Carl Cooper

**Carl Cooper** was an entrepreneur, fraudster, extortionist, product tamperer and poisoner.

## Background

Cooper attended Business Administration at Rayne City University, and eventually obtained a bachelor's degree. He briefly worked as a financial advisor, before turning to ventures. However, everything he got involved with turned into a failure, and Carl began having trouble supporting himself and his common-law wife, who later left him. Eventually, he resolved starting a travel agency, which quickly went out of business because of his incompetency and tendency to pay flight tickets with bad checks. He became convinced that both airline companies and SoftCo, a soft drinks manufacturer which he previously sued for alleged benzene poisoning, were conspiring against him. Cooper wrote letters to both consumer organizations and the mayor of Rayne City, which were left unanswered. Feeling ignored, he decided to exact his vengeance and enrich himself at the same time.

## Poisonings and Extortion

He spiked bottles of Mr. Thirsty, a SoftCo product, with ethylene glycol-based antifreeze, and returned them on the supermarket shelves where he firstly picked them up. The tamperings caused six fatalities out of nine intoxications. As soon as the incidents were connected to Mr. Thirsty, Cooper sent a letter to SoftCo, demanding $25.000 to be yearly deposited into a specially created bank account, which he would be the only one to have access to. A multi-agency law enforcement task force advised SoftCo to take time and keep in touch with the blackmailer, while they arranged a massive surveillance operation in order to intercept him as he approached an ATM to withdraw the ransom.

## Arrest and Trial

After months of trying, Cooper was finally arrested after approaching a surveilled cashpoint. He admitted extorting money from SoftCo, but denied involvement in the poisonings. Eventually, he was found guilty on all charges, and condemned to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

## Modus Operandi

Cooper picked up bottles of Mr. Thirsty from supermarket shelves, and spiked them with a lethal dose of ethylene glycol-based antifreeze. Then, he returned the bottles to the shelves, waiting for someone to buy them. He was careful to avoid being seen on the supermarket CCTV cameras, but was eventually caught on tape once.

He extorted SoftCo through a letter he sent to them, and kept in touch with the company through personal ads where he signed himself as "Arthur Francis Grayson", which he said stood for "AntiFreeze Guy".

## Profile

Cooper was profiled by FBI experts as a white male in his late twenties to mid thirties, who would be a depressed loner driven by rage, being convinced that society wronged him. His life would be marked by behavioral problems, psychiatric treatment, and repeated failures concerning either education, profession, or relationship with women. Also, he would feel inadequate, which could stem from a physical disability. He would gravitate towards positions of authority, but would have trouble keeping his job. He would drive a large car to compensate for his feelings of inferiority. He committed this crime as the result of a stressor he recently suffered.

The fact that he killed people before requesting a ransom suggests a personal motive, even though it involves enriching himself. It can't be excluded that he is a disgruntled and/or former employee of SoftCo, though it is more likely that his rage was directed at society in general. Likewise, his choice of the product could be relevant or not. In all likelihood, he wrote letters to people in positions of power and, feeling ignored by them, he escalated to the poisonings. Also, the offender probably keeps a journal of some kind, detailing his activities and talking about his frustrations.

Postoffense, he would talk to people about the incidents, even people directly involved in the poisonings, such as police officers and supermarket clerks. He would probably revisit the stores where he planted the tainted bottles, and would also inject himself into the investigation, volunteering for helping police and participating to the victims' funerals and vigils. This type of offender would feel remorseful if faced with the consequences his actions had on the people he depersonalized.

## Known Victims

		- Albert Haney
		- Cameron Donahue
		- John Kozarski (died a day later)
		- Rachel Benson
		- Marianne Benson (survived)
		- Joshua Sanders
	+ Second day:
		- Doris Petersen
		- Lorna Buckingham (survived)
		- David Desoto (survived)

## Real-Life Inspiration

* The 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders: From September 29 to October 1, 1982, seven people, including a twelve-year-old girl, residing in the Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan area, died soon after ingesting Tylenol (a painkiller) pills. The drug bottles were picked up at drugstores, tainted with potassium cyanide, and then replaced on the shelves. James W. Lewis, a former tax accountant and fraudster, was later arrested in relation to an extortion letter sent to Johnson & Johnson, the company manufacturing Tylenol*,* in which he claimed responsibility for the poisonings. Though he pleaded guilty to extortion, for which he was condemned to 20 years of imprisonment, Lewis vehemently denied involvement in the murders. The case remained officially unsolved, though circumstancial evidence against Lewis were pretty damning.
* The 1985 Japan Paraquat Murders: During the course of 1985, Japan was affected by a series of poisonings carried out through the product tampering of soft and energy drinks bottles, which were left inside or in the nearings of vending machines. They were mainly spiked with Paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide. The case, which remains unsolved, was linked to further non-lethal poisonings which were later classified as copycat crimes or attempted suicides. Japanese authorities believed multiple offenders were responsible, rather then a single one.
* Rodney Whitchelo: Whitchelo was a British former policeman who, in 1988, orchestrated an extortion scheme against Pedigree Petfoods and Heinz. He tampered their dog and baby food products with caustic soda and broken razor blades, demanding large sums of money to be deposited on several bank accounts as ransom, for five years. He was caught as a result of a vast surveillance operation launched by British authorities, and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment.