THE SLAYING OF TEACHER RUTH PELKE LEFT A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL ON DEATH ROW
It was atypical spring day in Gary, Indiana, when Bible teacher Ruth Pelke answered aring on her doorbell.
Standing there were three teenage girls, including 15-year-old Paula Cooper. The girls were skipping school, and after running out of money to play games at alocal arcade, they and another friend decided to rob Ruth, 78, who they knew from the neighbourhood. What happened next culminated in Cooper being sentenced to death –and areprieve coming from the most surprising of places.
UPBRINGING
Cooper was born in Chicago on 25 August 1969 to Herman and Gloria, ayounger sister to three-year-old Rhonda. She was abright girl, who enjoyed singing in the choir, but her home life was tumultuous. Gloria drank and took drugs to get through the day, while Herman spent large amounts of time living with another woman. Whenever he returned to their home on Wisconsin Street, he and Gloria would fight, and their daughters were not spared Herman’s brutality, which was sometimes encouraged by Gloria.
Things took aterrible turn in 1979, when Herman returned home from one spell away to find himself locked out. After forcing his way back in, he raped Gloria in front of the children. Sometime after that, Gloria took ahandful of meds with alcohol, then ushered her girls into the garage. Placing them in the back of the family car, she got in the front, then turned on the ignition and waited for all three of them to die. Mercifully, Gloria had a change of heart, as the girls later woke in their beds with their mother whispering goodbye, before returning to the garage. However, aneighbour managed to pull Gloria to safety.
After that, Cooper took to running away from home, but was constantly returned, where she would be met with more violence. By the time she was 14, she was drinking, smoking, taking drugs and playing truant. She spent several spells in juvenile detention and children’s homes, where she displayed increasingly violent tendencies. Every time, though, she ended up back with Herman and Gloria, with Herman’s brutality escalating. On one occasion, he drove her to the woods where he beat her for 30 minutes, almost killing her. Cooper found atemporary respite when, aged 15, she got pregnant. While the baby’s father was not in the picture, Cooper embraced the idea of loving someone in away she herself had never been loved. But Gloria forced her daughter to have an abortion and losing the baby plunged Cooper into despair.
She was trapped in an endless cycle of violence and hate, one that would only be broken when she committed adreadful act herself.
DREADFUL CRIME
Ruth Pelke had lived in her home for 41 years. Though, in that time, the neighbourhood had gotten more dangerous, she still believed in the work she did there,
