I’m Mike Fitzsimmons with commentary on 920 – KXLY….

 

We learned this week that a woman thinks she knows the identity of the legendary D.B. Cooper, who carried out the only unsolved aircraft hijacking in U.S. history.   Marla Cooper of Oklahoma City says he was her uncle.  She says she remembers when she was 8-years old and her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper showed up on a November night claiming he had been in a car accident.    She says that later she remembers her uncle saying that the family’s financial problems were over and something about an airplane hijacking.    I have no doubt that Marla Cooper believes her uncle was the infamous D.B. Cooper, but I doubt that he was.

 
On November 24, 1971 a skyjacker parachuted out of a Northwest Airlines 727 jetliner in midair over southwest Washington and vanished with $200,000 in ransom cash.   Federal agents have long believed the thief died in the caper, but they’re willing to look into this latest claim.   I think D.B. Cooper died that night too.    I’m not calling Marla Cooper a liar, but I don’t think her uncle hijacked that plane.    For one thing, how could the family’s financial difficulties have been resolved?   Not a dime of the ransom money was ever spent.   If Lynn Doyle Cooper had the money from the hijacking, presumably he would have used it.   He didn’t.    Further, some years after the hijacking a young boy came across a bound stack of disintegrating $20-bills along the Columbia River in Skamania County.   The bills were verified to have been a part of the ransom money that was delivered to D.B. Cooper in Seattle.    The discovery led law enforcement to believe that the cash and the hijacker were somehow separated on that November night.   That would explain why the money was never spent.

 

Authorities say that the hijacker used the name “Dan Cooper” when he purchased a $20 one way ticket from Portland to Seattle, but they believe that it is unlikely that was his real name.    I’m sure Marla Cooper is sincere.    There have been many others, equally sincere, but also mistaken.   Of course the FBI will check out the claims, but the fact that they are looking into this doesn’t mean that they’ve found D.B. Cooper.   I’m inclined to think that they haven’t.

 

With commentary on 920-KXLY, I’m Mike Fitzsimmons