Shattered marriage leads to a husband behind bars

Brad Cooper will get a court-appointed attorney to defend him against charges of killing his wife

On first glance, Brad Cooper appears to be the kind of guy your mother would want you to marry. Tall and athletic, self-assured, and ambitious, Cooper earned enough to afford a nice house and fancy cars.

Tuesday, Cooper stood before a judge in an orange-and-white jumpsuit, facing a first-degree murder charge in the death of his wife, Nancy, in July. Cooper, who'd assembled a four-man legal team within days of his wife's death, indicated that he was poor enough to need the state to pick up the tab for a lawyer.

Cooper then headed back to jail, where he will live for now, after being denied the option of posting bail.

His attorney Seth Blum again declared Cooper innocent, saying, "We look forward to Brad's day in court."

It was a far fall for the Research Triangle Park engineer. For Nancy Cooper's grieving family, it was a fitting descent.

Months before Nancy Cooper was killed, her sister, Krista Lister, watched her twin struggle beneath the weight of her failing marriage. Brad was cool and distant; to Lister, he seemed cruel. Nancy's escape had been thwarted when Brad Cooper hid their daughters' passports, effectively barring her from taking them to the Coopers' native Canada.

"It was awful," Lister said at a hearing this month. "She felt helpless and useless. She felt extremely trapped."

Brad and Nancy's courtship began as an office romance. As Bradley Cooper tells it, Nancy Cooper had her eye on him. Both worked in tech support for Transcanada Pipelines in Calgary.

"She asked me out a few times," Brad Cooper said in a deposition given as part of his custody battle with Nancy Cooper's family. "I turned her down."

Brad Cooper said he was still reeling from a recent split. Finally, though, he joined Nancy at a bar one night.

Theirs was a whirlwind courtship, brought on, in part, by Brad's chance to transfer to America with Cisco Systems, a computer networking company with offices in RTP. The company would secure a visa only for a wife, not a fiancee.

So in October 2000, Nancy and Brad stood before a justice of the peace and promised to build a life together. Nancy's parents, Garry and Donna Rentz, and her sister looked on.

Within months, the newlyweds moved to Cary.

For Nancy Cooper, the move was a sacrifice. Her visa allowed her to join Bradley in America but prohibited her from working.

Instead, she settled into the rhythms of being a suburban wife. She ran the stretches of wooded trails weaving through the Lochmere subdivision. In 2004, after several miscarriages, Nancy delivered their first daughter, Bella. In 2006, Katie made their family four.

Nancy's circle of friends swelled. Friends say she was warm and animated. She made everyone's guest list.

Meanwhile, Brad buried himself in work and excelled there. He wanted to advance at Cisco. In 2005, he enrolled in a part-time business graduate program at N.C. State University.

For 2 1/2 years, Brad Cooper piled on another 12 to 20 hours of classes and schoolwork a week.

At NCSU, Brad Cooper seemed reserved but likable enough, classmate Joey D'Antoni said in an interview Tuesday. It wasn't until several MBA students took a class trip to France last spring that D'Antoni started to wonder about Cooper.

Just days into the trip, Cooper paired off with a young French woman in the program. D'Antoni saw him slip his wedding ring off and spend more time her.

"He said he was going to leave his wife," D'Antoni said, adding that Cooper promised the young woman he would stay in France longer.

If Cooper's job and graduate school weren't enough, Brad also trained for a triathlon, a grueling three-sport test that he'd taken on several times before. He reported his progress on his blog, "Adventures of Brad."

From his deposition, it was clear Bradley Cooper had few close friends. Most were extensions of Nancy's connections to the wives of Lochmere. He'd join one or another husband for a tennis match and would see the couples at neighborhood barbecues.

After Nancy's death, those connections dwindled as many of the couples became convinced he had a hand in his wife's death. As police declared his house a crime scene and forced him out, Brad Cooper sought shelter with Scott Heider, a friend from Cisco, whose ex-wife Brad had had an affair with years before. When asked in his deposition if he'd connected with any other colleagues since Nancy died, Brad said he hadn't.

While Bradley Cooper fought to win back his two girls at a hearing Oct. 16, only one intimate stood in his defense as a father. Friend Mike Hiller offered a lukewarm endorsement.

"He was an OK dad," Hiller said.

Brad's parents, who still live in Brad's hometown of Medicine Hat, Alberta, looked on from two rows behind. They never said a word.

On Tuesday, Brad Cooper's mother, Carol Cooper, watched her son in another courtroom. She stared straight ahead as her son stood before the judge in his jail-issued jumper. He never looked her way.