Butler County, Kansas 

Two Deaths Last Night Called Murder / Suicide

Bill Cooper Shoots Wife Then Ends His Own Life

Mrs. and Mrs. Bill Cooper, who recently moved to the apartment above Cooper Drug company, are dead as the result of what was determined by investigating officers to be a murder and suicide.

Bill Cooper, adopted son of Mr. and Mrs. John Cooper, killed his wife, Betty, then ended his own life with the same gun, a .22 caliber Remington pump gun, at 11:40 p.m. last night.

A six-man coroner's jury empanelled by Dr. Overholser and Sheriff Gill, with County Attorney Morris Moon, heard evidence in the case this morning at 10 a.m. at Dunsford Funeral home and returned a verdict of murder of Betty Cooper by her husband, Bill Cooper and suicide of Bill Cooper.

D.R. Burns and Jim Boren, who were across the street from the Cooper address, 509-1/2 State street, heard a scream at the stairway and looked across the street in time to see Betty Cooper, who was facing the street at the time she gave the agonizing scream, spun around either by Cooper himself or by the impact of a bullet heard about three shots fired into her body.  She fell to the concrete and a series of about five shots were heard, being pumped into her body as she lay on the doorway with her right foot on the first step and left foot on the second.  She lay on her back with her arm over her face in a protective position.

Burns and Boren started across the street to the scene after the first three shots and stopped in the middle of the street when the second burst started, continuing on after the first ceased.  It was dark in the hallway and the two told the coroner's jury they did not see Cooper in the stairway, or after he went back up the stairs.

Woman Alive

Someone ran to Lehr's Coffee Shop and reported  œa shooting down the street.  Patrolman Jim Hannon, off-duty, rushed to the scene and examined Mrs. Cooper, found a faint heartbeat and pulse and heard her murmur incoherently.  While hold the woman, a light was flashed on the officer from the head of the stairs a distance of about 20 feet.

Hannon asked the man holding the light who he was, and received a few words in reply, then told Cooper that this is the police and told him to come down.  Cooper's answer indicated he had no intention of coming down the stairs and he turned and started back toward the apartment and Patrolman Hannon went up the stairs after him.

While Hannon was trying to get Cooper to come down, other police officers arrived and two were dispatched to the rear of the building.

When Hannon reached the door, he found it locked.  By this time John Cooper had arrived and the two men entered the apartment.

Hannon told the jury this morning he heard what he thought to be a shell being injected into the chamber when he was trying to engage Cooper in conversation through the closed and locked door upstairs, but did not hear the shot when it was fired.  (Cooper went to the bedroom to fire the fatal shot.)

When the elder Cooper and Hannon entered they found the young Cooper had fallen back across the foot of the bed, a pool of blood on the floor on the floor and a rifle nearby.  He had shot himself just below the right temple, near the cheekbone, the bullet going out the other side.

Cooper was fully clothed and his wife wore only a bathrobe.  Her clothing was on a chair beside the bed and top covers on the bed were turned down and disarranged.

Investigating officers believe from the position of the bullet marks and other factors that the trouble, whatever it was, started either in the bathroom or adjacent bedroom and Mrs. Cooper ran through the kitchen toward the hall door upstairs, either before or immediately after the first two wild shots were fired.  Apparently he fired the first two wild shots and missed, then chased her down the hall, a distance of about 20 feet, then down the steps about the same distance to the doorway onto the street, where he fired the fatal shot.  There was a bullet hole in the back of the head which indicated a shot from the stairway might have spun her around.

An operator at Southwestern Bell Telephone company reported to police that at about 11:40 the signal from the Cooper apartment telephone flashed on and off two or three times.  The telephone is on the left side of the door from an exit position.  A bullet was found imbedded in the electric socket near the telephone and another on the other side of the door imbedded in the wall.  This led investigators to believe Cooper fired two shots at his wife as she attempted to call someone over the telephone.  Whether he fired to frighten her and deliberately missed or fired wildly could not be determined.  Apparently she hung up the telephone and ran from the room after the two shots were fired, Cooper following her.

Augusta police, County Sheriff Alva Gill and County Coroner N.H. Overholser examined the bodies at Dunsford Funeral home where they were taken after preliminary examination and investigation at the scene, and found seven definite bullet wounds, with indications of two more, in the upper half of Mrs. Cooper's body, and one bullet hole in Cooper's head.  With the two that went wild, a total of about a dozen shots were fired.

There was no indication of anything that could give a clue as to the events leading up to the tragedy.

Cooper was a World War II veteran, having served in the E.T.O.  He had been undergoing treatments by a Wichita medical doctor the past few weeks.

Mrs. Cooper was the former Betty Barton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Barton of El Dorado.  The couple were married April 22, 1952, at Newkirk, Okla.

There will be private graveside services only, at 4 p.m. Friday at Elmwood cemetery.  It will be a double funeral with Dunsford Funeral Home in charge.

(The Augusta Gazette ~ 30 October 1952 ~ Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

婩 2007 Genealogy Trails