The Case of Tommy Cooper

May 11th 1998 Raleigh, North Carolina.
On the sunny afternoon of May 11th, Tommy Cooper (13) went missing, as students returned home from the school day, and Tommy never reached his house.
It was initially feared that he had been abducted, so search parties and door-to-door searches were conducted, but their results turned up empty-handed, as no clue leading to Tommy's whereabouts turned up.
While the leading theory which the police held, was that he may have been abducted, it was also speculated that he may have been the victim of bullying. But that theory was quickly dispelled, as Tommy's classmates reported that he was well-liked and wasn't a victim of bullying.
Suspicion fell on Cooper's paternal uncle, Jeremy Cooper (39), who lived in the area and was rumoured to be a pedophile. Vivian Cooper (42), the mother of Tommy, explained that during a family gathering months prior, Jeremy had offered marijuana to Tommy, and kissed him on the cheek.
Police also became aware of Jeremy's live-in friend, Benson Cook (40), who was a registered sex offender. Benson Cook knew Tommy personally.
On the evening of May 14th, a black plastic bag was retrieved from a river, which contained two severed human arms. Two days later, another black plastic bag was retrieved from the same river, in which a nude, and limbless human torso was contained. The body parts were identified to be that of Tommy Cooper.
Jeremy Cooper and Benson Cook were taken in for interrogation and were considered the prime suspects in the homicide, due to their connection to Tommy, their past sexual endeavors, and the fact that Jeremy's address was on Tommy's way home.
Jeremy dismissed these facts as circumstantial evidence, and stated that he and Benson had never seen Tommy that day.
Despite the strong suspicion hanging over Cooper and Cook, they were let go, as no other evidence linked them to the murder of Tommy.
Forensics reported that Tommy had died on the day he had disappeared, and that the mutilations had been crudely done by a common cutting tool, like a kitchen knife. The forensics also reported that he had been sexually assaulted.
The case went cold as no further clues turned up, suspects came and went, but nothing solid came up.
On December 23rd, 1999, a human skull was found in a washed up plastic bag, miles south of Raleigh. It was later identified as the skull of Tommy.
Jeremy Cooper took his own life on November 30th, 2000, with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. He left his estate to Benson Cook.
Benson Cook died on July 1st, 2004, in a motorcycle accident, he sustained great injuries to the head, later dying in the hospital. After his funeral, family members went to the former home of Jeremy Cooper to collect his personal possessions. A female family member made a haunting discovery: a collection of Polaroid photographs, which depicted a youth, strongly resembling Tommy Cooper.
It later came up that forensics had misidentified the human torso to be that of Tommy Cooper, concluding that it was of another murder victim, whose identity remains a mystery.
The rest of Tommy Cooper's body parts have never been found.
Category:Crime
Category:Mental Illness