In an ironic twist of fate, a woman who was spared the death penalty and released from prison ultimately took her own life. She was found dead Tuesday with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
She was Paula Cooper.
I was not familiar with that name until a couple years ago when she was released from Indiana’s Rockville Correctional Facility. I was only 8 years old in 1985, when Cooper, along with three other teenage girls brutally murdered a 78-year-old grandmother who taught Bible school to children in her Gary, Ind. neighborhood. While details of what led to that awful day vary, specifics of the vicious crime are clear: the victim, Ruth Pelke, was struck with a vase, cut on her arms and legs and savagely stabbed 33 times in the chest and stomach. The girls stole $10 and Pelke’s car from the crime scene.
At the time of the murder, Cooper was 15 years old. A year later, after pleading guilty, Cooper was sentenced to death. Indiana’s harsh sentencing of a minor sparked international outrage and more than 2 million people signed a petition asking the Indiana Supreme Court to overturn the sentence. Even Pope John Paul II made a personal plea to then Gov. Robert Orr.
On July 13, 1989, the Indiana Supreme Court cited Cooper’s sentence as unconstitutional and commuted her sentence to 60 years in prison. She was credited time for good behavior and was released July 17, 2013 after serving 28 years in prison.
While most of the media reporting on Cooper’s death mentioned an overview of the crime as I just did, there is actually more to the story that needs to be told and that is the circumstances in Cooper’s life that contributed to her violently killing an innocent woman she had never met.
But before I get to deep into specifics of Cooper’s life prior to that horrid day in May 1985, it is important to note I do not condone violence, nor is what I am about to say any sort of justification for Pelke’s death. Cooper and the other three women were wrong for killing Pelke. Period.
Studies show individuals who commit savage acts, like stabbing Pelke 33 times, are generally people who are acting on crimes of passion, extreme hatred, or those perpetrators were abused at some point in their lives – usually sexually and/or physically.
The latter was the case with Cooper. Throughout the relatively short life she lived prior to committing the murder, Cooper was repeatedly beaten. As a matter of fact, upon her arrest, authorities noted whelps on her back from where she’d been struck with an electrical cord. When she was even younger, Cooper and another child relative were barricaded in a car with the ignition going. The car was in a closed garage and an adult relative’s intention was to commit murder/suicide.
Rarely can one be subjected to such cruelty in life and emerge OK without the successful intervention of others. Cooper had no one who served that role for her which is why she probably didn’t value Ruth Pelke’s life. Cooper didn’t even value her own life – not when she committed the murder, or days ago when she put a gun to her own head and pulled the trigger. The old adage, “hurt people hurt people” was especially true for Cooper.
When one is subjected to violence, eventually that exposure leads to more violence and oftentimes the victim becomes the perpetrator. That’s what happened to Cooper and that is what happens every day in America when the system – be it the child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, or even the adult criminal justice system – does not effectively address the concerns and needs of children. Ignoring the problem ultimately makes us all less safe.
More needs to be done on the front end to combat crime and violence. We have to take a more proactive approach. Parents need to be more involved and if they aren’t effective parents, then authorities need to get involved to hold them accountable. And for those children who find their way to juvenile and ultimately adult prisons, more needs to be done to rehabilitate them while they are incarcerated so they can not only be productive, law-abiding members of society, but also physically and mentally healthy members of society.
Cooper really never had a chance when you consider her upbringing and the way the system ignored the abuse she endured. And sadly, while incarcerated, very little was probably done to help her cope with the emotional pressures of committing her crime and being free after spending 75 percent of her life in prison.
In old interviews of Cooper, including some from the Recorder, she often spoke about hoping people would give her a chance once she is released. Her freedom was one obvious chance, but in learning of her suicide, I questioned if she ever received a chance to deal with the physical and emotional trauma she endured throughout her life. Killing herself leads me to believe she did not.
