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The Murder of Alicia Bramfield · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A young woman stands up, you know, raises a glass
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: of champagne and toasts her boss's sister on her wedding day.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: She's smiling. She's like celebrating love. Right. And then literally
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: hours later, that same boss is on a 911 call
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: calmly confessing to her murder.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It's just wild.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Today's deep dive is pulling from a deeply unsettling and
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: honestly incredibly layered YouTube transcript from True Crime News titled
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: She Toasted a Bride and Groom Today. Then she was murdered.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the title alone gives you a sense of
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the sheer psychological whiplash involved in this case. You go
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: from this highly public, joyous social contract to.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: To just the absolute darkest depths of interpersonal violence.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: In a matter of hours. It is a whiplash that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: we are going to dissect piece by piece today. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I want to set a very clear mission for you listening.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: This deep dive is not just a recounting of a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: tragic true crime timeline.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We are going to explore the terrifying, suffocating reality of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: toxic workplace power dynamics. We're going to look at the slow,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: almost invisible escalation of dangerous obsession. We are going to
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: expose a shocking and frankly, unbelievable loophole in the American
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: legal system that might have existed in your very own state.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that part is going to make a lot of
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: people angry.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. And ultimately, we are going to look at
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: how one grieving mother managed to take her unimaginable pain
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and literally change the laws in 32 states. OK, let's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: unpack this. We need to start by looking at the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: victim and crucially the setup, you know, the environment where
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: this nightmare took root. We are looking at a young
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: woman named Alicia Bramfield.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Right, and she is 21 years old, and she's six
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and a half months pregnant with a little girl that
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: she has already named Ava Lucille.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Which is just so heartbreaking.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: It really is. And when you look at Alicia's profile,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: you see someone who is balancing a truly staggering amount
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: of responsibility for a 21-year-old. The source material notes this specific,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: really poignant detail. When she told her mother, Sherry, that
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: she was pregnant, Alicia was literally sitting on the floor
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: studying for a class.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Because she was a college student, right? Like just one
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: semester away from graduating.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Yes. One semester left.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And her majors were forensic psychology and criminal justice.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Which just.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I know it adds this agonizing tragic irony to the
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: entire narrative. Yeah.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: She is dedicating her academic career to studying the criminal mind,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you know, to understanding the mechanics of deviant behavior in
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the justice system, while being completely unaware that she is
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: being actively targeted by a predator in her own life.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It highlights this massive psychological blind spot that affects a
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: lot of professionals and students in these fields. You learn
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: to analyze threats in a textbook or in a sterile
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: academic environment.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: You learn the profiles of serial offenders or organized crime figures.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: But human beings are just notoriously terrible at applying those
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: clinical profiles to the mundane figures in their daily lives.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: You don't expect the subject of a forensic psychology textbook
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: to be the guy approving your time card.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You don't look at your boss in the break
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: room and think, serial killer profile. So a bit more
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: context on Alicia. The father of her baby, a guy
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: she met at college, makes it clear he wants absolutely
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with this pregnancy.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he completely bails.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: But Alicia actually takes us in stride. She is completely
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: fine with that reality. She is stepping up. She is
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: incredibly excited to be a mother, and she is preparing
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to do it entirely on her own.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: But practically speaking, single motherhood requires immediate, tangible security. She
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: needs money. She needs money. And so she becomes heavily,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: almost desperately reliant on her job. She works in the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: garden department of a major national retail store.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And it's a job she's actually held since she was
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: 16 years old, right?
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that longevity is a vital piece of the puzzle here.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Five years at the same retail job means she is dependable,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: she is loyal, and she's deeply entrenched in that specific
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: workplace ecosystem.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: She isn't just a transient employee who clocks.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: In and out. Exactly. This job is her anchor. And
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the primary reason she is holding on to this specific
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: retail job so tightly right now, as a pregnant college student,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: is because it offers paid time off in the winter.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Which is when baby Ava is due.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: This paid time off, I mean, this is her maternity leave.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: It's the entire financial safety net for herself and her newborn.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: She needs this job like she needs oxygen.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: And the man standing between her and that safety net
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: is the supervisor of this garden department, a 36-year-old man
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: named Brian Cooper.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about Brian.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: So the initial impression of Cooper, according to Alicia's friends
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: who also worked in that department, was that he was
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: an affable supervisor.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Affable supervisor. I hate that word in these cases.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Right. But he comes across as friendly, approachable. He even
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: hires Alicia's best friend. He strikes up what appears to
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: the outside world, you know, to the casual observer in
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: the break room, as a casual friendship with Alicia.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I said, I always cringe when I
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: hear that word affable in these contexts because the reality
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of what is happening behind the scenes, behind that mask
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of the friendly boss, is drastically different.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: It's night and day.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: This isn't a friendship. It is a systematic, highly orchestrated
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: campaign of control. Cooper starts weaponizing his authority as her
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: supervisor to manipulate every aspect of her life.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the source details how he literally forces her to
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: come into work when she has scheduled necessary doctor's appointments
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: for her pregnancy.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Just flat out denying her the time off.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And he demeans her constantly. He calls her horrific
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: derogatory names right there on the clock.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Words like slut and whore.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: At work.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: At work.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And perhaps most bizarrely, he is actively lying to their
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: other co-workers, telling everyone that he and Alicia are dating.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Which is so crazy. And her best friend explicitly clarified
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to investigators that this was absolutely false. Right.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: There was never any romantic or sexual relationship between them.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: This was entirely one-sided on his part. It was a
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: delusion he was just forcing onto the reality of the workplace.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: So the immediate question anyone asks is, you know, why
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: does a 21-year-old put up with a 36-year-old boss calling
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: her names and lying to the entire staff about dating her?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: It's the first thing people ask.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But Alicia's mother, Sherry, explains it perfectly. It was pure self-preservation.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Alicia was terrified of losing her job.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And this requires us to deeply analyze the psychology of
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: economic vulnerability. When society discusses workplace harassment. The conversation usually
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: centers around annoyance, discomfort, or hostile work environments that cause
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: emotional distress.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like inappropriate jokes or whatever. Right.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: But what Brian Cooper was doing was fundamentally different. He
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: was weaponizing survival itself. Alicia wasn't just dealing with a
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: creepy guy making inappropriate comments by the water cooler. She
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: was dealing with the absolute gatekeeper to her livelihood, her
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: health care access, and her unborn child's immediate future.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And I want to push back on something here because
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: you always hear this societal trip, right? People who are
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: entirely removed from the situation always say, well, why didn't
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: she just quit?
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Constantly.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Why didn't she just walk into HR and file a
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: complaint or just walk out the door? And I think
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that fundamentally misunderstands the mechanism of this specific kind of abuse.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I look at this situation and it doesn't look like
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a toxic job. It looks like a hostage negotiation. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the ransom is a paycheck.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: That is exactly the framework we need to use. The
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: conventional HR advice assumes a level playing field that simply
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: does not exist here.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Because Cooper wasn't just exhibiting poor management skills or
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: crossing professional boundaries, he was actively and purposefully building a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: cage out of her financial needs. Yes. When a hostage
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: taker holds a gun to someone's head in a bank vault,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: no one asks the victim why they didn't just walk away.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Obviously not.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Here, the gun is poverty. The gun is losing the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: ability to buy diapers and formula for a newborn baby.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: He knew she needed that winter paid time off. He
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: knew she was a single mother. He zeroed in on
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: the most vulnerable person in his orbit and used her
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: ambition to be a good mother as the very leash
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: he tied around her neck.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: That's chilling. And if we look closely at the specific
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: tactics he used, like denying time off for prenatal doctor's appointments,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: that is a classic textbook isolation technique.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: He is essentially forcing her to prove that his demands
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: supersede her own health and the health of her viable fetus.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: It's a power play designed to establish absolute dominance.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Like, I control your medical care.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And the public name-calling, the degradation, it's designed to
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: methodically chip away at her self-esteem so that she internalizes
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the abuse, making her feel she doesn't deserve a better
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: job or that she couldn't possibly find one in her condition.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And the most insidious part, honestly, is telling the coworkers
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that they are dating.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's incredibly calculated.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: It completely cuts off her avenues of support within the workplace.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Think about it. If she goes to a colleague crying,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: saying Cooper is being verbally abusive and won't let her
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: go to the doctor, the colleague might just brush it
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: off as a lover's quarrel.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, oh, Brian and Alicia are just fighting again.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Cooper has already seeded the narrative that they are
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a couple going through a rough patch rather than a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: manager abusing a subordinate.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: He creates this reality distortion field around her. She is
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: trapped in a false narrative that he wrote and directed.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And he is using his managerial authority to enforce it
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: every single shift.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: It's suffocating.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And the power imbalance is astronomical. He is a decade
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: and a half older. He has the institutional backing of
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: a major national retail company as a supervisor. And he
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: holds the literal keys to her financial future.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And she is a student, heavily pregnant, trying to navigate
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: early adulthood completely on her own. Right. It is the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: complete weaponization of the nine to five. In this slow-boil,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: toxic environment, you know, this cage he built in the
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: aisles of the garden department? it eventually spills out into
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the real world because Cooper decides he wants to take
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: this power dynamic on the road.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the weekend of his sister's wedding.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: This is a critical escalation point. The coercion moves from
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: the professional sphere into the intensely personal sphere.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Cooper tells Alicia she is going to accompany him to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: his sister's wedding. Now, the sources make it very clear
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: this wasn't an invitation. No. It wasn't a request for
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: a plus one. He explicitly threatened to fire her if
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: she didn't go.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: He put her job on the line.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The wedding is taking place in Door County, Wisconsin, which
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: is roughly a four-hour drive away from where they live
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in Illinois. And it's an August wedding.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: And Door County is a very specific type of geographical location.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: It's this rural idyllic peninsula jutting out into Lake Michigan.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Very pretty, very scenic.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is wildly popular for people from the greater
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Chicago and Illinois areas to rent cabins, go fishing, and
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: host destination weddings. It's picturesque. It's designed to be a
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: getaway from the stress of everyday life.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: But for Alicia, this is the furthest thing from a getaway.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It's a mandatory off-the-books work assignment under extreme duress and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the threat of termination. Yeah. But she agrees to go.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And her reasoning, as she explained it to her friends
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and her mother, was that they were just going as
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: friends to keep the peace. But more importantly, she deeply
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: believed she was going to be safe because of the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: social context.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: That's the tragic part.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: She explicitly told her mom they were staying at a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: hotel with the entire wedding party. They were all going
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to be in the same place, surrounded by people, and
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: they would come home the next morning.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the concept of false security. And
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I use fascinating in the most clinical, tragic sense possible.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Alicia is relying entirely on the social contract to protect her.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: She assumes that the presence of a wedding, which is
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: a highly structured, very public, family-oriented event, will act as
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: an impenetrable buffer against Cooper's toxicity.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Like he wouldn't dare try anything with his family around.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Her internal logic is sound, based on normal human behavior.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: She's thinking he can't possibly do anything crazy when his
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: entire family, his sister, the bride and a massive crowd
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: of guests are right down the hall.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: The illusion of safety in a crowd. I mean, it's
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: something we all rely on every single day. You walk
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: through a busy, well-lit city square at midnight and you
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: feel infinitely safer than you do in an empty alleyway
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: because you assume the eyes of others provide a shield.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: You assume there are witnesses.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Right. A predator wouldn't act with witnesses. She thought the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: wedding guests were her shield. But what she didn't know
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: was that Cooper had already dismantled that shield before they
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: even crossed the state line.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Because Brian Cooper had intentionally booked their accommodations at a
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: place called the Sand Bay Beach Resort. And as the
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: timeline unfolds, we learn very quickly that this is not
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: where the bride, the groom, or the rest of the
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: wedding party is staying.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: They are completely separate. Let's look at the morning of
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the wedding, because the red flags are flying at absolute
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: gale force here. Alicia's mother, Sherry, gets a phone call
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: from Alicia. And Alicia sounds distressed. Yeah.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: She tells her mom we're packing up the car to leave.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: They had gotten into some kind of fight. Sherry, being
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a normal, rational parent who simply cannot comprehend the depths
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of the danger her daughter is actually in, goes into
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: polite society mode.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Which is what any parent would do.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Right. She gives standard mom advice. She says you can't leave.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: He's walking his sister down the aisle today. At least
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: call the sister at the hotel and tell her you
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: aren't coming so you don't ruin the wedding.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: And that is the exact moment the geographical isolation is
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: revealed to the outside world. Alicia tells her mom, I
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: don't know where she's staying.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And Sherry is understandably confused.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she asks, what do you mean? You guys aren't
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: at the same place. And Alicia replies, no.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Cooper had strategically, methodically separated them from the herd. He
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: ostensibly brought her to a highly social event, but physically
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: removed her from the social protection of that event.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: He isolated her while perfectly maintaining the illusion of inclusion
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: to everyone else.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, Sherry texts Alicia to see if the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: fight blew over, if everything is okay. Alicia texts back, yes,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: we're staying.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: That text is a haunting artifact of course of control.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: It is the documented capitulation. Whatever argument they had, Whatever
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: brave attempt she made to escape the situation, pack the car,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: and drive the four hours home, he overruled it.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: He reestablished that control.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: He exerted that managerial, financial, and emotional control again. She
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: surrendered to the immediate pressure to keep the peace, to
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: ensure she kept her job, just to get through the night.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And she does exactly what is asked of her. She
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: goes to the wedding. She actually stands up and gives
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: a champagne toast to the bride and groom.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Which is just.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Stop and think about the surreal, almost cinematic nature of
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: that moment. She's standing there, a 21-year-old pregnant woman, celebrating love,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: celebrating family, holding a glass, surrounded by music, dancing and laughter.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: She's performing her role perfectly.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then the reception ends. The crowd disperses. And
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Brian and Alicia drive back to the Sand Bay Beach Resort,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: completely alone.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: It is a devastating juxtaposition. Because just a few hours
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: after that toast, that beautiful celebration of a new beginning
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: for his sister, Alicia Bramfield's life and her unborn baby's
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: life will be violently ended.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the morning after. And this is
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: where the narrative shifts from a deeply toxic workplace drama
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: into one of the most chilling, detached confessions I have
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: ever encountered in any source material.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: We are at a gas station. It is early morning.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Surveillance video captures a man walking through the doors. His
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: clothes are soaking wet. He doesn't go to the aisles.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: He walks straight up to the clerk at the counter.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: He calmly asks the clerk to call 911.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: And the transcript of this 911 tape defies belief. The
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: dispatcher gets on the line, and this man says, without
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a single tremor in his voice, Hello. Yes. I'd like
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to report a murder, please.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Just completely flat.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: The dispatcher, who is understandably stunned by the casual delivery,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: asks if he knows for sure a murder occurred. He says, yes.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: She asks, do you know who murdered her? And he replies,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: The absolute absence of panic or even heightened emotion in
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: his voice is what investigators found so striking. He clearly
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: identifies himself as Brian Cooper. He identifies the victim as
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Alicia Bramfield. He tells him the exact location of the
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: body at the Sand Bay Beach Resort.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And then the dispatcher asks if it was an accident,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: like maybe things got out of hand. And Cooper says
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it was intentional.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And then he drops this line that I genuinely cannot
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: stop thinking about. He says to the dispatcher, I'm a
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: good person besides what I did last night.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: That single sentence is a master class in extreme cognitive dissonance.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It's nuts.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I'm a good person besides what I did last night.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: He's just committed a double homicide, murdering a young woman
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: he controlled, and a viable six-and-a-half-month-old fetus. And yet his
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: primary concern in that moment is actively trying to preserve
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: his own internal self-image as a fundamentally decent guy.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Like it was just a tiny slip-up.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. He views the double murder as a bizarre anomaly,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: a tiny exception to his character, rather than the defining
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: monstrous act of his existence.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I was trying to find a way to explain this mindset.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And it reminds me of a corrupt accountant keeping two
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: entirely separate ledgers, you know?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's interesting.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: You have the clean ledger showing all the good, lawful business,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and you have the secret ledger full of embezzlement and fraud.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Cooper is holding up the clean ledger to the 911 dispatcher,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: desperately wanting to be judged only by that one, while
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: fully admitting the other ledger exists. He is compartmentalizing the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: act of murder entirely.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: That's a highly accurate analogy. To him, the murder doesn't
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: negate his core identity. He genuinely believes that by calling
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: the police, by being polite to the dispatcher, by turning
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: himself in, he is earning back moral points.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The dispatcher, you know, trying to keep him on
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the line and de-escalate, he even tells him, you know,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: you're doing the right thing. I'm glad you called me.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And he accepts that validation.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Like he's being a good citizen.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: So local police arrive at the gas station. They arrest
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: him without any incident. And Door County Sheriff's investigator, Mark Winkle,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: heads over to the Sand Bay Beach Resort to check
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the room. And what he finds there is deeply disturbing.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Not just because it's a brutal crime scene, but because
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of how the scene was meticulously staged.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Investigator Winkle walks into the resort room and he sees
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Alicia deceased on the floor. But she isn't just lying
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: there where she fell. She is positioned in a very specific,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: deliberate way.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: She's nude, but she's been covered with a blanket. pulled
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: neatly up to her chest. Her head has been carefully
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: placed on a pillow. Winkle noted in his report that
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: from a distance, it appeared as if she was simply
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: resting comfortably.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Which is just so macabre.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until he got closer that he saw the
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: severe bruising and the deep scratch marks indicative of a violent,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: desperate struggle.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Let me stop you there because the psychology of that
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: is baffling. He murders her and then essentially tucks her in.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: He makes a little bed for her corpse. Again, this
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: points back to that bizarre, fractured, two-ledgers psychology. He utterly
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: destroys her, he ends her life, and then tries to
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: pantomime care and affection.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: It's performative empathy.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: While the crime scene is being processed by forensics, investigator
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Winkle heads back to the station to interrogate Cooper. Winkle's
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: strategy here is textbook law enforcement. He knows he needs
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: to build a rapport. He needs to keep Cooper talking
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: without demanding a lawyer. He wants the timeline voluntarily.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: And Cooper is more than willing to talk. He does
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: not clam up. He sits down with investigator Winkle. And
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: he lays out the entire horrific timeline of the night
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: with a level of mechanical detachment that is truly chilling.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I have to say, reading the transcript of this interrogation,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've consumed a lot of true crime material.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Usually in these tapes, there is panic or denial or
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: someone sobbing or a suspect trying to spin a complex
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: web of lies to minimize their involvement. But Cooper, he
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: describes the mechanics of the murder the way a mechanic
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: might describe murder. taking apart an engine block. It is step-by-step, analytical,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: completely devoid of humanity. And I want to get into
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the granular weeds of this confession because, as we'll see
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: very shortly, the sheer, staggering detail of this tape becomes
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: a massive double-edged sword in the legal system. Right.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Let's break down his narrative to Winkle. Cooper says that
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: after the wedding reception, they go back to the hotel.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Alicia goes to sleep in the bed. Cooper stays up.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: He is drinking alcohol. And this is when his internal
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: monologue starts to spiral into a crisis of control. He
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: tells the investigator that reality was setting in. He realized
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: that after this weekend trip, there wasn't even going to
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: be a friendship between them anymore.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Right, because Alicia had finally laid down a boundary.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: She had told him earlier that day, perhaps during that
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: fight that prompted the text to her mom, that that
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: this was it. Like the fake dating routine, the controlling behavior,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the mandatory trips like she was done. There would be
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: no relationship of any kind once they got back to
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: a store in Illinois.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: And for an individual who thrives entirely on exerting control,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the absolute loss of that control is intolerable. It's an
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: ego injury he cannot process. He tells Winkle he was
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: pacing outside. He goes out for a cigarette, comes back in.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: He's watching her sleep.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Winkle asks a probing question, trying to establish motive. He
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: asks if Cooper was getting angry. And Cooper actually corrects him.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: He says, maybe I wouldn't call it angry, maybe frustrated, hurt,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: feeling hurt.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Again, listen to how he centers himself. He is centering
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: his own mild emotional discomfort over the fact that he
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: is actively contemplating murder. He says he felt hurt. And
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: then he admits to the most crucial legal element, premeditation.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: This isn't a sudden blinding snap of rage. He tells
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the investigator that he was doing some prepping.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. He says he started looking around the hotel room
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: for tools. He found some cords under the bed. He
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: thinks maybe a cell phone charger, maybe a computer cord.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: He tells Winkle he was thinking about tying her legs
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: up while she slept.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: But he doesn't.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: No, because she shifted her legs in her sleep. So
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: he evaluated the plan and decided in his own words,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: that's stupid. He abandons plan A because it was tactically unsound.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: He is calmly evaluating the logistics of restraint. So he
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: gets into the bed next to her. She wakes up
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a little bit and then comes to the conversational trigger.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Cooper asks her a seemingly mundane question about a TV
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: show they had on DVD. He asks if they are
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: still going to watch it together this coming Sunday.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Alicia, sleepy but firmly holding her newly established boundary, replies
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: that there isn't going to be a Sunday without.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: That specific phrase, there isn't going to be a Sunday,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: that is the moment the illusion shatters completely for him.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: He can no longer pretend, even to himself, that he
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: has any power over her future. And his reaction to
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: losing psychological control is immediate, overwhelming, physical domination.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: He tells Winkle it kind of triggered and then i
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: kind of just jumped on her he straddles her while
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: she is laying on her back and he begins strangling
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: her with.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: His bare hands and she fights back.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And alicia fights for her life she is fighting for
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: two lives she fights back violently she actually bites his
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: finger hard enough to leave a permanent mark and as
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: he is actively choking the life out of her she
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: manages to plead with him she yells don't do it
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: to me because of the baby.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate Desperate appeal to basic human empathy.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: She is begging him to recognize the innocent life inside her,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: hoping that even if he hates her in that moment,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: he won't destroy an unborn child.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: But he does.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: But Cooper tells the investigator his exact thought process in
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: that split second. He says, that moment, I didn't care.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: He estimates he manually strangled her for a couple of
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: minutes until she was gone.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: And if the sheer brutality of that wasn't horrific enough,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: the interrogation takes a turn in two Absolute depravity. Cooper
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: confesses that after she was dead, he took off his
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: pants and he raped her. He raped the corpse of
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: a woman who was nearly seven months pregnant.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: It is an act of total ownership and ultimate desecration.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: It is the final expression of his desire to control
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: her physical body when her mind and her boundaries could
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: no longer deny him.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And it's only after this horrific violation that he performs
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: that bizarre ritual of care we talked about earlier. He
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: meticulously puts the pillow under her head. He pulls a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: blanket up over her body to keep her warm. Right.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And then the adrenaline of the violence fades, and the
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: stark reality of his own consequences begins to dawn on him.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Not guilt, necessarily, but a selfish realization that his life
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: as he knows it is officially over.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: So he decides to kill himself.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: He tells Winkle he decided to kill himself. First, he
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: tries to slit his wrists with a dull knife he
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: found in the room. Then he tries with a corkscrew.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Which is just bizarre.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Neither tool works. So he simply goes to sleep in
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: the bathtub.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: He sleeps in the bathtub while the woman he murdered
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: is lying on the floor just a few feet away.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And then when the sun comes up, he gets in
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: his car, drives to a nearby park, wades into the
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: freezing waters of the bay, and tries to drown himself.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: But he can't go through with it. Exactly.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: He tells the cops he panicked. He couldn't do it.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: He realized he still wanted to live, so... He walked
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: out of the water in his wet clothes, drove to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the gas station, and made the 911 call.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And when Investigator Winkle asks him ultimately the biggest question
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: of all, why did you do this? What was the
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: core motive? Cooper's answer is incredibly mundane and unspeakably selfish.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: He says, I didn't want to go back home alone.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to drive six hours home. I didn't
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: feel like doing that.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I literally had to read that sentence three times. He
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: murdered a young woman and her baby because he didn't
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: want to have an awkward, quiet car ride back to Illinois.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: It is a stunning, fathomless void of empathy.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: So Winkle asks him point blank the question prosecutors need
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: for a conviction. Did you mean to kill her? And
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Cooper says clearly, yes.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Based on this confession, he's immediately charged with two counts
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: of first degree intentional homicide. and third-degree sexual assault of
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: a corpse. Meanwhile, across the state line in Illinois, a
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: local police officer is dispatched to deliver this news to
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Alicia's mother, Sherry.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Sherry recounted that she saw the officer walking up to
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: her door with tears in his eyes, and she instantly
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: knew Alicia was gone. But her mind went to the
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: most logical conclusion. She assumed it was a car accident.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Because that's what makes sense to a normal brain. People
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: die in tragic car accidents on long, late-night drives all
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: the time. Right.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: When the officer finally said the word homicide, her reality
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: just completely fractured. Her daughter didn't just die. She was
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: hunted and murdered by the man who signed her paychecks.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: So let's look at where the state stands. We have
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: a devastated family. We have a suspect firmly in custody.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: We have a body with a clear cause of death.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: We have physical evidence of the violent struggle, including the
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: bite mark on his finger matching her teeth.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Check, check, check.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: And we have a videotaped confession where the suspect calmly,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: chronologically details the premeditation, the motive, the act itself, and
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: explicitly admits to the intent to kill. Right.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: If you are listening to this right now, you are
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: undoubtedly thinking what I am thinking. This is an absolute,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: undeniable slam dunk.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: It seems impossible to lose.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: The trial is going to be a pure formality. They
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: will see the jury, play the tape, the jury will
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: gasp in horror, and he will go to prison forever.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: But the American legal system, as we are about to
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: find out, provided a terrifying trap door.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: And the first hint of that trap door begins with
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Cooper's official plea. Despite everything he told Investigator Winkle on tape,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Brian Cooper stands up in court and enters a plea
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: of not guilty.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: And before we even get to the mechanics of the trial,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the police execute search warrants on Cooper's life back in Illinois.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: And what they find completely obliterates the idea that this
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: was just a bad night that got out of hand
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: or a sudden crime of passion.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they uncover a massive, deeply hidden obsession.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: A really creepy obsession.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: This is a crucial evidentiary element that completely reframes the
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: entire power dynamic we discussed earlier. During a forensic search
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: of Cooper's personal laptop, investigators found multiple voyeuristic videos of Alicia.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: He had secretly installed spy cameras in his home in Plainfield, Illinois.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: He had actually drilled a small hole in a triangular
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: shelf positioned directly in front of his toilet, and he
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: would routinely invite Alicia over to his house, ask her
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to take his dog out or do him a small favor,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: orchestrating situations. just so he could capture her using his bathroom.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And the premeditation extends to the wedding trip itself. He
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: didn't just pack a suit for his sister's wedding. He
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: packed a spy camera.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Of course he did.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: He deliberately hid it in the trash can in the
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: bathroom at the Sand Bay Beach Resort. He actually captured
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: footage of Alicia getting out of the shower naked before
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: she went to the wedding.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: This digital evidence proves that the stalking, the surveillance, the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: complete invasion of her privacy was ongoing long before she
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: ever told him there wouldn't be a Sunday.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a snap decision.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: The murder was simply the climax of a deeply entrenched
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: predatory obsession. And there's more. Investigator Winkle had asked Cooper
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: during the interrogation if he had ever harmed anyone else
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: in the past. And Cooper casually admitted that he had
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: previously tied up an ex-girlfriend because he just couldn't get
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: through to her and wanted to force her to listen
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to him.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: But he was never arrested for that incident because the
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: ex-girlfriend never reported it to the police, which is a
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: tragic foreshadowing and something we will definitely return to at
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: the end of this deep dive.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: So 10 agonizing months go by. 10 months of Alicia's
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: family grieving, burying their daughter and granddaughter and preparing themselves
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: for this trial. And they finally get into the courtroom
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: and Cooper's defense team reveals their strategy.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: And this is where the trap door opens.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: They are not denying that his hands killed her. They
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: are utilizing a legal defense called voluntary intoxication.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: This is where we need to dive into the philosophy
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: and history of criminal law. The core requirement for a
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: conviction of first-degree murder is establishing something called mens rea.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, what does that mean?
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: It's a Latin term that translates to guilty mind. It
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: means the prosecution must prove you had the specific conscious
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: intent to kill. The Voluntary intoxication defense argues that a
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: defendant consumed so much alcohol or drugs that their brain
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: was chemically, functionally incapable of forming that specific intent.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: So they're saying he was too drunk to know what
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: he was doing.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The defense attorneys are essentially saying to the jury, yes,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: my client's hands committed the physical act, but his brain
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: was too poisoned by alcohol to understand what his hands
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: were doing.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: But let me ask you this because this makes my
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: blood boil. How can a judge even allow a jury
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: to consider an intoxication defense when the guy is on
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: tape explicitly outlining his premeditation?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: It seems contradictory, I know.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: He told the cops he was evaluating cords and abandoned
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the idea because it was tactically stupid. That requires complex
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: cognitive function.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It does. And that is the argument the prosecution makes.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: But in the legal system, if a law exists on
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: the books and Voluntary intoxication was a valid defense statute
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: in Wisconsin at the time. The defense has the right
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: to present it, and the judge must instruct the jury
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: to consider it if there is any evidence of drinking.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: And Cooper admitted he was drinking.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: But still, he remembers everything. Right.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: A severely intoxicated person who is experiencing a blackout or
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: a complete loss of cognitive function does not remember their
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: thought process. They do not remember making a decision to
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: look for cords, evaluating the cords, and deciding it was
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: stupid because their legs were moving. But the defense's job
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: is to introduce just a sliver of reasonable doubt about
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: his state of mind at the exact moment his hands
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: were around her neck.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: So they are claiming he was too drunk to know
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: what he was doing when he strangled her, despite his
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: perfect memory of it the next morning. Now Sherry, Alicia's mom,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: is sitting in this courtroom.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine what that was like for her.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: She is listening to the 911 call. She is watching
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the videotaped interrogation where Cooper describes the murder like he's
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: recounting a boring baseball game he watched on TV. And
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: she thinks this defense is absurd. The jury is going
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to see right through this smoke and mirrors.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question about how juries actually process
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: complex information and how defense attorneys manipulate the rigid mechanics
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: of the court system.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Because they only need one or two people, right?
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Defense attorneys don't need to convince the whole jury.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: They just need to find one or two people who
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: are susceptible to the idea that alcohol makes people do
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: crazy things they wouldn't normally do.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Because after five grueling days of testimony, including Brian Cooper
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: himself taking the stand to say he was super drunk,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the jury goes into deliberation and they come back hung.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Hung jury.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: They are deadlocked 10 to 2. Two jurors completely refuse
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: to convict him of first degree intentional homicide.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: And shockingly to everyone involved, from the prosecutors to the family,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: those two holdouts were women. Wow. Two women on that
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: jury listened to a man describe strangling a pregnant woman.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: raping her corpse, and then listen to his lawyers say, well,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: he'd been drinking heavily, and they bought it. They believed
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: he was too intoxicated to form the required intent.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, and by interesting I
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: mean absolutely infuriating. Imagine you are Sherry Anisich. You are
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the mother. You have endured the most horrific loss imaginable.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: You sit through a trial where the killer confesses on tape,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the evidence is a mountain, the spy cameras prove a
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: long-standing obsession, and yet The judge bangs the gavel and
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: declares a mistrial.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: The lead prosecutor on the case called it an absolute
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: punch in the gut. He told reporters, this was a
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: slam dunk. We had dotted all our I's, we'd crossed
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: all our T's. A mistrial of this nature shatters your
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: faith in the judicial process entirely.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: It makes the nightmare real in a whole new bureaucratic way,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: because suddenly there is a very real possibility that the
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: man who murdered your daughter might walk free, or at
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: least escape the penalty for first-degree murder. simply because he
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: had a few drinks first.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Think about this in the context of your own life.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Alcohol is the most common social lubricant we have in
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: our society. The idea that it could be weaponized as
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for a double homicide is terrifying.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: It means anyone could theoretically plan a murder, take a
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: few shots of tequila beforehand, and then claim their brain
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: was incapacitated.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: It's a legal loophole that essentially subsidizes phylum behavior under
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: the guise of chemical impairment. And, as we noted, It
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: was a legitimate law on the books, not just in Wisconsin,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: but in many other states across the country.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: So the trial ends in a hung jury. The prosecutors
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: have to go back to the drawing board to prepare
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: to try him all over again in a second trial.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: But Sherry Anisich.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: She doesn't just go home and weep.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: No. She doesn't just swallow her grief, accept that the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: system is broken, and wait for trial number two. She
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: decides to break the system back.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: This is one of the most remarkable pivots from personal tragedy...
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: to sweeping public policy I have ever seen in any
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: case study. The source material notes that the very next day,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: literally the morning after the mistrial was declared in court,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Sherry gathered Alicia's friends and family for a meeting in
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: her living room.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: She stood in front of them and said, Such a
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: powerful statement. she took the nuclear energy of her grief
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and weaponized it into governance. She started a massive lobbying campaign.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: We need to pause and think about the monumental, almost
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: impossible effort required here. Lobbying state legislatures is a labyrinthine, exhausting,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: deeply cynical process, even for seasoned political operatives with millions
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: of dollars in backing.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Let alone a grieving mother.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to draft bills in legal language. You
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: have to find State senators and representatives willing to sponsor them.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: You have to testify in front of endless subcommittees. And
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: you face massive coordinated pushback from defense attorneys associations who
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: argue that removing this defense infringes on the rights of
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: the accused to a fair trial. For an ordinary citizen,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: a grieving mother, to navigate this bureaucratic swamp is staggering.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: She teams up with a former Chicago Tribune reporter named
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Jeff Zulitz, who starts covering her crusade and amplifying her voice.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And with that media spotlight and her absolute bulldog refusal
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: to take no for an answer, she achieves the impossible.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: She doesn't just get lawmakers to listen. She doesn't just
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: get the law changed in Wisconsin. She gets the voluntary
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: intoxication defense banished from the books in 32 separate states.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: 32 states.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: 32 states.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: She fundamentally altered the American legal landscape. She removed a shield.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: that defense attorneys had been using for decades to minimize
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: the culpability of violent offenders. It is a structural, systemic
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: change born from an individual nightmare.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: But, and this is where the universe delivers a truly cruel,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: agonizing twist of fate. I want you to explain this
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: because it feels so wrong. Why doesn't her new law
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: apply to Brian Cooper?
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: It comes down to a foundational principle of the U.S. Constitution.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: specifically Article 1, Section 9, which contains the ex post
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: facto clause.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Ex post facto.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, which means after the facts. The founding fathers put
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: this in the Constitution to prevent tyrannical governments from passing
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: a law today that makes something you did yesterday illegal
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: and then arresting you for it.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense in theory.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: It means laws cannot be applied retroactively to crimes that
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: have already been committed. At the exact time Brian Cooper
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: murdered Alicia, voluntary intoxication was a valid legal defense in
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: the state of Wisconsin. Therefore, he was legally constitutionally entitled
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to use it at his trial.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: The grandfather clause. You know, it is the most agonizing
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: irony I can imagine. It's like discovering a lethal structural
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: flaw in a massive suspension bridge.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good way to look at it.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: It's killing people. So you wage a massive public safety campaign.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: You fight the government and you get a law passed
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: that mandates every single bridge in the country must be
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: fixed immediately. You save countless lives. But the law dictates
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the repairs start tomorrow. And you still have to drive
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: your own car over that broken bridge one last time today.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: That is precisely what it was. Sherry fixed the law
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: for everyone else's daughters. She protected millions of people. But
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: she still had to face trial number two under the
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: old broken rules. Cooper's voluntary intoxication defense was grandfathered in.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: He got to use it again.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So almost a year later, they are back in court,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: trial number two. Sherry is sitting four feet away from
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: the man who murdered her daughter, knowing he has this
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: loophole in his back pocket again.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Must have been agonizing.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: But this time the prosecution adjusts their strategy. They don't
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: just rely on the absurdity of the defense, assuming the
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: jury will see through it. They attack the premise directly.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: They bring in the wedding guests. They track down the
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: people who were at the reception and put them on
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: the stand to testify under oath about how inebriated Cooper
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: actually was or wasn't that night.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: They dismantle the illusion that he was blackout drunk. They
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: paint a vivid picture of a man who was drinking, yes,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: but who was entirely in control of his physical and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: mental faculties. A man who was calculating, observant, and highly
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: capable of forming the intent to kill.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: And this time, the jury selection is tighter, and the
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: jury doesn't get distracted. The defense of smoke and mirrors
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: don't work. After about a week of testimony, the case
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: goes to the jury for deliberation.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And it takes them just one hour.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: One hour. One hour.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: One single hour of deliberation to completely reject the intoxication defense.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: They find Brian Cooper guilty of two counts of first-degree
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: intentional homicide for the murders of Alicia and baby Ava.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: The relief Sherry describes in the source material, shaking uncontrollably,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: crying for 30 minutes, unable to even stand up, it
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: is the physical release of years of compressed trauma. Cooper
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: is sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He is never
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: getting out. He is never going to manipulate, stalk, or
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: hurt anyone else again.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: You had to face the music, she said. But the victory,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: while absolute in the courtroom, doesn't bring Alicia back. It
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't bring Ava back. The void they left is permanent.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And Sherry, in her incredible strength, wants to make sure
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: this deep dive isn't just about what happened to her family,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: but how we can stop it from happening to yours.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture... We have
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: to go back to that one seemingly small detail dropped
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the interrogation tape.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: The ex-girlfriend.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Yes. The woman Cooper admitted he tied up because he
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: couldn't get through to her.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Sherry explicitly says, I wish that girlfriend would have pressed
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: charges because maybe he could have gotten the help that
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: he needed. Or at the very least, he would have
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: been in the system. There would have been a documented
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: legal history of violence and coercive control.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: This is the ripple effect of silence. When early red flags,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: the coercive control, the physical restraint, the boundary pushing, are
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: ignored or swept under the rug, the perpetrator learns a
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: very dangerous lesson, that there are no consequences. It emboldens them.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: The behavior inevitably escalates.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: It is the ultimate see-something-say-something message. We tend to brush
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: off the weird guy at work, or the boss who
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: crosses a line, or the boyfriend who gets a little
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: too aggressive but didn't actually hit me.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: We make excuses for them.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: We minimize it because we don't want to make a
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: fuss or we don't want to ruin their life over
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: one mistake. But Sherry's point is that making a fuss
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: is how you save a life down the line. If
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: that ex-girlfriend had reported him, maybe he wouldn't have been
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: hired as a supervisor.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: That's entirely possible.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe he wouldn't have been in a position of power
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: over Alicia. Maybe Alicia and Ava would still be here.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: The tragedy is compounded by those hypothetical what-ifs. But the
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: lesson is tangible. The warning signs of a predator are
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: often mundane before they are lethal.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? We started this deep
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: dive by talking about the environments we live in. We
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: are conditioned by movies and media to fear the masked intruder,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the boogeyman who kicks down the door in
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night, the stranger in the dark alley.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: But the reality of danger is far more insidious, and
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: it often operates in broad daylight.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: It really is. This case forces us to completely reexamine
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: the spaces we consider inherently safe. The garden department of
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a retail store. The break room. The 9-to-5 grind.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the everyday places.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: What happens when the greatest threat to your life isn't
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: someone hiding in the bushes, but the person who dictates
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: your schedule? The person holding the power of your time card?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Brian Cooper didn't need a mask or a weapon to
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: trap Alicia Bromfield. He weaponized her own ambition. He weaponized
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: her work ethic.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, he did.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: He weaponized her very instinct to survive and provide for
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: her family, turning her greatest strengths into the bars of
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a cage.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: He turned the mundane mechanics of everyday survival into a trap.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And that is a far more terrifying reality than the
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: monster in the dark.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: It is a reality that demands we pay attention to
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: the subtle dynamics of power in our own lives and
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the laws that govern them. Thank you for joining us
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: on this deep dive. Stay safe, trust your instincts, and
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: we'll catch you next time.