testified, nancy was shaking with anger when she revealed brad withheld her allowance that day because she earned her own money painting a friends house. did she tell you what kind of day this was? this was an i hate brad day. she said three times that day, i hate you brad cooper, i hate you, i hate you, i hate you. reporter: diana lived across the street. it was her party that friday at which brad and nancy fought openly, she said. her tone was angry but also there was a tone of you re an idiot. brad went home with the girls aren t a. nancy stayed on, bitterly complaining about brad, to strangers like donna lopez. once in a while, said donna, nancy nervously looked across the street to her own house. how did you feel when you left that night? i was very worried for someone who i didn t know well. i thought i met someone really, really nice and told my husband, something really bad is going to happen over.
. at reporter: it was a saturday morning in july. the happy little world suburb of raleigh, north carolina, called cary, a place where a young family would aspire to if you were someone like hanna pritchard, for example. there s always lots of friend making going on through someone you meet. lots of cookouts and family functions. reporter: like the one in the neighborhood the night before. so hanna would have heard party stories that saturday morning from her friend nancy cooper. would. i hadn t heard from her maybe by like 10:00, i called her house. brad answered and he said, she went for a run. reporter: nancy was an athlete, training for a half marathon. brad cooper was nancy s husband. i was like oh, okay. when did she leave. he told me 6:30 or,,? it reporter: weird. if nancy had to cancel their meeting,
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the police and prosecution bought into a whispering campaign when nancy s friends against brad. it made it easier for them to simply let the gossip about brad became their reality, even when the facts and the evidence did not fit it. and now, the police department and the prosecutors are willing to send an innocent man to rot in a dungeon in essence for the rest of his life. but there were facts said the prosecution to send brad cooper away. fact, the defendant googled where he was going to place his wife s body. fact, the router that could help him automate a phone call is now missing. fact, nancy cooper never left that house the morning of july 12th. so, the jurors adjourned to deliberate. guilty of first-degree murder, second degree or not guilty? and nancy s family, having listened to weeks of confusing
marriage, that they re contemplating divorce, it gets you to the point where you say, i need to take a second look at this. reporter: this is howard kurtz, defense attorney, and here s what he thought about the murder case against his client, brad cooper. you need actual evidence to convict and actual evidence is something that they did not have. reporter: no physical evidence, said defense attorneys kurtz and robert trankle to tie brad to nancy s murder. the awful scenes from the cooper marriage the jury heard no witness from either side had seen brad physically violent toward nancy. for the $300 a week allowance there was a reason, the defense argued. remember the couple had serious debt. the defense offered contrasting scenes of the cooper marriage from another set of friends.