Cooper, citing childhood memories, told ABC News she is convinced her uncle was the man who hijacked a Seattle-bound jet on Thanksgiving Eve 1971 and parachuted over Southwest Washington with $200,000 in cash.
"I'm certain he was my uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, who we called L.D. Cooper," she told ABC News, offering tantalizing details of his life.
To back her claims, she said she recalled her uncle and a second uncle planning something suspicious at her grandmother's house in Sisters, Ore.
"My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous," Cooper told ABC News. "I was watching them using some very expensive walkie-talkies that they had purchased. They left to supposedly go turkey hunting, and Thanksgiving morning I was waiting for them to return."
After Northwest Orient Flight 305 was hijacked, L.D. Cooper came home claiming to have been in a car accident, Cooper told ABC News.
"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. My other uncle, who was with L.D., said, 'Marla just shut up and go get your dad,' " she said.
She said she is now convinced the car accident was a ruse and that her uncle was injured in a parachute jump.
Cooper also told ABC News she remembers a discussion about the money.
"I heard my uncle say, 'We did it, our money problems are over, we hijacked an airplane,' " she said.
Cooper says her two uncles wanted to return to search for cash apparently lost in the jump.
She said her father refused, likely because the FBI was beginning to search the area where the hijacker was believed to have landed.
Cooper said she never saw her uncle again after that Thanksgiving. She said she believes he lived in the Northwest and had children.
Click to expand...