I Should Have Known: A Memoir with a D.B. Cooper Twist

By Liza Morado

The story opens to a simple life in the farming community of White Hall, Maryland. Liza develops a lasting bond with the Kaufmans after they move into the neighboring farm. Dushka and Liza become fast friends, and eventually become the Maids of Honor in each other's weddings. The girls drift apart, but their parents remain close … until Dushka's father betrays Liza and wrecks her oldest friendship. In her grief, Liza exposes him and his neighbor to the DOJ, feeling something was off about both men. The DOJ closed the criminal case in 2016. She's ready to share her side of the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9781667877938

Book preview

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Copyright 2021 Liza Morado. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-66787-792-1 paperback

ISBN: 978-1-66787-793-8 ebook

Contents

DISCLAIMER

FOREWORD

NEW NEIGHBORS

A SHARED CHILDHOOD

OUR OLD HOME

NATURE’S SYMPHONY

MY INTRODUCTION TO FLYING SQUIRRELS

WH ITE HALL, MARYLAND

DUSHKA’S PARENTS

WHO AM I TO START THINKING THIS?

HALE’S SWIMMING HOLE

THE CIRCUS CAME TO WHITE HALL

FOX HUNTS AND STEEPLECHASE RACES

TIME TO FLY THE NEST

MY WEDDING

DUSHKA’S WEDDING

THE KAUFMAN’S NEW HOUSE

BROADMEAD RETIREMENT CENTER

THE END OF A FIFTY-YEAR FRIENDSHIP

AN EPIPHANY

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

FURMAN HENDRIX, ACCORDING TO OUR OLD NEIGHBORS

Byron S.

Stuart

Mr. Farmer

Jutsy N.

Jennifer

Clorice

Richard

Ivan

Maggie

Billy B.

AUGUST 1ST, 2011

KAUFMAN FAMILY SPIRITS

IS THAT SO?

THE HIJACKING OF NORTHWEST ORIENT # 305

D.B. COOPER SUSPECTS

KENNETH PETER CHRISTIANSEN

JACK COFFELT

LYNN DOYLE COOPER

BARBARA DAYTON

WILLIAM GOSSETT

ROBERT RICHARD LEPSY

JOHN EMIL LIST

EARNEST THEODORE TED MAYFIELD

RICHARD MCCOY

ROBERT RACKSTRAW

WALTER RECA

WILLIAM J. SMITH

DUANE WEBER

TED B. BRADEN

ROD SERLING

CHANGES IN THE WAY WE FLY

D.B. COOPER TAUNTS INVESTIGATORS

TOM KAYE, SPECTROSCOPY EXPERT

CITIZEN SLEUTHS

COOPERCON

SPARKY 99

JACQUES DUBONNET

THE SMOKING GUN

EARL COSSEY

INVESTIGATION CLOSED-2016

PORTAL TO ENLIGHTENMENT

IF I COULD GO BACK IN TIME

FINAL THOUGHTS

DISCLAIMER

I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations based on my memories. To maintain the anonymity of my informants and others, I have changed the names of some individuals. This story is presented as fiction, but it is based upon actual events.

FOREWORD

This book is not about proving the identity of D.B. Cooper. I cannot do that. It is not my job. It is about sharing my journey involving one man and his good friend, both of whom led double lives and could very well be the reason why the case was suddenly closed in 2016. You are encouraged to draw your own conclusions. The story is about everything I learned along the way.

It is important to understand how isolated and naïve the town of White Hall is and was. Please enjoy my memories but keep the bucolic setting in mind as the story unfolds.

Hendrix and Kaufman’s possible involvement in the hijacking is better than happenstance. The information I discovered parallels information already made available to the public. It is not proof they did it, but there are startling equivalences and uncanny coincidences.

Why write this book now? I believe the public has the right to know about my story.

NEW NEIGHBORS

Finding playmates in the country was hard. Farms were distanced far apart. As my parents were not in agriculture, there was little socializing between us and neighboring farmers. Some neighbors had barely finished high school. My father and mother were highly educated. Our lifestyles were completely different. My parents met interesting couples to befriend, but they rarely had kids.

We heard about the Hendrix family, but we never spent any time with them. For a brief period, their kids got on our school bus on White Hall Road, but they soon disappeared to private schools—McDonough Military School for boys and Bryn Mawr Preparatory School for Girls.

Furman E. Hendrix owned an agricultural molasses supply business. We saw his trucks around town. He must have been rich because he had his own airstrip on his property. We could see his Piper airplane flying low in the skies above our farm. His airstrip was less than a mile from our house, as the Piper flies.

Life was lonely for me as a young girl and things got worse when my brother entered first grade. There were no little girls near our farm for me to play with. Friends lived in homes that were miles away.

When Alex and Eleanor Kaufman purchased their farm, life for me got more interesting. For once I could walk to a friend’s house. Their home was literally over the river and through the woods from our house.

I was twelve years old when the Kaufman’s moved into their farm. Dushka was eight. I took to their family like a duck to water. Every week we got together at least once. Both of our fathers were merchant marines. Dushka and I became the best of friends. We were inseparable.

Their lane was carved into the dirt from years of use, so much so that it had high banks. Brush arched over the lane, creating a tunnel during the summer. It was like driving into middle earth going down their lane.

During winter, their lane became impassable because windblown snow drifted over the banks and completely closed it. They had to leave their cars parked on Vernon Road and hike in. Leaving a car unattended on a country road was always a vandalism risk.

The lane’s high banks no longer exist. They were completely shaved down when their farm was developed with housing. There are at least fifteen new houses along their old lane. Their old lane is now called River Bend Court.

I never dreamed my childhood friends could be connected to the biggest unsolved hijacking in American history.

A SHARED CHILDHOOD

How did Dushka and I spend our sweltering summer days in the country? The short answer is doing nothing. Nothing was everything. Dushka was four years younger than me. I loved introducing her to what was fun about living in the country.

The creek by our house fed into their little creek, which merged into the Gunpowder River in White Hall. The little stream fascinated us. There was always something alive, wiggling and/or attached to the underside of a rock.

We were the first explorers to discover gold in our streams. We were sure it was gold. We found rocks shimmering in gold and silver layers that sparkled in the sun. Tragically, we were wrong about that. It was mica. Mica is a flaky rock used as an additive in toothpaste, lady’s facial powder, and eye shadow. Mica is also used in electronic equipment as a thermal insulator because it has a high thermal resistance. We wanted to believe it was gold.

Unfortunately, mica held little commercial value for gold diggers like us. Our dreams of witnessing our names in national headlines never materialized, However, the thrill of the hunt was priceless.

Wildflowers grew abundantly along the roadsides, in our fields, and across our lawns and yards. Bouquets of tiny violets and shiny buttercups were in our lawns for the picking. We believed angels sprinkled their seeds. We picked tiny bouquets for our mothers to bring them good luck.

Black-eyed Susans, blue-flowered chicory, and Queen Anne’s lace were everywhere. Our gardens were full of fresh vegetables—tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, corn, and green beans. We grabbed the saltshaker and headed for the garden after lunch. It was a heavenly fresh smorgasbord!

We played in our hay lofts. We made fortresses out of bales and held great battles. We flew across our barns on rope swings for sneak attacks during our battles. One day I held off Dushka’s brother for an hour by hiding in the feed bin. Considering he was full of himself; this was sweet revenge. I beat him at his own game. The only reason I came out was I had to go to the bathroom.

Square dances were a fun neighborly activity. Mr. and Mrs. Ensor hosted dances in their barn. They cleared out all the farm machinery to make room. Mr. Ensor played records on a phonograph. He was the caller, and she taught the different steps. They even had a dusty old chandelier hanging from the rafters! It was always a hoot and a holler to be invited to their dances.

We were the happiest country kids in the world.

OUR OLD HOME

My parents purchased our home on Hunter Mill Road in 1947 for an unimaginable amount of money—twenty thousand dollars. It came with one hundred and twenty acres.

Our home was already a hundred and ninety years old when we moved there in 1950. It still stands and can be seen from Hunter Mill Road. This home was built in two parts. The first part is on the left side of the building, the portion with the shutters. It was erected in 1760.

The second section was added in about 1840 and included the formal dining room, grand curved stairwell, an upstairs bathroom, Mom’s bedroom, living room and expansive front porch.

Our house was in the Bosley family for generations, passed down from father to son. In 1840, James Bosley added the second part of our house with a porch. Every brick was handmade by slaves, a grim reminder of man’s inhumanity to humanity.

In the 1850 census, James Bosley was no longer present. The census taker just missed his death. His wife, Hannah, was seventy-three years old. She lived with her son John, age thirty-two, and her daughter Lucretia. Under their names was also a male named William McFarlane. He was twelve years old. The census taker noted his birth was on dark deck in a blue ocean.

James and Hannah are buried in the family cemetery on the hill behind our old house, in the woods. Their gravestones may be difficult to read now, but they are there. Their daughter Lucretia is also buried there.

James and Hannah’s son, John Bosley, was quite successful and owned a kiln that made bricks. The kiln was once located at the intersection of Hunter Mill and Vernon Road, next to the little bridge where the forest is cleared.

John Bosley supplied all the bricks needed to make Wesley Chapel Methodist Church in Monkton. Wesley Chapel was destroyed by fire in 1900. It was rebuilt in 1901 but dismantled in 1976 because of declining membership.

Wesley Chapel Church, Painted by Mom

Elizabeth M. Partridge c. 1950s

All that is left now is the old cemetery surrounded by an iron Victorian gate. John and Mary Bosley are buried at Wesley Chapel cemetery.

Our home was heated by an oil furnace in the basement that looked like a giant octopus. Behind the furnace was a small cabinet-sized door in the middle of a stone wall that opened into the crawl space under the original section of the house. Behind the little door were disintegrated woven mats and random chicken bones, along with a whole lot of broken furniture and a motherload of meaningless stuff.

This house had been a safe house for runaway slaves and was part of the Underground Railroad. If slave bounty hunters searched, all they saw was broken furniture and useless stuff. Runaway slaves hid behind the clutter in the crawl space, under the dining room floor.

Behind the house were four other buildings. The large barn had stalls for animals and a milking parlor on the ground floor. Only the foundation and moping yard (used to contain cattle after milking) remain. A moping yard is where cows stand around looking listless but relieved their bags are drained. After all the cows were milked they were turned out to pasture across the lane.

The big barn’s upper floor had two lofts used for keeping hay and straw dry and one bay for storing farm equipment. There was a round hay baler, a corn planter, a rake, a disc plow, a cultivator, and all sorts of hand tools such as a horse collar, a sickle, and a scythe. The first floor had stalls and a milking parlor. The most intriguing piece of farm equipment left behind rested in the field behind the barn—a wooden sleigh, broken and collapsing.

The little white house was added in the mid-1800s and still stands. It served as upgraded slaves’ quarters. The original slaves’ quarters were on the second floor of the carriage house.

The small white building in the distance was the chicken house. One day a fox raided the chicken house. Seeing chicken carnage in the morning was more than my mother could take. Blood, chicken guts, and feathers were strewn everywhere. It was not long after this incident that the surviving chickens were slaughtered.

Have you heard the saying, He was running around like a chicken with its head cut off? It is true. They dash around headless and then flop to the ground.

We had a cow named Miss Ivy and a randy bull named Herman. It did not take long before Ivy was pregnant. One day the veterinarian came to examine Miss Ivy. I was mortified when I saw his arm disappear into her vagina, all the way up to his armpit. He said the calf was doing fine and would soon be born.

I could not imagine any man’s arm disappearing up to his armpit in anyone’s vagina.

NATURE’S SYMPHONY

The darker the day became, the louder the crickets, cicadas, and katydids chirped and the frogs in the stream croaked. There were so many tireless voices trying to outdo one another. This went on all summer and sometimes late into October—that is until freezing temperatures ended their fun.

It was nature’s highest orchestral performance––each and every night. It sounded a bit chaotic but nonetheless sensational. Screech owls and whippoorwills added harmony with their own unique songs.

Fireflies lit up the meadow across from our porch. Fireflies are members of the beetle family, Coleoptera, which is spelled like Cleopatra, just not as sexy.

Fireflies burrow underground to hibernate for the winter. Their eggs are laid on the ground, under mulch or logs