FAMILY SLAYINGS STUN SMALL TOWN//RACINE MAN KILLS WIFE, DAUGHTERS, SELF AFTER ABUSE ACCUSATION

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)

Author: BYLINE: Lisa Grace Lednicer, Staff Writer

Dateline: RACINE, Minn.

Surrounded by 250 sobbing classmates, the Stewartville High School girls' volleyball team struggled Monday night to sing a song in memory of the girl who once had cheered them to victory.

They broke down as the song ended, stumbling to their seats in the church where students and teachers from Stewartville High had gathered to make sense of the deaths of cheerleader Nicole Cooke, 14, and her 15-year-old sister, Holly.

The girls and their mother, Lois, 48, were shot by their father, 63-year-old James Cooke late Saturday or early Sunday, authorities said. After writing a rambling suicide note, Cooke shot himself four times and died as he was being taken to the hospital.

Cooke apparently learned that his daughters told their mother he had sexually abused them. Lois Cooke contacted a Mower County sheriff's investigator Saturday and said she had been told during an argument with the girls that they had been abused by their father.

The investigator urged Lois Cooke to take her daughters to a shelter in Rochester or to a motel in town, said Mower County Sheriff Wayne Goodnature. Lois Cooke discussed those options with her daughters, then called the investigator and said they had decided to stay in the family's ranch-style home in Racine, a town of 280, through the weekend.

``She said she and the girls could not say anything,'' Goodnature said Monday. ``She felt she and her daughters could be safe for the weekend and she would be home to protect her children.''

Lois Cooke agreed to bring her daughters to police after school Monday, Goodnature said.

Although Lois Cooke tried to keep the discussion hidden from her husband, he found out, Goodnature said. Cooke's wife may have confronted him or else he learned by tape recording her conversations. Investigators found wires in the house suggesting the latter theory.

Cooke denied the abuse allegations in his suicide note.

Cooke apparently shot the two girls as they were sleeping. Each was shot once in the forehead with a .22-caliber weapon. After the slayings, Cooke cleaned the blood from his daughters' bodies and laid out clothes for their funerals at the foot of their beds.

Lois Cooke was shot with a .380-caliber handgun, apparently somewhere outside the house, and Cooke carried her body back to the couple's bed, Goodnature said. Cooke then called his son, Alan, in California and told him what he had done. He told Alan Cooke to call a neighbor, Keith Erickson, then hung up.

Cooke shot himself twice in the chest and twice under the chin, Goodnature said. Cooke died en route to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester, where his wife worked.

Goodnature said there had been no history of domestic problems at the home. The Korean girls had been adopted by Lois Cooke and a previous husband. When she remarried about a decade ago, James Cooke adopted the girls.

Holly Cooke, a varsity tennis player, and Nicole seemed well adjusted and happy, said teachers and students at Stewartville high. Both were honor roll students and were popular.

Signs reading, ``We'll miss you!'' and ``Who am I going to play tennis with?'' covered the walls of the high school Monday as pastors and administrators helped the school's 750 students cope with their grief. The school stayed open until 10 p.m.

Monday afternoon's tennis game was canceled, as is cheerleading today: ``All the cheerleaders this morning were saying, `We can't cheer tomorrow, we can't cheer without Nicole,''' said cheerleading adviser Lynn Ellinghuysen.

Back-to-back prayer services were held Monday night, the first in the girls' tiny hometown of Racine, 20 miles south of Rochester, and the second at a large church in Stewartville.

One mourner read a poem written that day by a classmate: ``Lonesome cries roll like thunder/As the rest of us sit here and wonder/About the lasting question burning in our soul/Why did it have to be Holly and Nicole?''

As the poem ended, girls wearing Stewartville Tigers jackets hugged each other tightly and wept. As they left the church, they glanced at pictures of the girls - in class, eating pizza, posing in front of a bookshelf.

Most of the girls' friends didn't want to talk, but Monday afternoon they said over and over again how cheerful and smart Holly and Nicole were. None of their friends had noticed anything wrong in the family.

``When I heard about this, I started screaming,'' said Nicole's team mate Amber Hamilton. ``They were perfect. Everybody liked them.''

Funeral services will be Friday.