Three abortion activists strip to underwear in protest during Joel ...

Three abortion activists stripped down to their underwear in protest to interrupt a Sunday service at pastor Joel Osteen's Texas megachurch.

After Osteen had finished leading a prayer and congregants began to sit down, the women stood up and began chanting, "my body, my (expletive choice)." Two of the women removed their dresses, with one shouting, "Overturn Roe, hell no!"

The video footage of the protest quickly went viral over Twitter and the 11 a.m. service's live stream has since been taken down.

The activists, a trio from Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, were wearing white sports bras with green hand prints on them to symbolize the color representing the pro-choice movement. Security promptly escorted the three women out of the church as many congregants began to cheer at their dismissal.

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The women said they opted to protest in Osteen's megachurch, which draws upwards of 50,000 people regularly, arguing that anti-abortion protesters show up in their safe spaces – doctors' offices and clinics – to make them feel uncomfortable.

"I know it seems very outrageous to do it in a church in a private space," activist Julianne D'Eredita told local Houston television station KPRC 2 of the protest, which continued outside the Lakewood Church afterwards. "However, the people who are enforcing these laws have no qualms coming up to women in private spaces such as doctors' offices and medical clinics to harass them and call them murderers.

"Joel Osteen has an international audience and silence is violence when it comes to things like these. We have a very unprecedented and very short amount of time to garner the attention that we need to get millions of people on the streets, millions of people doing actions like we were today."

The protests come in light of a leaked draft from the Supreme Court opining to overthrow Roe v. Wade, a ruling that would rescind the federal law protecting abortion rights and instead allowing states to set their own laws.

Lakewood Church did not immediately respond to a Tuesday morning request from USA TODAY for comment.

Indiana killer Paula Cooper: The Executioner Within

Robert King

robert.king@indystar.com

This 13-chapter story, told as a real-life novel, raises questions about race, justice, poverty and abuse. But it is also the story about the human capacity for forgiveness and a young woman’s struggle to find peace.

Still shrouded in darkness, she sat alone in her car, parked between night and day, between this world and the next.

Behind her, a family of teddy bears sat strapped in by a seat belt. In the front seat next to her was a digital recorder. And a gun.

She picked up the recorder and clicked it on.

"This is Paula Cooper."

A short introduction, a simple statement. Even though nothing had been simple about being Paula Cooper.

"I believe today is the 26th; 5:15 will be my death."

She saw it clearly now, even in the pre-dawn gloom. She'd spent so much of her life searching for peace. But early on the morning of May 26, 2015, the end was in sight. She would reach it before sunrise.

She just had a few things left to say.

—

"My sister. My queen. My everything."

Every morning she spoke to Rhonda. Why should this morning be different?

—

"My mother, I felt like you didn't love me. You didn't care about me. You cut me off. You judged me. You didn't want me at your church. You hurt me about the man I loved. But I still love you."

Others had forgiven Paula. Yet she never felt it from the woman who mattered most.

—

"To Monica, I'm so sorry. This pain that I feel every day. I walk around. I'm so miserable inside. I can't deal with this reality."

Monica had been like a godmother in the fairy tales — someone to fill the void in the absence of a mother's love.

—

"LeShon, I love you. … You showed me how to love.You showed me how to be a woman."

LeShon looked beyond Paula's past. As if it had never occurred.

—

"Michael, I'm so proud of you. And thank you for apologizing."

Michael was her first love. She wanted a life with him; he wanted something else.

—

"Meshia … you helped me when I was down, but I explained to you better than anybody how I feel."

Meshia knew Paula's pain; she'd just been unable to stop it.

—

These were the people Paula loved most. And to each one she had revealed part of herself, but never the whole. It was a select list from a life populated by characters: Her brutal father and her innocent victim; the judge who condemned her and the man who forgave her. There were friars and a bishop and a pope; jailers and journalists; people who were zealous to save her life and people eager to end it. There were too many to consider, really. And the sun would be up soon. She could wait no longer.

"Forgive me," she said in a recording that would soon become part of a police investigation. "I must go now."

Her coda finished, Paula stepped out of the car and into the shadows. She took a seat against a blighted tree. She felt the breeze in her hair. She felt the gun in her hand.

She was familiar with death. She'd seen it up close. She'd been condemned to it, resigned to it and reprieved from it. She had debated its merits and come to terms with it. Never had she stopped thinking of it.

But the question that would vex those she was leaving behind was maddeningly simple.

Why, after all she had endured and all she had survived, after all she had done and seemed capable of doing, had she chosen to die now?

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The garden spot in the woods — where her father grew vegetables and beat his daughters — was only an occasional venue of torture.

More often, for Paula Cooper, it happened at home.

As a child, Paula went to bed night after night next to her sister, listening to their parents argue, listening to her father make threats to come after them. Sometimes her mother would talk him out of it. Sometimes the man's wrath ebbed and they fell asleep. Sometimes they would be jarred awake at 3 o'clock in the morning, her father standing over them, ready to beat them.

Paula believed there were other kinds of families out there. She watched the people on "The Cosby Show," and they seemed to have such a nice family. But that was television. This was real. This was her family. And it looked as if there was no escaping it.

—

Paula was born in Chicago to Herman and Gloria Cooper on Aug. 25, 1969. Her sister, Rhonda, was three years older. Early on, the family lived in Michigan City, but by the time Paula was old enough for school they had moved to Gary.

The girls attended Bethune Grade School, a stone's throw from home. They went to nearby New Testament Baptist Church, where Paula sang in the choir and helped with the little children's Bible classes.

By the late 1970s, Gary's downward spiral from a midcentury boomtown was picking up speed. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing. White families were fleeing to the suburbs. Crime was rising. Like many black families still in the city, the Coopers were left in the wake of all this.

Gloria worked as a lab tech at a hospital. She had an assortment of health problems, none of them helped by the drugs and booze she added to the mixture.

"One day my mother be nice, the next day she be angry," Paula would tell Woman's Day, years later, when her story was national news. "And the next day she be real strange-acting."

Herman worked for U.S. Steel and worked construction, but his employment was sporadic. He had a girlfriend on the side and would be gone for long stretches. When he returned, chaos followed. Herman and Gloria were a volatile pair, drinking hard and arguing often, creating an atmosphere that was not just unstable, but dangerous.

The result, as Paula would say later, was that the girls had to "fend for themselves." Sometimes, on evenings when Herman was gone and Gloria worked late, Paula took meals with the next-door neighbors, who allowed her to stick around and watch TV. Most of the time the girls had food and nice clothing. But, as Rhonda would say later, "we hardly ever had any love."

Except from each other.

In the middle of all the darkness, Paula and Rhonda clung tightly to each other. They found moments to giggle together, play pranks together and share secrets.

More than just a sister, Rhonda became Paula's caregiver. Yet, through their early years, they were unaware of an important family secret: Rhonda was the child of a different father. It was a secret Gloria took great pains to hide, even though she allowed Rhonda's father, Ronald Williams, to visit occasionally. She said he was her uncle.

Before Herman came along, Ronald and Gloria were engaged. They broke it off, as Williams would later tell a courtroom, because he felt Gloria had a "split personality." In short, he thought she was crazy.

Living with Herman Cooper didn't help.

Herman beat everyone in the house. He beat Gloria in front of the girls. He beat the girls together. He beat them separately, sometimes in front of their mother. Sometimes Gloria seemed to egg on the violence.

"We did everything we was supposed to do, but it just wasn't never good enough for her," Paula told Woman's Day many years later. "… She get mad at us and he'd beat us. 'Be a man,' she'd tell him. 'Take care of it,' she'd say. And he'd take care of it."

The girls grew up unable to remember a time before the abuse. When they were little, Paula would later say, Herman beat them "for the things little kids do." When they were older, Rhonda remembered, he beat them for forgetting to take out the trash, for not doing the dishes and for skipping school.

Herman employed an assortment of tools for punishment, whatever he could get his hands on — shoes, straps, sticks, a broom. Sometimes he used an electrical cord from an air conditioner.

"He'd triple it up and go to work," Paula would say later. "It got to the point I was so used to it I didn't cry anymore."

To heighten the pain, Herman sometimes ordered the girls to remove their clothes before a beating. Questioned later, he denied that he ever abused the girls at all.

—

This stark picture of Paula Cooper's childhood emerges from several sources; the courtroom testimony from Rhonda and her father; testimony from Dr. Frank Brogno, a clinical psychologist who discussed what he learned from examining Paula. Some of the glimpses into the darkness come from now-yellowed news clippings. Others come from anecdotes Paula shared with friends and loved ones and the few journalists she favored. Finally, there's the freshest source of insight into Paula's world — more than 100 personal letters she wrote to a treasured friend that were reviewed by IndyStar.

Taken together, they amount to a catalog of horrors. Her father's beatings, Paula said, left her "close to death so many times." With no apparent means of escape, she seemed to stop fearing death at all. "I just cried," she wrote, "until all my tears were gone away."

—

In 1978, when Paula was 9, the tears were still flowing. Her parents separated, but it was often fuzzy as to when they were back together and when they were apart. Once, when Herman returned home to find the doors locked, he forced his way in. According to testimony Rhonda gave in court, Herman entered their home, beat up their mother and raped her in front of the two girls.

The incident seems to have been a tipping point. Not long after, Gloria began telling her daughters the world had nothing to offer them. Instead, she said, they'd all be better off going to heaven. On this point, Rhonda would say later, Gloria began pressuring her daughters. Eventually, the girls came to believe, like their mother, they had nothing to live for.

Gloria phoned Ronald Williams, Rhonda's father and steady friend. It was late. She'd been drinking and taking pills. She was crying. Herman had been giving her problems, she said, and things weren't good at work.

She was thinking of killing herself.

Williams had heard this kind of talk from Gloria before. Always, he had been able to console her, to talk her back from the precipice. He reminded her that she had Paula and Rhonda to think about. What would happen to them? His question made Gloria think. But only for an hour.

She called Williams back. Between her tears and her wailing, Gloria said: "I finally found out what I'm going to do with the kids."

Williams was alarmed. He demanded to know what she meant.

"I'm going to take them with me," she replied. "I'm going to let you speak to your daughter and Paula for the last time."

The girls took the phone in turns. They were crying, too. Rhonda said they were going to heaven with their mother.

"Don't do nothing drastic," Williams told them. "Let me speak to your mother, OK."

The phone went dead.

Williams panicked. Gloria and the girls had recently moved. She hadn't shared their new address. He didn't know where to find them, how to stop her.

He called the operator and asked for his last call to be traced; it was no good. He called Gary police. Without an address, they could do nothing.

There was nothing anyone could do. Williams waited. For three weeks, he waited. He feared what had become of them.

Had Gloria killed them all?

—

After she hung up the phone, Gloria decided not to act right away; she'd wait until morning. When she awoke, Gloria took the girls out to the car in the garage. She put them in the back seat and started the engine. The garage door remained closed.

From there, accounts differ. Williams testified that a friend told him neighbors noticed something and called the fire department. Rhonda testified that, as the fumes gathered, the girls drifted off to sleep. They thought they were going to heaven; instead, they woke up in bed. How they got there isn't clear. Rhonda said Gloria had changed her mind. When the girls awoke, she said, their mother was coughing on the lawn.

From then on, Williams tried to coax Gloria into letting him have the girls. Rhonda was his daughter, and he was fond of Paula, too. Gloria would have none of it.

"I'd rather see them both dead," she said.

—

The girls survived their first brush with death. But Paula and her sister were being shaped in a world without hope. And now their mother had planted a seed: The ultimate escape was death.

Rhonda looked around at this nihilist world and began seeking a way out. Several times she tried to run. Soon, she began taking Paula with her. "I couldn't take it no more in that house," she would say, "and I didn't want her to, either."

By 1982, when both girls were teenagers, they made an unsuccessful attempt to run and were sent — together — to the Thelma Marshall Children's Home in Gary. Within a short time, they were returned to the Coopers. For Paula, it was the beginning of a cycle — of running and being returned home. For Rhonda, that cycle ended only when she learned Ronald Williams was her biological father. At her first opportunity, she left the Coopers to live with him.

If the move helped Rhonda, it had grievous consequences for Paula, then 13. Her sister had been the most stable person in her home. Now she was gone. Paula came to believe her parents blamed her for Rhonda's departure. Now that her father's anger had one less target, Paula's beatings grew more frequent and more brutal. Even as her parents divorced, Herman never quite left the picture. And his handiwork began to show.

At school, Paula revealed to an administrator a rash of injuries — a bruise on her thigh, a welt on her arm, a rug burn on her elbow.

When a welfare caseworker visited the Cooper home, Herman and Gloria cursed at her. They blamed Paula's problems on interference from the courts, from the school psychologist and from the welfare department itself. When the caseworker recommended family counseling, Gloria said she'd rather go to jail.

At various times, Gloria and Herman seemed to vacillate between wanting Paula and considering her a curse. Paula began running away on her own. After one attempt, welfare officials wanted to send Paula home, but her mother objected. If Paula returned, Gloria vowed to leave.

On another occasion, when Rhonda made a rare visit to spend a weekend with Paula and her mother, arguments ensued and Williams returned for Rhonda. He couldn't find her there, but he found Paula. She was crying so loudly he heard her without going in. Gloria, who stood in front of the house fuming about Paula, simply said: "I'm going to kill that bitch."

Paula emerged and, seeing Williams, ran to him and jumped into his arms. He asked her if her mother would really hurt her.

"Yes."

Williams told her to get in the car. Gloria charged out toward them and began to threaten Paula. "I'm going to kill you and if I don't (Herman) will."

Williams considered it serious business to take Paula. He lived in Illinois and assumed it would be a crime to take a child across the state line without permission of the parents. He took her anyway. Gloria and other family members threatened to phone the police.

At his home, Williams asked Paula what she wanted to do. They talked about the logistics of her staying with him without her mother's permission. It would be impossible for her to go to school. Then there was the trouble Williams might face. With tears, Paula looked at Williams and said, "It's best for me to go home … I don't want to get you in no trouble." Paula's respite lasted only a few hours.

Even though he wasn't keeping Paula, Williams couldn't fathom returning her home. Instead, he just let her walk away. She was young, no more than 13, but Williams believed she was safer on the streets of Chicago than at home. Under scrutiny for making such a choice, Williams later told a courtroom he thought Paula was in danger there. "I would rather see her in the street as a slut than for her mother to blow her brains out."

For several days, Paula survived on her own. Inevitably, she wound up back home.

—

By 1983, when Paula turned 14, she stayed away from home as much as possible. She was smoking cigarettes and drinking. She smoked marijuana almost daily. Tall, but heavy, she took speed to lose weight. She tried cocaine. She skipped school routinely. She was sexually active. Years later, she would warn others against making similar choices. But for the moment, it was her life.

And it was a rootless life. She spent six months at a children's home in Mishawaka and three months in a juvenile detention center. She was removed from one home after only six days after she threatened a staff member and another resident — with a knife.

With each new address, Paula changed schools. She attended four high schools without ever finishing the 10th grade. Her schoolwork, decent at first, nosedived. She called a teacher "crazy," resulting in a suspension. She struggled to keep friends. She developed a reputation as a bully. All the while, Paula struggled to wake up in the mornings. When she was evaluated for the problem, a doctor at a local hospital asked if she ever thought of killing herself.

"Yes," she replied.

For that answer, she was sent to a mental hospital. Released four days later, she returned home.

"I told people I needed help and to talk, but all they did was move me from home to home," Paula would write a few years later. "I didn't care about life or trouble or consequences at all."

—

Perhaps the pinnacle of Paula's abuse came, ironically, after her father visited Gary police seeking advice on how to deal with a wayward child. Paula was 14, and Herman Cooper couldn't keep her reined in. Frustrated, he asked the police what he should do with her. It was a family matter, they said; he should do what he thought was right.

For Herman Cooper, that meant one thing: another beating. But for what he had in mind this time, he'd need some privacy. He took Paula to a woody patch near a spot where he kept a garden. Paula had been there before; so had Rhonda.

"If you scream where I take you," he told Paula, "no one will hear you."

Several times in her life, Paula thought her father was going to beat her to death. This was one of them. "He just kept beating me and beating me," she would tell the clinical psychologist, for what seemed like half an hour. Instead of the cord or a broom or a stick, this time Herman beat her with his bare hands.

When he was done, Herman put Paula in the car to take her home. But as they drove through the darkening streets of Gary, Paula knew she couldn't go back there. Not when the possibility of more punishment lay ahead in the Cooper house of horrors.

As Herman pulled the car up to the house, Paula jumped out and took off running into the night. Running and screaming. Herman gave chase, but porch lights began to click on. Up and down the street, neighbors stepped out to investigate the commotion. The neighbors had seen this show before; it never seemed to end. This time, though, Herman retreated.

Paula ran until she wound up where the night had begun — at the police station. She told officers there about the beating, told them she couldn't go home. At least not while Herman was around. The state pulled her away from the Coopers. It isn't clear from the record where she was placed. But soon, she was sent back home.

—

In the summer of 1984, when Paula turned 15, she felt as lonely as ever.

Adrift, Paula briefly took up with a guy she hoped might offer her a haven. Later, she would tell others he was a rough character who dealt drugs and treated her poorly. The one thing he did for Paula was leave her pregnant.

Many teenage girls would consider pregnancy a tragedy; Paula saw it as a blessing. She had almost forgotten how to care about anyone. She wanted a family, wanted someone to belong to. The child growing inside her represented someone she could love, someone who would love her in return.

And then it was gone.

Gloria had been dead set against the pregnancy; she wanted Paula to end it. Paula refused and ran off — perhaps to seek help from a woman she knew in Chicago. Her mother tracked her down and, as Paula would write years later in a letter and tell friends, forced her to have an abortion.

Paula was several months into the pregnancy; the procedure nearly killed her. "She took something that would have completed my life," Paula would write later, "and after that I felt I had no one."

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Ruth Pelke was gentle, an old woman with silvery hair and horn-rimmed glasses. As her stepson Robert and his wife pleaded for her to leave Gary, she listened.

Robert pledged to do everything necessary to make her house ready for sale — the legal stuff, the touch-up jobs, whatever. She listened as they talked to her about how dangerous her neighborhood had become.

But Ruth didn't really need reminding. Her Glen Park neighborhood was still one of the better places to live in Gary, although that wasn't saying much, given the city's downward lurch. There were abandoned houses now. There were burglaries. Her own home had been hit five times in recent years, including when her husband, Oscar, was still alive. Now, at 78, she was widowed and alone, and things were only getting worse. But Ruth had been in Glen Park for 41 years; it was home. She still had some good neighbors. Just as important, she had a mission.

For decades, she'd opened her home and heart to the neighborhood children. She'd taught them the Bible using felt cutouts of Bible characters that she stuck to a flannel board. She'd given the kids candy when they memorized Scripture. She'd driven them to church. She believed these were children who needed hope, and they could find it in Jesus. No, she finally said that night after her stepson's plea — she wouldn't be leaving the home in her neighborhood.

"I'll stay here until I go there," she said.

Ruth Pelke was pointing a finger to heaven.

—

The next day, Tuesday, May 14, 1985, Ruth's doorbell rang.

She answered it and found three teenage girls standing on her porch. She didn't recognize them, but she opened her door. One of the girls said, "My auntie would like to know about Bible classes. When do y'all hold them?"

Ruth wasn't up to teaching anymore, but she wanted to help the girls. "Come back on Saturday," she said. And closed the door.

—

The girls — Karen Corder, Denise Thomas and Paula Cooper — walked back across the alley. Sitting on a porch, April Beverly was waiting.

The foursome — all ninth- and 10th-graders at Lew Wallace High School — left school at lunchtime that afternoon with no intention of going back. The girls walked the 10 blocks or so to an arcade near 45th and Broadway where they spent what little money they had on games and candy. When their money was gone, they headed back to the house where April was staying with her sister.

They were a ragtag bunch.

At 16, Karen Corder — known to her friends as "Pooky" — was the oldest. More than two years earlier, she'd given birth to a baby boy whom she'd delivered in a toilet. She'd managed to keep the pregnancy secret from her parents until the child was born, according to court records.

At 15, April Beverly was seven months pregnant. She was part of a divided family with 11 children, and she bounced between two homes, her father's and her sister's. Her mother was dead, her father had remarried. On occasion, April benefited from the kindness of the old lady across the alley. She'd listened to Ruth Pelke's Bible lessons. And the old woman had brought food over to April and her siblings when she was concerned they might be hungry.

At 14, Denise Thomas was the youngest of the four and the smallest. The others were mature young women — at different places on the spectrum of teen motherhood. Denise still looked very much like a little girl. In the context of this group, some would later describe her as a tag-along.

And, of course, there was Paula Cooper. At 15, she was only months removed from an unwanted abortion that had nearly killed her. She was tall, somewhat heavy and had the bearing of a girl beyond her years. She would be described as the "prime mover" of the quartet — the ringleader. But it was a label she'd never cop to.

—

To date, the sum total of their illicit behavior was strictly small-time. Karen had tried her hand at shoplifting. Paula, Karen and April had pulled off a burglary a few days before that netted them $90. Mostly, the girls were truants. And on this Tuesday afternoon away from school, their immediate priority was to raise some money so they could go back to the arcade.

Their first attempt was a harebrained scheme April cooked up to get some cash from a woman up the street. All four girls had gone to the woman's door. April introduced Denise, the small one, as her daughter. April claimed the woman's husband had taken $20 from Denise and they'd come to collect it. For added zest, April threw in this detail: The woman's husband had been naked when he stepped into the street to take Denise's money.

The woman didn't go for it.

After that failure, April turned her focus to Ruth Pelke. She seemed to recall the lady keeping a jar of $2 bills. She thought the woman might even have some jewelry. The question was how to get to it all.

As they sat on the porch at her sister's house, April asked Paula to come inside — she might know where there was a gun. For the girls, a gun crime would be a considerable step up the criminal ladder. But the gun wasn't where April thought it was; she couldn't find it. Then it occurred to April: Something else might do.

"I have a knife you could scare the lady with," she said.

Soon, April produced a 12-inch butcher knife. It was sharp and had a curving blade that graduated to a fine point. It was a cooking tool, but also a potentially lethal instrument. Paula took the knife and hid it in her light jacket. Out on the porch, she and April explained to the other girls: This was their new weapon of choice. And Karen came up with another approach to getting inside the old lady's home: They would ask her to write down the time and place where the Bible classes would be.

In all this planning, Paula and the other girls would forever swear, the subject of killing the old woman never came up. The most they would admit, according to Corder, was that they'd knock out the woman and rob her. Still, the reality of what they were planning — to con their way into her house, pull a knife and take the old woman's valuables — was fraught with danger.

As their scheme unfolded, April stayed back again, resting on her sister's porch; she didn't want the old woman to recognize her. Karen, Paula and Denise crossed the alley.

They rang the bell, and soon Ruth Pelke appeared at the door. This time, when she answered, Karen said: "My auntie wants to know where the Bible classes are held at. Could you write it down for me?"

Ruth said she no longer taught the classes, but she knew of a lady. "I'll look up her telephone number for you." She invited the girls to come in. And she turned to walk to the desk on the far side of the room.

—

Ruth Pelke looked for all the world like the kindly grandmother drawn up in children's books. She was also a woman whose Christian faith was essential to who she was. She went to church on Wednesday nights and twice on Sundays. She visited church members who were too old or too sick to get out. She sang in the choir. She hosted missionaries in her home on their trips back from foreign lands. She took her own missionary journeys, going deeper into the heart of Gary to share her faith with children.

What followed — recorded in statements to police, testified to in court, reported in newspaper accounts and, in brief instances, described in letters Paula would write years later — was a scene that would shock Northwest Indiana and the rest of the state.

As Ruth Pelke crossed her living room to the desk where she kept phone numbers, she felt a pair of arms wrap around her neck.

Paula had put her jacket on the couch and run up on Ruth, grabbing her from behind. For a moment, the teenager and the old woman struggled. Ruth still tended a garden and did a little work outside the house to keep fit, but she was in no shape for a chunky 15-year-old girl who now had her in a headlock.

Paula threw Ruth to the floor.

On a table nearby sat an item some would describe as a vase but others likened more to a triangular snow globe. One of the girls picked it up and hit Ruth Pelke over the head. Prosecutors would allege it was Denise Thomas; Paula took the blame.

Paula demanded to know where Ruth kept her valuables. She threatened to cut her with the knife. "Give me the money, bitch," she said.

Ruth looked up and said simply: "You aren't going to kill me." She began hollering for help. Paula's anger rose now. Then she looked at Ruth's head. Blood was streaming from the place where she'd been hit with the vase. Paula saw the blood and reacted in a way she would struggle to explain for the rest of her life.

To police investigators, she would say she entered "a blackout stage."

To a judge, she would say, "Something clicked in on me."

To a psychologist, she said the sight of the blood altered her perception of whom she was attacking: "I saw somebody else inside of that body."

Several friends and supporters who heard similar explanations from Paula concluded that, in this moment, Paula no longer saw the meek and mild Bible teacher in front of her. They believed Paula saw the woman who watched her suffer so many beatings and did nothing to stop them, the woman who took away the baby she'd wanted to love. They were convinced that, in the defenseless woman pinned to the floor, Paula saw her mother.

Whatever she saw, Paula reached for the knife. She grabbed it by the handle and began slashing. She sliced open the old woman's cheek. She stabbed at her head, without deep penetration. Ruth fell back, flat on the floor. And Paula went to work, cutting her arms and legs.

The other girls stood by in disbelief.

Karen Corder, the oldest, told Paula to stop.

Denise Thomas, the youngest, cried and screamed for Paula to quit. Later, she would claim she yelled, "I'm getting out of here," only to be met with a withering threat from Paula: "Leave and you're dead."

Paula's barrage was relentless. She stabbed the old woman in the belly and, finally, thrust the blade deep into the side of Ruth's chest. With that, Paula stopped; she pulled back from the carnage.

"I can't take it no more," she said.

Paula looked at Denise; she told her to come hold the knife. But Denise refused. She looked at Karen, communicating the same message. Karen knelt beside the wounded woman. The blade remained lodged in her chest. And Karen held it in place.

April Beverly, who concocted the robbery scheme, initially held back. After the others went inside, she had come up to Ruth's porch and acted as lookout. Now she entered the house. The old woman was lying on her back, her dress covered in blood, her arms and legs still moving. Karen, she noticed, held the knife as it protruded from the woman's side. To April, it appeared that Karen wasn't just holding it: She was wiggling the knife back and forth. Out of some morbid curiosity, she would tell police later, Karen pushed the blade farther into the hole to see how deep it would go. At one point, she concluded, "The bitch won't die."

Karen estimated she held the knife in Ruth Pelke's side for upwards of 15 minutes; Paula thought it closer to 30.

Ruth Pelke moaned through most of this. The old woman's torn and tortured face was too much for the girls to bear. One of them went to the bathroom and got a towel to cover Ruth's face — and try to smother the last breaths of life from her. Paula and Denise said it was Karen; Karen said it was Paula.

In her dying moments, Ruth Pelke managed to share a few last words. Denise heard her saying the Lord's Prayer.

"Our Father, which art in heaven …"

Paula had stalked in and out of the room, and the last words she heard from Ruth were something else. Words that would haunt her the rest of her life.

"If you kill me," she heard Ruth say, "you will be sorry."

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Paula and Denise began tearing the house apart, rifling through drawers, ripping items off shelves and upending furniture.

For Paula, it was a mad search for some reward for the awful business she'd just concluded. There had to be some money somewhere. Maybe some jewelry. But as she continued her desperate search, a nervousness began to grow inside her. Whether it was regret for the killing or the chilling final words of her victim, she felt uneasy. And she didn't like it. As they were going through the upstairs rooms, Paula tried to pull herself away. But the only place to go was back downstairs, where the source of her angst lay dead on the floor. She resumed the treasure hunt and soon managed to turn up some cash — all of $10. She came across a key and thought it might start the old woman's Plymouth in the garage. She ran out to give it a try. Nothing.

April joined in the search and quickly turned up another key. This time when Paula tried it, the engine stirred to life. April went inside to fetch the other girls.

By then, Karen and Denise were alone with Ruth Pelke's body. Karen had watched the rise and fall of the old woman's chest until it grew shallower. Finally, it stopped. Maybe April sensed some new panic; she sternly warned the other girls: "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you."

The girls had spent roughly an hour in the old woman's house. They hadn't found a jar of $2 bills. They hadn't found a trove of jewelry. But it was time to go. Someone might come looking. Before they could leave, Karen grabbed one last item.

She knelt down again beside Ruth. The butcher knife was planted firmly in the left side of her chest, just below her breast. Karen grabbed the handle. She pulled it out. As they headed out to the car, Karen carried the knife at her side. She climbed into the back of the car and dropped it to the floor. The blade was still coated in blood.

—

Paula Cooper was 15. She was too young to drive. But with her three accomplices as passengers, she managed to steer Ruth's car out of the neighborhood and onto 45th Avenue. They were just down the street from Lew Wallace High School. School was out now and, almost immediately, they saw a classmate walking along the street. Almost reflexively, they waved to Beverly Byndum. And Beverly waved back.

This was the paradox they now faced. They were teenagers in possession of a car, the apex of adolescence. Yet they had acquired it in the most horrific way imaginable. Years later, Paula would say things just "got out of control." But here she was — a killer. Now that the deed was done, now that they had a few bucks, Paula and the others seemed in no mood to enjoy it.

Before they arrived at the video arcade, Karen asked Paula to let her out of the car; she wanted to go back to April's house. Paula let her go, but not before asking her to perform a little task: Go back to the old lady's house and get the jacket Paula had left inside.

Next, Denise said she wanted to go home. She asked Paula to let her out at a convenience store and she would make her way from there.

When Paula and April pulled up to Candyland Arcade, they were alone. For a few minutes, they just sat there, talking about what they'd done. April hadn't witnessed everything that went on inside the house. It's not clear how many of the missing details Paula shared.

Paula said she needed to use the restroom, and she ventured into the arcade. When she returned, five girls from school were standing around the car. One of them was Beverly Byndum, whom they had passed on the street. Her sister, Latesha, asked where they had come by the car. Paula said it was her sister's.

Within minutes, Karen walked up to the arcade out of breath, as if she had been running to catch up with the crew. Wherever she had been, she hadn't stayed long. Paula pulled her aside and asked if she'd gone back to the house, if she'd picked up the jacket. No, Karen replied. It was probably the last place on Earth she wanted to go. And she didn't hang around long enough to talk further about it. In a few minutes, she caught a bus for home.

Whether Paula remembered it or not, she had left more than her jacket in the house. Inside one of its pockets was a newly filled prescription for birth control pills — her pills. She had picked them up earlier that morning before school. It was just one of the clues she had left for investigators to find.

Paula and April looked around at the girls and asked if anyone wanted a ride home. Eagerly, their friends piled into the Plymouth. Latesha Byndum was among those who jumped into the back. As she did, she felt her foot brush across something on the floor. She reached down to pick it up. It was a knife. And there was blood on it. There was also blood on her shoe. Latesha looked at Paula and April in the front seat and asked, "What you all do? Just kill somebody?"

The girls looked back at Latesha.

No, they replied.

And, in a response that would reverberate across the community, Paula and April laughed.

—

Paula and April dropped off their passengers at various addresses around Gary. But details about where and how they spent their next two days are choppy and imprecise.

Prosecutors would characterize their time in the car as a joy ride. But from this point on, Paula and April seemed to have a different sense of what to do next.

April wanted to go to a park in Hammond; she wanted to see her brother Tony; she wanted to see her boyfriend. When she found $40 in Ruth Pelke's glove box, she wanted to spend it. When they picked up April's boyfriend and he brought some alcohol, she drank it.

Paula wanted to go to a girl's home where she had lived for a time; she wanted to pick up some friends there. But she quickly decided she and April needed some time to focus on what to do next. When April found the money, Paula thought they should save it for gas. While April got drunk, Paula wanted nothing to drink. She was too nervous.

Most symbolic of their division, perhaps, is what happened to the money from Ruth's glove box. The girls wrestled over it, and one of the $20 bills was torn. Paula gave up the fight. April could keep the money and do with it what she wanted.

—

On Wednesday morning, the day after the crime, Robert Pelke phoned Ruth's house to check up on her. She didn't pick up the phone, and he decided to check on her in person. Just three days before, he and a large portion of the extended Pelke family had taken Ruth out for a Mother's Day dinner. Just two days earlier, Robert and his wife had pushed Ruth to think about selling her house and leaving Gary. Robert rang the doorbell, with no idea how prescient that conversation had been.

There was no answer, so Robert opened the mail slot on the door and called inside. There was only silence. But through the mail slot, something caught Robert's eye: The dining room was torn apart. He went to fetch a spare key Ruth kept hidden outside. Looking around the place, he noticed Ruth's car was missing from the garage, and he assumed Ruth must be gone, too.

He found the key, unlocked the door and stepped into the house. The place appeared to have been ransacked. Pictures that had adorned the walls were now scattered about the floor. Cushions from the couch had been pulled up and cast about. And then his eyes turned to the dining room floor.

The cloaked figure of a woman lay there motionless. Her dress was caked in blood. Her arms were slashed. A towel masked her face.

Robert knelt down next to her. He pulled the towel away and called her name. Still, there was no movement. He touched her, and the body was cold. He knew she was dead.

Robert got up and went for the phone. In an age when every phone was a landline, Ruth's had been ripped from its place on the wall. He stepped outside and began going door to door, looking for someone who would let him use their phone. But at house after house, he found nobody. Finally, Robert looked farther up the street and saw a man and a woman getting out of a car. He approached them and asked them to call the police.

His stepmother had been murdered.

—

Robert's son, Bill Pelke, arrived home just after 3 o'clock from his shift at Bethlehem Steel and soon received a phone call. It was one of his uncles. Nana, he said, was dead.

Nana was the term of endearment everyone in the family used for Ruth. Bill had grown up listening to her Bible stories. He'd loved her flannel board tales of the three men in the fiery furnace, of Noah and the ark and his favorite — Joseph and the coat of many colors.

Even as a 37-year-old man, he still loved to go to Nana's house for the holidays, to warm himself beside her fireplace and congregate there with the rest of the family. His grandfather had passed almost two years before, but Nana was still a magnet. She could still bring the family together. And now, suddenly, she was gone.

At such moments of shock, the brain's processor goes into hyperdrive. And some key facts rushed through Bill's head: Nana had been 78; she was the oldest Pelke; she'd had a good life; it must have been her time. But that instant of comfort evaporated quickly. He sensed something else in his uncle's voice that was borne out in his next words: There'd been a break-in at Nana's house. He didn't know if there was a connection.

Bill hung up and turned on the television, wondering if there might be some news about it. Sure enough, his father appeared on camera. He was saying something about it being a terrible murder. For Bill, everything else was a blur; he had to go. He had to be with his family.

As it turned out, Ruth Pelke had been dead for a full day.

—

By that spring of 1985, crime was a painful reality in Gary. Its murder rate was among the highest in the country. It was on its way to becoming the murder capital of the United States.

Gary was a city in decline; poverty was growing like a cancer. But the violence was being spread through an influx of gangs with names such as The Family and the Black Gangster Disciples.

Yet as accustomed to crime as the city had become, the murder of Ruth Pelke shocked and angered people in a whole new way. There was the innocence of Ruth herself — the elderly Bible teacher. As one observer put it, she was a grandma to the neighborhood. The killing's effect also might have been amplified because it happened in Glen Park, which a prosecutor later described as a "last bastion" of the white population in a city from which white residents had disappeared.

On the day after the discovery of Ruth's body, The Post-Tribune in Gary devoted two front-page columns to the story: "Bible teacher, 77, murdered in her home." It had her age wrong, but the dominant image on the page was a picture of Ruth — silver-haired and smiling behind her horn-rimmed glasses from another era.

The newspaper reported that neighborhood children "were visibly upset and shaken by the murder." They spoke of Pelke as "meek and mild," serving cookies during summer Bible classes and giving out boxes of candy to the children who memorized Scripture.

As for who might be responsible, the initial story carried some important nuggets: Police were searching for a 15-year-old girl who'd been seen driving Pelke's blue Plymouth. They weren't releasing her name, but the girl was a student at Lew Wallace High and lived in Gary's Marshalltown neighborhood.

—

Paula Cooper lived in Marshalltown.

As they combed through Ruth's house, police found the jacket with the prescription in the pocket. Eyewitnesses had seen Paula and the other girls in a car that matched the description of Ruth's missing Plymouth. And on the day Ruth's body was discovered, Gloria Cooper phoned police to report her 15-year-old daughter missing; she'd been missing since the day before.

The ink was barely dry on the newspaper stories when Karen Corder, walking around school on Thursday, two days after the crime, began looking for someone on whom she could unload her conscience. She had opted out of the joy ride and gone home and had a couple of restless nights' sleep. She found a gym teacher who'd been nice to her and said they needed to talk; she'd witnessed a murder. Soon, police were at the school. They took Karen and Denise into custody. And Karen was telling her story about the crime.

In the two days since the killing, Paula and April — with April's brother, Tony — had driven aimlessly from Gary to Hammond and to various parts of Chicago's South Side. They'd had no real sense of direction.

Tony pressed on in Ruth's Plymouth until the gas needle dropped well below empty. Then he pushed it some more. Finally, the car died. Their money gone, they found a phone and called April's sister. Thursday night, with the police dragnet closing around them, she took the girls to see the Gary police.

—

Detective William Kennedy Jr. had been looking for Paula Cooper and April Beverly for the better part of two days. When his phone rang around midnight, the news was good: They'd turned themselves in.

In addition to being a cop, Kennedy worked security at Lew Wallace High School. He'd seen Paula Cooper walking the halls. He never knew her name, but they'd exchanged hellos. Now, he was tidying up the loose ends of a case for murder against her.

When he arrived at the station, Paula's parents were waiting. Kennedy asked Herman and Gloria Cooper if Paula could make a formal statement about the crime. Herman, speaking for everyone, declined. They were interested in talking to a lawyer, and he seemed annoyed at the article in the morning paper, which he felt pointed a finger at Paula even if it didn't name her.

The Coopers met briefly with Paula, then returned to the waiting room. Soon, Rhonda arrived at the station. She'd read the papers. She knew Paula was in jail. And she was upset. She wanted to see her sister.

Gloria was OK with that but urged her to persuade Paula to talk about what she'd done. When the police wouldn't let Rhonda see her sister without a parent, Gloria agreed to go with Rhonda.

After so many years of turmoil and strife, Gloria and her two daughters were together again — for a moment alone in a police interrogation room. What they said isn't clear. But when Kennedy, the detective, rejoined them, Gloria gave Paula a nudge.

"Say something," she said.

Paula hesitated. She said she didn't want anyone looking at her. So Kennedy turned 45 degrees and looked at a wall. Paula began to speak. She kept speaking for 15 minutes. She laid out the essential elements of Ruth Pelke's murder, described the girls' desire for money and a car, described how they came up with the Bible class as their way in. She described how she got the knife and stabbed the old woman more times than she could remember. She talked about the aftermath, when they took the car and gave rides to their friends. At one point, according to the account the detective would later make from his "mental notes," Gloria Cooper asked Paula in front of the detective: Were you and Karen basically responsible for the lady's death?

Paula's answer: "Yeah, you could say that."

When Paula was done, Kennedy left the room. Her mother and her sister left, too. As Paula stood alone in the interrogation room, April Beverly was giving a statement in a room nearby. When Kennedy returned to Paula, she was newly animated. She began unloading a rapid-fire addendum to her confession to the detective.

"April is lying. She's lying on me, so I'm going to tell you where the murder weapon is. It's at the McDonald's in Hammond on Calumet Avenue, next to the police station. Her brother threw it out the car right by the drive-thru window side. It was by a tree right there."

For Paula, this was the start of one of the great grievances of her life — her claim that the other girls lied. A few details aside, their stories largely matched up. But in the discrepancies, Paula saw injustice. And correcting the narrative to fit her exact version of the truth would become an obsession.

The legal ramifications of what she'd shared, in her two statements, were that Paula had essentially confessed to the key elements of the murder. She had gift-wrapped a case for the authorities. She also had put herself in the cross hairs of a zealous prosecutor. She had no idea just how precarious her own life had become.

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Jack Crawford — with a swooping, blow-dried haircut that gave him an appearance not unlike the televangelists of the era — came before a bank of reporters with material certain to make a splash.

A rising star in Indiana's Democratic Party, Crawford had swept into the Lake County prosecutor's job years before, having pledged to get tough on crime. Since then, he had pursued the death penalty more than any other prosecutor in the state. In the first five months of 1985, he'd already won four death penalty convictions.

Now, flanked by a pair of cops, Crawford came before the gathered media with an announcement sure to make headlines: For the first time in Lake County, his office was charging four girls with murder. He would seek the death penalty against the oldest — 16-year-old Karen Corder — and if the other girls were moved out of juvenile court, he'd likely seek death for them, too.

"I've been a prosecutor for seven years," Crawford told the media, "and we've never had a case like this before."

As zealous as he was, Crawford privately acknowledged that same day that his chance for death sentences had already taken a big hit. That's because the clerk's office announced that the judge handling the Ruth Pelke cases was Superior Court Judge James C. Kimbrough Jr.

Kimbrough was a former public defender and NAACP lawyer who'd grown up in the civil rights heartland of Selma, Ala. More important than all of that, everyone around the courts — from prosecutors and public defenders to reporters and clerks — knew Kimbrough hated the death penalty. Hated it for its unfairness. Hated it for its inability to deter crime. And in a county where other judges had shown themselves willing to brandish the ultimate weapon, Kimbrough hadn't sent anyone to the electric chair during 12 years on the bench. Only once had he come close: Kimbrough sentenced a man to death who had been convicted of a double murder. Soon, though, the judge reversed himself and gave the man a new trial. Eventually, he was set free.

So, at word of Kimbrough's assignment, Jack Crawford and his team murmured that the path to a death sentence was a steep one. "We certainly thought we had an uphill climb," he would say later.

—

In the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center, Paula Cooper's life behind bars was getting off to a rough start.

She was no stranger to jail, having spent three months in the same detention center two years earlier after she ran away from home. She was a bit weepy then, even tender, the guards remembered. But this 15-year-old version of Paula Cooper was angrier, explosive and cocky. She acted as if she owned the place. She was a handful.

Two weeks after the crime, Paula took a seat next to two of her friends in the jail during "quiet hour." Soon they grew noisy. A guard told them to shut up and disperse; Paula refused. The guard ordered her back to her cell. But as she stepped into the hall, Paula struck the guard across the bridge of the nose. She fought until reinforcements arrived to pull Paula off. As they were dragging her away, Paula issued a warning: They'd better transfer the guard or she would get a knife and come after her.

The dust-up prompted a transfer for the girls — from the juvenile center to the Lake County Jail. It also made the local papers, which didn't help the cause of saving their lives.

By the end of July 1985, the cases against all four girls were formally moved to adult court. Crawford, after sifting through the ample evidence, made his purpose clear: He would seek the death penalty against all four.

The case had pricked the public's consciousness of crime at a new level.

Crawford's decision made news on the Chicago television stations; it made headlines across Indiana. The public defender assigned to represent Paula, Kevin Relphorde, was incredulous. "They must be the youngest females in the country facing the death penalty," he told reporters.

By then, Paula and Karen, sharing a cell in the Lake County Jail, had been locked up two months. They began telling jail staff they were considering suicide. On cards they were given to report health problems, they wrote things such as "Give me the electric chair" and "Give me that shock. I want to die."

As a precaution, jail officers took their personal belongings and stripped them to their underwear; they were on suicide watch.

Paula and Karen responded by banging on the bars and making noise. To calm them, a nurse broke out the oral sedatives. Karen took hers; Paula refused. The guards teamed up to hold down Paula so the nurse could give her a shot. But as they tried to restrain her, Paula jumped up and hit one guard in the shoulder.

"Oh you tough, huh?" the guard replied. "You stabbed an old lady." It was less than professional, but it was a gut reaction.

"Yeah, I stabbed an old lady," Paula replied. "And I'd stab that bitch again. I'd stab your fucking grandmother."

The jail incidents were part of a pattern to be repeated in years to come. Paula didn't respond well to restraints; she bucked authority. In such instances, she could be aggressive and hostile. A psychologist noted her tendencies and something else plain to see: Battered and badgered as a girl, she was now mistrustful and suspicious.

Soon, Paula's interaction with the jail staff would grow more complicated. By August 1985, about the time she turned 16, Paula began receiving a series of private visitors. Two were male corrections officers. Another was a male recreational therapist. They weren't visiting just because of their jobs.

They were coming for sex.

—

Outside the jail, the stories about the angry young prisoners seemed only to add to the public's contempt. And as the details of their crime emerged, they were already easy to hate. Especially the girl who had wielded the knife — Paula Cooper.

Paula had not just killed Ruth Pelke; she had stabbed her 33 times, according to the coroner. Some of the cuts on her arms looked like saw marks, as if the knife had been pulled back and forth. In other instances, the 12-inch knife had been wielded with such ferocity that the tip of the blade went through Ruth's body, pierced the carpet on which she lay and chipped the wood flooring beneath. Worst of all, it appeared Ruth Pelke survived the torturous assault for more than 30 minutes. The Post-Tribune called it "possibly the most brutal killing in Gary history."

If all that wasn't bad enough, two of the girls had bragged about the killing at school. As defendants go, they were about as unsympathetic as they come. With guilt hardly in doubt, letters began appearing in the Gary newspaper debating the punishment. Some asked for mercy; others wanted severe justice. One letter directed at Paula appeared under the headline, "She should pay."

All of it left Kevin Relphorde, Paula's lawyer, searching for a viable strategy to save Paula's life. The evidence was overwhelming, and the prosecutor was determined, which made a plea deal unimaginable. Paula's childhood had been bad, but it didn't seem to add up to an insanity plea. Her youth and relatively clean prior record were assets, but they looked meager compared to the brutality of the crime. Then there was the jury. Any panel drawn from across Lake County would be mostly white. And Paula was a black teenager who had killed an old white woman. All of it added up to a grim outlook.

As best as Relphorde could figure, the only thing Paula had going for her was the judge. Relphorde knew of Kimbrough's opposition to the death penalty. Ultimately, he suggested to Paula a stomach-churning strategy: Plead guilty.

Relphorde was a part-time public defender who'd never handled a death penalty case. But he figured Paula's chances were better in the hands of a liberal judge than with 12 angry jurors.

As risky as it sounded, Relphorde wasn't the only person who sized things up the same way. David Olson, who was Karen Corder's attorney, came to a similar conclusion. He'd had a nightmare about Karen, he told the Post-Tribune in March 1986, and awoke fearful of "losing her." His fears were amplified when he attended the trial of Denise Thomas, the first suspect to answer for the death of Ruth Pelke.

Just before the case against Thomas went to trial, in November 1985, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty charge, concluding she'd been more of a bystander to the crime.

But that didn't stop the jurors from reacting strongly to the horrific details of Pelke's death. They quickly found Denise guilty. Olson didn't want to risk that with death on the line for his client. So in March, 10 months after the crime, Karen went before Kimbrough with a guilty plea. Her sentencing would follow two months later.

How well Paula understood the risks of her plea — and how much say she had in it — is now a matter of dispute. Relphorde said he met with Paula regularly to talk strategy and that the plea was ultimately her decision. Years later, Paula would recall only three brief meetings with her attorney, who she said assured her the judge opposed the death penalty and would be sympathetic to a black girl. If she pleaded guilty, she said she was told, she wouldn't get a death sentence.

On April 21, 1986, Paula appeared in court to plead guilty to murder.

Herman Cooper came to the courtroom that day; so did Paula's sister, Rhonda. But Gloria Cooper, Paula's mother, was nowhere to be found. She had moved to Georgia and stopped answering the calls of Paula's attorney.

When the hearing began, Kimbrough asked Paula more than once if she knew she could be sentenced to death. Each time, Paula answered yes. To the most important question — How do you plead? — she never hesitated: Guilty.

For the record, Paula retold the story of the crime — the scheme to get into the house; what she did to Ruth; how the girls took the car.

"We went to commit a robbery, you know," she told the judge.

Was there any discussion in advance about what you'd do with Mrs. Pelke? he asked.

"No. It wasn't a discussion to go and kill anyone, you know."

Kimbrough accepted the plea. Paula's life was now in his hands. But she would have to wait months for an answer. Relphorde left convinced Paula had made her best play: "We were basically throwing ourselves on the mercy of the court."

Paula's strategy seemed to appear sound when, in May 1986, Kimbrough spared Karen Corder's life, giving her 60 years in prison. In fact, three of the girls had escaped with their lives. Denise Thomas, found guilty at trial, received a 35-year sentence. April Beverly, who conceived the robbery but waited outside during the killing, pleaded guilty in exchange for a 25-year prison term.

Only Paula's fate remained unresolved.

Lost in the news of Corder's reprieve, perhaps, was some language the judge used in reference to Paula. It seemed ominous. Kimbrough said it had been "conceded by all that Paula Cooper was the leader of this group of four young ladies. That Paula Cooper was the dominant factor in the crime." He said Corder was "operating under the substantial domination of Paula Cooper." Despite such words, the prevailing view in legal circles was that Kimbrough would spare Paula's life.

—

As her judgment approached, there were hints that Paula Cooper's case was starting to resonate beyond Indiana. Jack Crawford's first clue came when his secretary stepped into his office with an unusual message: "There's a man outside who says he's from the Vatican. He's dressed like a monk and wants to talk to you about Paula Cooper's case."

Crawford took a look. Sure enough, in a brown tunic bound at the waist with a cord, there stood a Franciscan friar. He told Crawford he was from Rome. He offered a letter validating his credentials. And he brought a simple message: Pope John Paul II and the Vatican weren't pleased with Crawford's decision to seek the death penalty.

Crawford was Roman Catholic. He'd gone to Notre Dame. He knew the church's opposition to the death penalty. But, as he explained to the friar, this was a legal decision, not a religious one. The friar left unsatisfied. He would not be the last Franciscan to stand with Paula.

More surprising than the friar's appearance was the visit Crawford received in June 1986 from Paula's attorney, Kevin Relphorde.

It was just weeks before Paula's sentencing, and Relphorde had few cards to play in Paula's defense. This time, though, it appeared he might have a game changer.

"You can't execute Paula Cooper," he said.

"Well, why is that, Kevin?" Crawford asked.

"She's pregnant."

—

The sex scandal at the Lake County Jail erupted in June 1986.

For months, corrections officers Vernard Rouster, 25, and Parmaley Rainge, 27, had been coming to see Paula for sex, officials discovered. So, too, had Michael Dean Lampley, a recreational therapist from a mental health center. Their encounters occurred even as a 40-year-old female corrections officer and a police patrolman were supposed to be maintaining security for the state's highest-profile murder suspect.

—

One of the guards admitted the sex began when Paula was still a week shy of 16 — the age of consent in Indiana. That people working in the jail were having sex with a captive wasn't illegal in Indiana in 1986. After the revelation, the jail workers resigned their jobs and the therapist was fired, but no one was prosecuted. Supervisors on the jail floor were suspended — for 15 days.

For all of its tawdriness, the scandal had the potential to affect Paula's case. State law prohibited the execution of a pregnant woman; punishment would have to wait. And while a death penalty appeal was certain to outlast a pregnancy, the strange episode raised the possibility of a sentencing delay.

Kimbrough ordered a medical exam for Paula. Quickly, the matter was put to rest: She wasn't pregnant. But, in a sign of the times, public discussion about the scandal seemed to focus less on the culpability of the jailers than on the promiscuity of the 16-year-old girl in jail.

James McNew, a deputy in Crawford's office who prosecuted the case, told the Post-Tribune he suspected Paula Cooper tried to get pregnant to stir up sympathy and avoid death.

However it came about, the sex scandal prompted a change in state law: It became a crime for jailers to have sex with their prisoners. Soon, though, the jailhouse sex scandal would become little more than a footnote before a judgment heard around the world.

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Bill Pelke sat on the wrong side of the courtroom.

His grandmother was the murder victim. Unwittingly, Bill took a seat on the side of the murderer. He was unfamiliar with the trappings of the courtroom. And unlike some in the community — in his own family — Bill carried no blood lust into the chamber. He thought people who committed murder should die. And Paula Cooper had killed his beloved Nana. But he wasn't fuming about it.

Bill had stayed away from the previous court hearings, but decided this was one he shouldn't miss. It was July 11, 1986. And for Paula Cooper, it was judgment day.

Courtroom 3 of Lake Superior Court was a small space. The gallery, oriented outside a circle where the business of the court was conducted, had seats for just 43 onlookers. This day, it was packed to overflowing. People stood, straining to hear, just outside the public entrance. Lawyers and other court personnel did the same just outside the doors normally used by the judge and juries. All wanted to know the fate of a 16-year-old girl who faced a potential death sentence.

Into this cauldron, Paula Cooper entered under the escort of a jail matron. She didn't need to look around to see she had few friends in the room. Her sister and her grandfather were there, but neither of her parents was present. Her mother had moved to Georgia, her father to Tennessee. As Paula entered, the matron said something that made the young defendant smile. The gesture surprised Bill Pelke; it struck him as unbefitting for the moment. When this day is done, he thought to himself, she's not going to be smiling.

Deputy Prosecutor James McNew began the proceedings by calling Bill's father to testify. Robert Pelke hadn't missed a hearing — for Paula or any of the other girls. He had been the family spokesman, and he wanted a death sentence for Paula. He described going to Ruth Pelke's home when she hadn't answered the phone, finding her home in disarray and her body on the floor. He described her bloody dress and the towel wrapped around her head. When the attorneys finished questioning him, Robert asked to read a statement to the court.

This, Robert Pelke said, was a crime that deserved the maximum sentence the law would allow. He quoted the Bible about submitting to authorities and God's vengeance and punishing evildoers. He said Paula gave Ruth no second chance, and he saw no reason to give Paula one.

"Paula reveled in her doings and enjoyed it," he said. He spoke of ridding society of those who would prey upon the innocent. "This is a tragedy that should never have happened," he said, "and a tragedy that family and friends will never forget."

Next, one of the girls from Lew Wallace High School testified about seeing Paula and the others on their joy ride and about finding the bloody knife on the floor of the car.

A crime lab technician discussed grisly photos from the scene — pictures of Ruth Pelke, of the knife-torn carpet and the gouge marks in the hardwood floor.

The prosecution introduced into evidence the autopsy report, which expressed the damage done by the 33 stab wounds. There was also an anatomical diagram noting the points where Ruth had been wounded — so many it looked like a star chart.

Jailers who had been attacked and threatened by Paula detailed her bad behavior; they recounted her admission about stabbing "an old lady."

Entering into evidence the grisly details of the crime and the accounts of Paula's callous behavior was part of the prosecution's effort to build a case that the only just punishment was death.

In Paula's defense, only three witnesses spoke.

Rhonda Cooper gave a picture of how she and Paula grew up terrorized in the home of Herman Cooper. She testified to the beatings, to their father's raping their mother in front of them, to their mother's suicide attempt and to their attempts to run away.

Ronald Williams, Rhonda's biological father, testified that he wanted to take Paula away from the misery, but her mother refused. He spoke of Gloria's threats against Paula and of the suicide attempt.

Dr. Frank Brogno, a Gary psychologist who examined Paula, described how Paula's abuse left her angry and confused, depressed and hostile. He said she was prone to confusion and bizarre thinking, even drifting into fantasies. Still, he said, Paula knew right from wrong. There was still hope for her, but also a real danger she could become a sociopath.

McNew, on cross-examination, ripped into the doctor. He pointed out how Brogno had testified in Karen Corder's case that Paula was the "prime mover" in the crime.

—

Relphorde made a plea for Paula's life, saying she had gone to Ruth Pelke's home to rob, not kill. He said the other girls were intensely involved in the crime and their lives had been spared. The death penalty, he said, was applied at the whim of prosecutors. He said Ruth Pelke, a woman of faith, wouldn't want Paula to die. In the end, he said, Paula was the handiwork of an abusive home and a system that failed her.

"I don't think Paula was born violent," he said. "I think Paula was a product of what was done to her."

McNew, closing the prosecution's case, checked all the boxes needed for a death sentence: Paula wasn't crazy. She wasn't doing someone else's bidding. She'd struck the death blows. She had a criminal record, as far as a juvenile goes, for skipping school and running away from home. And Paula's abusive childhood? To use that for an excuse, McNew said, was to insult everyone who has endured similar treatment and found a way to overcome the horrors. Giving Paula the death penalty, McNew said, would have a sobering effect on others who might be considering crime. But McNew said there was one reason, above all, for a death sentence.

"I am not seeking a deterrence to crime when I ask the death penalty on Paula Cooper. I seek justice for the family of Ruth Pelke."

—

With the attorneys done, Kimbrough asked Paula if she had anything to say. And Paula did not shrink from the moment.

She hadn't wanted a trial, Paula began; she only wanted to tell the truth. "Now my family life, it hasn't really been good. … Nobody understand how I feel."

"This man," she said, pointing to the prosecutor, "sit here and say he want to take my life. Is that right? I didn't go to Mrs. Pelke's house to kill her. It wasn't planned. I didn't go there to take somebody's life. It happened. It just happened. Something. It wasn't planned. We didn't sit up and say we was going to go and kill this innocent old lady. I didn't even know the lady. But everybody put the blame on me."

She said Jack Crawford had described her in the newspaper as the ringleader. "I wasn't the ringleader. I didn't make those girls go," she said. "They went on their own."

Looking around at the people in the courtroom, Paula seemed disgusted. "Well, where was all these people at right here when I needed somebody? Where was they at? They turned their backs on me and took me through all this. All I can say is now, look where I am now, facing a possible death sentence."

She pointed at the Pelke family and repeated her plea that killing wasn't her intention. "I hope you all could find some happiness in your hearts to forgive me. And I know your mother was a Christian lady, and she is in heaven right now. I read my Bible. How do you think I feel? I can't sit here and tell you I understand how you feel because I don't."

She acknowledged that "sorry" would never be good enough.

Paula looked to Judge Kimbrough. But, as Bill Dolan would report in the Post-Tribune the next day, the judge "didn't return her gaze." "I don't know what the decision is going to be today, or whenever you make your decision. I know justice must be done. And whatever the circumstances, or whatever your decision is, I will accept it, even if it is death." She acknowledged she couldn't change what happened: She hoped to get out one day and start life over, maybe even finish school.

"Will I have a chance?" she asked. "Will I get a chance?"

For a couple of minutes, Paula rambled. She repeated that she hadn't forced the other girls to act; she felt it important everyone know she wasn't a gang member. Then she reined it back in for one final thought: "I am sorry for what I did. And I know my involvement in this case is very deep. But all I can ask you is not to take my life. That is all I can ask you. That is all I can ask is to spare my life."

Suddenly, a commotion broke out in the courtroom. There was shouting in the gallery. "My grandbaby, my grandbaby."

Bill Pelke looked at the wailing man near him and saw the tears run down his cheeks; the visage burned into Bill's memory. He watched the man as the bailiff escorted him out of the courtroom.

It was Paula's grandfather, making one final plea on Paula's behalf.

Now it was up to the judge.

—

Judge James C. Kimbrough had been wading through the sordid details of Ruth Pelke's murder for more than a year. He'd parsed the depressing narrative, and people had speculated whether he had a death penalty in him, especially for a girl. Now they were about to get their answer.

There was no doubt about Paula Cooper's guilt. Kimbrough dispatched that with his first breath. The murder had been disturbing: Paula had inflicted the 33 stab wounds in the body of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke.

Those were the strikes against her.

But the defendant had no prior criminal history, and she was 15 at the time of the crime.

Those were factors to consider on her behalf.

The other requirements for the death penalty, Kimbrough said, didn't work in the defendant's favor. She acted of her own free will. She wasn't under the influence of drugs. Her mental problems didn't rise to the level of incompetence. But all those things, Kimbrough said, were legalities. Ultimately, he said, death penalty cases boil down to a "political utterance."

"This case has received an unusual amount of publicity," Kimbrough said. "There is worldwide interest in the outcome of these proceedings today. And the court is certainly aware of that interest."

When he left law school in 1959, Kimbrough said, he had been "totally against" the death penalty — and most of the country shared the view.

Nearly 30 years later, he said, public sentiment had changed, perhaps because of the violent activities of people such as Paula Cooper. Now, the vast majority of the public favors the death penalty, Kimbrough said, Normally, he wrote out his sentences in advance. But this case had challenged him to the point he'd been unable to do so.

Kimbrough praised the deputy prosecutor for speaking "eloquently" — he said McNew brought the matters into focus "better than all of the turmoil that I have been through in the last several months."

He criticized state law for being too general when it came to giving minors the death penalty. It left him unsure what to do on that fundamental question. "I don't know what the right political answer to that question is."

Then Kimbrough, in a moment of vulnerability judges don't always reveal, showed some insight into his restless mind. "I don't believe I am ever going to be quite the same after these four cases. They have had a very profound effect on me. They have made me come to grips with the question of whether or not a judge can hold personal beliefs which are inconsistent at all with the law as they were sworn to uphold. And for those of you who have no appreciation of it, it is not a simple question. It is not a simple question for me."

Kimbrough interrupted his confessional to take issue with something Robert Pelke said: "I do not believe the failure to impose the death penalty today would be unbiblical. … I don't profess to be an expert in religion. But I know the Bible has passages which are merciful, and do not demand or mandate an eye for an eye."

Returning to his inner turmoil, Kimbrough said he'd concluded that a judge must decide a case based on facts, regardless of whether it satisfies him. "I will tell you, very frankly now, on the record, that I do not believe in the death penalty."

This seemed to launch Kimbrough on a rant. "Maybe in 20 years, after we have had our fill of executions, we will swing back the other way and think they are unconstitutional. Maybe."

At about this point, Jack Crawford, sitting at the prosecutor's table, was ready to give up hope for a death penalty. He turned to McNew, he remembered later, and whispered into his ear.

"He's not going to give it."

Then Kimbrough directed his eyes to the girl awaiting his judgment.

"Stand up, Paula."

She had stabbed Ruth Pelke 33 times, he said. He was concerned about her background. She had been "born into a household where your father abused you, and your mother either participated or allowed it to happen. And those seem to be explanations or some indication of why you may be this type of personality that you are."

"They are not excuses, however."

However.

That word caught Crawford's attention. So did the fact that Kimbrough's shoulders seemed to slump, as if the weight of the moment was getting to the judge. Crawford leaned in and whispered again to McNew.

"I think he's going to give it. I think he's going to give it."

Kimbrough continued.

"You committed the act, and you must pay the penalty," Kimbrough said. Briefly, he trailed into some legalese about the charge. Then he gathered himself for the final judgment.

"The law requires me, and I do now impose, the death penalty."

—

The courtroom erupted.

"What did he say?"

Paula Cooper looked at Kevin Relphorde for help; amid the chaos, she wasn't sure what had just happened. She looked back for the judge; he had already left the bench. She asked Relphorde what had happened. He delivered the verdict again: He gave you the death penalty.

The smile Paula wore into the courtroom was gone, indeed. Bill Pelke took note of that. Instead, he saw a river of tears streaming down her cheeks. As she was led from the courtroom, the tears soaked the top of her blouse.

Just like that, Paula Cooper — at 16 years, 10 months and 16 days — became the youngest person ever sentenced to death in Indiana; she was now the youngest female on death row anywhere in the United States. In this age before the cellphone, news reporters from national outlets raced out of the courtroom to the nearest bank of pay telephones. It took a few hours, but the verdict soon circled the globe.

In the hallway outside the courtroom, Rhonda Cooper yelled in anguish at members of the Pelke family and the prosecutors nearby.

"Are you satisfied now?"

They seemed satisfied.

Strangely, one of the most unsatisfied people in the building was the source of the commotion: Judge Kimbrough.

After delivering the verdict, he darted out of the courtroom and into the hallway leading to his chambers. There, between the two rooms, he spotted William Touchette, a public defender who handled appeals. Kimbrough told Touchette to follow him.

Touchette (pronounced TOO-shay) had been among those outside the courtroom straining to hear the proceedings. Like so many local lawyers, he was friendly with the judge; they'd socialized outside of work. He followed Kimbrough into his chambers.

The judge was angry. As angry as Touchette had ever seen him. Angry that the defense hadn't given him enough to spare Paula Cooper's life. Then Kimbrough uttered seven words Touchette would never again hear from a judge.

"I want you to get me reversed."

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Paula Cooper's death sentence was one of Indiana's biggest news stories in 1986. It garnered network television news coverage. Once it hit the international news wires, it was picked up by newspapers in Europe, where it inspired protests.

But Monica Foster, working for a nonprofit death penalty defense group in Downtown Indianapolis, somehow missed all that. To her, it was as if the Paula Cooper case had never happened.

It wasn't that Foster was uninterested in current events or that she was dull. In fact, Foster was a wunderkind. She'd graduated from high school at 16, college at 19 and law school at 22. She'd come to work for the Indiana Public Defender Council, researching and offering advice to lawyers with death penalty cases, even before finishing her law degree. But at 27, she had a tendency to get absorbed in her work. And when that happened, the outside world ceased to exist.

So when William Touchette, the Lake County attorney preparing Paula Cooper's appeal, called the council looking for some help, Foster knew nothing of the case. Without hesitation, Foster agreed to be Touchette's local connection to Paula, who was being held at the Indiana Women's Prison on the city's east side. Foster even said she'd donate her time, seeing the client on evenings and weekends, as a sideline.

Foster didn't realize she'd just signed on to the case that would become the most noteworthy of her career.

When the case file arrived in her office, Foster began reading about Paula Cooper. Right away, she was puzzled.

Here was a black girl from Gary who had been sentenced to death by a black judge whom even Foster knew to be one of the most liberal, anti-death penalty jurists in the state. The girl had brutally murdered an elderly woman during a robbery, but Foster told the people in her office that to get a death sentence from this judge Paula Cooper had to be some kind of rabid animal.

"She must be frothing at the mouth."

Foster decided to go to the prison and see Paula Cooper for herself.

—

Paula had arrived at the Indiana Women's Prison — America's oldest women's prison — five days after her sentencing.

Established shortly after the Civil War, it was originally in the countryside east of Indianapolis. Over time, brick storefronts and wood-frame houses sprang up around the prison's series of boxy brick buildings — situated around a grassy courtyard — and now the prison was landlocked in the middle of an urban neighborhood.

Awaiting Paula was a cell tucked away on the second floor of the segregation unit. It was stark: block walls and tile floor; aluminum sink and toilet; a desk and a chair; all of it packaged in a space slightly bigger than a walk-in closet.

She had one window to the outside world. Depending on which side of the hallway she was assigned at the time, it featured either a view of the courtyard or, just beyond a fence topped by razor wire, the backside of a row of decaying houses.

Paula's cell had two metal doors. One was made of bars, the other was solid. Most of the time, the solid door remained open, allowing her to talk through the bars to passing guards and nearby prisoners. But when the solid door was closed, it was as if she was locked in a vault. Worse, the prison had no air conditioning. As summer temperatures outside climbed into the 90s, the only air moving through the wing was pushed by a floor fan at the end of the hall. Most of the time, the place felt like the inside of a cook stove.

Here, Paula Cooper spent 23 hours a day. In the remaining hour, she had 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes for recreation, which meant a short walk to a larger room where she could play Ping-Pong or cards with other prisoners. Meals were delivered to her cell.

She was 16 years old and, in the grand scheme of things, set apart from the rest of the human race.

The treatment was harsher than what Paula's three co-defendants in the murder of Ruth Pelke faced. They were housed elsewhere in the prison, with the general population. They had greater freedom of movement, time outdoors and an ongoing interaction with other people. Paula was allotted 10 hours of visits per month, but she wasn't sure who would fill the time. Her sister had moved to Minnesota. Her mother had moved to Georgia. Her father had moved to Tennessee. Paula was as alone as she could be.

Yet she faced a struggle greater than isolation and heat. She lived in fear that the executioner was coming for her any minute. Whatever she'd been told about the appeals process hadn't registered. She thought she was about to be taken away and killed. She existed moment to moment, in dread the guards were about to drag her away to the electric chair. In letters, she would describe her situation in the bleakest of terms — "a mental hell." Paula needed hope. She needed a friend. But who?

—

Monica Foster entered the security checkpoint at the Indiana Women's Prison and was shown to the glass-walled consultation room. In short order, she watched as a guard escorted her client in to meet her.

Paula Cooper was nothing like she expected. Monica came looking for the heartless killer who had murdered an old woman in cold blood, fought the guards at the county jail and been given a ticket to the chair by the most liberal judge in Lake County.

Instead, Foster found a girl, sobbing uncontrollably, who had been on suicide watch. Foster tried to calm her. After some questioning, she gathered the reason for the emotional meltdown: Paula thought they were coming any time now. To kill her.

Foster's blood boiled. She realized that, since the sentencing, no one had explained to Paula the years of appeals; the good chance for a reprieve; and, should all else fail, the notice she would receive well ahead of an execution. Foster felt sorry for Paula. She explained the process. Above all, she told Paula she'd never be ambushed by the executioner.

Paula went back to her cell in a little better shape, but Foster left the prison rattled. She couldn't believe how she had misjudged her client. She realized that her role in this case was about more than legal counsel. She would need to offer her client a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen.

Foster began going to the prison on weekends, sitting and talking with Paula for hours. She listened to Paula talk about being depressed, and she tried to buck her up. She listened to Paula's troubles with the prison administration and offered advice on ways to get along. She listened to Paula describe the abuses of her childhood, and Foster shared some of the tougher aspects of her own. The conversation wasn't always heavy. Sometimes they talked about places they dreamed of going and about men Foster was dating. Paula, in particular, was quick with a jab about Foster's romantic failures. Even in a maximum security prison, with one of them facing death, they spent a good deal of time laughing. And Foster found Paula's laugh to be infectious. That she could laugh at all impressed Foster. The girl seemed to have some kind of resiliency. After a while, Foster could deny it no longer: She liked Paula Cooper.

—

Bill Pelke felt no such affection.

In the 18 months since Paula Cooper killed his grandmother, Bill had lost the ability to think of Ruth Pelke as the sweet person she'd been; he could only see the murder victim. He couldn't remember the warmth of Ruth's home; he could only think of it as a crime scene. When Paula Cooper received her sentence, Pelke felt justice had been served. His father, Robert Pelke, warned him that the justice wouldn't last. On a trip to Florida they took to get away from it all, Robert Pelke said Paula would probably never see the electric chair. "Some do-gooder will probably come along and help get her off death row," he'd said. Bill struggled to imagine it; he just tried to get on with his life.

But moving on wasn't easy. And at 39, Bill already had other things on his mind that bothered him. He'd dropped out of college and wound up in Vietnam during the height of the war. As a radio operator, he was supposed to take cover during the fighting and call in air support. But he still carried shrapnel in his side from the wounds he suffered. Worse than that, he carried memories of the Army buddies who'd never come back. The experience left him sick of death. When he returned home, he'd married and started a family, but his marriage failed. So many things in his life hadn't gone as he'd planned. One afternoon in November 1986, all of this seemed to coalesce in Bill's mind.

Bill worked in a steel mill as a crane operator. He sat 50 feet above the manufacturing floor in the cab of his crane, moving heavy loads as the need arose. But on this Sunday night shift, things were slow; his mind began to drift. He wondered why life was so hard, why God had allowed Ruth to suffer such a horrendous death. He wondered why his family — his good family — was made to suffer in the wake of the crime. It was an unlikely perch for prayer, but Bill closed his eyes and began seeing images in his mind. He saw the courtroom where Paula had been sentenced to death. He remembered the outburst of her grandfather and the tears streaming down the man's face. He remembered Paula's reaction and the tears streaming down hers, how they soaked her blouse.

A hard realization hit Bill: Ruth wouldn't have wanted these things. She had invited Paula and the girls into her home to help them find faith. It occurred to Bill that Ruth would be more interested in Paula's salvation than her execution. He was certain, too, that Ruth would have hated seeing Paula's grandfather in anguish.

Bill thought of the Bible stories Ruth had taught and the lessons he'd learned from a lifetime in church. He remembered Jesus taught that you shouldn't forgive someone just seven times, but 70 times seven — in other words, forgiveness should be a habit. He remembered being taught that the measure of forgiveness we show others is the measure by which we shall be judged. He remembered hearing about Jesus on the cross, offering salvation to the man dying next to him, offering grace to those who sought his death. "Forgive them," Jesus had said, "for they know not what they do."

And then Bill realized something: Paula hadn't known what she was doing. Nobody in their right mind would take a 12-inch butcher knife and stab someone 33 times. It was crazy. Senseless.

In his mind, Bill began to see a new image: It was the picture of Ruth, the one published countless times since her death — silver hair, horn-rimmed glasses, sweet smile. Except now, he saw her face in the picture with tears running down her cheeks. Bill felt certain Ruth wanted someone from her family to show love to Paula and hers. Bill wasn't capable of it right then, but he thought he should try. He was a blue collar guy — a steelworker — and now he was at work crying a river of his own tears. From his seat in the cab of the crane, Bill prayed: "God, give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family." In return, he promised God two things. First, Bill would give credit to God for giving him the ability to forgive Paula whenever success came his way. Second, he'd walk through whatever door opened as a result of forgiving Paula.

Eventually, the sweet memories of Ruth would come back to Bill. He would be able to put aside the horror story. First, though, he felt he had to take a greater leap of faith. He had to get in touch with his grandmother's killer. He had to reach out to Paula Cooper.

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The next day, Bill phoned Paula's attorney. He wanted her prison address, and he was willing to do whatever it took to help save Paula's life. Kevin Relphorde's response wasn't encouraging: "It's kind of late for that."

Undeterred, Bill took the address and sat down at a desk in his Portage home to write perhaps the most intense letter of his life. He told Paula he had forgiven her; he wanted to visit her; there were Bible verses his grandmother would want him to share. He also wanted to meet her grandfather, he of the tearful courtroom outburst.

Bill dropped the letter in his mailbox and, at some level, thought that would be the end of it. But in the days following, he found himself checking his mailbox almost daily. Ten days after he sent his letter, an envelope showed up. The return address said: "Ms. Paula Cooper."

The envelope was thick. Inside, he found a letter dated Nov. 10, 1986, six pages of a teenage girl's loopy cursive, written in pencil, on pink stationery. The contents were far from a schoolgirl's bubble gum dreams. It was a snapshot of Paula's mind on death row. Her thoughts darted back and forth — between apologies and self-pity, between empathy for those who hated her and preachiness about why they should forgive her. Much of the letter was frenetic. Sentences ran on and on like the transcriptions of a nervous talker. Her misspellings and limited punctuation seemed to reflect the erratic schooling of someone who'd been on the run since eighth grade. But it also bore the hallmarks of a mind in overdrive, overloaded with conflicting emotions. Here are some excerpts. Periods have been added for clarity.

Bill 11/10/86

Hello how are you? fine I truly hope. me I'll survive, I received your letter today & it was nice of you to write me. one of Ms Pelkes friends wrote me also, I answered it back also. Im not the mean type of person your family thinks I am but I can except that. I really do. your cousin Robert was something else & what he said about not knowing if Ms Pelke would forgiving me. Ive read my bible & I know it says the way you judge others the Lord will judge you the same way. Ive prayed for your family. a lady in a wheel chair use to visit me at the jail. she said God would be pleased if I prayed for all of you, I am doing fine. They treat me ok & I am always isolated 23 hrs a day. thats how it is on death row, it is a mental hell because no one cares except for themselves. I am thankful to the Lord for them letting the others have a little time, because I've had hell all my life. so it really doesnt matter if I live or die because Im ready any time they come …

In his initial letter, Bill expressed a desire to save Paula from her death sentence. But in her reply, Paula told Bill he need not write, travel or speak on her behalf; she just wanted his forgiveness. She seemed proud of her performance in court — how she looked his family in the face and apologized. She seemed to excuse her parents for missing her sentencing. Although they had beaten and neglected her, Paula said, her actions affected them, too.

At various times, her words ranged from fatalistic to self-pitying:

I cant stay here like this & I don't want to be here, I deserve a chance one that Ive never had before. but one day Ill be free even if its when Im dead…

I cry every time I think of your grand mom. the others think it's a joke because you all let them be free. Im not an evil person, or what ever you think of me to be, Im just some one who is real angry, angry with life & all the people around me …

Ive never done anything wrong before except ask for help, I was turned away & introduced into a life of drugs, sex & crime, but now its too late for help. Im dying inside because of this but I only hope for the best for others.

In closing, she made it clear she wanted more interaction with Bill, even if she was passive about it. She would put him on her list of allowable prison visitors; she would write him whenever he wrote her; she offered her grandfather's phone number and address. In a dark world, it was as if she had seen a flicker of light.

Well, Ill go now, Ill continue to pray for all of you.

Take care

Paula

Their first exchange was the start of a surprising correspondence that would span years and delve into the core themes of Paula's life — searching for forgiveness; grappling with remorse; her closeness with death; her search for peace.

The letters also chart the course of a relationship that many people would struggle to understand, especially Bill Pelke's father.

—

After a second exchange of letters with Paula, Bill felt compelled to share with his parents the news of his surprising correspondence: His father had once warned of a do-gooder who would get Paula off death row. Now it appeared Bill wanted to be that do-gooder.

At first, his parents were speechless. "We don't understand why you are doing this," his mother, Lola, said. Surprisingly, his father acquiesced.

"Do what you got to do," Robert said.

Bill wrote Clarence Trigg, the superintendent of the Indiana Women's Prison, a letter that spent most of a page describing Ruth Pelke's faith and her commitment to sharing it. He concluded with a request:

Clarence, if Ruth Pelke could speak with you right now, I am sure she would say, "Please let Billy see Paula."

Thank you for your consideration

In the name of Jesus and His Love

William R. Pelke

But the prison doors weren't about to open to Bill anytime soon. Corrections officials didn't know what to make of his request — a murder victim's grandson seeking an audience with her killer. They suspected he had another motive, such as revenge.

—

The aftermath of Paula's case was confounding in other ways. Since giving Paula a death sentence, Judge James C. Kimbrough had been very public about his discomfort with his own ruling. Based on the law and the case in court, he said Paula qualified for the death penalty. But he hadn't been able to square it with his own opposition to capital punishment. The decision was costing him sleep. In an interview with the (Gary) Post-Tribune, published Aug. 4, 1986, a reporter noted the judge's nervous appearance.

He fidgeted in his chair. His gaze varied — at times less steady and slanted toward the desktop. He removed his glasses, toying with them.

Friends who knew Kimbrough said the judge was different than he'd been before the Paula Cooper sentencing. The man they knew as friendly and jovial, even gregarious, was more reclusive, less outgoing. "It weighed heavily on his mind," said Earline Rogers, a state legislator and a friend. "That was something he felt legally he had to do but, personally, he would not have taken that path."

Some in the legal community began to think there was a good chance Paula's death sentence would be overturned. But Kimbrough wouldn't live to find out.

On April 30, 1987, less than a year after his judgment of Paula, Kimbrough drove his car into the back of a semi and was killed. He had been drinking. The tragedy cast a pall over the Lake County courts, but it also landed hard at the Indiana Women's Prison. When Monica Foster told Paula her judge was dead, Paula was inconsolable. Days later, in a letter to Bill Pelke, she shared her thoughts about the judge.

"all I could do was cry, even though Kimbrough sentenced me to die. I felt a closeness to him as if he were my father. I have been sentenced to die many times by a lot of people and it's only words. We are all on Death Row and the last day of April his death sentence was completed & it should teach a lot of people we all have a date that is already planned & the way it will happen."

Paula's own father had been cruel; at least Kimbrough had agonized over the punishment he gave.

The letter about Kimbrough was the 20th she'd written to Bill Pelke in less than six months. She was surprising herself at her output: "I didn't even know I had a good handwriting or a great vocabulary until I was locked up."

By then, she was 17 and a condemned killer with hours to contemplate her past, present and future. Several themes recurred in her writing.

Life on death row. She struggled to sleep, to breathe, to deal with the noise. "To be on death row is worst than when I was in a mental hospital. At least it was quiet." She had ailments from toothaches to a bad back. Mostly, she was confused and on edge. Life on the row made her feel like "a walking time bomb."

Memories of the murder. Her thoughts were plagued by it. She described what she did to Ruth Pelke as "awful." She wished she could erase it. "Every day," she said, "I see my nightmare."

Death. It was constantly on her mind, whether by execution or by her own hand. She alternated between dread of the electric chair — "I hope it never happens to me" — and anticipation of it — "sometimes I wish they would just go ahead & do it. They continue to put this death threat on my life and I'm tired of it."

Suicide. She seemed to ponder the merits of killing herself. She wasn't sure what it would solve but, in words that seemed to echo from her mother, she said, "there isn't anything here for me." She talked about hanging herself but acknowledged she couldn't follow through. "I know that if I do that I might go to hell (and) I don't want that to happen."

Meanwhile, people from across the country wrote her. Some, including a death row inmate in North Carolina, wanted a romantic relationship. Some wanted answers to the plague of juvenile crime. Others sent her Bibles and tried to save her soul. Yet her faith — another frequent topic — had grown cold. As a child, she read her Bible often, she said, but "my faith started to shatter because of a lot of feelings, hopes and unanswered prayers. I love the Lord but we aren't rea