News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Marla Cooper has fond memories of Sisters.
The 48-year-old Oklahoma woman told The Nugget last week that she remembers exploring the forests around the Brooks-Scanlon logging camp, where her family lived, horseback riding with her friend Patty Oatman, shopping at Leithauser's grocery store.
She also remembers what may have been the planning of one of the most storied heists in the annals of American crime.
Marla Cooper believes her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper was the man known as D.B. Cooper, who hijacked a flight from Portland to Seattle in November, 1971, then parachuted from the plane with a ransom of $200,000. D.B. Cooper was never found.
In an ABC News interview that created a bit of Coopermania across Central Oregon last week, Marla Cooper recalled, "My two uncles, who I only saw at holiday time, were planning something very mischievous. 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."
Northwest Orient flight 305 was hijacked November 24, 1971, a day after Marla Cooper says she observed her uncles' apparent mission planning. L.D. Cooper came home battered and bloody, claiming to have been in a car accident, she said.
"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 in the ABC report.
Marla believes her uncle was injured parachuting into the forest. She said she spied on her uncle and father after he returned:
"I heard my uncle say 'we did it, our money problems are over, we hijacked an airplane,'" she said.
Cooper told The Nugget that she believes that her uncle, a Korean War veteran, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and she thinks that led him to commit an outlandish crime. Folks who grew up in Sisters and remember L.D. lend credence to Marla Cooper's analysis; many recall him as keeping to himself a lot and having emotional problems (see related story, page 25).
In her interview with The Nugget, Marla Cooper said she saw her uncle one more time.
"I saw him Christmas of the following year," she said. "Christmas of '72, when I was living in Sisters was the last time I saw him."
She said L.D., a talented leather carver, had started a belt for her and had carved part of her name on the back. He promised to return and finish it.
"I was always looking for him to come back, and he never did," she recalled.
She told The Nugget that the subject of L.D.'s disappearance came up in 1995 in a late-night conversation with her father, Don, who died in early 1996. She asked him why her uncle had never returned, not even to come to his mother's funeral.
"He said, 'He's been hiding,'" Marla recalled. "I said, 'Why would he be hiding?' (Don) said, 'Don't you remember? He hijacked that plane and (another brother) Dewey helped him.'"
Marla told The Nugget that she wasn't really aware of the cultural phenomenon that was the D.B. Cooper case and, as she was then going through a divorce, she didn't focus on the matter until years later, when her mother told her the same thing.
That was 2009. Curious, Marla went online and found information about the case. When she saw the FBI sketch of D.B. Cooper, she was shocked at how much it resembled her own father.
"Over the next few days, my memories just resurfaced in my mind," she said. "It's as if I was digging in my brain and things were coming up."
She approached the FBI, but nothing came of the contact.
"Of course, they probably dismissed me as some kook," she said.
She told her story to a friend who had had a career in law enforcement. He and another man were convinced enough to build a "case file" to present to the FBI. That reignited interest in the case, when, on August 1, the FBI announced that they had a "credible lead" in the 40-year-old case.
FBI Special Agent Fred Gutt of the Seattle field office told the Associated Press that "the suspect is someone who has not been previously investigated, and Gutt said initial vetting supported the belief of the tipster. But he cautioned that the new lead may not pan out, and that investigators were still pursuing other possibilities."
Gutt told The Nugget that the bureau, as a matter of policy, would not identify any witness or discuss details of the case. Gutt did, however, confirm that the FBI received a guitar strap connected to the case and sent it to the bureau's forensic lab for testing, but found it was "not conducive to pulling prints." He said that the FBI is continuing to look for physical evidence in the case.
The media spotlight has not been entirely kind to Marla Cooper, who acknowledged that her intention to write a book has drawn criticism.
"I know I've been blasted as someone who is looking for attention," she told The Nugget. "Anybody who knows me and knows me well knows that that's not who I am."
She readily acknowledges that "I expect to have some security for myself" from proceeds of a memoir, but she also hopes to support veterans causes, especially related to PTSD - the condition that she believes led her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper to "do something insane."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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