A man has endorsed one researcher’s theory that infamous skyjacker DB Cooper — who has never been identified — could have been his dad.
Inventor, licensed pilot and author Bill Rollins claims Cooper could have been none other than Nashville dad Joe Lakich, whose daughter Susan was kidnapped and eventually killed by her estranged husband just weeks before Cooper’s famed Nov. 24, 1971 flight.
Lakich’s son, Keith Bagsby, now says the theory carries weight.
“I believe it’s extremely possible, on one hand, it could’ve been Joe with all the circumstances at hand, but if so, he hid it very well from any of us,” Keith Bagsby, Lakich’s son, told the Daily Mail.
Susan was forced onto a private plane by her George Giffe, who posed as a doctor transporting a patient.
But when asked to prove his credentials, Giffe pulled a .45 caliber pistol and ordered the pilot to fly them to the Bahamas. The quick thinking pilot instead landed in Jacksonville, Florida — where Federal Bureau of Investigation agents lying in wait opened fire.
The agents then heard gunfire erupt from the plane and found Giffe killed Susan and the pilot, according to the Nashville Scene.
Lakich blamed the FBI for mishandling the incident — and may have wanted to embarrass the feds, Rollins told the Daily Mail.
Lakich’s family thinks Rollins, who wrote about Cooper in a 2017 book, might be on to something.
“‘After hearing more about the theory and reading through [Rollins] book, I thought that it could be possible,” Bagsby added.
“The tragedy with Susan greatly affected Joe. He would talk about it from time to time. It genuinely saddened him,” Bagsby told the Daily Mail.
“Unfortunately …he’d already passed,” Bagsby, who could not be reached for comment, told the outlet of his dad.
Cooper was said to be a dapper, dark-haired man in his mid-forties, but not much else is known about him.
He passed a note to a stewardess on Northwest Orient Airlines flight in Portland on Nov. 24, 1971 claiming he had a bomb in his suitcase.
“It’s not because I have a grudge against your airlines, it’s just because I have a grudge,” Cooper chillingly told a stewardess when he was asked why he chose that plane to hijack.
The plane landed in Seattle, where Cooper freed 36 passengers in exchange for four parachutes and $200,000 in cash.
He then ordered the plane to fly to Mexico City, but leapt out with the ransom money at an altitude of 10,000 feet somewhere between Seattle and Reno, Nevada.
Rollins could not be reached for comment.
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