RALEIGH -- Inside Brad Cooper's laptop computer, investigators found zoomed-in satellite images of the wooded dirt road where his wife was found slain - all of them accessed while she was still alive.
A police detective working with the FBI's cybercrime squad testified Wednesday in Wake County Superior Court that Cooper's IBM ThinkPad showed multiple images of the Fielding Drive area, which at the time was a secluded and unfinished construction site near the Coopers' Cary home.
The Google map images appeared to have been viewed at 1:15 p.m. on July 11, 2008 - hours before Nancy Cooper was seen at a neighborhood party and three days before a man walking his dog discovered her barely clad body in the same spot.
"It appears to be from the area of Fielding Drive," said Chris Chappell, a Durham Police detective working with the FBI task force. "My understanding is (that's) where Nancy Cooper's body was found."
Prosecutors contend that Brad Cooper strangled his wife in the early hours of July 12 and dumped her body in the subdivision, where numerous houses have since been built.
Cooper's attorneys say he is innocent, and they have argued that Cary police investigators mishandled the case, calling them "inept."
Cooper's laptop was assigned to him by Cisco Systems, his employer, and hisuser account required a password for access.
The images discovered there were accessed by entering 27518 - also the Cooper's ZIP code - into the Google maps website.
Jurors saw the map enlarged on a screen, where Chappell pointed to what later became the crime scene with a laser pointer.
"This is from before Nancy Cooper's body was found?" asked Boz Zellinger, Wake County assistant district attorney.
"That's correct," Chappell said.
Weeks of evidence have laid out the Coopers' broken marriage and fights over money and the custody of their two children, rather than his possibly direct connection to the crime.
Numerous friends of Nancy Cooper have testified about how she hated her husband and wanted to take the children back to Canada.
But the map testimony was the latest - and perhaps strongest - attempt by prosecutors to link Cooper to the site where the body was found.
Earlier in the case, prosecutors questioned:
A Cary police officer, who testified that he saw straw in the Cooper's foyer that looked similar to a "haylike substance" where Nancy Cooper was found. But he did not collect it as evidence or tell investigators about his finding.
A geologist, who testified that white mica found in one of Cooper's shoes was similar to white mica found where the body was found, but she did not test the samples. Also, she conceded that white mica is present at other places around Wake County.
The schedule Wednesday included about two hours of testimony, and defense attorneys had only begun to cross-examine Chappell. But in that time the defense made clear its long-held assertion that someone had tampered with Brad Cooper's computer.
Testimony today will likely return to the electronic insides of Cooper's computer and the possibility that it fell into hands other than Cooper's.
