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Speaker 4: Lost You are now listening to true Murder, The most
Speaker 4: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 4: have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 4: Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 4: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 4: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 6: Good Evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 6: program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 6: history and the authors that have written about them. Nancy
Speaker 6: Cooper is missing. Her husband said she went for a
Speaker 6: job and never came home. Hundreds search for the vivacious
Speaker 6: mother of two young girls in the upscale North Carolina neighborhood.
Speaker 6: Days later, Nancy's body is discovered face down in a
Speaker 6: ditch a few miles from her home. It appears he's
Speaker 6: been snatched off a jogging trail and strangled, Yet focus
Speaker 6: immediately falls on Nancy's smart, athletic and handsome husband, Brad.
Speaker 6: Because the couple had been embroiled in a violently contentious divorce,
Speaker 6: Dad Cooper steadfastly maintained maintains his innocence. Nancy's loved one
Speaker 6: knows of Brad's lies and his cheating. They know he
Speaker 6: wielded an unhealthy control over his wife. They feared with
Speaker 6: good reason, that the strong willed Nancy was ultimately no
Speaker 6: match for her husband's dark side. As the story unfolds
Speaker 6: in this peaceful suburb, secrets are revealed, families are torn apart,
Speaker 6: and a trail of damning evidence paves the path to
Speaker 6: final justice. The book that's featured this evening is Love Lies,
Speaker 6: a true story of marriage and murder in the Suburbs,
Speaker 6: with my special guest journalist, author Amandalam. Thank you for
Speaker 6: agreeing to the program and welcome back to True Murder
Speaker 6: amand Lamb.
Speaker 5: Thanks, thank you, Dan, happy to be here.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Now, tell us a little bit about where
Speaker 6: exactly this crime occurred. I know that we're we're dealing
Speaker 6: with North Carolina, We're dealing with Rally, North Carolina. But
Speaker 6: this is Is this a suburb or tell us what Carrie, North.
Speaker 5: Carry is really the closest suburb to Raleigh. It's a
Speaker 5: middle upper class suburb, a bedroom community. People who were
Speaker 5: familiar with this area maybe twenty years ago, would have
Speaker 5: called it a crossroads. And now this crossroads has turned
Speaker 5: into a town of you know, more than one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty thousand people, so it's really almost a small city,
Speaker 5: but it's it's very suburb and it's a sprawling suburb
Speaker 5: with you know, manatured lawns and walking paths, and you know,
Speaker 5: you drive around and you see kids on their bikes
Speaker 5: and people walking their dogs and jogging, and it's just
Speaker 5: a very serene, quiet, nice community. Was a very very
Speaker 5: low crime rate, so that was one of the reasons
Speaker 5: this case really catched everybody's attentions immediately.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's start with who Nancy Cooper was, her early life,
Speaker 6: her parents, She grew up in Edmonton, I believe, or
Speaker 6: at least that's.
Speaker 4: What she did.
Speaker 6: There is a Canadian.
Speaker 5: Yes, she grew up in Edmonton, and she met her husband,
Speaker 5: Brad in Canada. He's also a Canadian. He's from a
Speaker 5: small town called Pittston hat And at the time both
Speaker 5: of them were kind of starting out in their early
Speaker 5: professional careers. If Brad was in information technology and Nancy
Speaker 5: was also doing some work in that area, and they
Speaker 5: were working at the same company. They met they started dating. Actually,
Speaker 5: Nancy had tried to fix Bred up with one of
Speaker 5: her friends and then decided that she liked him and
Speaker 5: that they were more suited for each other, and it
Speaker 5: was a it's a fairly quick romance. I mean they met,
Speaker 5: she had been in a long term relationship prior to
Speaker 5: that with somebody else as well as he had. They
Speaker 5: met and within a few months decided they were going
Speaker 5: to get married. They were planning a wedding for some
Speaker 5: time down the road, maybe a year down the road.
Speaker 5: And as it ended up, Brad got a job in
Speaker 5: North Carolina with a very large technology company called Cisco Systems,
Speaker 5: and so as a result, he was planning to move
Speaker 5: to North Carolina, and so he and Nancy immediately sped
Speaker 5: up their marriage plans and just had a very very
Speaker 5: quick wedding really with just Nancy's family and close friends.
Speaker 5: Parents did not even attend. They were living in another
Speaker 5: area at the time. And then Brad moved to North
Speaker 5: Carolina and Nancy followed very quickly after that. And when
Speaker 5: they moved to North Carolina, they immediately moved to this
Speaker 5: area in Carrie, which, as you know, suburbs are not
Speaker 5: walking areas, not areas that are you know, adjacent to
Speaker 5: public transportation or to shopping areas. I mean, you have
Speaker 5: to have a car. So that was kind of One
Speaker 5: of their first seeking points is that they didn't have
Speaker 5: the finances for both of them to have a vehicle,
Speaker 5: and so soon after they moved to North Carolina, they
Speaker 5: started talking about having a family, and eventually they did
Speaker 5: have two little girls. And for a long time, I
Speaker 5: think most people who knew them would have said, you know,
Speaker 5: they were living what most people thought was the American dream.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's in a nice house. They lived in
Speaker 5: a nice neighborhood. They had lots of friends, they had
Speaker 5: two beautiful daughters. They were very both very athletic, both
Speaker 5: into running. Brad Cooper did iron men, you know, triathlons,
Speaker 5: and Nancy was training for a marathon. And so from
Speaker 5: the outside they looked like they were doing well. But
Speaker 5: as we learned more about them and learned more about
Speaker 5: their marriage, that clearly was not the case.
Speaker 6: Now let's go back for our audience a little bit,
Speaker 6: because you do obviously paint the you know, a character
Speaker 6: portrait of these people. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: Brad Cooper. Tell us about his early life, if there
Speaker 6: was any indication whatsoever except that he would be an
Speaker 6: exceptionally gifted person, very intelligent guy, good looking guy, athletic guy,
Speaker 6: seem to be quite charming. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: about Brad Cooper in his early life and tell us
Speaker 6: what his family life was really like and if there
Speaker 6: was any indication of what did happen later.
Speaker 5: What we know about Brad Cooper is very limited because
Speaker 5: he and his family have been very private throughout this
Speaker 5: whole ordeal, and so most of what we know comes
Speaker 5: from a deposition that he set for in the custody
Speaker 5: case that involved their children after the murder, and he
Speaker 5: talked about, you know, growing up in this small town.
Speaker 5: His father was worked at the university. He was a
Speaker 5: very accomplished, very bright man and had pushed Brad to
Speaker 5: achieve things in his life, and Brad had followed suit.
Speaker 5: He had one brother, and it seems like from everything
Speaker 5: he talked about that there wasn't a lot of communication
Speaker 5: amongst his family members, that they were very quiet, very reserved,
Speaker 5: and that carried into his adult life. From the understanding
Speaker 5: that we have from the people that testify in the
Speaker 5: case and also were involved in filing affidavits in the
Speaker 5: custody case, and they basically just talked about this stark
Speaker 5: contrast between Brad Cooper and Nancy Cooper, which was that
Speaker 5: Brad was just a very quiet, very reserved person. Again,
Speaker 5: as you mentioned, clearly very intelligent and also quite talented athlete,
Speaker 5: but a very reserved person, and Nancy was quite the opposite.
Speaker 5: I think I've heard her referred to as body saucy.
Speaker 5: She had a great kind of crazy sense of humor
Speaker 5: that people enjoyed. She was the less of the party,
Speaker 5: very outgoing, very very outgoing, lots of friends, was the
Speaker 5: kind of person that every time she met somebody, they
Speaker 5: became a new friend. And so Brad's personality seemed to
Speaker 5: be the polar opposite and really a start contrast to Nancy's.
Speaker 5: And you know that may have contributed clearly to some
Speaker 5: of the problems in their marriage, but no indication of
Speaker 5: any I mean, he had no past criminal record, no
Speaker 5: history of violence. There were some allegations that he did
Speaker 5: have some problems with depression and that he may have
Speaker 5: been suicidal. He himself, in his definition said that was
Speaker 5: not the case, but those were some allegations from Nancy's
Speaker 5: family during the city case that they felt that he
Speaker 5: did have some issues with depression.
Speaker 6: Now, before we get too far into this too, maybe
Speaker 6: you can tell us a little bit about Nancy Cooper's life,
Speaker 6: because you did have contact with the parents, Donna Rentz
Speaker 6: and Gary rent And tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: her life, because I think it's important because we'll talk
Speaker 6: about the custody battle and then of course they're even
Speaker 6: important in the trial itself. But tell us about Donna
Speaker 6: Rentz and Gary Rentz and Nancy's life growing up in
Speaker 6: Canada and Edmonton a fairly big city in.
Speaker 5: Canada, right, Well, I had a lot more access to
Speaker 5: Nancy's family, so I definitely have a lot more information
Speaker 5: about the Rents is. But Nancy came from large by
Speaker 5: today's standards, four children, a large, loving family, a family
Speaker 5: that loved to be together, loved to do things together.
Speaker 5: They traveled together, they played games together, they were all
Speaker 5: very involved in each other's lives. And the stories of
Speaker 5: growing up were amazing because you really got a sense
Speaker 5: of this close knit family that whenever somebody knew came
Speaker 5: in a boyfriend, a girlfriend, of spouse, they were just
Speaker 5: kind of welcomed into this family and found a place
Speaker 5: there and really fell in love with this family. And
Speaker 5: I think Brad Cooper fell in love with this family.
Speaker 5: And I know that they had welcomed him with open arms,
Speaker 5: even though he was very different from Nancy, because that's
Speaker 5: just the kind of people they were. Nancy, Donna and
Speaker 5: Gary Wruntz are very bright. They own their own business.
Speaker 5: Gary has worked in the past. He did work in
Speaker 5: child welfare in Canada, so he did have some backgrounds
Speaker 5: and that helped him and when he got involved in
Speaker 5: the custom case. But all of the children and their
Speaker 5: children come home frequently and they all again vacation together
Speaker 5: and spend time together, and that was There were just many, many,
Speaker 5: many stories they shared with me, like that Nancy was
Speaker 5: an identical twin her sister, Christa Lister is now raising
Speaker 5: her children. And she had an older brother, Jeff, who
Speaker 5: is a police officer, and she also had a younger sister, Jill,
Speaker 5: And so as I got to know them, I realized
Speaker 5: that they really were genuinely the kind of people that
Speaker 5: were open minded and welcomes people into their home and
Speaker 5: into their family. And again that's what they did with
Speaker 5: bred Cooper. So losing Nancy was literally like losing as
Speaker 5: Jess said, it was like there's a spoke missing in
Speaker 5: our wheel. And I think for any parent that's ever
Speaker 5: lost a child. It's really like losing your arm or
Speaker 5: losing your leg. It's something that you can't imagine living without,
Speaker 5: and yet somehow you do. But just pretty amazing people
Speaker 5: and very gracious and very reserved in that they did
Speaker 5: not lash out in anger when they could have with many,
Speaker 5: many television cameras in their face. They chose their words
Speaker 5: very carefully, and they chose to concentrate on the positive,
Speaker 5: which was all the support they received from the community
Speaker 5: and also from the investigators involved in the case.
Speaker 6: Okay, now let's get back to the marriage. And you
Speaker 6: say that they had a sort of a quiet wedding
Speaker 6: and his parents didn't show up. Found that family didn't
Speaker 6: show up at the wedding for whatever reason. I found
Speaker 6: that a little bit odd. But now, at what point
Speaker 6: and how many years have they been married, because we're
Speaker 6: talking about two thousand and eight here, When do these
Speaker 6: problems surface that they have in their marriage And what
Speaker 6: exactly specifically are the kinds of issues that are presenting
Speaker 6: themselves as problems in the marriage from what you've researched, Well.
Speaker 5: My understanding is that early on in the marriage, the
Speaker 5: transportation issue was really one of the first sticking points,
Speaker 5: which was that they had moved to the suburban community
Speaker 5: and Nancy had no transportation. She had no way to
Speaker 5: go to the grocery store, to go shopping, to go
Speaker 5: see a friend. She also had no visa, so she
Speaker 5: couldn't work. So there was a kind of an immediate
Speaker 5: sense of being trapped in a way because she was
Speaker 5: a woman who had worked, had a college degree, she
Speaker 5: had owned her own store at one time, she had
Speaker 5: had professional job in Canada, and all of a sudden
Speaker 5: she was living in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina,
Speaker 5: with no job and no transportation. So if you ask
Speaker 5: family members, they will say that the cracks started to
Speaker 5: show in the relationship very early in the marriage, and
Speaker 5: to the point where Nancy had actually come home I
Speaker 5: think it was in the first year of marriage if
Speaker 5: I recall, and said, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 5: And the family had talked to her and convinced her
Speaker 5: to basically give it another try, and Brad had in
Speaker 5: fact come back to Canada and asked her to give
Speaker 5: the marriage another try. He was working a lot, and
Speaker 5: so again she was left at home alone with very
Speaker 5: few friends. At that time, she really hadn't connected with
Speaker 5: people and had no transportation. What I'm told by the
Speaker 5: family is that things were rocky. And then as soon
Speaker 5: as she had her first child, a daughter named Bella,
Speaker 5: things really started to improve. Because Nancy had always wanted
Speaker 5: to be a mother and that was really one of
Speaker 5: her biggest goals in life and one of the really
Speaker 5: the impetus for marrying Brad very quickly, because at the
Speaker 5: time she had been involved in Canada was a man
Speaker 5: prior to Brad who she was very much in love with,
Speaker 5: but he was older and had older children and did
Speaker 5: not apparently want to have more children. But she knew
Speaker 5: Brad wanted to have a family again, there was this
Speaker 5: desire to have a family. She had this daughter and
Speaker 5: things started to improve. Then they had the second child,
Speaker 5: and that's when things started to go downhill. And specifically,
Speaker 5: Nancy started to hear stories about Brad being unfaithful to her,
Speaker 5: and one of those stories was actually that it was
Speaker 5: one of her very close friends, and she confronted the friend. Well,
Speaker 5: the friend told her and then.
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Speaker 5: He called her the next day and said, I want
Speaker 5: to be clear, did this happen? And the friend told
Speaker 5: her that, in fact, did happen, and she confronted Brad,
Speaker 5: and so that was kind of the beginning of the end.
Speaker 5: But there were many other issues, I think, based on
Speaker 5: a surrounding control. If you look back again, that early
Speaker 5: transportation issue that continued in a different way, and that
Speaker 5: she was only allowed to have a certain amount of
Speaker 5: gas in her car and the gas would only take
Speaker 5: her so far, and that Brad had cut her off
Speaker 5: from finances. His reasoning, and this is what he said
Speaker 5: in court documents, was that she was a spendthrift and
Speaker 5: that they were having financial problems and that he had
Speaker 5: to budget and so he basically took her off all
Speaker 5: the bank accounts, all the credit cards. She had no
Speaker 5: access to money at all other than what he gave her,
Speaker 5: and so that limitation again, limiting your transportation, limiting your finances.
Speaker 5: And then I think the next level was that he
Speaker 5: started to According to her family and friends, they believe
Speaker 5: that he was monitoring her communications with them, looking at
Speaker 5: her email, also listening to a phone calls, possibly even
Speaker 5: disconnecting phone calls. He was an expert in voiceover internet technology,
Speaker 5: which is now much more common, but at that time,
Speaker 5: a couple of years ago, it was still kind of
Speaker 5: in its infancy in terms of being widely used, and
Speaker 5: he knew a lot about phones. He knew a lot
Speaker 5: about how computers and phones and how they worked. And
Speaker 5: the belief was that he was monitoring her phone calls.
Speaker 5: And then finally, I think the last straw in the
Speaker 5: whole control issue was that they were beginning to talk
Speaker 5: about divorce and custody issues and they were still living
Speaker 5: in the home together because now there's them basically could
Speaker 5: really afford to not do that at that time, and
Speaker 5: they were trying to figure out what the next step was,
Speaker 5: and Nancy really wanted to go back to Canada to
Speaker 5: be with her family, and Nancy said told her friends,
Speaker 5: and this was later confirmed that he had taken the
Speaker 5: children's passports, so she was not able to leave the country.
Speaker 5: And so again really a lot of small things started
Speaker 5: out as small issues but turned into much bigger issues.
Speaker 6: Yeah, certainly, the idea that he would take the passports.
Speaker 6: I understand he's a paranoid person that thinks that maybe
Speaker 6: his wife will take off there having arguments that she
Speaker 6: doesn't want to stay, so he takes the passports and
Speaker 6: he's doing all this monitoring. Seems to be at that
Speaker 6: time a very paranoid person, maybe even rightfully so, because
Speaker 6: she's telling him that she does not want this, doesn't
Speaker 6: want this anymore. That doesn't mean it's justifiable, but it
Speaker 6: sort of lends itself to his paranoia.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. And there was also an issue of alimony. They
Speaker 5: again were in the beginning stages of talking about a
Speaker 5: separation agreement, and Nancy's lawyer had drafted a very early agreement,
Speaker 5: which is usually something that you then negotiate back and
Speaker 5: forth for a while, but he had gotten hold of that. Again,
Speaker 5: the belief is that he got into her email and
Speaker 5: the alimony payments were high, and the belief was that
Speaker 5: he just didn't want to pay those alimony payments or
Speaker 5: the child support, and clearly she didn't work, and that
Speaker 5: was going to be part of the deal. If she
Speaker 5: went wherever she went, whether she went to Canada or not,
Speaker 5: that was going to be part of the issue. So
Speaker 5: there was a lot of discussion during the trial and
Speaker 5: also during the custody battle about Brad's concern for his
Speaker 5: finances and how a divorce would ultimately have affected him financially.
Speaker 6: Now, in terms of the two young girls, what was
Speaker 6: Brad like as a father and was it more so
Speaker 6: just the in keeping with the characteristic of control that
Speaker 6: he didn't want them to leave, or was he going
Speaker 6: to be a devastated father who was a good father?
Speaker 6: I mean, I know he was busy, so he wasn't
Speaker 6: as attentive as he could be. But would you like
Speaker 6: as a father?
Speaker 5: I think that there was There was a lot of
Speaker 5: controversy about that issue. I think that in many ways
Speaker 5: he was like many fathers in America and that he
Speaker 5: worked long hours and as a result, his wife was
Speaker 5: the primary caregiver for the children. That doesn't mean he
Speaker 5: didn't love his children. It just means that he wasn't
Speaker 5: present with them in the same way that she was,
Speaker 5: and as a result, the children had a much stronger
Speaker 5: bond with their mother than they did with their father.
Speaker 5: I think that people that saw Brad with the children,
Speaker 5: and for example, if they were at a party, Brad
Speaker 5: was not somebody that liked to socialize with adults or
Speaker 5: make chit chat. That just wasn't his nature. And a
Speaker 5: lot of times Nancy, being the social one, would be
Speaker 5: talking to the adults and Brad would be watching the
Speaker 5: children or playing with the children. And people did witness
Speaker 5: him playing with the children at the pool and in
Speaker 5: other settings. But there was also a lot of a
Speaker 5: lot of anecdotal evidence that he was absent for a
Speaker 5: lot of important things in their lives, be it doctor's appointments,
Speaker 5: things that happened at the preschool, any kind of you know,
Speaker 5: events where they were performing, that Nancy was the one
Speaker 5: that was there. There. Definitely, there's no doubt I don't
Speaker 5: think that he loved his children. But then there was
Speaker 5: also a question about the custody, and at one point
Speaker 5: Nancy told friends that he had said, well I'll take
Speaker 5: one child and you take the other, which I think
Speaker 5: for any of us that are parents. We couldn't even imagine,
Speaker 5: how could that, how could you even have on that?
Speaker 5: And then there were some other discussion where Nancy had
Speaker 5: told friends that he had said, I want to spend
Speaker 5: time with the kids and then leave and don't ever
Speaker 5: come back, and I don't want to see you or
Speaker 5: the kids ever again. And who knows if that was
Speaker 5: said in anger or if that was something that he meant.
Speaker 5: But at the end of the day, I think the
Speaker 5: evidence simply was that he was an absent father, not
Speaker 5: necessarily that he was a bad father, but that he
Speaker 5: just wasn't present with his children. And he did again,
Speaker 5: other than working many, many long hours. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think everybody agreed that he was a workaholic. I think
Speaker 5: he was also very involved in these Ironman triathlons, which,
Speaker 5: for anybody that knows about the training for those, I
Speaker 5: mean that's one hundred mile bike ride, a full marathon,
Speaker 5: a swim. I mean it takes a lot of time
Speaker 5: to train for something like that. So between those two things,
Speaker 5: and he was getting his MBA, between those three things,
Speaker 5: he simply didn't have a lot of time to be
Speaker 5: a father.
Speaker 6: And like you say, because of these hobbies that take
Speaker 6: an incredible amount of time us his work schedule, and
Speaker 6: there is some talk of infidelity as well. At least
Speaker 6: he's got these long hours. He's a busy guy outside
Speaker 6: of the family, and she's really stuck at home with
Speaker 6: the kids pretty well full time.
Speaker 5: And there was also some testimony about the fact that
Speaker 5: Nancy had found a list under his keyboard of his computer,
Speaker 5: and she also showed it to some friends who verified
Speaker 5: after her death that this list existed. And basically the
Speaker 5: list had things that he had written down, like so,
Speaker 5: with this child likes chicken nuggets, this child's favorite color
Speaker 5: is yellow, things that a good parent would not have
Speaker 5: to write down, that you would know these things about
Speaker 5: your own child, And so the thought was that he
Speaker 5: was preparing for the custody battle and was trying to
Speaker 5: memorize things about his kids, and so, you know, that
Speaker 5: was obviously a little unsettling for her when she found
Speaker 5: this and shared it with friends, saying, Hey, I don't
Speaker 5: understand why any parent would have to, you know, would
Speaker 5: know what their kid's favorite food is and what their
Speaker 5: favorite color is and so on.
Speaker 6: Interesting, not that this is the prooven and self of anything,
Speaker 6: but was there any conversations with Nancy and her parents
Speaker 6: or her family, her brother, or her sister an identical twin.
Speaker 6: Is there any conversations whatsoever about her being fearful that
Speaker 6: he may assault her, hurt her, stop her, or be
Speaker 6: violent in any way. Was there any conversations like that.
Speaker 5: There were no conversations with her family to that end.
Speaker 5: And in fact, even in the very final weeks when
Speaker 5: there were some desperate crime phone calls between Nancy and
Speaker 5: her parents and her sisters, they asked her. They all
Speaker 5: asked her, and in fact her brother remembers asking her directly,
Speaker 5: are you afraid? Her father asked her directly, are you afraid?
Speaker 5: And Nancy Cooper was a very and many ways very strong,
Speaker 5: very opinionated, very confident woman. She had become broken in
Speaker 5: a way through this troubled marriage, but inherently her core
Speaker 5: was that she was somebody that didn't give up easily,
Speaker 5: that didn't didn't you know, take no for an answer,
Speaker 5: and that she was somehow, even though she had gotten
Speaker 5: very desperate and very distraught over the state of her marriage,
Speaker 5: was going to get through this. And I think it
Speaker 5: would have been very difficult for her to admit that
Speaker 5: she was afraid. On the contrary, there were several friends
Speaker 5: who testified that she told them that she did sleep
Speaker 5: sometimes with her door locked, with her jeans on or
Speaker 5: her you know, street clothes on, and with her keys
Speaker 5: in her pocket, ready to go if she needed to
Speaker 5: go in the middle of the night. That she was
Speaker 5: afraid of Brad. Now whether that was physically being afraid
Speaker 5: or just afraid that there was going to be a
Speaker 5: huge fight and that she would have to just run
Speaker 5: out and get in her car. The passports were also
Speaker 5: kept in the car prior to him taking them, So
Speaker 5: again that belief of I'm ready to go, My purse
Speaker 5: is in my car, my passports are in my car,
Speaker 5: my keys are in my pocket, my phones, you know,
Speaker 5: on the night stand next to me, I'm ready to go.
Speaker 5: But never were there any allegations of physical abuse prior
Speaker 5: to the murder.
Speaker 6: Now, let's get to two thousand and eight, and let's
Speaker 6: get to the just prior to this, And there's a
Speaker 6: person named Carrie Clark, Nancy's friend. And for the audience
Speaker 6: that may not know, Nancy did have I don't know
Speaker 6: the degree of it, but she did have Crohn's disease. Okay,
Speaker 6: she did she did.
Speaker 5: She did have crimes disease, which is you know, testinal
Speaker 5: gas throoine testinal issue. Some people it can be very
Speaker 5: very serious, other people can have a mild case. Nancy
Speaker 5: had had had some serious bouts with it that took
Speaker 5: her to the emergency room, you know, dehydrated and not
Speaker 5: being able to keep any food down. But she became
Speaker 5: a runner, and the running seemed to really help kind
Speaker 5: of balance her system and her body, and so she
Speaker 5: really had become quite an avid runner prior to her death.
Speaker 5: And when she initially disappeared, you know, one of the
Speaker 5: first questions people had was, well, maybe she had some
Speaker 5: kind of an attack of Crime's disease and maybe she
Speaker 5: was lying on the side of the road or in
Speaker 5: the woods somewhere. And so her friend the very first
Speaker 5: thing she did actually was called all the emergency rooms
Speaker 5: in the area to see if she had you know,
Speaker 5: been admitted, had flagged the car down and had maybe
Speaker 5: been set about with cunies.
Speaker 6: Wasn't there a conversation with Carrie that she didn't feel
Speaker 6: like running either it was a day before or that day,
Speaker 6: so there was some indication that she wasn't feeling well
Speaker 6: enough to jog. And then of course tell us about
Speaker 6: I don't think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that she had some It had something
Speaker 5: more to do with muscular stuff. It was not about
Speaker 5: it was not about her Crowns disease. But yet she
Speaker 5: was supposed to run. She had a couple running partners,
Speaker 5: but she was supposed to run with this particular partner
Speaker 5: the day before and they connected that morning at five
Speaker 5: or five thirty and says, you know what, Nancy said,
Speaker 5: I just I'm not up to it today. So she didn't.
Speaker 5: Then the plan, according to her husband, was that she
Speaker 5: was going to run that Saturday morning. And so when
Speaker 5: Nancy didn't show up for some other plans with friends
Speaker 5: that day Saturday, Brad said she had gone running and
Speaker 5: had not returned. And later the woman that was her
Speaker 5: usual running partner, she testified that they did not have
Speaker 5: any plans to run on that Saturday, and that she
Speaker 5: hadn't planned to see Nancy until at least Sunday or
Speaker 5: maybe the day after that. So there was some discrepancies
Speaker 5: in as far as what plans did she have, what
Speaker 5: plans did she not have. Her very close friend Jessica Adam,
Speaker 5: testified that she had a plan to come to her
Speaker 5: house to help her paint, because Nancy had been picking
Speaker 5: up extra jobs for a little money here and there,
Speaker 5: and one of the things that she could do with paint,
Speaker 5: and so she was helping her friend paint I think
Speaker 5: it was her dining room, and so that that was
Speaker 5: supposedly her plan for that Saturday, and she never showed up,
Speaker 5: and so that started the ball rolling of Okay, what's
Speaker 5: happened to Nancy and her friend? Ultimately, after calling around,
Speaker 5: calling other friends and calling the emergency rooms, she ultimately
Speaker 5: called the police nine one one and said, you know,
Speaker 5: my friend is missing and I don't know, but something
Speaker 5: may have happened to her. And so that was the
Speaker 5: beginning of the investigation. And really that call had had
Speaker 5: that call not been made, it might have been many
Speaker 5: many days before anybody found out what happened to Nancy.
Speaker 6: Cooper now now tell us about the what Brad Cooper
Speaker 6: does when he says, oh, you know, I think my
Speaker 6: Nancy went for a jog and didn't come home. How
Speaker 6: many hours before he called anyone? And who did he
Speaker 6: call first, and what was his mainer like, and what
Speaker 6: was the conversation she was supposed right.
Speaker 5: She supposedly left the house. I think he testified that
Speaker 5: she she you know, he heard her leave the house
Speaker 5: a little before seven, and then he had a tennis
Speaker 5: game at nine point thirty. He said, he canceled his
Speaker 5: tennis game when Nancy didn't return, But it wasn't unusual
Speaker 5: for her to go for a long run and then
Speaker 5: have call again, not counting into the fact that she
Speaker 5: had this painting date with her friend, because he clearly
Speaker 5: didn't know about that plan. And then her friend started
Speaker 5: to call, and then another friend called, and so then
Speaker 5: clearly Brad realized that she had plans with other people,
Speaker 5: and so ultimately he said, well, let me see if
Speaker 5: I can try to reach her running partner. Do you
Speaker 5: have her name? Do you have her number? He didn't
Speaker 5: have her number or her last name. And then eventually,
Speaker 5: around lunchtime on that Saturday, he stepped.
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Speaker 5: Kids in the car and went driving around the area
Speaker 5: looking for her and told Nancy's friends that that's what
Speaker 5: he was going to do and I'm part of that.
Speaker 5: He went to several neighborhoods and he also went to
Speaker 5: the gym that they both belonged to, which was nearby,
Speaker 5: to see if she had checked in at the gym.
Speaker 5: The friends were getting impatient. He was not answering his
Speaker 5: cell phone and so ultimately that's why Jessica Adam called
Speaker 5: called nine one one, and then she met the police
Speaker 5: at the house. And by that time, Brad was coming
Speaker 5: back from you know, allegedly going out and looking for her,
Speaker 5: and that's when the investigation started. And then you know,
Speaker 5: hundreds hundreds of people came out for this search. It
Speaker 5: was a massive search. And in addition to the police
Speaker 5: search which was going on by air, by helicopter, by
Speaker 5: boat or several lakes in this neighborhood, there were dogs
Speaker 5: on the ground, you know, sniffing the trails. It's a
Speaker 5: very wooded area with lots of trails, and then just
Speaker 5: hundreds of searchers volunteers looking for her, but ironically none
Speaker 5: of them found her. She was found that Monday, so
Speaker 5: again she was reported missing Saturday. She was found Monday night,
Speaker 5: about three miles from her home in an undeveloped subdivision,
Speaker 5: face down in a drainage ditch partially closed in a
Speaker 5: jogging top, and she was found by a man walking
Speaker 5: his dogs. And so then it became a homicide investigation.
Speaker 5: From that point on, what was.
Speaker 6: The cause of death.
Speaker 5: It was very difficult to say because she had decomposed,
Speaker 5: it was very hot. It's North Carolina, obviously, and we
Speaker 5: had had torrential rains for about twenty four hours. But
Speaker 5: the autopsy results the best I don't want to say guests,
Speaker 5: because I don't think doctor's guests, but their their ultimate
Speaker 5: decision was that it was asphyxiation and that she had
Speaker 5: been strangled. Right, there were no other wounds on the body.
Speaker 6: Now, when the search is called and Brad again has
Speaker 6: to pretend that he knew nothing of this, and he's
Speaker 6: totally surprised and he shocked. What exactly is his demeanor?
Speaker 6: What does how does he behave in light of this news.
Speaker 5: It's interesting because right away the career police are very
Speaker 5: media friendly, and right away they started having press conferences
Speaker 5: to update the public on what was going on and
Speaker 5: also to ask for people's health in this search. And
Speaker 5: you know, Nancy's family immediately all came from Canada to
Speaker 5: participate in the search, but also to participate in this
Speaker 5: media attention that they were trying to get, which was, hey,
Speaker 5: please help us find our daughter. And so Brad was
Speaker 5: invited to these press conferences. He attended one, which was
Speaker 5: the evening press conference on that Monday night. The body
Speaker 5: was found several hours after this press conference, but this
Speaker 5: was around dinner time on that Monday night, which would
Speaker 5: have been July fourteenth, two thousand and eight. And he
Speaker 5: got up and he made a very very brief statement
Speaker 5: where he just said, I don't want to thank everybody
Speaker 5: for your support, thank people for searching and help me.
Speaker 5: You know, hopefully we'll find her. Is very quick. Again,
Speaker 5: he's very shy, he looks down. He's not you know,
Speaker 5: he's not somebody that is very outgoing or engaging in
Speaker 5: any way. And it was just very, very brief, and
Speaker 5: then that was his last appearance. And when we as
Speaker 5: journalists asked the police chief why he wasn't at subsequent
Speaker 5: press conferences, she basically said he'd been invited, but he
Speaker 5: had chose not to come. And they did say from
Speaker 5: the beginning that he was cooperating, but again I think
Speaker 5: that's more police speak because at the time they didn't
Speaker 5: want to call him the suspect because they didn't have
Speaker 5: enough evidence to arrest him, and so they weren't calling
Speaker 5: him the suspects until his arrest, which was about three
Speaker 5: and a half months after into his body was found.
Speaker 6: Now that you say too cooperative, I wanted to clarify
Speaker 6: that too. What it was is that he didn't let
Speaker 6: the police go in and search high and low. They
Speaker 6: were able to walk through, so he was sort of
Speaker 6: allude to he was somewhat cooperative, and then soon after
Speaker 6: not cooperative at all.
Speaker 5: Right, He shut down as soon as the body was
Speaker 5: found and hired a lawyer. And I mean, we've seen
Speaker 5: this in a lot of national cases, and we've seen
Speaker 5: it in a lot of our local cases. He initially
Speaker 5: took them into the home, didn't let them walk around,
Speaker 5: but they didn't have a search warrant and they didn't
Speaker 5: take anything out of the home. It wasn't a scientific
Speaker 5: search if you or a search where they had gathered evidence.
Speaker 5: It was just, you know, hey, come on and sit,
Speaker 5: it's down room table. And he did let them walk
Speaker 5: through the house, and then as soon as the body
Speaker 5: was found, that conversation with police ended and he never
Speaker 5: spoke to them after that. There were many, many attempts
Speaker 5: by investigators to have him come down to the police
Speaker 5: station and answer questions. They even eventually, I think, gave
Speaker 5: questions to his attorney and asked him to answer those questions,
Speaker 5: which he did answer some of those, but very briefly.
Speaker 5: So it's like we've seen in many, many cases like
Speaker 5: this in domestic situations where the man immediately stops talking
Speaker 5: or the spouse immediately stops talking to investigators. And most
Speaker 5: of us think, well, if your wife was murdered, wouldn't
Speaker 5: you want to know what was going on? I mean,
Speaker 5: wouldn't you be banging on the police station door saying, hey,
Speaker 5: what's going on with my wife's case? Have you found murderer?
Speaker 5: And so when somebody doesn't do that, it's unusual. Although again,
Speaker 5: his personality very very reserved, very quiet, not very outgoing,
Speaker 5: So it's kind of hard to tell, you know, what
Speaker 5: the impetus behind that was.
Speaker 6: Now before we get to the trial, Like you say,
Speaker 6: he was arrested three and a half months after police
Speaker 6: finally lay the charges. Nancy Cooper's family takes in Brad Cooper,
Speaker 6: this shy guy with not really close ties with his
Speaker 6: own family. When this occurs, when there's they've had the search,
Speaker 6: when they've located her body, she's been found dead and strangled.
Speaker 6: What kinds of conversations if any, does he have with
Speaker 6: the parents, and what does he say if he does
Speaker 6: have a conversation with them?
Speaker 5: Right, Absolutely, no conversation. He never called her parents or
Speaker 5: any members of her family to say something's happened to me.
Speaker 5: At one point, the identical twin sister, Christa, does call
Speaker 5: him when Nancy's missing and says, what have you done
Speaker 5: with her? Because she immediately assumes, as did others, that
Speaker 5: something had happened between them and he had done something
Speaker 5: and he hung up on her. When the family comes,
Speaker 5: they have to have some interaction with him because of
Speaker 5: the two children. The children are being shuffled around with
Speaker 5: friends and of course Nancy's family wants to have some
Speaker 5: time with the children, and so Brett at one point
Speaker 5: has to bring the children to the hotel where they're
Speaker 5: staying actually so he could go to that press conference.
Speaker 5: And they said there was absolutely no conversation, No I'm sorry,
Speaker 5: I'm worried, no hugs. And so the first real interaction
Speaker 5: that occurred happened at a prayer visual at a local church.
Speaker 5: It was outside the church and everybody was holding hands
Speaker 5: and her mother, Donnas, sees Brad and you have to
Speaker 5: picture Dona. Donna's a very petite woman, and Brad is
Speaker 5: very tall and athletic, and she said she just decided
Speaker 5: to go up to him and to give him a hug.
Speaker 5: And she said he had a baseball hat on and
Speaker 5: he leaned over and she tried to look him in
Speaker 5: the eye as he leaned over to hug her, and
Speaker 5: she said the hug was very stiff and awkward, not
Speaker 5: like the times that she shared with him in the past,
Speaker 5: because she said she felt like he was her son.
Speaker 5: She treated him like a son, and she said he
Speaker 5: wouldn't look her in the eye. And she said, at
Speaker 5: that moment, she said, I knew he killed my daughter,
Speaker 5: and so that was a very emotional moment for her
Speaker 5: to have those failings so early on in the case,
Speaker 5: and then to have to live with those failings for
Speaker 5: the next several years as the case worked its way
Speaker 5: through the system.
Speaker 6: Now he's charged with murder. But while this is going on,
Speaker 6: we've got a we can't forget about the two children,
Speaker 6: the two younger. So a custody battle where the Nancy's
Speaker 6: parents are trying to gain custody of the children is
Speaker 6: raging while these charges and the preliminary is coming up.
Speaker 6: So while this is all going on, there's a fierce
Speaker 6: custody battle as well.
Speaker 5: Right, and again I had mentioned that Gary Rent had
Speaker 5: worked in child welfare in Canada, so he had some
Speaker 5: knowledge of how these things worked. So immediately, within within
Speaker 5: hours of Nancy's body being found, the wheels were turning
Speaker 5: and Gary and Donna decided they were going to petition
Speaker 5: for custody of the girls, and so they got a lawyer.
Speaker 5: They actually hired the lawyer that Nancy had used for
Speaker 5: the divorce was using for the divorce, and they filed
Speaker 5: an emergency petition to get custody of the girls. It
Speaker 5: was granted and then they went took the girls back
Speaker 5: to Canada. They came back for a hearing and were
Speaker 5: awarded temporary custody discontinued for several months. And what happen
Speaker 5: than in those months was that there were hundreds and
Speaker 5: hundreds of pages filed in the public court record documenting
Speaker 5: the problems in this marriage, many many dozens of affidavits
Speaker 5: from friends and family members talking about all the problems
Speaker 5: that we've already discussed, the control issues, the financial issues,
Speaker 5: the infidelity. So whereas in most criminal investigations, the public
Speaker 5: en the media gets very little insight into what actually
Speaker 5: goes is going on here, we had this whole relationship
Speaker 5: kind of laid out for us in these custody documents.
Speaker 5: And then Brad Cooper did what most people would think
Speaker 5: is quite unheard of and probably not legally very smart,
Speaker 5: which is sitting for a six and a half hour
Speaker 5: deposition in this custody case. And the belief of a
Speaker 5: lot of people is that that deposition gave investigators the
Speaker 5: fuel if you will, because as we all know, if
Speaker 5: you are lying about something, it's hard to keep that straight,
Speaker 5: especially for six and a half hours, and you're going
Speaker 5: to mess up there are going to be some pitfalls,
Speaker 5: and so as soon as that deposition was done, one
Speaker 5: of the investigators filed in after Davis that said, the
Speaker 5: information in this deposition is inconsistent with what Brad Cooper
Speaker 5: has told us in the past, and he was arrested
Speaker 5: shortly after that, which was in late October of that year,
Speaker 5: about three and a half months after the murder.
Speaker 6: Now, part of what took the police a little bit
Speaker 6: of time is because they need to have some concrete evidence,
Speaker 6: and as you talk about in the book, this is
Speaker 6: a circumstantial case. However, circumstantial evidence is seen by the
Speaker 6: judiciary very much like any kind of direct evidence or
Speaker 6: material evidence. It just has to be put together. What
Speaker 6: is we're a couple things. We could talk about the
Speaker 6: missing shoes, and we could talk about the Google Maps ort.
Speaker 6: So tell us a little bit about some of the
Speaker 6: evidence that the police gathered that ends up being really
Speaker 6: really important that trial.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think probably the biggest evidence in this case
Speaker 5: did surround computers and phones and all of the communications
Speaker 5: that today have become commonplace. I think that specifically, the
Speaker 5: biggest piece of evidence that most people believe was the
Speaker 5: turning point in the case. It was a very long trial.
Speaker 5: It was eight weeks long, and again mostly circumstantial. Case
Speaker 5: was that investigators found a Google Map search on Brad
Speaker 5: Cooper's laptop computer that occurred at one o'clock on that Friday.
Speaker 5: And remember I don't know if I've mentioned it, but
Speaker 5: they were at a party that Friday night, and so
Speaker 5: she disappeared sometime after that party before you know, daylight
Speaker 5: the next day. And this Google Map search was of
Speaker 5: the location where her body was found that following Monday.
Speaker 5: So the belief is that Brad Cooper is googling the
Speaker 5: place that he's going to dump his wife's body twelve
Speaker 5: hours before she disappears, and so that was pretty definitive.
Speaker 5: It was a very short search. It was forty some
Speaker 5: seconds I believe maybe six seven, eight nine clicks of
Speaker 5: the mouth, but it was, it was there, and so
Speaker 5: that that was quite I think damning evidence. There was
Speaker 5: also some evidence he's this expert in phone technology that
Speaker 5: he possibly made a call, he made his home phone
Speaker 5: call his cell phone that Saturday morning because he had
Speaker 5: to establish an alibi, and so he made two trips
Speaker 5: to the grocery store and was caught on videotape both
Speaker 5: times at the grocery store, had receipts that were time
Speaker 5: stamped to prove that he was there. And during one
Speaker 5: of those drives to the grocery store, there is a
Speaker 5: record of his home phone calling his cell phone, and
Speaker 5: so he used that to prove that Nancy was still
Speaker 5: alive at that time, that she was calling him to
Speaker 5: tell him to get something extra at the grocery store.
Speaker 5: And so there was a lot of evidence introduced about
Speaker 5: how all these he had, all these calls rooted to
Speaker 5: different locations, and that you know, he had one call
Speaker 5: that went through some European number, and he had another
Speaker 5: call that went to a conference center in California that
Speaker 5: he left the voicemail for himself in Europe, and so
Speaker 5: there were all sorts of strange things going on with
Speaker 5: his phone that morning as well. But again that was
Speaker 5: much still much more circumstantial because part of that to
Speaker 5: make that work, he had to have this special kind
Speaker 5: of router to make this phone call from the house work,
Speaker 5: and didn't find that router, it was missing, but there
Speaker 5: was some evidence that he had had that specific router.
Speaker 5: So a lot of a lot of electronic evidence I
Speaker 5: was it was probably the biggest thing that brought this
Speaker 5: case together.
Speaker 6: One of the other bits of evidence too, was that
Speaker 6: they had him at the Loew's I Guess department store
Speaker 6: hardware store buying a drop sheet. And again they very
Speaker 6: effectively at trial said he wasn't doing any painting, put
Speaker 6: the drop sheet where the painting was.
Speaker 5: So yeah, what he said was that he knew his
Speaker 5: wife was doing painting, so he was buying her drop sheet.
Speaker 5: Of course, again there was no evidence that he knew
Speaker 5: that she was going to paint that Saturday. In addition
Speaker 5: to that, there was some discussion about the fact that
Speaker 5: he didn't approve of her painting because he just he
Speaker 5: didn't approve of her doing these things for extra money.
Speaker 5: And so they did find that drop cloth. It was
Speaker 5: not used. It was in the garage, still in the package.
Speaker 5: But he had told investigators that that morning he was
Speaker 5: actually helping Nancy get the kids ready for preschool, when
Speaker 5: in fact he was buying the drop cloth. And one
Speaker 5: of the interesting things we haven't really talked about this.
Speaker 5: Of the two grocery store runs, they were sixteen minutes apart,
Speaker 5: and so the thought was that if he did, as
Speaker 5: the state alleges, put her body in the trunk of
Speaker 5: his car and dump her in this location about three
Speaker 5: miles from their home. That he may have done that
Speaker 5: in between the grocery store runs. In the first video,
Speaker 5: he's wearing sneakers running shoes. In the second video he's
Speaker 5: wearing sandals. And so the thought is, why would you
Speaker 5: go home and change your shoes to go right back
Speaker 5: to the grocery store. He could have only been home
Speaker 5: given the distance and the time, you know, a couple
Speaker 5: of minutes before he would have turned around. And the
Speaker 5: location where the body was found was completely just thick
Speaker 5: red mud. Again, we've had these torrential rains, So if
Speaker 5: he did go there and those sneakers, they would have
Speaker 5: had to have been thrown away, and those sneakers were
Speaker 5: never found. So that was that was another piece of
Speaker 5: circumstantial evidence. And then again, like I said that, the
Speaker 5: you know, the infidelities, I think was probably something that
Speaker 5: did sway the jurors because they were hearing kind of
Speaker 5: this pattern of him, you know, just not really wanting
Speaker 5: to begin the marriage and not really being present in
Speaker 5: the marriage. And I think that you know, lent itself
Speaker 5: to the again to the circumstantial case.
Speaker 6: Which I found very interesting. Too, was the makeup of
Speaker 6: the jury that there was ten women on that jury, so.
Speaker 5: Right, and and that's clearly I mean, I think when
Speaker 5: you're dealing with a domestic violence case, to no doubt
Speaker 5: that's that's favorable to the state. It was interesting because
Speaker 5: I do go around and speak and I think a
Speaker 5: lot of people don't understand our justice system and don't
Speaker 5: understand how it works. And in fact, I've had questions
Speaker 5: of well, how is that fair? And I've tried to
Speaker 5: explain to them that both sides, attorneys on both sides
Speaker 5: helped pick that jury, and so they get to choose
Speaker 5: to hunt that jury to a certain extent, and they
Speaker 5: also get to challenge. They get a certain number of
Speaker 5: challenges to get people off the jury. And I think, unfortunately,
Speaker 5: what you know, the belief may have been from the
Speaker 5: defense side, I mean, I don't know, they've never shared
Speaker 5: this with me, is that maybe some of these women
Speaker 5: had had family members that had run ins with the law,
Speaker 5: maybe they were skeptical of authority, And I think it
Speaker 5: was just the opposite. I think they were women that
Speaker 5: maybe had had some experiences with bad relationships and saw
Speaker 5: the case in a totally different light.
Speaker 6: Well, they picked the best that they had to pick from,
Speaker 6: so they there could have been a worse jury in
Speaker 6: their mind, I guess based on there's so many reasons
Speaker 6: to eliminate somebody or want somebody not on that jury.
Speaker 6: So I just think that the state really made their case.
Speaker 6: I think they made a very compelling case. And even
Speaker 6: though you know it's kind of wonky scientific technology, you'd say, oh,
Speaker 6: that could be a problem, the state put out a
Speaker 6: pretty good case and explain things fairly simply, So I
Speaker 6: think that was to their benefit definitely. I wanted to
Speaker 6: ask you too, because I think that you've had a
Speaker 6: little bit of well, you've had quite a bit of
Speaker 6: controversy over people like we talked about earlier before the
Speaker 6: interview about prejudging this case. And I think that is
Speaker 6: also stirred up by the defense attorneys grandstanding to a
Speaker 6: certain or making statements to the effect that what we
Speaker 6: couldn't get our expert up there, our expert would have
Speaker 6: proven that there was some tampering and so a lot
Speaker 6: thank it.
Speaker 5: Absolutely And one little funny sidebar to that, Dan is
Speaker 5: that expert that didn't get to testify actually came to
Speaker 5: my first book signing about twelve books for his family
Speaker 5: and had me sign themselves. He wasn't upset. He's not
Speaker 5: that upset. It was just a job to him. But
Speaker 5: you know, there is a lot of controversy. It's really
Speaker 5: interesting what we're seeing with this case and other cases
Speaker 5: like it, and I just I really strongly believe that,
Speaker 5: Well it's twofold. First of all, we're streaming these cases online.
Speaker 5: So for the first time ever, people the courtrooms have
Speaker 5: always been open to the public, but people aren't going
Speaker 5: to go to the courtroom. Most people aren't. So for
Speaker 5: the first time ever, the public, wherever they are in
Speaker 5: North Carolina, California, Maryland, New York, Florida, can sit down
Speaker 5: and watch everything that goes on in the courtroom and
Speaker 5: be their own judge of what they believe to be
Speaker 5: the truth or not the truth. And in addition to that,
Speaker 5: the proliferation of social media where anybody who has access
Speaker 5: to a computer can log on and say anything they
Speaker 5: want to say with no backgrounds in the law, with
Speaker 5: no background in the particular case that they're watching. I
Speaker 5: mean again, they could be anywhere in the country, anywhere
Speaker 5: in the world, and so you do get these trial junkies,
Speaker 5: these people that are just obsessed with these cases, have
Speaker 5: no connection to Brad Cooper or the case, but just
Speaker 5: you know, fall on one side or the other very strongly.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's a very interesting debate because I
Speaker 5: think that it's going to be more and more difficult
Speaker 5: for judges to insulate juries, specifically from this kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: You know, you can tell them not to watch the news. Well,
Speaker 5: the news is pretty benign, frankly, I mean, don't watch
Speaker 5: the news, don't look at the newspaper, don't look at
Speaker 5: news websites. Now they're starting to say, in fact, I'm
Speaker 5: covering another similar case right now, the judge is saying,
Speaker 5: don't Facebook, don't Twitter, don't do it on your phone,
Speaker 5: don't do it on your computer. You have to you
Speaker 5: have to insulate these juries if you're going to keep
Speaker 5: the justice system fair. So, you know, everybody's entitled to
Speaker 5: their opinion. I strongly believe that. But I also believe
Speaker 5: that just like you have a right to turn the channel,
Speaker 5: I have a right not to read your comments and
Speaker 5: I don't so you know, not to respond. And you know,
Speaker 5: that's America. It's the first Amendment. People can say whatever
Speaker 5: they want. And I think until we decide how we're
Speaker 5: going to rein that in on the internet. I don't
Speaker 5: know if we ever will. I don't know that there's
Speaker 5: a there's there's going to be a change, But I
Speaker 5: do think it's a challenge for the justice system. And
Speaker 5: in this case, we had a lawyer who was working
Speaker 5: for the defense in the courtroom who was on blogging
Speaker 5: and on and commenting on the case. And you know,
Speaker 5: you can you can decide what you will. Is that illegal?
Speaker 5: Is that unethical? I think it may be a little
Speaker 5: bit of both, but especially if you're managing the conversation,
Speaker 5: so you know, you have to look at the source.
Speaker 5: And again, everybody is entitled to their opinion, and they
Speaker 5: sure we'll share it one't they.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's unethical because you have you have
Speaker 6: the the arena where you can do what you want.
Speaker 6: But to go outside that arena and then cry that
Speaker 6: your expert wasn't a accept it in court and make
Speaker 6: it sound like there was some conspiracy. The judge decided
Speaker 6: that this person wasn't an expert and wasn't qualified to
Speaker 6: be able to testify, And so if you have an
Speaker 6: issue with the judge, and then then that defense attorney
Speaker 6: knows that he can file the necessary papers for that,
Speaker 6: and if he had any ethics he would he would
Speaker 6: wait that out. Instead, he goes to the public domain
Speaker 6: for what reason, I'm not sure for for yeah, for
Speaker 6: further work or something, because it is conjecture, and some
Speaker 6: people don't take the time to look at the trial
Speaker 6: very carefully and then make a decision based on that
Speaker 6: emotional you know, being stirred up emotionally. But I do
Speaker 6: agree with you now that this new era of this
Speaker 6: information being in real time and people be able to
Speaker 6: follow it, I think there is the ability for people
Speaker 6: to educate themselves with the trial process because there's a.
Speaker 5: Lot to know, absolutely, and you know, so I think
Speaker 5: that there's a lot of value in that. At the
Speaker 5: same time, I think there's a danger of people that
Speaker 5: don't have a background in the law and don't really
Speaker 5: necessarily completely understand the system making putting out misinformation and
Speaker 5: things that could influence the case. Now again, you hope
Speaker 5: that jurors are not paying attention to that, and they
Speaker 5: shouldn't be paying attention to that, And good jurors, which
Speaker 5: I believe most people who sit on a jury take
Speaker 5: it very seriously, will insulate themselves from that. But it's
Speaker 5: becoming harder and harder. I mean, I know when I
Speaker 5: first started in this business, jurors were literally surquestered. I
Speaker 5: mean they were in a hotel room. And now states
Speaker 5: have decided that's too expensive. And even if you were
Speaker 5: to do that, you would have to take away their
Speaker 5: phones and computers. And I think very few people would
Speaker 5: sit on a jury with those kinds of rules. So,
Speaker 5: you know, it is it's a challenge to figure out
Speaker 5: how do you mix this new world with the adjustice
Speaker 5: system that is supposed to be unbiased.
Speaker 6: Now, with this trial, there was about an you say,
Speaker 6: there was almost one hundred witnesses. It was well attended.
Speaker 6: Of course, the media was all over this thing was
Speaker 6: a huge story. In the end, of course, the defendant
Speaker 6: didn't take the stand in his own defense. What was
Speaker 6: the final outcome, the.
Speaker 5: Right The final outcome was that Brad Cooper was convicted
Speaker 5: a first degree murder. He is now serving a life sentence.
Speaker 5: His lawyers have appealed that verdict and so we'll no
Speaker 5: Probably it can take many months to even a year
Speaker 5: before the appeals court says we will or will not
Speaker 5: hear this case. So it will be a while before
Speaker 5: we have any information on that, but I think that
Speaker 5: there was some surprise in the verdict in that the
Speaker 5: jury was out for several days, and I think Nancy's
Speaker 5: family specifically was starting to feel like, you know, they
Speaker 5: weren't going to get a verdict, that it could end
Speaker 5: in a mistrial. They also had second degree murder on
Speaker 5: the table, so they could have gone that direction, but
Speaker 5: ultimately they came back with the guilty verdict. And it
Speaker 5: was interesting. Right after the verdict came down, none of
Speaker 5: the jurors wanted to talk. A lot of them were
Speaker 5: very emotional, as in many cases. That's I mean, it's
Speaker 5: a difficult thing. You're deciding about somebody's life. And I
Speaker 5: recently had the opportunity to speak with the juror. She
Speaker 5: approached me at one of my book signings. She read
Speaker 5: the book and she told me that there was never
Speaker 5: any dissension in the jury room. She said that they
Speaker 5: agreed from the very beginning that it was guilt, and
Speaker 5: that they just methodically went through the evidence to make
Speaker 5: sure that they were all on the same page with
Speaker 5: the degree, and they in the end, we felt very
Speaker 5: strongly that they had made the right decision. Interesting to
Speaker 5: hear her perspective, you know, many months after the verdict
Speaker 5: had come down.
Speaker 6: Certainly, and it gives you some vindication that you were
Speaker 6: on that you handled this properly, because she did read
Speaker 6: the book and you would have heard otherwise if she
Speaker 6: had any issues with your depiction of how this trial
Speaker 6: did go down.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and as you know, Dan, in a true crime.
Speaker 5: I mean it's factual. So I'm telling the story basically
Speaker 5: from what happened. I mean, this is the public record.
Speaker 5: I shared the custody battle, I shared the press conferences,
Speaker 5: I shared the hearings, and then of course the trial,
Speaker 5: and so I can't change the outcome. I can't change
Speaker 5: the it's not a murder mystery, it's not fiction. I
Speaker 5: can only write what happens, and the subjective aspect comes in.
Speaker 5: When you decide, you know which interviews you're going to include,
Speaker 5: And of course Nancy's family did do several interviews for
Speaker 5: the book, and so those are included in the book,
Speaker 5: and they basically talk about the fact that they believed
Speaker 5: that this was domestic abuse and they want other women
Speaker 5: who may be in this situation to use this story
Speaker 5: kind of as a cautionary tale and to reach out
Speaker 5: for help if they are in this situation. And you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of women who are educated, who are professional,
Speaker 5: who are in upper middle class communities are shames to
Speaker 5: ask for help in these situations because they don't have
Speaker 5: a broken arm or a black eye or a broken nose,
Speaker 5: which is what most of us think of domestic violence,
Speaker 5: and so therefore they think, well, I'm not really a victim.
Speaker 5: And you know, the bottom line is there in this
Speaker 5: situation were some red flags, a lot of red flags
Speaker 5: according to family and friends and other people maybe in
Speaker 5: that same situation, and it doesn't have there doesn't have
Speaker 5: to be abuse before somebody is murdered. That can be
Speaker 5: the ultimate act of domestic violence.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Now, just for a little bit of a bright
Speaker 6: spot with this, you did talk about who the children
Speaker 6: live with. Now, tell us again who the children live
Speaker 6: with and sort of where they are now and what
Speaker 6: their life is like, if you know, have any indications right, Well.
Speaker 5: The children were taken in by Nancy's family, and it
Speaker 5: was interesting because there was a lot of discussion because
Speaker 5: they already had a daughter who had a child, so
Speaker 5: she clearly knew how to be a mother. And then
Speaker 5: they had a son, the police officer, and he had
Speaker 5: several children, but they ended up with the sister who
Speaker 5: didn't have any children. In fact, she couldn't have any children,
Speaker 5: but had really bonded with Nancy's child and it was
Speaker 5: especially close with the older daughter, and so she is
Speaker 5: the identical twin sister, and she took the children in
Speaker 5: she and her husband and they are being raised in Canada,
Speaker 5: and so the youngest child in many ways, although they
Speaker 5: talk about Nancy and they tell her about Nancy never
Speaker 5: missed a beat. I mean, it was only two, and
Speaker 5: she now has a mother who looks exactly like the
Speaker 5: mother that was the gave birth to her. So there
Speaker 5: is something special about that in the DNA kind of
Speaker 5: being shared. And I'm told they're doing very well. They
Speaker 5: have a big, loving, extended family and a lot of support,
Speaker 5: and so given the tragedy, it's the best possible situation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so just a bit of a bright spot and
Speaker 6: what usually are sad stories really, but yeah, it's a
Speaker 6: little bit of a bright spot. Yeah. Well, I want
Speaker 6: to thank you Amanda for a great interview and about
Speaker 6: a fantastic book, Love Lies, and thank you very much
Speaker 6: for coming on this evening. And talking about this book,
Speaker 6: and I really appreciate it, so I wish you the
Speaker 6: best of love Well, thank you very much. We enjoyed it.
Speaker 6: I enjoyed it, and I'm sure the audience will respond
Speaker 6: with many many listens to the program. So I want
Speaker 6: to thank you very much for those people listening. The
Speaker 6: book that we were dealing with this evening is Love
Speaker 6: Lies by Amanda Lamb. Thank you very much, Amanda, and
Speaker 6: good night, thanks
Speaker 5: Again, good night, good night.