Lynn Doyle "LD" Cooper was a leather worker and a Korean War veteran who died in 1999. In 2011, his niece, Marla Cooper, said she recalled her uncle planning the notorious skyjacking during a family gathering around Thanksgiving Day in 1971. According to Marla, she remembered seeing LD and another uncle using "very expensive walkie-talkies" before the two men left to go turkey hunting.
When they returned, LD was "bloody, bruised, and a mess," claiming he'd been in a car accident. She recalled one of her uncles saying, "We did it. Our money problems are over; we've hijacked an airplane," before asking her father to "help them go back into the woods and find the money."
Marla adds that LD had a comic about Dan Cooper, a Canadian skydiving cartoon character, tacked to a wall in his home — a nod to the alias used by the elusive hijacker. Marla's claims prompted investigators to reopen the DB Cooper case, but there wasn't enough evidence to implicate LD as an active suspect.
