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Wish TV
May 30, 2015
An Indiana woman who was once the nation’s youngest person on death row but whose sentence was eventually commuted to a prison term was found dead in Indianapolis on Tuesday.
Indianapolis police said 45-year-old Paula Cooper was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound outside a residence on the city’s northwest side. Cooper had been released from prison about two years ago, after the Indiana Supreme Court set aside her death sentence and gave her a 60-year prison term.
Cooper was 16 when she was sentenced to death in 1986 after confessing to her role in the murder of a 78-year-old Gary Bible studies teacher the year before. Cooper admitted stabbing 78-year-old Ruth Pelke 33 times with a 12-inch butcher knife in a robbery that netted four youths $10 and an old car. Cooper was 15 at the time the crime was committed.
Her death sentence enraged human rights activists in the U.S. and Europe and drew a plea for clemency from Pope John Paul II. In 1988, a priest delivered a petition to Indianapolis with more than 2 million signatures protesting Cooper’s sentence.
Pelke’s grandson, Bill Pelke, who organized opposition to the death penalty after his grandmother’s killing, said he was devastated to learn of Cooper’s death. He said he worked to help Cooper after realizing that’s what his grandmother would have wanted.
