A new memoir is trying to put a final word on a mystery that has plagued the US and the world for almost half-a-century.

Author Carl Laurin thinks he has solved the mystery of D.B. Cooper. In a new book, a memoir called “D. B Cooper & Me: A Criminal, A Spy, My Best Friend” he claims Cooper was really a former military paratrooper from Northeast Lower Michigan.

Laurin claims that Cooper was really his best friend, Walter Reca, of the Lake Huron town of Oscoda. The publisher of the book played audio recordings of Reca that included details of the famous 1971 skyjacking that were not known to the public at the time of the interview.

D.B. Cooper parachuted out of a plane he hijacked over Oregon, after he was given a $200,000, never to be seen again.