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appear to be physically discrete, sitting on the surface of his Rat face, as
ifhis mouth were stuck on like that of a Mr. Potato Head. The eyes are
symbols of eyes, Rat and conceptualized-almonds with circles inside.
Cooke had long braids. The man in the sketch has a hat. It amazes me
that someone recognized him from it.

Cooke had been living with his girlfriend and their four kids,
a fifth one due any day. He worked at the Payless in a shopping center
just off the east end of Main Street. Someone saw him at the store and
recognized him from the sketch.

In court, Cooke claimed he had consensual sex with Bonisrall:
did not rape her, did not kill her, did not burn her apartment down.
DNA, handwriting analysis, an odd 911 call in which Cooke let slip
specifics of the murder while claiming that a white supremacist gang had
broken into some apartments as part of a drug war, and all other evi-
dence suggested otherwise. It took the jury two days to find him guilty
of murder, felony murder, rape, robbery, three counts of burglary, arson,
and reckless endangering.

And two counts of misdemeanor theft.

Cooke chose his target at random. He and Bonistall had never met
before. The sentencing judge called Cooke's claim that the sex was
consensual "absurd." Cooke had strangled Lindsey with a T-shirt and
pressed on her chest to slowly push the life out of her. In 2007, he was
sentenced to death, but that was later overturned. The defense con-
vinced the Delaware Supreme Court to bring the case to retrial, as they
had not been permitted to make a plea of guilty but mentally ill. The
retrial was postponed after Cooke fired his attorneys, insisting he was
neither guilty nor mentally ill.

§

I used to walk the length of Main Street all the time, especially
in the spring and fall, during the temperate transition between too cold
and too hot or vice versa. It's only about a mile from the Deer Park
Tavern, which marks the west end, to the library at the eastern terminus.
I took a walk to RadioShack to buy a special grade of isopropyl alcohol
I needed to clean the heads on my tape recorder. They hadn't caught the
guy yet, and with his wanted poster hanging on every door and window,

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