Brad Cooper trial exposes more tales of infidelity

RALEIGH The web of romantic trysts in the Brad Cooper murder trial has become so tangled that spectators could be forgiven for wanting a soap opera digest to keep track of who was involved with whom in Cary’s social circles.

Brad Cooper is accused of strangling his wife, Nancy, to death inside their Cary home in July 2008 as their marital and financial troubles mounted.

The defense team maintains Brad Cooper’s innocence. Its members argue that Cary police were so bent on making their client the prime suspect that they overlooked details that might have led them to a different theory.

John Pearson, a man with whom Nancy Cooper had a sexual liaison in 2005, was on the stand much of Tuesday recounting what he remembered of that encounter and subsequent phone calls and meetings since the infidelity.

On Oct. 31, 2005, Pearson, who was married at the time, walked Nancy Cooper home from a neighborhood Halloween party.

Brad Cooper was out of town that night, and the older Cooper girl - the only one born at that point - was not at home. At Nancy Cooper’s urging, he went upstairs and showered to wash off the makeup from his costume.

After the shower, Pearson said, he sat on a couch with Nancy Cooper, drinking wine, talking and eventually ending up naked together. Pearson said he did not remember the extent of their sexual involvement because he was inebriated, but he did ask Nancy Cooper after he found out she was pregnant several months later whether he needed to worry.

“The only time we talked about it was very brief,” Pearson said. “It was just a brief: ‘Is there anything we should worry about here?’ “

Nancy Cooper told him no, that she and her husband had been trying to have a baby.

“We didn’t believe we had gone to that extreme,” Pearson said.

The Coopers’ younger daughter was born eight months and 24 days after the Halloween encounter, defense attorneys pointed out.

Investigation assailed

Defense attorney Howard Kurtz has spent the past six weeks attacking the investigation. The defense has questioned the protocols investigators used to seize, preserve and analyze computers and cellphones connected to the case. They brought a diverse collection of witnesses who raised concerns about slow or no police follow-ups.

On Tuesday, Kurtz used the testimony of Pearson to bolster his claims that investigators treated Brad Cooper differently from other people police interviewed for their case.

In his first interview with police, Pearson told them his last contact with Nancy Cooper was in May. They met in a downtown coffee shop to discuss a lawsuit his former wife, Kinde Rawlins, had filed against Heather MeTour, with whom Pearson and Brad Cooper had extramarital affairs.

Brad Cooper’s affair with MeTour, prosecutors contend, was a key reason for the Coopers’ fractured marriage, a corrosive incident that led Nancy Cooper to develop a plan to leave her husband and move back to Canada with their two young girls.

MeTour was married to Scott Heider when she had an affair with Brad Cooper. But it was Heider, who came to Cooper’s aid after Nancy Cooper was found dead. During testimony Monday and Tuesday, Heider said that though he had heard about Cooper’s affair with MeTour, the men never discussed it.

On Tuesday, Pearson described MeTour as his former girlfriend but said that his relationship with her had continued after his divorce. He said he was with MeTour the night before Nancy Cooper was reported missing. The couple had dinner at a Cary restaurant, then spent the night at her home.

Pearson said he left MeTour’s home shortly before 6:30 a.m. July 12, 2008, to meet his former wife and their children at his Cary apartment. He took care of the children that day, he said, unaware until late in the afternoon that Nancy Cooper had been reported missing.

He testified that he had seen Nancy Cooper one other time in the summer of 2008, at a grocery store.

Pearson said he did not initially divulge to police his full relationship with Nancy Cooper because he was worried about his family and career.

“The only thing I was holding back, for privacy and the protection of my children, was the indiscretion I had with Nancy in 2005,” Pearson said.

Gathering his records

But many months after his first interview with police, Pearson said he learned from an investigator that the defense might focus on him to try to discredit the prosecution’s theory. After that, he collected his wife’s timecard, showing her early morning check-in at work on July 12, and any bank or other electronic transactions he could find.

“It was brought up ... that I was an alternate theory,” Pearson said. “I became alarmed.”

Outside the jurors’ presence Tuesday, Kurtz told the judge that investigators, in their interrogation of Pearson, should have been more critical of his reports to police.

Pearson told police he had a “passing relationship” with Nancy Cooper, Kurtz said, then weeks later he mentioned the Halloween encounter.

“These are all the things an investigator should be looking at,” Kurtz said.

The defense is expected to continue calling witnesses today.

This story was originally published April 27, 2011 at 6:52 PM with the headline "Brad Cooper trial exposes more tales of infidelity."