Friend of Cooper's husband says police pressured him

A friend of Bradley Cooper claimed this week that Cary police tried to force him to admit that he helped Cooper try to establish an alibi after Cooper's wife, Nancy, was found murdered on July 14.

In an affidavit filed Monday in Wake District Court, Mike Hiller said that Cary police tried to coerce him into admitting that he repeatedly called Nancy Cooper's cell phone to help her husband explain his whereabouts.

The police also told Hiller they had to investigate Bradley Cooper because if they arrested someone else for Nancy Cooper's murder without investigating her husband, a defense attorney would accuse Cary police of doing "poor" police work, according to the affidavit.

Hiller said Cary police have interviewed him three times with the last interview taking place about four weeks ago. Hiller accused the police of using "good cop-bad cop" tactics, while trying to "coerce me to admit that I made calls on Nancy's cell phone to help Brad establish an alibi."

Cary Police Capt. Mike Williams said this afternoon that police would not comment on Hiller's affidavit.

Lawyers for Bradley Cooper filed the affidavit in connection with a custody dispute over the couple's two daughters. Nancy Cooper's parents are seeking custody of the children, and they have filed a number of affidavits from their daughter's friends that suggest Bradley Cooper mistreated his wife.

Nancy Cooper's body was found near a drainage ditch in an unfinished subdivision near the couple's Cary home. An autopsy report released Monday indicated she died of strangulation.

Police have made no arrests, though much of their investigation has focused on her husband, a Research Triangle Park employee.

Days after her death, Cary police were suspicious enough of Bradley Cooper that they scoured his computers to see whether he had researched how to dispose of a body, according to search warrants. Affidavits filed at the courthouse following Nancy Cooper's death revealed a troubled marriage entangled in disputes over financial debt, infidelity and distrust.

Bradley Cooper told police that his wife went out about 7 a.m. for a jog with a friend on the day she disappeared. But Jessica Adam, a friend of Nancy Cooper's, told police she was expecting the slain woman to help her paint her dining room that morning. Adam eventually called police early that afternoon to report her friend was missing.

In his affidavit, Hiller said he and Bradley Cooper had plans to play tennis on the morning Nancy Cooper disappeared. He said they had planned to play that day between 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Hiller said he called Nancy Cooper the night before she disappeared to ask if it was OK. Previously, according to Hiller's affidavit, Bradley Cooper had played tennis with him only a few times this year because Cooper had been spending time with his wife trying to work on his marriage.

"I specifically asked Nancy ... Friday night if Brad could play tennis with me at 9:30 a.m. the next day [Saturday]," Hiller said in the affidavit. "Nancy told me, 'Yeah, that's fine.'"

Hiller said that Bradley Cooper called him the next day about 9:15 a.m. and said that Nancy had not yet come home from her morning jog. Bradley Cooper called him three times that morning, Hiller said.

Hiller said he called Bradley Cooper at 10:04 a.m. to reschedule the morning tennis match, according to the affidavit.

Hiller contended that Nancy Cooper's friends had been pressured by others to file affidavits pointing the finger at her husband for her murder. He also suggested that Nancy Cooper had a tendency to exaggerate the problems in her marriage.

"One example of the exaggeration is the story of how Nancy was 'trapped' because she did not have a car," Hiller said in the affidavit.

"Nancy was only without a car for only a short period of time. Nancy told me that it was her own decision to wait for the dealer to find the specific preferred pre-owned model year BMW X5 that she wanted."

Hiller noted that earlier affidavits filed by Nancy Cooper's friends made it sound as if she did not have enough money to buy food or clothes. But Hller said those accounts conflict with his own experiences with Nancy Cooper, who once chided him when he suggested the family could not afford a home for sale on Lochmere Lake.

"She called me up and said that I didn't know how much her husband made and that she could afford both the house on the lake and the BMW the dealer was trying to find for her," Hiller said in the affidavit.