RALEIGH - Bradley Cooper frightened his former fiancee so much that she moved out of her apartment when she discovered he had been going into her home when she wasn't around, she said.

Jennifer Windsor Ball, who was engaged to Cooper, said in an affidavit that he emotionally abused and neglected her during their year and a half relationship in the late 1990s. He later met and married Nancy Cooper.

"He constantly belittled me to other people," Ball said in the affidavit. "I had never before, and have never again, been in a relationship with someone who treated me so poorly."

Ball's statements echo descriptions that Nancy Cooper's friends have offered about her marriage before she was murdered in July.

Nancy Cooper, 34, was strangled, her body discovered in an unfinished subdivision near her Cary home. Bradley Cooper said he last saw her when she went out for a jog.

No one has been arrested in Nancy Cooper's death. Police have scrutinized Bradley Cooper, though, collecting DNA evidence from him and searching his computers for signs that he researched how to dispose of a body.

Bradley Cooper's relationship with Ball is surfacing as part of a custody battle over his two daughters.

The girls, 4-year-old Bella and 2-year-old Katie, have been living with Nancy Cooper's parents and sister in Canada pending a final decision on who should rear the girls.

Her parents and sister have argued that Bradley Cooper must have had a hand in his wife's death and is unfit to rear his girls.

Bradley Cooper is fighting those insinuations and wants his daughters back. His attorneys insist he had no part in his wife's slaying.

Cooper's attorneys failed to convince a judge Monday to dismiss the custody claim by his in-laws and spare them a full-blown hearing Thursday.

Lynn Prather, one of Bradley Cooper's attorneys, said Nancy Cooper's family had failed to offer any evidence that he should be stripped of his right to rear his daughters.

Wake County District Court Judge Debra Sasser disagreed. She will hear arguments Thursday regarding whether Bradley Cooper had a hand in his wife's killing.

Ball's account of her relationship with Bradley Cooper could factor into their arguments.

She described him as "emotionally detached and mentally cruel" and said she began to fear for her physical safety as their relationship crumbled.

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