) The Federal government spends 40 years trying to find someone who stole $200,000

    (2) The Federal government just borrowed another $200,000 in the last 4 seconds. 

  • Anonymous

    Where are ya DB?

  • Mask

    Copper had 21 pounds of 20′s strapped to him when he jumped. He survied that jumped and today we now know who he is. It is so crazy for him to use his real last name on the ticket yet its so true. I can beleave that he got away with it.    

  • BlaineC

    I’m still skeptical, to say the least, that DB even survived that jump. And I, like many others, have a hard time believing that he would have used anything close to his real name. With that said, I’d still like to hear more. I’m particularly curious about Marla’s claim that her uncle was obsessed with the Dan Cooper comics. Why? Could he even read them? (They were never translated into English). On the other hand, a quick Facebook investigation reveals that his daughter Stacey speaks French. I wonder if that’s something she picked up later, or if her father was in fact a French speaker? Also, while I see little-to-no resemblance between this guy and the infamous DB Cooper sketches, Lynn Doyle is a dead ringer for the sketch which was created on the Unsolved Mysteries program, based on the flight attendant’s memory, years ago (she said the previous sketches didn’t look very much like him). Check it out on Youtube.

  • Danwiand

    I even wonder if he made the jump at all in the pacific northwest…cloud cover at 5000ft so ground features not visible, -7 and -70 windchill outside the plane, heavy rains, unforgiving wilderness below, good chance he gets stuck in a tree if he chutes successfully down, had to plan on law enforcement putting out a huge manhunt so you couldn’t plan on gimping around the forest in your loafers and suit while carrying cash, briefcase, 2 chutes, etc…or he would’ve had to plan on burying evidence with his hands through the snow covered ground. Two fighter jets that tailed plane detected nothing visually or on radar but I think DB knew they would…he did mention McChord Air Force base where the jets originated. This jump contrasts the meticulous attention to detail and calculating nature of his plot. He’s throwing any certainty to the wind with the wilderness jump. Perhaps he threw some of the money out the back of the plane in hopes that it would be found soon after the hijacking to throw off authorities. The $5800 is interesting. One stack is 10 bills light but still in the rubber band…maybe someone wanted to make the stack unique so that it would be known for sure barring any copycat incidents that those were THE bills. Those bills found by the boy were like a needle in a haystack compared to the other items that did not turn up…brief case, parachutes, a body(bones/skull), the other $194,200.

  • Danwiand

    You are off topic. You could make the same boring, irrelevant comparison about anything the government does.

  • Alan

    Well, confirming or debunking this story should be fairly simple. Why haven’t authorities or the media tracked down the surviving members of the Northwest flight crew and shown them the photograph of LD Cooper to see if it’s a match? Or take DNA samples from the Oklahoma woman and compare them with what they aready have in their files. I have to disagree with Blaine; Lynn Doyle Cooper is NOT a “dead ringer” for any of the various DB Cooper sketches including the one commissioned by Unsolved Mysteries (which I have seen and looked at carefully). He might look *somewhat* like the sketch, but it’s certainly not a dead ringer.

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