A judge on Friday sentenced a Portage man to 55 years in the Indiana Department of Correction for the shooting death of his wife last year.
Richard Cooley, 64, received the sentence after a jury in Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Clymer’s courtroom found him guilty on June 11 of murder, a Level 1 felony, and pointing a firearm, a Level 6 felony.
Around 10:45 a.m. on Feb. 13, 2023, Portage police responded to the 2100 block of Damon Street in connection with a man calling that he had accidentally shot his wife in the chest, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Police found Dana Cooley, 47, unresponsive and medics confirmed that she died at the scene, records state.
A Porter County jury deliberated almost 10 hours before concluding that Richard Cooley was guilty.
“This is a tale as old as time,” Deputy Prosecutor Harry Peterson said in his closing remarks. “Man loves woman. Woman wants to leave man. Man gets mad.”
He said the timeline of events and Cooley’s story don’t line up. He said Cooley had told police his conversation with his wife immediately preceding her death took 10 to 15 minutes, but phone records cast disbelief on that story.
Internet records from Feb. 13 show Dana Cooley had been searching online for used furniture, emotional support animals, and Porter Starke-Services. At 10:26 and 10:27 a.m., she searched “how to make a man happy” and “how rare it is to get a second chance in a relationship.”
Richard returned home at 10:28 a.m. and Dana’s friend, whom she was supposed to go shopping with, knocked on the door at 10:30 a.m. Peterson said Richard asked the friend to give them a minute and while she returned to her car and left he went upstairs to retrieve a gun.
Peterson said Richard Cooley had to take a box down from a shelf in the closet and open a zippered pouch to access his gun. “Deliberation,” he said. “He’s not in a rush. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He has time to put it all away, close the closet door.
“Then Richard Cooley shot Dana Cooley point blank, hard contact, right through the heart,” Peterson said. Richard Cooley called 911 at 10:42 a.m. “That’s a total of 10 to 15 minutes just being in the house,” Peterson added.
He also spoke of the couple having had marital problems for eight months before Dana Cooley’s death, debt they had incurred together, and Richard’s displeasure with her renewed contact with her ex-husband and a five-and-a-half hour conversation between Cooley and her ex two days before her death that Richard was aware of.
Defense attorney Russell Brown told the jury they had endured the testimony of 28 witnesses and been shown over 400 exhibits waiting “for that aha moment” that never came. He said Dana Cooley was accidentally shot when she and her husband “tussled” over a firearm that he did, indeed, point at her.
“The pointing of a firearm does not equal murder,” Brown said. “The discharge of a firearm is what commits a crime.”
He added that a guilty man would not have waved his rights and done a three-hour interview with police immediately after Dana was taken to the hospital or agreed to a search of his phone. He said Cooley was so distraught that he was unable to work and came home on a workday because he was determined to get answers out of Dana as to whether she would be having her ex-husband, a man she had reportedly told Richard engaged in sexually deviant behavior, around their daughter after she moved out to a trailer in Chesterton.
“He said it multiple times throughout his interview (with police) ‘Are you taking my 7-year-old daughter around a man who is a sexual deviant? Because if you are, I’m getting an attorney,’” Brown told the jury.
He also argued the positioning of Dana Cooley’s head when authorities arrived on the scene was not consistent with the prosecution’s theory and that her hands were covered in blood because blood from her wound flowed onto them when her body was moved, not because she pressed her hands to her chest to stop the flow of blood.
An autopsy confirmed that Dana Cooley died from a single gunshot wound to the chest, with the pathologist calling it a “hard contact wound” meaning that the gun had been pressed against her chest, court records state. There was soot with no stippling and muzzle abrasion on the gunshot wound.
According to Clymer’s sentencing order, Cooley is to spend 55 years in prison on the murder conviction with no time suspended. He is receiving credit for 516 days spent at Porter County Jail. The sentence on the firearm charge is one year in the county jail, with no time suspended, to be served concurrently with the murder sentence.
Cooley also was assessed $189 in court fees; a $200 safe school fee; and $4,263 in restitution.
Clymer found Cooley’s lack of criminal history as a mitigating factor in meting out the sentence and found no aggravating factors.
Freelance reporter Shelley Jones contributed.
