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July 25, 2008
Tragedy on Wallsburg Court
And so begins another episode of the soap opera that has the Triangle transfixed this summer: today is a major hearing for custody of Brad and Nancy Cooper's daughters. As you can imagine, the affidavits are aflyin'.
As you can also imagine, this is already becoming a complicated little web. Here is an attempt at the short version:
Her side:
He is an aloof, anti-social, mercurial, controlling nut job who had little or no interest in family responsibilities, spent most of his time focused on his own career goals or training for Iron Man competitions, provided little emotional and even less financial support to Nancy and had affairs. This is backed by a slew of affidavits from her friends. Upshot: At least from what has been made public, it would seem that the affidavits contain little by way of proof of anything that Brad Cooper has not readily conceded to begin with. Based on what he has admitted, I certainly don't think I would have really liked the guy. But the problem is that that is all that her friends really establish: they did not like him. Most of the other anecdotes they provide have a "where you sit is where you stand" kind of quality in terms of interpretation.
His Side:
He is simply a private person who made mistakes in his marriage (i.e. the infidelity) but was in a marriage with an image conscious social butterfly who was a serial exaggerator (in order to garner attention) and had a taste for a lifestyle far beyond their means (hence the short financial leash). Further, the Iron Man stuff was set aside long ago. Upshot: Looking at this from the outside, Brad may have the stronger hand. Many of his affidavits are from people with a less obvious dog in this fight. For instance, their daughter's teachers, whose testimony does seem in some sense to, taken against what Nancy told her friends, implicitly bolster the idea that she may have been prone toward exaggeration or at least a lack of proportionality. Incredibly, the husband of the other half of Brad's little indiscretion provided a strong affidavit on his behalf. Brad may also have things like a trail of receipts (it seems from limited information as if this might be the case) to demonstrate Nancy's spendthrift tendencies.
My Take: If I were deciding this Brad would get his kids back at this point. There simply isn't enough beyond hearsay in the affidavits from Nancy's family's side. The same could be said of his as well, but I think that in a tie based on "information and belief" (as opposed to evidence) the advantage should go to the biological parent. Most of the affidavits from either side essentially repeat each other, so in the many pages that they constitute, there is perhaps one page of actually useful information. Moreover, if you look carefully, as a collection, the documents supporting either side are riddled with implicit and explicit contradictions.
That said, what a sad tale this is. Superficially, these were beautiful people with a beautiful life. Obviously, the loved each other once, and had what 99.999999999 percent of humanity would regard as a foundation for bliss. How they came to this sad pass? Whether he killed her or not (and we really have heard nothing solid about that beyond the Cary Police's tasteless and inflammatory decision to release an emotional 911 call* reporting Nancy missing), this was clearly a world already unravelling as the dawn broke on what likely was Nancy Cooper's last day.
*The 911 call highlights the problem in evaluating these things. Given the information available to her friends at the time, you can view that call as reflecting either legitimate concern or emotional hysterics.
Posted by dag at July 25, 2008 9:57 AM