Guest blogger Jon Higgins discusses his personal interest in the D.B.Cooper case: How I Fell Into the Cooper Vortex

Having grown up in a small town near Seattle in the 1970s, I can’t remember a time in my life

when I wasn’t intrigued by the D.B. Cooper mystery. If I really think about it, there have always been two mysteries rattling around in the back of my mind: D.B. Cooper and the disappearance of my uncle.

Until recently, I believed my mom was the only member of her family to move to the U.S. from Canada. She stayed close to my aunts and their kids, but she would barely speak of her brother. All I knew of him was that he was the oldest of my mom’s four siblings, he had been married at some point with two kids, and according to my mother, he struggled in life and was probably manic-depressive. The only thing she told my sisters and I when we asked about our uncle was that at some point he had been suspected of stealing money from a company he worked for, then he disappeared.

There is a story told by my eldest sister that at some point in 1971 or 1972, the FBI visited my

family's home in Poulsbo, WA, looking for our uncle Leigh Seller. As the story goes, they visited at least twice and spent some time parked across the street from our house. When they came to the door, they asked my mom if she knew where her brother was. She said she did not know, but knowing my mom, she would not have told them anything if she had known.

Looking back, I’m a bit shocked it never occurred to me there could be a connection between these two mysteries. It’s as if they occupied two separate levels of my imagination that were not allowed to mingle.

As has been the case for many people, Covid caused me to slow down and take in stories and information I normally would not have had time for. After watching a D.B. Cooper documentary, my curiosity led me to the Cooper Vortex Podcast, where I became a full-fledged student of the mystery. As happens to most people in the Cooper world, I then found the Cooper Facebook groups and fell hard down the Vortex tunnel.

Listening to the Cooper Vortex podcast was not just an education on the Cooper case; I learned from the various guests how to use all of the resources available online to research people and past events. I began to think,“If my uncle lived in Canada, he must have stolen from a Canadian company, and it must have been a lot of money for the FBI to get involved.” I decided to search Newspapers.com, thinking there must be a news article that would tell me what he did to get an FBI agent to ride a ferry from Seattle to our front porch and ask what happened to Leigh.

I never did find anything about the embezzlement story my mom told. In fact, as I have talked to my cousins, no one—not even Leigh’s kids—had heard a word about Leigh stealing from an employer. It seems to either be something only my mom knew and shared only with her kids, or it was a story of her own creation. There are other stories floating around the family groups: check fraud, car theft, bank fraud, but embezzlement was not one of them.

As I made my way through the public domain, an image of Uncle Leigh took shape. It was an

image that matched D.B. Cooper in many ways. The moment when it really hit me that this may not be a coincidence was when I found a 1942 article from the Edmonton Journal. It highlighted four Canadian service members heading off to war. There was my uncle Leigh—he had just earned his wings and was heading to England to serve as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. For those who follow the Cooper case, there has been the belief that, given the knowledge Cooper displayed and the phrases he used, there is a good chance he was a pilot. Add to that Cooper’s age, and a WW2 pilot is very likely.

At this point, my uncle matched the physical description of Cooper. He was a WW2 pilot; had lived in Seattle and Vancouver, WA; suffered from mental health issues; was likely desperate; and was missing.

One of the great things about how Darren Schaffer structures the Cooper Vortex podcast is that he asks the same questions to each guest. I love it because it gives the listener a different perspective on the same questions. One common question is simply: “Did Cooper survive the jump?” The most common answer is: “Well, if he died, where is the missing person that matches Cooper’s description?” I found myself talking back to the podcast every time: “Hey, I know a guy.”

So many people have dedicated hundreds of hours to this case, and they had no idea there was a missing person that fits Cooper. I felt the need to tell someone in the Cooper community of Leigh’s existence.

I spent some time lurking in the D.B. Cooper Mystery group on Facebook, not just to learn about the case but to learn about the group. I wanted to find people who knew the case extremely well but were not locked into a suspect or their own theories. My plan was to make contact and share what I knew and then move on with my life. I figured most people would probably tell me I was nuts. In hindsight, I kind of wish they had. Instead I received a lot of positive feedback and encouragement to continue research into Leigh.

So there I was, having spent most of my life wondering who D.B. Cooper was, while also wondering where my uncle went. At that point, putting it aside was going to be impossible; I needed to find out if Leigh Seller was D.B. Cooper.

Two years later, I still have no idea if Leigh was D.B., but he has been presented as a suspect at CooperCon, and a dozen Cooper experts have seen all the information I’ve put together. He remains a viable person of interest.

A number of Cooper researchers have been a huge help. They have used their skills to verify that Leigh has never used his given name in any credit transaction since he disappeared; there is no death certificate; and he never claimed his military pension. Leigh Herbert Seller ceased to exist after 1971.

My hope is to continue learning about Leigh with the ultimate goal of discovering what happened to him. If something turns out, we also solve a 50-year mystery in the process and bring some closure to the victims of Flight 305, and that would be a major bonus.