The widow of a man linked in a book to the legendary skyjacker D.B. Cooper has filed suit against the two authors and a Provo attorney who represented her 20 years ago.
In her 3rd District Court suit, Karen Burns McCoy says the attorney, Thomas S. Taylor, double-crossed her by giving away 200 pages of his notes taken during interviews with her, husband Richard McCoy and family members."D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy" was written by Bernie Rhodes, a former federal probation and parole officer, and Russell Calame, an ex-FBI agent.
The book states Mrs. McCoy helped her husband with the 1971 skyjacking of a Northwest Airlines 727 jet flying from Portland to Seattle. A man calling himself "D.B. Cooper" parachuted from the aircraft into a freezing November night with the $200,000 he extorted from the airline.
The book also alleges Mrs. McCoy helped her husband escape from a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., after he was convicted for a 1972 skyjacking in which he bailed out over Provo with $500,000.
The book further charges Mrs. McCoy threatened to kill her daughter by throwing her under the wheels of a truck, kept $20,000 stolen from a bank and betrayed her husband by identifying him for the FBI.
Richard McCoy, a former Mormon Sunday school teacher, was gunned down in November 1974 by FBI agents in Virginia Beach, Va.
All of the parts of the book involving Mrs. McCoy are fiction, insists Mrs. McCoy's attorney, Michael Schwab.
"She isn't so upset by the book saying her husband was D.B. Cooper," the attorney said. "She's most upset about the book going beyond that and tying her into it."
Since the hijackings, Mrs. McCoy has earned a doctorate and is involved in her community as a responsible professional, Schwab said.
She was never prosecuted for any alleged wrongdoing, he added.
"Mrs. McCoy has worked for more than 18 years to put this all behind her," Schwab said. "She has lost her husband and had to raise two children by herself. To have this resurface after all these years has been very damaging to her."
Rhodes said Mrs. McCoy refused to be interviewed for the book.
"The book is correct right down to the letter," the writer insists. "Everything we put in the book we can prove."
Taylor denied Mrs. McCoy's allegations, saying that after the notes sat for nearly 20 years collecting dust in the basement of his Provo home, he was more than happy to turn them over to Rhodes and Calame.
"I don't believe there was a contract at all," he said. "For 20 years I haven't heard a word from (Mrs. McCoy)."
D.B. Cooper's true identity remains in dispute. Ralph Himmelsbach, a retired FBI agent, believes Cooper was killed by his 10,000-foot jump from the jetliner.
The agent's theory received credibility in 1980 when boys playing on the Columbia River in the area where Cooper bailed out found $5,200 worth of rotting $20 bills.