Testimony paints 2 faces of husband

Judge weighs custody of Cooper girls

RALEIGH -- A judge went home Thursday night to sleep on the question of where the two young Cooper girls ought to call home this fall -- in Canada or in Cary.

It's not clear when Wake County District Court Judge Debra Sasser will decide on the future of the daughters of Bradley and Nancy Cooper.

The heated custody battle comes three months after Nancy Cooper was strangled to death and dumped in an unfinished subdivision near her home in Cary. Police have named no suspects, but Nancy Cooper's family members testified Thursday that they are convinced she died at the hand of her husband Bradley Cooper.

Her parents and sister have been fighting to keep the girls out of the reach of Bradley Cooper. They think that, in time, he'll have to face another judge, in another courtroom on a far more serious matter.

"When this murder is solved, do you think [Bradley Cooper] should get his children back?" Deborah Sandlin, Bradley Cooper's lawyer, asked Nancy's twin sister, Krista Lister.

"No, he'll be in jail," Lister said.

For nearly eight hours Thursday, lawyers peppered witnesses with questions that sketched two different pictures of Bradley Cooper.

In one moment, he was an absent father, so determined to avoid steep alimony payments and so fearful of losing control over his wife that he killed her. In another moment, he was a quiet, brilliant engineer who worked long hours so he could afford his wife's extravagant tastes.

Bradley Cooper never took the stand. Speaking in his defense: a psychologist who thought he seemed normal for a guy who just lost his wife, a neighbor and sometime tennis opponent and a stranger who swears she saw Nancy Cooper jogging the day she disappeared.

There were no impassioned speeches about his tenderness as a father or adoration of his daughters. Cooper's attorneys insisted family and police think he's a killer because they have no other theories and it's easy to suspect the husband.

In the end, though, his lawyers said there was nothing to prevent him from caring for his daughters, and certainly, no one had proven he had a hand in his wife's death.

"There's not one person who came into this courtroom and offered evidence against him as a father," Sandlin said. "He was not anything but an appropriate father."

Nancy Cooper's family insisted he's the wrong choice for Bella, 4, and Katie, 2. Her family and another psychologist painted Bradley Cooper as a narcissistic, angry man who would put his needs above those of his daughters.

"If [the girls] go to live with [Bradley Cooper], they will model him," Wade Smith said in his closing argument. "They will model a man who is angry and self-indulgent and egocentric and can act out in an aggressive way if his competence is challenged or if he is maligned."

And in the end, Nancy Cooper's family begged the judge to keep Bella and Katie beyond the reach of a man they are convinced killed Nancy Cooper.

"He is dark, he is cold, he is dangerous," Smith said. "Does anyone believe that now, he will become steady, balanced, enlightened?"