D.B COOPER: AIR HOSTESS SPENT 10-YEARS IN NUNNERY

COOPER

MUCKLOW AT THE TIME

THE STRANGE case of mysterious skyjacker DB Cooper just took another bizarre twist when it was revealed that the stewardess who dealt with the thief, then spent 10-years in a nunnery - possibly as part of the witness protection programme.
Tina Mucklow was praised for her calm handling of the man, who called himself Dan Cooper, who in 1971, boarded the Seattle to Portland plane and claimed to have a bomb strapped to his chest. 
With as little fuss as possible, she served him drinks and passed messages between him and the pilot and then helped the passengers off the plane when it landed in Seattle. 
Then after he'd got his $200,000 ransom and forced the plane to take off again, she showed him how to operate the emergency door out of which he jumped. 
Hailed as a heroine at the time she told the World's media: "He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm."
The pilot is said to claimed that the 22-year-old's actions in air saved the passengers' lives.
But while she may have had nerves of steel at the time, the media glare allegedly became too much for the overawed young witness, who stopped speaking to the media completely in about 1980.   
Then she entered the Maria Regina Convent, a Carmelite Catholic nunnery outside Eugene, Oregon, where she would have had to immerse herself in prayer and would rarely have been allowed to leave the grounds of the convent.
Strangely, she left after 12-years, something very unusual for Carmelite nuns.
When CNN contacted them to ask why she'd left after 12 years, the head sister said it was because she "no longer fit in."

Refusing to give her name she added that she "left in about 1991 or 1992. I'm not going to say any more about it."
She's now believed to be living a quiet life in Oregon under a different name but has co-operated with the ongoing DB Cooper investigation, FBI spokeswoman Ayn Sandalo Dietrich said.
Her role may, however, become more important than ever now after a woman came out to say she believed her uncle was DB Cooper.
She has now provided the FBI with a photograph of her uncle Lynne Doyle and a guitar strap which he owned for fingerprint testing.
The FBI said DNA found on the tie does not match - but refused to rule him out as a suspect.