An Oklahoma woman has come forward to claim that her uncle, L.D. Cooper, is actually D.B. Cooper, the mysterious skyjacker who got away with a $200,000 ransom in 1971. INSIDE EDITION has the story.
Has the identity of legendary skyjacker D.B. Cooper finally been revealed?
A woman has now come forward to say she's the source of what the FBI calls a "promising lead" in the 40-year-old mystery.
"I'm certain he was my uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper," Marla Cooper, a 48-year-old divorced mom, told Good Morning America.
She claims her uncle L.D. Cooper is the man who parachuted from the rear of a passenger jet in 1971 with $200,000, never to be seen again.
Marla says she was just eight years old when she saw her uncle just days after the Northwest Orient flight was hijacked.
"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, I asked them what happened and they told me they'd been in a car accident," Marla said.
Later, Marla claims, she eavesdropped as L.D. talked about pulling off the only unsolved hijacking in American history.
Marla said, "I heard my uncles say, 'We did it. Our money problems are over. We hijacked an airplane.' "
Marla Cooper says she provided the FBI with a guitar strap that she believed had her uncle L.D.'s fingerprints so the FBI crime lab could compare it with partial fingerprints believed to be left by D.B. Cooper the night he parachuted into history.
The FBI now confirms they found no clear fingerprints on the guitar strap.
L.D. Cooper died ten years ago of natural causes.
INSIDE EDITION's Les Trent spoke about the latest dramatic development in the case with Geoffrey Gray, author of Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, which goes on sale next week.
"Is this new D.B. Cooper story credible to you?" Trent asked.
"I have doubts. I have many doubts," said Gray.
He says people claiming to know D.B. Cooper's identity came out of the woodwork in the 1970s.
When Trent asked Gray about the confession Marla Cooper says she overheard, he said, "These quotes simply feel like bad fiction to me."
Though it remains the only hijacking ever left unsolved, the FBI reportedly has said it's not a high priority. Their focus is on crimes that have an impact today.
