Once America's youngest death row inmate, released convict dies in apparent suicide
A 45-year-old former death row inmate released from an Indiana prison in 2013 has died in an apparent suicide, 30 years and two weeks after the murder that sent her to prison.
Paula Cooper had received the death penalty for the 1985 stabbing death of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke, who let Cooper and three friends into her home when they said they were interested in Bible study. Cooper was 15 at the time of the crime and 16 when she was sentenced to death, making her the youngest death row inmate in the United States at the time, the Indianapolis Star, the Associated Press and NWI.com report.
Cooper died outside an Indianapolis residence of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. Her body was found Tuesday.
Pelke’s grandson, Bill Pelke, had visited Cooper 14 times in prison and said he was devastated by her death. Pelke, who runs an Alaska charity called the Forgiveness Project, told AP he had tried to help Cooper because that’s what his grandmother would have wanted. Cooper had been abused as a child, and she wanted to tell others who had been abused that they had alternatives that wouldn’t put them in prison, Pelke told the Star.
Pelke said Cooper told him she had never written a check or paid a bill and she was fearful of life outside prison.
The Indiana Supreme Court commuted Cooper’s death sentence in 1988 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the prior year that it is unconstitutional to execute youths under the age of 16 at the time of their crimes. She was released after serving 27 years of the 60-year sentence imposed by the state supreme court.
