Still no answers in Diddie Cooper murder
The Times-Picayune newspaper described Diddie Cooper, a New Orleans television personality and mother of three, as an attractive young socialite from a prominent Louisiana family. Her seven-year-old daughter, the newspaper said, found her mother dead in their home on November 30, 1952.
Someone had strangled and bludgeoned Diddie to death with a blunt instrument, one never identified or recovered by the police. The victim wore a blue translucent negligee, turned inside out, and drenched in blood.
New Orleans police made arrests, and the state tried a suspect. Still, today, over a half-century later, no one knows who killed Diddie Cooper.
Family members described Diddie as a caring mother of three children. Her older two, Mackie and Allison, came from her first marriage, but Donald, her 9-month-old, was the son of James Leland “Jimmy” Cooper.
Jimmy Cooper was born in Clara, Mississippi, on January 16, 1910. In his teens, he went to school in Chicago, Illinois, and worked nights as a hospital technician. The Chicago Police Department arrested him for stealing a car in 1932, and he served six months in the Cook County House of Corrections before moving to New Orleans in 1933.
He worked as a theater manager in the French Quarter until 1938, when he bought the Court of Two Sisters Restaurant on Royal Street.
The United States Army Quartermaster Corps drafted him into the army during World War II, earning him the rank of captain before discharge. After the war, he returned home to New Orleans and the Court of Two Sisters.
His wife, Mildred Schmidt Cooper, ran the restaurant while Jimmy was overseas, growing the Court of Two Sisters into one of the most popular hotspots in the French Quarter. However, the enterprising couple drifted apart and eventually divorced on June 21, 1951.
On June 30, Jimmy married Diddie.
Amelie Jane “Diddie” Woolfolk was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 2, 1921. Her father, Robert M. Woolfolk, was an investment banker, and her mother, Ruth Samson Woolfolk, was an accomplished musician. Her socially prominent parents engaged in philanthropic work in the community. Like any proper young socialite, Diddie debuted in society after high school.
While she attended H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College at Tulane University, Diddie’s activities graced the society pages of all New Orleans newspapers. She made front page news on September 5, 1942, marrying Macrino Trelles, heir to the Trelles Cigar fortune.
Heiress or not, Diddie actively pursued a career of her own. Focusing on entertainment, she took a position with WDSU-TV in New Orleans, hosting “A Date with Diddie,” a weekly variety show spotlighting local talent.
Diddie and Macrino divorced in 1947.
Diddie married Jimmy Cooper four years later.
Jimmy adored Diddie’s children, and they loved him. He paid for their private schools, summer camps, and dance lessons. Before long, Diddie was pregnant again and gave birth to Donald Robert Cooper in 1952.
Newspapers described the Coopers as an ideal couple, but patrons of the Court of Two Sisters knew better. Jimmy drank, and when he drank, he abused Diddie and described their bedroom activities to anyone who would listen.
The couple had separated before the birth but reconciled for the baby’s sake. After the birth, according to the restaurant staff, Diddie seemed afraid of her husband and would not leave, no matter how belligerent Jimmy became.
After a festival in April of 1952 called A Night in Old New Orleans, Jimmy and Diddie held an upstairs party in the Creole Room at the Court of Two Sisters. For a time, all seemed fine. Diddie sat by the piano and sang.
She and Jimmy both drank, but everyone seemed happy.
As the night wore on, however, Jimmy became increasingly intoxicated and belligerent, ultimately provoking a fistfight with a guest and going home alone. Jimmy called the guests and apologized the following day, joking that Diddie would not return home until everyone forgave him.
On May 6, 1952, the New Orleans Police Department arrested Jimmy after Diddie called them. Once again, found intoxicated and abusive, Jimmy went to jail wearing only his undershorts and the style shirt later called a “wife-beater.”
The next morning, Diddie filed for formal separation, and in June of 1952, Jimmy moved out of the apartment at 3211 Louisiana Avenue Parkway and began paying Diddie alimony along with her apartment rent. He also paid a weekly salary for Diddie’s grandmother, Coralee Samson, to move into the apartment and work as a maid and part-time nanny to the children.
Jimmy refused to accept divorce as inevitable and smothered Diddie with his presence. In October 1952, after the Tulane-Georgia football game, Diddie gave a cocktail party. Jimmy arrived uninvited. Diddie left the party, later telling friends that Jimmy still entered the apartment at all hours. She said he threatened to evict her and her grandmother if she did not take him back.
Eventually, her party guests joined her at Perez’s nightclub, including Jimmy, once again drunk and obscene. He begged her to take him back in front of the guests and asked some of them to intercede on his behalf.
On November 29, 1952, the Saturday after Thanksgiving with relatives in another state, Diddie attended the Tulane-LSU football game with two other couples at Tulane Stadium.
No one invited Jimmy, but he followed anyway.
It was cold and stormy that night. At first, happy and pleasant, Jimmy bought umbrellas and raincoats for everyone. Diddie refused to sit with him and sat in the row before him with the other ladies in their party.
Diddie told him she had plans with her friends after the game and warned him that she would call the police if he followed. Jimmy apologized, insisting that he had not been drinking, and asked if little Mackie could spend the night at his house. Mackie adored Jimmy and had spent nights there before, but never on a Saturday night.
Saturday nights were busy at the restaurant after a Tulane-LSU game. Sports fans crowded Bourbon Street and filled restaurants. However, Diddie reluctantly agreed. Mackie loved Cooper’s company and even called him “Daddy.”
After Jimmy left with Mackie, Diddie went home and changed shoes, her other pair soggy from the rain. Afterward, she joined friends at Charlie’s Steak House on Dryades Street, and later, they migrated to the Key Club on Louisiana Avenue for dancing.
Diddie’s evening ended with coffee at her neighbor’s around 2:00 a.m.
Crossing the street for home, she realized she had forgotten her hat. Yelling back to the neighbors, she said she would pick it up in the morning. The neighbors stood outside, watching her cross Louisiana Avenue Parkway and climb the stairs to her apartment for the last time.
Upstairs, Diddie wrote a check for her babysitter, Cecile Plantagenet, who caught a cab home at 2:10 a.m. after locking Diddie’s front door on her way out.
At approximately 3:15 a.m., Diddie’s grandmother, Coralee, heard a scream. Climbing from the bed, she looked out the window facing Toledano Street in the back of the house. Under a street light on the corner of South Roman and Toledano, she watched a man in a gray suit get into a light-colored car and drive away.
Seeing nothing else unusual, she returned to her bed.
Near 9:00 Sunday morning, Coralee woke to the baby screaming and the telephone ringing. When she answered the phone, the voice sounded muffled, unrecognizable.
“Can I speak to Diddie?” the caller asked.
“Who is this?” Coralee asked back.
“Jimmy,” he said.
Coralee told him Diddie was still asleep and to call later.
At 10:00 a.m., Coralee asked Allison to wake up her mother, but the little girl refused, saying she had tried earlier and that her mother “looked funny.” Coralee walked to the bedroom to see for herself, but Diddie’s bed stood empty.
In the children’s room, the television star’s corpse lay half on and half off one of the two twin beds. Naked from the waist down, Diddie’s lingerie and quilted housecoat appeared rolled up over her breasts.
Purple finger marks wrapped her throat, and blood covered her hands and clothing. A bloody foam seeped from her nose. Coralee later told police that Diddie looked as if someone had dressed her with her clothes inside out.
More next week.