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