Lindsay Bonistall's killer sentenced to death

By Jonathan Bandler - The Journal News

June 7, 2007

The killer of White Plains college student Lindsey Bonistall was sentenced to death yesterday by a judge who acknowledged his horrific upbringing but found it did not outweigh the "slow, painful, terrifying" death of the 20-year-old University of Delaware sophomore.

James Cooke Jr. sat silently as it became clear Superior Court Judge Jerome Herlihy would follow a jury's unanimous recommendation that he deserves death for the May 1, 2005, rape and strangulation of Bonistall in her off-campus apartment in Newark. Three rows back, one of the defendant's relatives let out a gasp. Across the aisle, several members of Bonistall's family began to weep. Herlihy then ordered Cooke to stand

"James E. Cooke, in accordance with the law of the state of Delaware, it is the sentence of the Court that you be kept in the custody of the Department of Correction until such time that you shall be injected intravenously with a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death until you are dead," Herlihy said.

Once their daughter's killer was led from the courtroom, Mark Bonistall embraced his wife, Kathleen, as she sobbed against his shoulder.

As they later left the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del., they expressed relief that the trial had run its course and months of shuttling back and forth from New York was over. They welcomed the sentence and said they hoped it would be upheld on appeal.

"We were never big proponents of the death penalty. But when you have a child murdered so violently, so horrifically, any lesser sentence would not have served justice," Kathleen Bonistall said.

Neither would refer to Cooke by name, calling him the "individual" or the "defendant." Lindsey's uncle, John Bonistall, said the entire family refrains from uttering the name. "It's almost considered a curse word in our family," he said.

Prosecutors hailed the death sentence as appropriate but said it was not something to feel good about because it resulted from a tragedy.

"There was a striking contrast between the promise and goodness of Lindsey Bonistall and the menacing evil that is James Cooke," said Deputy Attorney General Steven Wood. "And that contrast was, I think for all of us, a source of very powerful emotions."

Cooke, now 36, was abused and neglected throughout an impoverished childhood in nearby Salem, N.J., even getting his feet scalded by his mother's boyfriend as a toddler, an injury that still affects the way he walks. He grew up to be an aggressive teenager, a drug dealer and a thief, although never to the violent level that he reached two years ago.

He lived around the corner from Bonistall with his girlfriend and four of his 10 children. The killing was the culmination of a break-in spree of escalating violence that week. The night before, he had threatened to kill a woman but fled her apartment when she screamed her roommate's name and dialed 911 on her cell phone.

Early on May 1, he broke into Bonistall's apartment through a sliding-glass door. He gagged her, raped her and strangled her with a T-shirt. He then put her body in the bathtub, set it on fire and scrawled messages on the wall to confuse police into thinking the crime was committed by white supremacists.

"Strangling Bonistall requires a desire to kill lasting much longer than pulling a trigger one or two times," Herlihy said. "It is particularly 'up close and personal.' The use of her T-shirt and pressing on her chest betrays a cold-blooded viciousness. It was a slow, painful, terrifying death."

It was the seventh time Herlihy has sent a convicted murderer to death row, and he has never gone against the jury's recommendation in nine death-penalty cases.

Cooke's conviction and sentence are automatically appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court. No execution date is set, and it would be several years before he is put to death.

He joins 16 other men on Delaware's death row, although executions are on hold in the state while a lawsuit brought by one of them, challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment, is pending.

Cooke spent most of the trial in a holding cell after several outbursts in which he complained the judge was unfair, the prosecutors and police were framing him and his lawyers were pursuing a mental illness defense he didn't want. On one occasion he had to be wrestled to the floor by bailiffs.

Cooke insisted he had consensual sex with Bonistall and did not kill her. The jury rejected his claims and convicted him of first-degree murder.

Cooke's public defenders, Brendan O'Neill and Kevin O'Connor, had conceded his guilt during the trial but focused on his troubled childhood in an attempt to secure life imprisonment.

They said they were disappointed by the judge's decision yesterday but not surprised, considering the jury's unanimous recommendation, and they will begin their appeal immediately.

"He's more than just the worst thing he ever did. He's a human being," O'Connell said. "We lost this battle, but there's still more to be done."

O'Neill said their client was stunned. "He understood this day was coming, and while he could expect this decision from the judge, it's difficult to appreciate it fully until it's announced publicly."

Five of the jurors and one of the alternates also attended the sentencing and welcomed the chance to speak with the Bonistall family when it was over.

Kathleen Bonistall made a point of telling them about PEACE OUTside Campus, the Lindsey M. Bonistall Foundation the family set up to promote safe campus communities at colleges around the country.

One of the jurors, Stewart Dotts, a 53-year-old high school chemistry teacher, said he wanted his own closure in the case and would have been satisfied with whatever the judge decided. He expressed no pleasure with the sentence.

"Neither side won. The truth came out," he said. "We made no moral judgment. It was a legal decision."