New Orleans TV star’s murder remains unsolved
The 7-year-old daughter of a New Orleans television star found her mother, Diddie Cooper, naked and strangled on a Sunday morning in 1952.
The child alerted her grandmother, who phoned Diddie’s brother, Bobby.
When Bobby arrived, he found the back door ajar and the screen door open.
Police on the scene found a thick layer of undisturbed dust on the railing and steps of the back stairs – no evidence of forced entry or a struggle. Neither Diddie’s downstairs neighbors nor the newspaper delivery boy reported witnessing anything unusual.
The police questioned Diddie’s first husband, Macrino Trelles, the father of her two oldest children. Trelles, who paid his wife $100 a month alimony, had been at home with his mother, Mary Venta Trelles, the wife of the Trelles Cigar manufacturer.
“I loved Diddie,” he told the police, “But she didn’t love me. She was cold.”
After an extensive investigation, police arrested Diddie’s estranged husband, the owner of the Court of Two Sisters restaurant, Jimmy Cooper. A grand jury indicted Cooper for first-degree murder on August 5, 1953. Jury selection in the case began on January 12, 1954. District Attorney Severn T. Darden assigned the case to Assistant District Attorney Edward A. Haggerty, who announced that week that the prosecution would seek the death penalty.
The state postulated that Jimmy Cooper – sometimes known as the “Mayor of the French Quarter” or “Mr. Bow Tie of Bourbon Street” – had grown tired of paying alimony to two ex-wives. They also pointed out that Diddie snubbed him following a football game earlier in the day and then spurned sexually by her later that night. Based on this circumstantial evidence, the state postulated that Cooper drank excessively and became enraged before attacking and killing his wife.
Crime scene fibers recovered from Diddie’s body and analyzed by the FBI were “consistent with” those found on Jimmy Cooper’s T-shirt and boxer shorts. The blood evidence on Diddie’s hands and clothes belonged only to the victim.
At trial, Orleans Parish Coroner Dr. Nicholas J. Chetta spoke extensively about Diddie’s injuries. Her time of death, he said, evidence from her stomach contents placed Diddie’s death between 3 and 4:30 a.m. on the morning of November 30, 1952.
Pointing to autopsy photos, he showed the jury the bloodstains on the bottom of Diddie’s nightgown, explaining how these proved that part of the gown had once covered her head. He said that was the reason her robe was on inside out. Although the position of the body hinted at sexual assault, Chetta said he found no evidence of that.
On projected slides, the jury saw blood streaming from Diddie’s nostrils. She had a black eye and frothy red clumps on her lips. Someone had fractured her skull with a blunt instrument. The photos revealed contusions and abrasions on her jaw and marks “like extended fingers” on her neck. Chetta said he found her hyoid bone broken. Strangulation caused her death. However, he explained, the skull fracture alone would have killed her had she not choked to death.
Diddie’s grandmother and live-in nanny, Mrs. Coralee Samson, took the stand to tell of the late-night scream she heard. She also described the unidentified man she saw boarding a vehicle on Toledano Street. Coralee said that man was not Jimmy Cooper. However, she also testified that Cooper had entered the apartment and Diddie’s bedroom uninvited one week before the murder.
Investigator Pershing Gervais testified that organized crime-controlled Cooper and said the word on the street that a hitman from Chicago killed Diddie at Cooper’s behest. The judge ordered Gervais’ remarks to be stricken from the record and instructed the jury to forget what he told them.
Mary Augusta, Diddie’s maid, testified that, per Diddie, she had to confirm the door to the back of the house was locked before she left each night. She explained that the back steps were hard to navigate unless you were familiar with them. She said she did not regularly clean the railing unless Diddie had house guests.
The night porter, John Washington Merritt, testified that Cooper had borrowed his car overnight, claiming his Cadillac’s brakes needed repair. He said that Cooper returned the car before 6:30 a.m.
When police examined the vehicle, they found a cigar wrapper from an El Trelles cigar, a brand sold exclusively in New Orleans at the Court of Two Sisters. The company owned by Macrino Trelles, Diddie’s first husband, manufactured the brand.
The porter also testified about a back entrance to Cooper’s apartment. He said it was off on the Bourbon Street side of the Court of Two Sisters, where anyone could enter and exit undetected.
The state introduced Yvonne Holmes, who dated Cooper at the request of the New Orleans Police Department, hoping to get a confession from him. She testified that Cooper did not confess but attempted to strangle her when he found out she was working for the police.
The defense painted a different view of the defendant. Putting him on the stand to testify on his behalf, Cooper systematically refuted each point of circumstantial evidence that the state brought against him. Cooper said he was innocent and had stopped drinking for two weeks preceding the murder in hopes of a reconciliation with Diddie.
“Diddie asked if I could straighten up and fly right,” he said. “I could come home any time I wanted to. I was working on that and why her boys stayed at my place that night.”
The defense also questioned Yvonne Evers Holmes’ credibility. Under cross-examination, she admitted to being a former barmaid and stripper on Bourbon Street before marrying one of the detectives working the Cooper case.
While the city could not get enough of his sensationalized trial, Cooper, twenty years older than the victim, fell asleep twice during his court proceedings. When the defense rested, Cooper predicted that he would be free by the weekend.
When the jury acquitted Jimmy Cooper, the panel joined courtroom spectators, who stood and applauded when the judge announced their verdict.
Unfortunately, the police had no other suspects.
Two years after his acquittal, Jimmy Cooper’s son, Mackie, found his father’s corpse on the kitchen floor of his apartment above the Court of Two Sisters. Dr. Chetta said Cooper’s death was “due to angioneurotic edema” from “a painful swelling of the windpipe due to an allergic reaction.”
In other words, he strangled to death.
Diddie Cooper’s family buried her on her 31st birthday. Her gravestone names her as simply Amelie Jane Woolfolk, forgetting her famous nickname and the surnames of her former husbands.
Seven decades later, Diddie Cooper’s murder is still unsolved.