Suspect L. D. Cooper's DNA Does Not Match FBI Sample
by John S. Craig
August 3, 2011, Marla Cooper told ABC News that her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, is the new suspect in the 1971 D.B. Cooper skyjacking case. Marla Cooper is a previous resident of Oregon and told reporters that she took and passed a five-and-a-half hour polygraph test given by the FBI.
Marla Cooper was eight-years-old when the skyjacking occurred. She claims that two of her uncles were conspirators in the case, and one uncle known to the family as "L.D.," was the man who jumped from the plane.
On August 5, 2011, Marla Cooper said that "the DNA that they were able to extract" from L.D.'s daughter, "did not match the partial sample of DNA that they have in their files." However, the question of the reliability of the DNA that the FBI procured from a tie and tie clip left on the plane, is and has been in question for years.
FBI agent Fred Gutt admits that the sample "is not very good" and in fact may not be the skyjacker's at all.
Marla Cooper created a national stir about the case when she told ABC and CNN News that before Thanksgiving of 1971, "My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous." She witnessed them before the skyjacking working with "expensive walkie talkies" and planning a hunting trip.
Ms. Cooper says she remembers that her two uncles showed up to a family house in Sisters, Oregon in the early morning of Thanksgiving, the day after the skyjacking. L.D. was bloodied and injured claiming he was in an 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," she said.
"I heard my uncle Dewy say, 'We did it. Our money problems are over. We just have to go back and get the money. L.D. hijacked an airplane,' " Marla said.
Her uncles tried to convince Marla's father, Don Cooper, into joining them to hunt for the money, which her father refused to do. Her father was angry and screamed at his brothers claiming they had ruined their lives. Marla's father and the two brothers are deceased.
As to why her uncle L.D. would choose the name "Dan Cooper" when purchasing a ticket, Marla recognized how using the name would be self incriminating. She believes that L.D. suffered from post-traumatic stress related to his experience in the Korean War, and the skyjacking was a misguided and poorly planned escapade that ended up in L.D.'s injuries and loss of the money during the jump from the plane. The similarity of the name on the ticket and her father's name was not lost to Don Cooper.
Questions remain legion in the case against L.D. Cooper as the legendary skyjacker. Did he have enough paratrooping experience to make a successful landing? How were the brothers able to link up after such a difficult night time jump? How were they able to return to Sisters, Oregon the next day when the recognized jump zone was approximately 150 miles northwest of Sisters as the crow flies? Did the Cooper brothers ever recover any of the money? How did the entire Cooper family stay silent for so long on such a famous incident in American crime? Of the $5,800 dollars found on the banks of the Columbia River at Tina Bar in 1980, where is the rest of the $194,200 in twenty dollar bills? None of the ransom money has ever been reported in circulation and no other trace of the skyjacker or any other ransom money has ever been found on the ground.
Marla Cooper has stated that she believed L. D. Cooper did not have paratrooping experience. He had an interest in the comic book Dan Cooper, which he kept a copy tacked to a wall. "Dan Cooper" is the name the skyjacker used when purchasing a twenty-dollar, one-way ticket from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington on November, 24, 1971. She produced a color photo of L.D. Cooper for ABC News, which she says was taken in 1972. Though the photo is not of great quality, the resemblance of L.D. to the FBI sketches of D.B. Cooper is similar. She did not see L.D. after 1972.
It is believed L.D. lived in the Fruit Valley area of Vancouver, Washington in 1969-70 and had a wife named Phyllis. Vancouver is across the border of Oregon a few miles from the Portland, Oregon airport where the skyjacking began. L.D. had been employed as an engineering surveyor, and his brother, Dewy Max Cooper, was employed at one time at Boeing. The men's occupations has led to speculation that Lynn was able to scout areas in Oregon and Washington in which he could land, and Dewy's work at Boeing would have provided knowledge concerning the jet's unique aft staircase used by the skyjacker to exit the plane.
L.D. Cooper died on April 30, 1999 and is buried in Bend, Oregon. He served in the Korean War with the U.S. Navy. Born in 1931, L.D. Cooper would have been forty-years old at the time of the hijacking.
Appearing on the Coast to Coast radio show on August 1, 2011 and August 6, 2011, Galen Cook said he became aware of the FBI's interest in this suspect early in 2011 while sharing information with an FBI agent at the Seattle field office.
Questions about how this case will be solved are no further along than it was in November of 1971: Does the FBI really have enough evidence to convict or eliminate suspects? Is the DNA they possess from the famous clip-on tie the skyjacker's or is it DNA from another source? Only the FBI can answer these questions and for almost 40 years there have been no definitive answers.