Steps From Home: The Unsolved Abduction of Rachel Louise Cooke

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
A college student is at home in Texas during winter
break in January of two thousand and two. She is
nearing the end of her time back home before returning
to college. Just like every other morning, the avid runner
laced up her shoes, grabbed her walkman, and headed out
on her four mile route around her family's sprawling subdivision.

(00:33):
Neighbors see her along her jog that morning, and her
movements are largely accounted for. In fact, one neighbor places
her just a football field's length away from her driveway,
but somehow she never makes it there. Her disappearance would
fracture the safety felt in the quiet community. Over the years,

(00:55):
there have been various theories, suspects, and even a confession,
but to this day, no sign of her has ever
turned up, and nobody has been held responsible. I'm your host, Megan,
and each week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I
cover older unsolved cases and challenge the idea that a
simpler time means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing

(01:19):
to you the unsolved disappearance of Rachel Louis Cook. This

(01:44):
week's case is from January of two thousand and two.
Just like the case I covered last episode, Doctor Cheryl
Lamont Pearson went missing from Bartlett, Tennessee, on January fifth,
two thousand and two, and today's case that of Rachel
Cook while Rachel went missing on January tenth, two thousand

(02:04):
and two in Georgetown, Texas. Now, I'm not mentioning it
because these two cases are related, but I do recognize
that these ones are both on the more recent side
of the cases I cover on this podcast, and the
good old days theme may not resonate with you as
much when I'm talking about cases that feel like, well,

(02:26):
at least to me, almost like yesterday in a sense.
But talking about these two cases is by design because
they occur in this transition time. DNA technology was advancing quickly,
but it was nowhere near where it is today. Surveillance
cameras existed, but very few people had them on their

(02:47):
homes and certainly not streaming live into their phones. Cell
phones were around, but they were bulky flip phones, not
constant companions, and the data they provided was limited. There
were ways to get the word out about missing persons cases,
but social media hadn't yet become the powerful tool it
is now. It wasn't the centralized hub for awareness, tips

(03:11):
and pressure that we see in modern cases. So as
we get into Rachel's story, I want you to keep
that context in mind and real quickly before I share
her case, I want to acknowledge that much of what
I'm able to share in this case I have to
credit to the original reporting done in the Austin American

(03:32):
Statesman newspaper. I will link all of that in the
show notes. So let's get into it. It was around
eight am on Thursday, January tenth, two thousand and two
in Georgetown, Texas. High School art teacher Janet Cook took
a moment to glance over at the couch where her
nineteen year old daughter, Rachel was still sleeping. Rachel was

(03:55):
home on an extended winter break from college. Rachel had
grown up and attended school in Georgetown, Texas, a city
of about one hundred thousand people near Austin, about thirty
miles to the north. It's one of those places with
a picturesque town square full of charm that could just
land on a postcard, and if you were to google

(04:18):
best places to raise a family near Austin, Georgetown would
come up. I'm not just saying that, I know because
I even tested it out. Rachel was the older of
the two Cook daughters. Her sister Joanne was two years younger.
Her father, Robert, worked at IBM in Austin, and the

(04:39):
Cooks resided in the North Lake subdivision in Texas. Now,
when I picture a subdivision, I tend to think of
housing tracks where houses are very close together, and that
is not at all the case here. I'll have some
Google street photos on Instagram so you can get a
feel for yourself. But this neighborhood had houses set often

(05:01):
on one to three acres of land that had wood
surrounding it, a lot of trees, a lot of horse
people in the area with stables, and lots of land.
The subdivision itself was surrounded by cattle ranches. A lot
of the houses are set back off the road with
long driveways. Rachel loved to run. In high school, she

(05:23):
made all state and cross country, and so when she
was home she had taken a run almost every day
while on break. She was home on break from Mesa
Junior College in San Diego. Her mother would later say
that Rachel moved to California because she loved the sun,
she loved being on the beach, and she was a vegetarian,

(05:45):
and her mother laughed and said that Rachel thought everyone
in California would be a vegetarian. She had hopes of
doing some undergraduate work at this college and then transferring
to a four year school to pursue a career in
fashion design. Initially, when Rachel had moved to California, she
was still dating her high school boyfriend Thomas, but she

(06:07):
broke that off pretty quickly. Rachel wanted to experience her
new city in life of freedom. Her boyfriend, who still
lived back in Texas, took the break up pretty hard.
Rachel was really enjoying herself out there, just like when
she was in Texas. She had some waitressing gigs in
San Diego and she also worked at a bakery. One

(06:29):
article talked about how when she would go home from
the bakery, she would take some of the leftover baked
goods and deliver them to people who were unhoused around
the city. She was just really thoughtful like that. After
being in San Diego for just a short while, she
met a new boyfriend who she got serious with fast.

(06:50):
His name was Greg, and they fell hard for each other.
He even came out to Texas with her when she
flew home for the holidays. After the year two thousand
and two, rang in Greg flew back to California separately
because he had to get back to work. Rachel was
staying in town for a bit longer until the semester started,

(07:10):
in part because she was going to her cousin's wedding
on Saturday, January twelfth. That would be her last event
in town before flying back on Sunday the thirteenth to
return to San Diego. So on this morning, as her
parents left for work, Rachel wasn't quite up yet, but
would be soon. Early that morning, sometime a little after

(07:32):
nine am Austin, Texas time and a little after seven
am San Diego time, Greg called Rachel and they spoke briefly,
and cell phone records back this up. She let him
know she was going to head out for her typical
morning run and that she'd call him back later when
she got back, but her phone call to Greg would
never come. Rachel put on a gray running outfit, a

(07:56):
shirt and shorts and a green sports spra. She laced
up her white A six sneakers and grabbed her bright
yellow Sony Walkman in sports headphones, and off she went.
Rachel's movements are well accounted for. On this jog, the
neighborhood still had new built homes going up, and there
was construction crews in the neighborhood and a decent amount

(08:17):
of cars in traffic, which was surprising to me, because
if you look at the pictures of how the neighborhood
is set up, I was surprised to find out that
there's a decent amount of through traffic. Neighbors at different
parts of the neighborhood all saw her jogging past at
different times, and then at around ten thirty am, the
last set of neighbors saw Rachel. She had begun shifting

(08:40):
from a jog down to a walk as part of
her cool down. Depending on the source material, Rachel was
anywhere from one hundred to three hundred yards from her
driveway at this point, and then she vanished. Greg never
did receive his phone call, but he wasn't immediately alarmed.
Rachel could have gotten distract and it's not like everyone

(09:01):
was texting each other regularly at this point or in
as much contact as we are now. But the first
concern that was felt was that of Robert Cook, Rachel's father.
He left work early on that Thursday, because he and
Rachel had plans to go shopping that afternoon. He was
even more alarmed that her purse and cell phone were

(09:22):
still at the house, but there were no other signs
of Rachel being there. When Janet returned home from work,
Robert and Janet talked through that maybe Rachel had picked
up a shift at the restaurant she worked at. She
worked at this one restaurant prior to going away to college,
and they kept her on the books even after she
moved so that she could still work shifts while she

(09:43):
was in town. So when Janet called the establishment and asked,
is Rachel working, they breathed a collective sigh of relief
when she said, yes, Rachel's here. They figured that she
must have just accidentally left some of her stuff behind
and would be getting a ride home later. But when
Rachel didn't come home at all that night, they grew

(10:04):
worried and called the restaurant the next day, and that's
when they got the gut punch. Rachel being a somewhat
common name, the person who had been on the phone
had indeed seen a Rachel working that night, but it
wasn't Rachel Cook. It was a different Rachel. Panic set
in full force because now not only did they not

(10:27):
know where Rachel was, they had lost precious time looking
for her. The Cooks called police, and the Williamson County
Sheriff's Department was first on the case. At first, their
response was a bit lukewarm. There were certainly things to
be concerned about, like Rachel's belongings being left behind and
this being totally out of character for her, But you

(10:50):
know how it goes sometimes still, but especially back then.
She's nineteen, she's an adult, she's home on break. She
probably is just visiting with friends. She lost track of time.
She's allowed to do that because she's an adult. What's
difficult is when we hear about these cases on podcasts
and true crime shows. One hundred percent of the time

(11:12):
these cases that we're seeing, there is something seriously wrong,
and so you want to shout out, why didn't you
take this seriously? But in defensive law enforcement, that statistic
doesn't ring true for them. In their day to day
they are getting a lot of calls about someone who
just walked off or didn't stay in touch with their family,

(11:33):
and ultimately, for the most part, they return. But in
this case, there were so many alarming things from the
jump that I don't give as much grace for the
slow start. The Cooks were aggressive in their search, starting
right out on that Friday, driving around, calling friends, looking everywhere,
and to their credit, police did jump in fairly quickly after,

(11:56):
especially when on Saturday, Rachel was not back for her
cousin's wedding. The wedding went on as scheduled, but a
special moment of prayer was held for Rachel, and her
disappearance certainly carried a cloud of worry and grief at
the event. The initial searches poured over the sprawling rural
areas surrounding Rachel's neighborhood and into nearby Russell Park. Russell

(12:20):
Park is about four miles outside of Rachel's neighborhood, but
there's a lot of wilderness in that area and it
backs up to Georgetown Lake. Throughout the weekend, the search
crews grew, both people in the community and law enforcement.
The Department of Public Safety searched by helicopter and the
Sheriff's Department used sent tracking dogs. On Sunday, the Texas

(12:44):
Rangers were called in along with a civilian search party,
and over one hundred volunteers showed up. Sergeant Michael Loomis
told the Austin American Statesman quote, I saw volunteers stand
for two hours waiting for assignment. They're very dedicated. End quote.
The neighbors in the North Lake subdivision wanted to help

(13:06):
in any way possible, even offering up their own horses
to help the search of the rugged terrain. And it
really was. In fact, early on, just a couple of
days into the search, an eighteen year old man was
seriously injured when he slipped and fell twenty feet down
an embankment while trying to help with the search. Despite
the dangers people carried on, fifty of Robert's colleagues from

(13:30):
IBM joined on the search. Searches were conducted on ADVs
and still nothing. The Cooks were grateful for the support
of everyone. Janet told the paper quote, all these people
being here, it helps. It helps enormously. We don't feel
alone going through this. The waiting is the most difficult

(13:52):
end quote. Rachel's sister Joanne and her parents, Robert and Janet,
stayed close to their home on Navajo Trail, waiting for updates.
Joanne told the papers that she hoped whoever kidnapped her
sister was being kind to her and that he returned
her home unharmed. She said, quote, everybody's pretty sure we're

(14:12):
going to find her end quote. Joanne would have no
idea in that moment, just days into her sister going missing,
how much she would need to hold out that hope,
and how unending the search for answers would be while

(14:37):
combing the area doing physical searches, Detectives working the case
also had to look into who might be behind this
and question the people closest to Rachel in her life. Now.
Outside of online discussion boards, there isn't a lot of
places that talk specifically about Rachel's ex boyfriend from high school, Thomas,

(14:58):
but in an episode of the The Investigation Discovery TV
program Disappeared, as well as interviews on Crimewatch Daily, he
is described as not taking the breakup well and becoming
very hostile. He would call often against Rachel's wishes, even
at one point necessitating intervention from Rachel's new boyfriend, Greg,

(15:20):
Greg told Crimewatch Daily that Thomas didn't seem in control
of his emotions and he was even sobbing in a
phone call to Greg about him missing Rachel. Greg also
had become irate that Rachel would not speak to him
or visit with him while she was home on break,
in the fact that she had drawn boundaries, and at

(15:40):
one point he showed up uninvited to a party she
was at over that holiday break. According to Greg, that
did not go well and ended up with Rachel and
Thomas getting into a serious verbal altercation. Now we know
statistics show that people are much more often victims of
crime at the hands of people they know and whom

(16:02):
they are close to, rather than a random stranger. So
could he have been waiting for her in the driveway
when she got back from her run and then, in
a fit of rage, abducted her. Rachel's father, Robert, had
written in one of his diaries where he tracked the case,
that he had given a list of friends and Rachel's
ex boyfriends to the detectives, and so it's understood that

(16:24):
investigators have likely spoken to him over the years. But
what came of those conversations, if he took a polygraph test,
or if he had an alibi, that's never been released.
What we do know is that to this day, at
the time of this recording, he hasn't been eliminated as
a person of interest in the case, and unfortunately, that's

(16:45):
all the information I have on him. Now, what about
a stranger lurking back at the house? It is possible
according to Robert, they did keep their doors unlocked, as
did most of the people in the neighborhood at that time.
So could someone have seen Rachel leave to go out
on her jog, gone inside and had been waiting for her.

(17:08):
That can't be ruled out. But there weren't any signs
of a struggle or any indication that she had come back.
But I mean, if someone was waiting right inside the
doorway with a weapon and was just waiting to abduct her,
that is possible. And truthfully, that could have been someone
she knew or a stranger. That doesn't necessarily make it

(17:30):
immediately a stranger. So let's talk about family. This is
going to be one of those instances where I jump
around in the timeline a bit, but I think it's
important to tie this off once and for all to
better focus for the rest of the episode. There was
some controversy on this case because, according to the first
detectives who worked the case, the original sheriff to investigate.

(17:53):
A man named John Miss Sparrow stated that those working
the Cook case that they were not to in the
family as potential suspects. Now, besides just deviating from a
standard investigative practice, it's also cloudy because this sheriff knew
Janet Cook and the family dating back to growing up

(18:13):
in Georgetown together, even going to kindergarten together. And look,
no family wants time wasted on them when they know
the real perpetrator is out there. But it is important
as a step and even if ultimately it rules them
out as suspects, which is a good thing, the conversations
often lead the police on a promising path to follow

(18:35):
up on new clues. So here's what I'll say. This
wasn't best police practice from everything I know. And Rachel's
case has been passed through several different sheriffs in office
and later on her family would be questioned in polygraphed
and her father, Robert, he actually failed the polygraph because

(18:56):
of one question. The question was do you know where
Rachel is? And he said no, and he failed. But
Janet Cook in the family, they were pretty quick to
have an explanation. You see, by the time Robert was polygraphed.
He was pretty certain that his beautiful daughter had been murdered,

(19:18):
and it was his belief that she was in heaven.
So when asked, he answered no because he didn't know
where her physical remains were, but in his heart he
had a belief about where her soul was. Police were
asked by Crimewatch Daily if they believed this, and they
say yes. There is absolutely nothing to point in the
direction of Robert Cook. He was at work at the

(19:41):
time of her disappearance, and as such, Rachel's family is
not considered suspects in her disappearance whatsoever. And so then
there are the eyewitness accounts of what was seen in
the neighborhood that morning. Vehicles in composite sketches end up
being a significant c in this case. Several witnesses came

(20:03):
forward to report a white vehicle in the neighborhood that
seemed out of place, and that this vehicle had men
in it who may have been seen speaking to a
woman who matched Rachel's description. It was a late model
white car, possibly a Chevy Camaro or Pontiac Transam, with
a black stripe towards the bottom. The driver was described

(20:25):
as possibly a hispanic mail, dark complexion, slicked back black hair,
and that there was another man seen in that vehicle
as well. This came out early on, so police worked
with the witnesses to do a composite sketch and so
that was drawn up and this information was shared with
the media. And this kind of brings us back to

(20:48):
the contemporaneous flow and timeline of the investigation. On January seventeenth,
investigators asked the public to come forward with anything they
think could be relevant, even if they're second guessing the
significance of it, and the following day, on January eighteenth,
a ten thousand dollars reward was announced for information on

(21:08):
Rachel's disappearance, and on that same day, search and rescue
organization Texas Equisearch was brought in. This would be the
beginning of a long standing relationship between the Cook family
and Tim Miller, the founder of Texas Equisearch, who knew
all too well what the Cook family was going through.

(21:30):
Tim founded Texas Equisearch in two thousand as a way
of giving back and helping other families of missing persons
after his teen daughter Laura Miller disappeared in nineteen eighty four.
While walking home after using a payphone nearby to his home.
Laura was later found murdered, a victim in a string

(21:50):
of homicides off Interstate forty five between Houston and Galveston,
dubbed the Texas Killing Fields. It's thought that the bodies
found in these fields are the results of multiple serial
killers over several decades. Tim Miller has his demons. He
wrongfully pursued who he thought was his daughter's killer, a

(22:12):
property owner where her body was found for years, harassing
him and ultimately ruining the man's life before he was
definitively ruled out in her murder. Tim owns up to
this now and states that due to his own actions
and behavior towards this innocent man, he was a secondary
victim in all of it. But unfortunately that man passed

(22:34):
away very tragically. But that is in part why Tim
founded this organization to give back and do differently and
help parents to process differently than he did. His organization
has helped locate so many people over the years, and
when he came into town, not only was his organization
conducting a massive fifty square mile search for Rachel, he

(22:57):
personally was checking in on the well being of the
Cooks and providing emotional support. Texas Equisearch did a two
week comprehensive search, but came up with nothing. They had
to leave on February first to assist in another missing
person's case. However, Tim Miller would continue to stay in

(23:17):
close contact with the Cook family for years to come,
and even collaborate on some initiatives with them, particularly Rachel's father, Robert.
Tim could understand the feelings that Robert was feeling, which
was a lot of guilt and a failure to protect,
which is how he felt about his own daughter. In fact,
Robert himself became involved with Texas Equisearch, and he would

(23:40):
later lend a hand to high profile investigations like the
Natalie Holloway case, while always keeping Rachel at the forefront.
By the end of January, the reward was bumped up
to twenty five thousand dollars, and on February tenth, the
Cook family had a message to mark the one month
anniversary of their daughter going missing, titled a heartfelt thank You,

(24:02):
It read how do you say thank you to so
many who have given so much? There are no words.
Since January tenth, you have fed, hugged, laughed, and cried
with us. You have rallied, walked, ridden, and prayed with us.
To know and experience this outpouring of love for Rachel
fills our hearts with courage and the strength to continue.

(24:24):
Our mission is not over, and it is comforting to
know that you are there should we need you. Somehow,
somewhere there is someone or something that will show the
way and bring Rachel home. We will not give up
until that day comes. So this thank you, inadequate as
it is, is not a door closing, but a declaration

(24:46):
of hope and a renewal of strength. We ask your
continued prayers for Rachel's return to us, Signed Robert Janet
and Joanne Cook. And the community was not giving up.
At the the end of February, Roberts colleagues at IBM
inspired an idea for the Ride for Rachel. People on

(25:07):
their motorcycles rode out to places like College Station, Corpus Christi,
and Fredericksburg to distribute flyers about Rachel to businesses and
get her face everywhere. Rachel's family began organizing with community
partners to offer self defense classes, something that would go
on for years, and in April of two thousand and two.

(25:28):
An honorary five k was held for Rachel, with all
proceeds going to her reward fund. In May, police released
more information about the composite sketch. They shared that the
person in the white vehicle was indeed believed to have
been talking to Rachel that day. You'll see in a
lot of publications that Rachel was seen on FM three

(25:50):
four zero five in Georgetown, and this is North Lake Road,
the main road that her subdivision is located off of,
and that's the area she was seen speaking to these men.
They also mentioned that at this time a white pickup
truck also possibly was seen in the area and they
were interested in speaking to the person driving it because

(26:10):
that driver was also said to ben speaking with Rachel.
So I don't know if that means that the people
in the car and the truck, if they were all involved,
or it was two totally separate interactions. At the six
month mark in July, Rachel's aunt, Elaine spoke on behalf
of the family with the following message to the community.

(26:32):
On Wednesday, Robert and Janet Cook will face you another
said milestone. Six months since their beautiful daughter, Rachel Cook,
my niece went jogging and never returned. Please join our
family in a moment of silence at eleven thirty am Wednesday.
If you are unable to observe this special moment, I
asked that you remember Rachel in your own way. Turn

(26:52):
on your headlights or tie a yellow ribbon on your antenna.
Hug your children, never forget that whoever took Rachel is
still out there. Rachel's family will be starting a website
in her honor, Rachel alert dot org. It will alert
law enforcement, media in search organizations to a possible abduction
within the first forty eight hours. It will not discriminate

(27:13):
according to missing persons age, location, race, family, income, or sex.
Our family found out January tenth that age discrimination occurs
when someone is reported missing. The fact that Rachel was
nineteen when she disappeared made a difference in how her
case was handled end quote. Just a couple weeks after that,

(27:34):
police in Georgetown, the Williamson County Sheriff's Department, they did
start using a software program and it allowed them to
notify seventy six law enforcement agencies and media outlets in
a one hundred mile radius in missing persons cases. And
it wasn't just things like abductions. It was for things
like missing vulnerable adults as well and elderly people, and

(27:56):
it was named in Rachel's honor. By October, Janet and
Robert joined Tim Miller to meet with President Bush at
the White House about missing persons cases. I can't even
imagine how disorienting it was to have their daughter happily
off in college in October of two thousand and one,
and then by that time, just a year later, they're

(28:18):
at the White House advocating for missing persons cases. That
has to just be wild. Robert Cook had very targeted
reasons for his advocacy. He said that he was hoping
to encourage authorities to create a state or federal task force,
including the FBI, US marshals, and local law enforcement officers

(28:40):
to work together on missing children's cases. He also wanted
to again focus on that age discrimination and make sure
that just because someone is nineteen like his daughter was,
that they don't get kind of pushed to the wayside
or taken less seriously. Later that month, Rachel's case would
be featured on The John Wall Show. By no reward

(29:00):
in Rachel's case had been raised to fifty thousand dollars
and her parents put a message out to Texas hunters
to be on the lookout for anything, because hunters would
now be entering areas that hadn't been previously searched. They
told those hunting to check often vacant places like their
hunting cabins or unused structures, to report any foul odors

(29:20):
or any suspicious activity. But the one year anniversary would
come and hit with no new evidence in the case.
In April of two thousand and three, the Cook family

(29:41):
in the Georgetown community all held their breaths as it
was announced that remains were found ten miles outside of
where Rachel was last seen. Two teen boys hitting golf
balls stumbled into the remains in a culvert. Rachel's father, Robert,
talked about how there'd been other instances is where remains
had been found, but they had all been fifty plus

(30:02):
miles away. This felt closer to home. It was at
this point that the family opened up about how difficult
this was on them. They would have trouble sleeping and
every time the phone rang they got anxiety. One thing
that can sometimes be assumed is that a family is
all handling something like this in the same way, or
that they're at least on the same page, but that's

(30:25):
actually rarely the case, as humans were all wired to
handle life differently, and there's no playbook for how you'll
respond to something as tragic and traumatic as this, So
Robert poured himself into every possible way he could take
in finding answers. Understandably almost obsessive. Janet was also regularly

(30:45):
engaging with the media and searchers and talked about how
she thought of her daughter hundreds of times a day,
but sometimes she needed a break from the constant pursuit
of those answers, and in years following, Johanne would talk
about how sometimes she didn't even want the answers because,
as painful as it was, knowing would mean hearing all
those details and having her heart broken. All of these

(31:09):
responses are just how people show up, and it's normal
and there's nothing wrong with handling things all differently. The
remains turned out to not be those of Rachel, but
of another missing man named Charles Kelsey. In January of
two thousand and four, at the two year mark of
Rachel's disappearance, a new sheriff named Jim Wilson took over

(31:30):
and on the second day on the job, he announced
that he was pulling together a multi agency task force
to look into Rachel's disappearance. It was made up of
ten members from the Austin Police Department's Cold Case Team,
a representative from the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force, a
retired FBI agent, a member of the Georgetown Police Department,

(31:52):
members of the Sheriff's department, and Texas Rangers. They planned
to take several months to review the entire case from
scratch and pour through all previously collected statements with friends, family, neighbors, witnesses,
you name it, and then in most cases, reinterview look
for inconsistencies and statements. The sheriff noted that most of

(32:13):
the time, people are able to keep their stories straight
when they're telling the truth, but it's harder when you
have to keep your story up. They hit the ground running.
By May, the sheriff provided a task force update, sharing
that over one thousand man hours had been devoted to
the case and they'd interviewed one hundred people. After that,
things seemed to fade and slow down a little bit,

(32:33):
but in reality, there was still a ton happening behind
the scenes. There is a bit of mixed reporting on
the way in which this next suspect came in contact
with the cold case team looking into Rachel Cook's case.
Some source material says that investigators were looking for murderers
in the area who were now in prison and who

(32:53):
had been out at the time of Rachel's case who
may have had a similar mo and that they came
across this suspect and began asking about Rachel's case. Other
sources say this suspect contacted investigators himself and just began
talking about Rachel. Either way, what we do know is
that behind the scenes, in August of two thousand and six,

(33:15):
a convicted murderer named Michael Keith Moore confessed in a
recorded jail interview to the murder of Rachel Cook. Just
as a content warning, this next part, where I talk
about the confession in Moore's previous crimes, they do have
some graphic content, so please take care when listening. Moore
told investigators that he happened to be out on the

(33:36):
day of Rachel's disappearance. He was looking for a business
to burglarize, and he just happened to see Rachel jogging.
He said he drove ahead and parked his truck. He
stayed near his truck and mimicked being a jogger himself.
When Rachel ran past him in the opposite direction, he
turned around and came up behind her and struck her

(33:57):
with a claw hammer, then abducted her, took her to
a second location where he sexually assaulted her and then
allegedly bludgeoned her and possibly suffocated her. He said he
then wrapped her body in a tarp and attached rocks
to weigh it down. He drove to the Gulf Coast
near the Mattagora Bay, where he dropped her body into

(34:19):
the water. He also mentioned burying some of her personal belongings.
Police secured this confession, but they didn't want to go
to court with just that, so they took Michael Moore
out and had him recreate where he had been, how
he had done it, drove to where he had dumped
the body, and spent a considerable amount of time on
cross referencing his story and the details so that they

(34:42):
had a sound case. It would take until November, but
on Thursday, November ninth, in a press conference, police announced
they had arrested Michael Keith Moore in Rachel's case. The
following day would be his arraignment, and they announced that
they had reached a plea deal. I plead guilty and
lead investigators to where he discarded Rachel's belongings and show

(35:05):
where her body was located exactly, in exchange for a
life sentence and the death penalty being taken off the table.
Rachel's family, loved one's, friends, and community members packed into
the courtroom on November tenth, two thousand and six, but
the next exchange would leave everyone speechless. District Judge Burt

(35:27):
Kharan said to Moore, how do you plead? And Michael
Moore said not guilty. Carn said could you repeat that
for me please? And again not guilty. Rachel's family felt
victimized all over again. Moore's defense attorneys tried for hours
to talk to him to rework the deal, but he refused.

(35:50):
As a result, the state had to drop the murder
charges in order to continue their investigation and give the
option to bring forth charges in the future. This created
a whole new wound in the Georgetown community and opened

(36:14):
up deeper scrutiny on the life of Michael Keith Moore.
I personally don't like to focus these episodes on coward
perpetrators at all, but I do want to focus on
a bit of his psychology and criminal profile and criminal
history for a moment, because as of today, his involvement
as a suspect is still highly debated. Many think he

(36:37):
was truly guilty, but there just wasn't enough evidence and
he's toying with investigators in the family and others believe
he was toying from the get go and that he
never had anything to do with this case. And all
of this is brought to you by a deep dive
in the Austin American Statesman on Moore's history. It came
from an article titled The Violent Past of an icy

(36:59):
Killer and it was published in late November of two
thousand and six. Michael began crimes as a juvenile, and
that was reported on by his father. His father said
he was always getting into trouble. He once shoplifted and
his father made him bring back everything in front of
the store owners and customers, and Michael didn't care whatsoever.

(37:20):
In his early twenties, he was arrested for criminal mischief
for breaking car windows into stroying property, seemingly just because
he got light sentencing for that sixty days in jail,
served on weekends. He then had multiple arrests for domestic
violence of his wife, and then he had weapons charges,
repeatedly carrying a knife on him even though this was

(37:43):
against his parole conditions. After this, in the late nineties
and early two thousands, the allegations around his inappropriate sexual
behavior ramp up. Someone uses his phone to say she
is being sexually assaulted, but then hangs up. This was
a nine to one one call, and that's an November
of two thousand and one. When police question him about this,
he denies it, and then he changes history and says

(38:06):
that he placed the call, but he was calling because
he had been choking, which doesn't even make sense. He
actually would face charges for filing a false police report
for that call, but those charges were later dropped and
they never could figure out who that woman was. On
December twenty one, two thousand and one, just weeks before

(38:26):
Rachel's disappearance, a young teen in a town about fifty
miles away from Georgetown returned home around ten pm and
pulled in her driveway. A pickup truck had been following
her and pulled up behind her with a man matching
Moore's description, getting out and striking up a conversation. He
then attempted to grab her, but she was able to

(38:48):
get away and run inside her house. He was and
is still considered a likely suspect in that interaction. Over
the next year or so, there are several allegations of
more attempting actual assault at college parties across Georgetown. The
only thing that really seems to stick is providing alcohol
to minors. Then things really escalate. In September of two

(39:10):
thousand and three, Moore breaks into the home of a
young mother named Christina Moore. She had her toddler home
with her at the time, and she was pregnant with
her second baby. He is no relation to Christina Moore,
but he supposedly chose her house to steal checks and
other items because he felt it would be easier to
forge and get away with using those documents since he

(39:33):
had the same last name as Christina Moore. Begged for
her life, he slit her throat and left her to die.
Her husband came home to find his wife dead and
his toddler wandering around the house. I mean, this guy
is just pure evil, But one thing besides evil is

(39:54):
that according to his own father and those who profile
criminals like him, Moore is of average, possibly even below
average intelligence, but he thinks he's the smartest person in
the room, which is maybe why he anonymously phoned police
from a payphone just four days after the murder to
tell police he had found check sparing Christina's name in

(40:16):
a payphone coin return slot. This was somewhat his undoing.
That phone call was recorded, so they had his voice
and his predatory sexual behavior would not stop. You see,
he has a host of inappropriate sexual activity, including but
not limited to the following, secretly photographing women in public

(40:38):
in writing down their license plate numbers, writing sexually inappropriate
letters from prison to his teenage stepdaughter, masturbating in front
of female inmates at the Williamson County Jail infirmary, which
ended up costing the county about sixty thousand dollars. In
this settlement with the three women, he also threatened to

(40:58):
kill a female inmate. She ever, told authorities that he
had found a way to leave his infirmary cell. And
then a break came in February of two thousand and four,
when Michael Moore's stepdaughter in law approached sheriff deputies and
said she wanted to discuss more breaking into her home.
She was sleeping overnight and he broke into her home

(41:22):
and started rubbing her leg and touching her inappropriately. While
she was talking, she mentioned that Moore once claimed to
have possessed checks bearing Christina Moore's name. That made detectives
decide to play the audio tape for her of this
so called anonymous caller, and she right away identified the
voice as that of Michael Moore's. Two days later, police

(41:46):
began questioning more about the murder, and he really tried
to dodge it at first, but there was no coming
back from it. In November of two thousand and four,
he was indicted on charges of capital murder, felony murder,
aggravated robbery, and aggravated kidnapping in connection with Christina Moore's death.

(42:07):
In It took a while actually for the trial to
get started. It was February of two thousand and six,
but a Williamson County jury ended up acquitting Michael Moore
of the capital murder, but they convicted him of felony murder,
aggravated robbery, and aggravated kidnapping. After deliberating for more than
seventeen hours over two days. It was actually the first

(42:28):
death penalty case where the Williamson County prosecution had lost
the death penalty aspect. But he did end up getting
chart or he ended up getting sentenced rather in a
way that gave him four concurrent life sentences. Moore's father
did not defend his son whatsoever in that article in
November of two thousand and six, to the paper, he said,

(42:50):
one time they tried to get a psycho veil for him,
but he fled the facility before he could be diagnosed.
Ronald Moore told the Austin American Statesman quote, he had
there no guilt on anything he does. He never has,
And he can stand in front of you and lie
to you and you cannot tell whether he's telling the
truth or lying. You stand up for your kids, You

(43:11):
stand up for them. But there's got to be a
point when you say no more. I reached that point.
He's in prison where he belongs. End quote. Michael Keith
Moore took exception to this article. He ended up contacting
the Austin American Statesman via a scathing letter and said
they said, we'd be happy to sit down and hear

(43:31):
your side, he declined. Then he reached back out. He
scheduled a time to meet with them, then he backed
out the day of the usual control stuff in toying
with people. But finally in June two thousand and seven,
he would sit down in this exclusive jailhouse interview. He
told investigators, or he told the paper, rather that he

(43:53):
duped investigators. He was getting special treatment in prison, he
was getting extra visits with his ex wife, having prison
infractions wiped off his record, all sorts of things as
long as he cooperated, including getting driven around to see
the coast and get out of his jail cell. And
then he began to mock the police a bit. He
said they should have picked up on the inconsistencies in

(44:14):
his story. He said he was known to burglarize unoccupied businesses,
so his story wouldn't even make sense, He said, to
be out looking for a business to rob, since most
businesses would have been open at that time, And how
did he make believe he was jogging in street clothes
or hide a hammer behind his back, he said. He
then ended by saying he felt bad for the cooks.

(44:37):
He told the paper quote, I can imagine them thinking
their daughter, their loved one, just disappeared again right there
in court. That's what I feel bad about. He also
said he changed his plea because he couldn't bear to
think of helping someone get away with murder. The district
attorney scoffed at this and said, quote, I would note

(44:59):
that Michael Keith Moore is serving four life sentences, is
a psychopathic killer, a proven pathological liar, and has repeatedly
used the media to manipulate his circumstances. It would appear
to me that he is attempting to manipulate the media
once again. End quote. Rachel's father agreed and said that
he didn't think that Michael cared whatsoever about his family,

(45:22):
his family that had fractured as the years went on.
Rachel's disappearance would ruin the marriage of Jana and Robert.
He would end up taking a new job up in Albany,
New York, while still spending all of his free time
on Rachel's case. Most of all, the family was now
profoundly worried of the collateral damage to the confession and

(45:44):
recanting of that confession. To some degree in the eyes
of public opinion, the case was solved but just couldn't
be proven. But the Cooks were not convinced that Moore
killed their daughter, and they did not want the community
or police to stop looking into their daughter's case. They
did feel that law enforcement was still convinced of More's

(46:04):
guilt and that for years it impeded the progress they
made in their daughter's case. Robert Cook purchased a billboard
in two thousand and eight and tried to keep eyes
on the progress, and then he began to get quite ill.
He vowed he would spend his whole rest of his
life finding answers if need be, and that's just what

(46:25):
he did, but sadly he would go to his grave
without them. Robert died after a long illness in twenty fourteen,
at just fifty nine years old. According to Williamson County Sheriffs,
even though the case would grow cold, it would never close,
and they always got tips, but nothing like in the beginning.
So for example, at the end of twenty sixteen, they

(46:46):
showed that they had had sixteen tips to follow up
on that year. In December of twenty sixteen, investigators announced
they had a forensic lead to follow down related to
a vehicle and only described it as quote a large
amount of new material. In December of twenty seventeen, another
task force was put together in a new reward and
the case offered, leaving the case at a one hundred

(47:10):
thousand dollars reward for info, fifty thousand from the family
and fifty thousand put up by law enforcement. In twenty eighteen,
more info was released on the twenty sixteen forensics investigators
shared that they recovered a nineteen ninety eight Pontiac transam
tied to potential persons of interest in Rachel's case, Which
you have to assume is that transam spotted that day.

(47:34):
Does this mean that for a while now police have
had suspects under their noses and they just can't tie
the evidence to them. Maybe it was said to be
about three or four potential suspects. In twenty eighteen, they
shared that preliminary testing revealed the possible presence of blood
on the passenger floorboard and door of that car, but

(47:54):
at this point nothing more has come of that. So
it's possible they don't have enough of a case, or
that forensics aren't far long enough at this very moment
to do more with what they found. But it does
bring some hope. This was the last major break in
the case, but Rachel's memory is never far from the

(48:15):
minds of the Georgetown community or her mother, sister, and
other loved ones still holding out hope for answers. Did
an ex boyfriend of Rachel have a deadly argument with
her that day? What can be done to rule him
in or out once and for all. Was Michael Keith
Moore truly involved? If so, the clock is slowly taking away.

(48:40):
Those four life sentences he received in the murder case
are served concurrently, and the fifty year old will be
up for parole in December of twenty thirty four. On
one hand, it's not unheard of for people looking for attention,
or looking to manipulate, or just to get outside of
prison walls to lie about something like this. But keep

(49:03):
in mind that he was connected to attempted abductions, he
did have deviant sexual behavior and problematic sexual history. And
this is just my observation, but the murder victim, even
though Christina was just because supposedly because she had the
same last name and it was easy enough to use

(49:26):
her name and stolen identity, my personal observation is that
she looked a lot like Rachel Cook. Was there any
connection to construction workers that were working in the neighborhood,
which could have really just been someone passing through? And
what about those persons of interest related to the White

(49:47):
trans am. If there are multiple people involved, it's time
for one of them to come forward. And not that
I'm cheering for anybody involved to get a deal, but
the person who breaks and turns on the others is
typically the one one that gets the latest sentence. Maybe
you used to date or be married to one of
these suspects and they said something to you. If so,

(50:08):
now is the time to come forward. I'll end with
the words of Janet Cook. She said, quote, we have
become victims almost as much as Rachel, and it hasn't
been easy, but I'm not giving up as long as
there's breath in my body. Rachel would be in her

(50:30):
forties if she were still alive today. At the time
of her disappearance, she was five to two and one
hundred and fifteen pounds. If you have any information, you
can contact the FBI at one eight hundred call FBI,
or submit a tip online at tips at FBI dot gov.
Or you can contact the Williamson County Sheriff's Office Cold
Case Team at five one two nine four three five

(50:55):
two zero four. This has been another episode of a
simpler time true crime. If you appreciate the work I'm doing,
please leave a five star review on your preferred listening
platform or any of your listening platforms. That really helps
get the word out there, but even more so just
telling your friends and sharing these episodes on social media.

(51:17):
If you wish to support the show monetarily, I do
have a speaker supporters club that you can find listed
at the bottom of the show notes. And as always,
thank you so much for listening and join me again
next Monday.

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