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12:27 p.m. • 2-12-12

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Friend of slain Cary woman says they never went jogging


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Nancy Cooper
Nancy Cooper

A slain Cary woman never went jogging and never had plans to do so with the friend her husband thought accompanied her the morning she disappeared.

That is according to a July 24 sworn affidavit filed Tuesday from Carey Clark, who often trained for a half marathon with Nancy Cooper and another friend, Jessica Adam.

Cary police say Nancy Cooper's husband, Brad Cooper, told investigators she went jogging around 7 a.m. July 12 – he thought with Clark.

Calls to Clark were not returned Wednesday.

Adam, however, said Wednesday that Brad Cooper definitively told her that his wife went running with Clark – a claim she also makes in a July 22 affidavit.

"He said that 'Nancy went for a run with Carrie (Clarke) [sic] and she would be back soon,'" Adam said, "I immediately felt strange, because I knew that Nancy would have informed me if she was meeting Carrie for a run."

Seth Blum, an attorney for Brad Cooper, said Wednesday only that his client "thought" Nancy Cooper was running with Clark but did not know for sure.

Hundreds of people searched for Nancy Cooper for two days and posted thousands of fliers around Cary for information about her disappearance.

A man walking his dog on the evening of July 14 found her body in a pond in an undeveloped subdivision just outside Cary's town limit.

Authorities have not said how she died and have released few details about the case. They have not named a suspect but have said they do not believe the crime was random.

Meanwhile, Blum has subpoenaed Harris Teeter, where Brad Cooper went shopping for his wife early July 12 and Time Warner Cable, the telephone and Internet provider for the Coopers' home. Blum declined to say why.

In his affidavit, Brad Cooper said he went to the grocery store twice, once around 6:15 a.m. to buy milk and again around 6:30 a.m. for laundry detergent and juice.

When Nancy Cooper did not return from her jog by noon that day, Brad Cooper said, he called her friends asking for Clark's number. About an hour later, he drove by Clark's home looking for her car but did not see it, he said.

By 3 p.m., when he had "exhausted all avenues" of locating his wife "and believed that she was truly missing," Adam had already reported her missing. Brad Cooper said "there was no longer any point in my calling them again."

Nancy Cooper's family and friends have challenged Brad Cooper's claims, saying they do not believe she went jogging. At least one friend said in an affidavit that she thought he might be involved in her death.

Police, however, have not named him a suspect, and Blum has said he has been cooperative with investigators.

"(He) has been very, very clear with police," Blum said last month. "He did not kill his wife."

“I’m sure more will be revealed with time,” Tom Hollis, pastor of Cary’s St. Francis United Methodist Church, said Wednesday of the probe into Nancy Cooper’s slaying.

Hollis has organized a musical program to help people cope with the Lochmere woman's death.

“We need our faith and we need that hope because we've got to rise up. We've got to carry on, we have to. It’s hard to do without the comfort we get from faith and from each other,” he said.

The program is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday at St. Francis United Methodist, 2965 Kildaire Farm Road.

RELATED TOPICS: Cary

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201 Comments


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Donnab, the affidavits were on The N&O website.

You may be right on the exact details.

I was trying to say that he had documentation that he was giving her money so her poor story of no money didn't hold water.

TarHeelsDontLikeEdwards - can you give the link to Brad's affadavit? I thought what was reported earlier was that he gave Nancy $300 per week to spend on herself, that the bills and the groceries were paid and the $300 was above and beyond. If my memory is incorrect, I would certainly like to know.

If he was paying for groceries and the $300 was extra, then Nancy was lying through her teeth to say there were no groceries in the house or that she had no money for them. If the $300 was to cover groceries, then I really want to know - what in the blue blazes did they eat that she burned through $300 and STILL ran out of food before the week was up?

My personal guess is she was spending the grocery money on other things and was ashamed to tell her friends that her spending was out of control. It was easier to say that Brad wouldn't buy groceries and make him out to be the bad guy.

Dr. Dataclerk, do you not recognize sarcasm when you read it? I've noticed that you very often get offended and jump all over someone for a comment that very clearly is sarcasm and was never intended to be taken as literal fact. Monkeyboy was being sarcastic when he said he was there and was going to write a book.

Pinetops: I know when I make plans with close friends, I will tell them what I will be doing before meeting them or what I have to do afterwards. This is not unusual for close friends. Maybe some of you do not have close friends.

You are kidding, right, pinetops? If I invited you to come to my house Saturday for dinner, you would call me back to tell me that before you got to my house you had to stop at the mall to exchange some shoes and stop by Wal-Mart for supplies, and and and ....

Thanks, but I don't care how close someone is or isn't, I don't need the details. Dinner's at 6:30, don't be late, I don't care where you are before that.

I don't even give my daughter and son-in-law the details of my life and I don't ask for theirs.

Jennifer Adam seemed to think that she and Nancy were supposed to be joined at the hip, and that's why her comments don't ring true for most of us.

TarheelsDontLikeEdwards...obviously we have a difference of opinion. I saw in the affidavit that they were 45K in cc debt but have not seen any documentation that proves that she spent it all and that Brad is merely guilty of indulging his wife as he claims.

I read in the affidavit that she refused to drive any car other than some model BMW but have seen no documentation to support that this is actually the case. And, he drove a BMW also. It's not like this guy was riding around town in a Yugo.

I read in the affidavit that ATM withdrawals would prove that Brad withdrew the $300 a week allowance but am not aware of any documentation that exists that shows that every week he gave that $$ to Nancy. There were some emails that her father was copied on but I am not aware how consistent they are and what time period they cover.

Nancy may have been a liar or may have exaggerated the truth. But what purpose would her friends have to lie? Why on earth would they want to hurt her

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