Wednesday, January 26, 2000
Teacher testifies she was shot at
Ex-boyfriend, his brother on trial
BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Sarah K. Jackson, a Ryle High School teacher, was leaving for work one morning with her son in her car when the crack of gunshots sounded around her.
She hadn't yet pulled out of the school parking lot when someone unloaded five rounds, Ms. Jackson testified Tuesday in U.S. District Court. No one was hurt.
“Five bullets were fired at us,” she said.
“Just one, two, three, four, five — bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! I really felt that Randy Cope was behind this.”
She said she didn't see whopulled the trigger.
Federal prosecutors say Randall Cope, her ex-boyfriend, and his brother, Terry, had conspired to kill Ms. Jackson that Jan. 22, 1999, morning for testifying against Randall Cope in an Internet harassment case.
He had sent incriminating e-mail messages to her friends and colleagues months after Ms. Jackson ended their four-year relationship. He ultimately pleaded guilty to 13 counts of making harassing telephone calls and using the Internet without disclosing his identity.
“Randy essentially would not take no for an answer,” assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Stine said Tuesday during opening statements.
The Cope brothers — Randall, 41, of Benton, Ky., and Terry, 43, of Hendersonville, Tenn., — face charges of conspiring to shoot Ms. Jackson and, when the attempt failed, hiring someone to kill Ms. Jackson and three others.
If convicted of the charges, which include murder for hire, conspiracy and retaliation against a witness, the Copes could be sentenced to decades in prison.
Ms. Jackson was the first person to testify Tuesday. She recounted how she and Randall Cope attended Marshall County High School in western Kentucky and went to their senior prom together.
They lost touch when she started college and he left for the Air Force. She said they didn't meet again until 1992, when they were attending a high school reunion. They be came romantically involved a year later.
“Obviously, I thought, "He loves me very much,'” she said. “But he was very controlling, very demanding.”
After their break-up, she said, Mr. Cope began sending e-mail messages in her name implying she was having affairs with students, which led to Randall Cope's federal charges. His bond was revoked in early January 1999.
A federal indictment states that the Cope brothers already had started planning Ms. Jackson's demise. While in jail, Randall Cope allegedly persuaded Terry to drive to Northern Kentucky and shoot her.
The federal indictment alleges that Randall Cope later wrote his brother indicating that he wanted him to hire a contract killer, known as Bill, to handle the job.
On April 6, Terry Cope met “Bill” at a Kmart parking lot in Florence and allegedly gave a partial payment of $2,500 for him to kill Ms. Jackson and David Bunning, an assistant U.S. attorney and son of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning. He also asked whether Bill, who is really an undercover Campbell County police officer, would perform work “down south,” where Terry Cope's ex-wife and her husband, Elizabeth and Ronald Nimmo, live. Mr. Cope was arrested that day.
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