she confessed – whether truthfully or
not, willingly or not – to the private
detective over the phone. Cooley buried
his head in his hands and sobbed when
he heard the ghostly, quavering voice of
his dead wife from the tape-recorder.
In the first conversation, late on
Sunday night, Lewis phoned the ranch
at Spade’s request and asked for Ella
Mae. “I’ve been quite ill,” she told him
shakily. “I’ve had almost a complete
nervous breakdown!”
“I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Cooley,” the
detective sympathised. “Tell me, have
you done anything you shouldn’t?”
“Yes, I have,” she replied, admitting
intimacy with one of the medical lab
technicians in a San Fernando Valley
motel the previous October.T
hen the district attorney called his star
witness, Melody Cooley. In a barely
audible voice, she said she had frequently
been present when her father raged at
her mother, accused her of having “other
men around,” and slapped and beat her.
Coming to the death night, Melody
told how her mother had called her at the
McWhorters’ home, and then Spade had
come on the line and urged her to comeover to the ranch. “He talked funny. I
was afraid of what was going to happen.
That’s why I asked Mrs. McWhorter to
wait.”
When she entered the house, she said,
she found her father clad in bloodstained
trousers and black cowboy boots. He was
shirtless and “real sweaty.”
“‘Come here,’ he ordered me. ‘I want
you to see your mother.’ I heard the
water running in the shower. Spade
went into the bathroom and dragged my
mother out by the hair, onto the floor of
the den. ‘Melody’s here,’ he told her. ‘Get
up and talk to your daughter.’ Then he
banged her head on the floor. I think she
was unconscious, but I don’t know. She
was moving a little, but she didn’t say
anything.”
Spade then got a rifle and said, “OK,
Melody, you can watch me kill your
mother!” He pointed the rifle at his
prostrate wife, then put it down and
walked around her. “Mother didn’t have
any clothes on and she was all bloody.
He stamped on her, on her stomach. He
ordered her to get up. Then he burned
her with a cigarette.”
Spade then started a countdown,
Melody testified. He told Ella Mae he’d
give her three minutes to get up, or he
would kill her. At that point, the phone
rang and he picked it up and said, “Hello,
Billy.” (This was the second call from
Lewis.)
“I was crying. I went to my mother
and said, ‘Get up, mother,’ but she didn’t
move or say anything. I got some water
and poured it over her head, trying to
revive her. Then my father came back
from the phone. He said, ‘Come on,
Melody, let’s leave her alone. I won’tThe critical moment in the
trial of Spade Cooley (left)
came when his daughter
Melody (right) gave the court
her account of the events
on the night of her mother’s
murdertouch her any more.’
“Then he made me sit on his lap.
He made me light a cigarette. He said,
‘Melody, I’m going to turn over all my
love to you.’ He started to caress me and
all that stuff. He kissed me in a way no
father should kiss his daughter. It was
too passionate a kiss for a daughter.
I couldn’t take it. I told him Mrs.
McWhorter was waiting for me.”