She broke away from her father’s
embrace, Melody recalled with a
shudder. As she ran to the front door, he
called after her: “Don’t tell the police or
anything – if you say anything about this,
I’ll kill you too!”
Stepping down from the witness-stand
for the mid-afternoon recess, Melody
passed close by her father at the counsel
table. Then she broke into a run and
collapsed in hysterical sobs in the arms
of an aunt. A moment later, standing up
from the table, Spade Cooley slumped
over with a heart attack. Oxygen was
administered and he was rushed to
hospital. Judge William Bradshaw
adjourned the trial for the day.
After a night’s rest in hospital, Cooley
was sufficiently recovered to return to
court the next morning. Cross-examined
by Lambros, Melody said she had
“disowned” her father. “He denied me
my mother – he took her away from me.”
Asked what she knew about Ella
Mae’s alleged affairs with other men,
Melody said: “Mother was forced to ask
forgiveness. Dad terrorised her. She was
supposed to be having affairs with other
men. He forced her to admit it, but I
the idea that we were fighting continually,
but this is not true, and she knows it’s not
true.”
With downcast eyes, Cooley later
admitted that he “might have” stamped
on his wife and struck her with his fists.
“She fell down, and rockets were going
off in my brain. The whole thing is
confused in my mind. I don’t believe I
hit her more than once or twice. After
hitting her, I don’t remember much.” He
still insisted that Ella Mae had been badly
hurt when she fell in the shower.
Asked by Lambros what had provoked
his attack, Cooley said he blew his top
after Ella Mae told him of bizarre sex
“initiation rites” she had gone through in
a motel with the two medical technicians
who, she said, were members of a “free
love cult.” He said his wife told him that
her first meeting with one of them “was a
meeting that alone would make you want
to never allow me in the house.”
The district attorney asked why Cooley
had not mentioned his wife’s alleged
“love cult” revelations in his previous
statements to the authorities, but had
instead saved them till he took the stand
in his own defence. Spade replied that he
had kept silent out of respect to his dead
wife’s memory. He had offered to plead
guilty to second-degree murder, rather
than make such shocking disclosures
about Ella Mae, he said, but his attorney
had been unable to make such a deal
with the authorities.
In his final speech to the jury, the
district attorney said there was no basis
for Cooley’s jealous suspicions of his
wife’s infidelity, and his story of “loveSpade Cooley with Red Murrell
at his last performance. After a
standing ovation he had a heart
attack and died backstage“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”
cult initiation rites” was “pulp fiction
trash.”
Basil Lambros sought an acquittal,
arguing that Ella Mae’s admissions of
unfaithfulness had driven Cooley to beat
her in a wild fury, for which he could not
be held responsible.
With that, on August 17th, nearly six
weeks into the trial, the case was given
to the jury. After more than 19 hours’
deliberation, they found Spade Cooley
guilty of first-degree murder, and his
secondary plea of insanity was set to be
heard by the same jury the following
week to determine his fate.
When the court reconvened on August
22nd for the sanity hearing, Lambros
told the judge that Cooley wished to
withdraw his insanity plea, and to waive
the jury hearing on the penalty and
throw himself on the mercy of the court.
“Is this your desire?” the judge asked
the defendant.
“Yes, sir,” said Cooley.
The jury was dismissed and Nelson
demanded the death penalty, while
Lambros pleaded for his client’s life.
“There is nothing in his past that
shows the court that he is not amenable
to rehabilitation,” said Judge Bradshaw.
“So Mr. Cooley, it is the judgment of
this court that you be sentenced to life
imprisonment.
The haggard Cooley expressed relief
that his ordeal was over. “To go through
another trial, and the horror day by day,
was more than I could take,” he said. “I
want to go to prison as soon as I can.”
On November 25th, 1969, Donnell
Cooley was given a 72-hour furlough
from prison to perform at a benefit show
at Oakland Auditorium, sponsored by the
Alameda County sheriff ’s association.
The standing ovation he received
following his performance echoed
his heyday as King of Western
Swing, and the excitement proved
too much for him. During the
intermission he collapsed while
talking to friends backstage. Another
heart attack had finally claimed
his life at the age of 58, two months
before he would have been eligible
for parole.knew it wasn’t true.”
Cooley had another heart attack in the
county jail, and the trial was recessed for
several days. When it resumed he was
called to the witness-stand, swallowing a
sedative before he shakily raised his hand
to take the oath.
Ella Mae had been mentally ill, he
testified. He did not believe she was fully
responsible for her infidelities, which he
claimed she had freely admitted. “I was
trying to protect her – I didn’t mean to
go through with the divorce. I couldn’t
live without her.”
He said Ella Mae first admitted her
latest “unfaithfulness” when they set
out on a brief holiday trip after her
release from hospital in March. Both of
them were so upset, he said, that they
discussed committing double suicide by
jumping off a cliff.
Although he and his wife had many
arguments, he had never beaten her,
Cooley said. “There were fights, but
there were no beatings. We had scraps,
but no beatings. Melody may have got