Ruth Pelke
Posted on 05/26/2015 5:03:59 PM PDT by tcrlaf
Paula Cooper, a Gary native who at age 16 was the youngest death row inmate in the United States before an international outcry helped reduce her sentence, killed herself Tuesday near an Indianapolis office building.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said officers were called to the 9500 block of Angola Court, near the northwest Indianapolis-Carmel border, Tuesday morning in response to a report of a body lying near a tree.
The Marion County coroner's office confirmed that Cooper, 45, was pronounced dead at the scene at 7:38 a.m. Indianapolis time from a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
Cooper's death comes 30 years and 12 days after she and three friends murdered Ruth Pelke, a 78-year-old Gary Bible school teacher, in Pelke's Glen Park home.
According to records, the teenagers pretended to be interested in taking part in Pelke's Bible classes to get into the house where Cooper, then 15, ultimately stabbed Pelke 33 times with a butcher knife.
She and the other girls, all students at Gary's Lew Wallace High School, then ransacked the house and got away with $10 and Pelke's car
(Excerpt) Read more at nwitimes.com ...
Ruth Pelke
IIRC, W allowed her to be executed. Ignoring the Pope.
There should be a law against that!
;>D
The murderer should have hung herself 28 years ago and saved the taxpayers some money.
Ruth Pelke was the kind of Christian we all would like to be.
I remember the case well now and yes, she was praying for them as they stabbed her to death. I can’t think of a better example of Christ’s love.
That’s one major problem with any justice system.
If her son or grandson had a chance to ask Ruth Pelke what she thought of Paula Cooper’s death, she would have said, “I prefer to have stayed alive back then”.
No tears for psycho killers. Only tears for their victims.
I also remember when this murder happened. Ruth Pelke’s family opposed imposition of the death penalty. Pelke was a saint who should have left Gary before the animals took over.
But Paula Cooper has venued her case to a Higher Court now.
Obviously a misprint........
Black deaths matter
Didn’t even think of/wonder about, skin color while reading the comments.
(No, not saying a photo should not have been posted).
It seems they did. From WISH tv
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.
“My grandmother would have been appalled she was on death row and that there was so much hate and anger and desire for her to die. I was convinced my grandmother would have had love and compassion for Paula and her family,” he said in a telephone interview from Anchorage, Alaska, where he runs the Forgiveness Project, a charity that seeks to promote understanding and forgiveness.
Pelke said he visited with Cooper while she was in prison and had last spoke to her last August. He was expecting to hear from Cooper next month, when she was scheduled to be released from parole. He said she had expressed an interest in speaking for his organization.
“I have no idea what was going on in her life. I thought she was doing well from everything I had heard,” he said. “I had hoped she would travel with us. She had always told me she wanted to help young people to avoid the pitfalls that she had fallen into. She said she knew she had done something terrible to society and she wanted to give back.”
Prayers for her soul.
It looks like she couldn’t live with the guilt.
I hope she knew God.
Bill Pelke makes me want to vomit.
And what happened to the other three turds?
Also, I don’t see the words “hate crime” in this Big News story.
Finally justice and peace.....
Individual guilt can be mitigated by psychiatric issues, i.e. if the person was not in their right mind.
Maybe you won’t like heaven? Because I hear tell it’s full of foolish people who prayed nonsense like “Forgive us our trepasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Foolish people like Ruth Pelke.
America is a bit better place today with Cooper dead. I hope her three pals quickly join her.
I am against suicide, which is more likely symptomatic of despair, a heinous crime against life and against the Lord and Giver of Life ---yet another murder --- which manifests final impenitence.
Only God can judge, of course. Only He -- who loves her --- knows what was in her mind.
Astute observation.
5.56mm
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