one of just 152 such experts in the whole world. and best of all, two little girls, bella, born in 2004, katie, two years later. the best mother i ve ever seen. she played and played and played. she was just so hands-on. and now they were putting up missing posters. sunday went by, all day monday, then monday evening someone called 911. as the chief of the cary police department, it is my very sad duty to tell you that the search for our nancy is over. it was a man walking his dog who found her. lying face down in water at the edge of a storm drain near a housing construction site several miles from the cooper home. our investigation is now a homicide. now they have to say good-bye. it was a measure of the woman that total strangers joined nancy s family and friends to share in the sorrow.
bradley graham cooper, to be guilty of first degree murder. i cried for hours. yeah, i cried for hours. relief, yes, it s over. there s a conclusion. and it s justice for nancy. and now we can all go home. and brad? obviously brad was upset. he knows and feels that this is not over. in 2013, an appeals court overturned bradley cooper s conviction. deciding the judge should have allowed more defense testimony regarding the laptop evidence. a new trial was ordered. but while awaiting his second trial, cooper pleaded guilty to second degree murder, and was sentenced to approximately 12 to 15 years. and nancy there s a black granite bench in cary park, the police she once ran, her adopted town s way of remembering. the cooper girls bella and katie
brad made two trips to the store. on the second trip, nancy called him, he said. he remembers being at an intersection when the call came in. do you know what time that would have been? i think looking at the cell phone records, 6:40 a.m. when he came back from the store the second time, katie had calmed down and nancy told brad she was going for a run. i took katie upstairs. went in front of my computer. read some e-mails with katie in my lap. and then around 7:00, he said, nancy left. how do you know that she left the home? i m not sure if she says good-bye. either the door closed or she said later or something. that, he said, was the last time he saw her. three weeks after this deposition, three months after nancy s body was found, in late october 2008, brad cooper was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife.
but when it became time for the family to split, brad said he found the monthly terms of the proposed separation agreement unreasonable. child support, medical, private school, extra activities, you know, kind of added it up and i ballparked it at over $5,000 to $6,000. he also explained why he called off nancy s move back to canada. i realized that seeing the girls every other weekend would not be sufficient. and brad gave his account of the hours before nancy went missing. they were at a party across the street friday night. he left about 8:00 p.m. got the girls ready for bed. the kids fell asleep about 9:00 p.m. i probably fell asleep soon after. he was awakened previously about 12:30 when nancy came home. when she opened the front door and i heard her come up the stairs. again at 4:00 a.m. by katie s crying. took her downstairs followed by nancy about 20 minutes later. nancy and i tag-teamed off and on trying to keep her calm.
before she disappeared, they d seen emotional abuse. and they were sure she never went jogging july 12th. and then after she went missing? she was very standoffish and aloof with the family and he didn t contact anybody, and he just didn t want anybody around, didn t want any help. and it was strange enough to be alarming. so they feared for bella and katie s safety. did you think they were in danger? if he s in a place he could do this? could he bring harm to those kids? and the answer was absolutely. you have a million conversations. at the end of the day you have to live with the fact that if we re wrong and this is way over the line, we did it for the right reasons. there was an emergency and the judge determined the intense scrutiny brad was likely to face during a murder investigation put the children at risk. in late july 2008, the girls went back to canada to live with their slain mother s twin and her husband. kind of in a hurry. but brad, remember, had not b