Post by Scumhunter on Apr 28, 2017 3:31:24 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: knoxnews.com)
From the Knoxville News Sentinel website (knoxnews.com):
The party had been over, but someone was knocking on Gary Cooley's door.
Rain fell outside. Cooley, then 57, "addressed" the knock, Knoxville Police Department Sgt. Jason Hill said, but authorities believe the visitor eventually forced the door open and gunned down Cooley and his guest, 46-year-old Regina Keck.
That was nearly three years ago, on April 29, 2014. On Thursday, police returned to Cooley's home, 4100 Alma Ave., to speak to neighbors, hand out fliers and revisit a case that has since gone cold.
"We have no leads currently that we have not examined," Hill said as investigators and police officers milled about in the parking lot of an East Knoxville laundromat, two blocks away from the crime scene.
"So we've come out here again to re-canvass and kind of make it fresh in folks' minds and see if there's anybody that's lived in this neighborhood that may have heard something that day that never got to us for any reason."
Cooley worked for years as a foreclosure counselor for the Knox Housing Partnership. He also ran a cleaning company on the side. Neighbors have said he lived alone after a divorce, and children along the street knew him as “Pop-Pop.”
He was a kind, hard-working man who mainly kept to himself and wasn't involved in crime, neighborhood drama or drug activity, according to William Anderson, who said he lived near Cooley "for at least 8 years."
Anderson was on his way to work the morning after the shooting when he saw the door to Cooley's home was open — "It ain't like him," he recalled thinking.
But Anderson and other neighbors have said they didn't hear anything that sounded like trouble the night before.
When Cooley didn't show up for work, a friend went by Cooley's house, saw the door ajar and called E-911. Police responded to the home and found Cooley and Keck inside, dead of multiple gunshot wounds, and a white Dodge Caravan in the driveway, which Anderson believes belonged to Keck.
Keck would occasionally visit Cooley early in the mornings, according to Anderson. "She'd come and get out of there," he said.
Keck was a certified nursing assistant at an area nursing home who "loved taking care of people and never would have done anything to hurt anybody," her friend Lisa Williams has said.
Sgt. Hill, the supervisor of KPD's Violet Crimes Unit," described the relationship between the victims as "friends." Cooley had hosted a party the afternoon of the shooting, and Keck lingered after the get-together concluded, Hill said.
"Ultimately, we’re trying to solve this case and bring justice to the family of these two victims," he said.
www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2017/04/27/knock-then-double-murder-knox-police-revisit-2014-cold-case/100987134/
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