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GREENACRES MAN A SUSPECT IN WIFE'S 1970 DISAPPEARANCE[/size][/font]
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BYLINE: SCOTT McCABE, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer[/font]
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DATE: April 26, 2003[/font] [font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]
PUBLICATION: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)[/font]
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EDITION: FINAL[/font]
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SECTION: A SECTION[/font]
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PAGE: 1A[/font]
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MEMO: Ran all editions.[/font]
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Tony Cook barely remembers his mother, but he has vowed to find her killer.
Police say he should start with his father.[/font] [font=Arial,geneva,helvetica]
Polk County sheriff's detectives reopened the 32-year-old mystery of Mary Margaret Cook last month by digging up the garage floor of the family's former home in Highland City. They also announced that Leathern "Earl" Cook, Tony's father, now a Greenacres resident, was their main suspect.
"I would hate it if it's my father and lose both parents, but I would like to see it resolved," Tony Cook said when investigators began snooping around. "I hope he didn't. I love him, but there's always that doubt."
Tony's 35 now and lives in South Palm Beach with a family of his own. He was 3 years old and the younger of Mary Margaret's two boys when she vanished in November 1970. He remembers only flashes of his mother, his bottle and his crib. It's mostly an emotional recall.
But in the month since detectives began ripping up the garage, Tony began his own investigating - questioning his father's family and visiting with detectives. Tony has even undergone hypnosis to delve for clues and lost memories.
Earl Cook has always told Tony that his mother abandoned the family. Tony's not so sure. The more he learns, the more suspicious he has grown.
Now, Earl Cook refuses to talk to him, Tony says.
Cook, 62 and a Greenacres resident for nearly 30 years, maintains his innocence and told detectives that they wouldn't find anything under the garage in the Central Florida town.
"I never killed my wife," he told The Lakeland Ledger last month, "and I want them to prove that I did."
He wouldn't comment for this story.
Learning through clippings
As a boy about 7 years old, Tony Cook got in trouble for learning the details of his mother's disappearance.
It was in the mid-1970s. He was visiting his grandmother's tiny house in Mulberry, where a living room wall displayed a framed portrait of Tony and his brother, Travis, with their mother.
Tony knew not to bring up the subject of his missing mother. His father didn't even have photos of her. But that day, when no one was looking, he crept into his grandmother's bedroom. He discovered a shoebox filled with old pictures and worn newspaper clippings about his mother: "Highland City woman missing," "Police suspect foul play in woman's disappearance," read the 5-year-old headlines.
Tony quickly shoveled the keepsakes into his little blue suitcase so that he could read them when it was safe. When he returned home to his father's house in Greenacres, he sat on his bed and stared at the clippings. He was too young to fully absorb the painful words in front of him.
The thrust of what he saw: On Nov. 14, 1970, Mary Margaret Cook disappeared. Her 1959 white Cadillac was found, along with her empty wallet, the next day at a Lakeland department store parking lot. Earl Cook told detectives his wife, who was 25, had about $200 with her to buy Christmas presents for her two boys, Travis, 5, and Tony, 3. They never found her.
'I had a lot of questions'
Tony's stepmother found him on his bed that day, looking at the articles. She made Tony apologize to his grandmother for taking them from her house.
"When I got caught, I had a lot of questions and a lot of tears," he said. "What happened to her? What was she like? Where did she go to school? Did she love me and Travis? Who was she?"
The Mary Margaret Cook case outlived the life of the detective who tried to solve it. Dan Weatherford, a huge, gruff man, had investigated Polk County's biggest crimes, even discovering the controversial gun that sent convicted killer Willie Darden to the electric chair in a case that drew national attention.
Mary Cook's disappearance was the only major crime Weatherford couldn't solve. After his retirement in 1977, he would call his department at least three times a year to remind them. "You figure out how to solve that case, yet?" his deep voice boomed over the phone, recalled sheriff's Col. Grady Judd. Weatherford told him,"I don't want you to quit. You can't ever quit, not until you solve it or until the suspect dies."
Weatherford didn't live to see it solved. He died in a tractor accident in 1992.
Judd, who looks more FBI than small-town deputy, is running the investigation now. He wouldn't say why he ordered the garage searched, but he believes more information is out there. Over time, he said, relationships change and someone may come forward with details they have held inside for years. After all, there's no statute of limitation for murder.
"We're hoping that someone comes forward - before they go to their grave - to clear up their conscience and clear up the murder of a 25-year-old mother of two boys," he said.
But after nearly a month of digging and demolishing the garage, sheriff's detectives turned up nothing.
Earl Cook remains the main suspect, although he should be comforted to know that detectives don't focus solely on one person, Judd said. He had opportunity, he was the last to see her alive, and he was physically capable, Judd said. He wouldn't talk about why he would want to see his young wife dead.
8-year-old marriage
Earl and Mary Margaret Cook were married about eight years when she vanished. He often drove to West Palm Beach for painting jobs during the week, then would return to Highland City on weekends. He remarried two years after his wife's disappearance and divorced three years ago. He married a third time and lives in a modest, well-kept yellow house.
Mary Margaret's 77-year-old mother still has two of the three Christmas gifts that Mary Margaret intended to buy her boys the night she disappeared. Gladys Barefoot bought the toys for her grandchildren that Christmas in 1970 because that's what Mary Margaret would have wanted, she said. One present is a red Radio Flyer wagon; the other is a heavy plastic elephant with velvet ears.
"It's kind of hard knowing that your mother is missing because she was out buying something for you," Tony said. "That's a killer."
He's worried that his older brother, Travis, saw something and has been holding it inside all his life. Travis, who lives in Lakeland working for the same tank-lining company Earl once worked for, is painfully shy, Tony said.
Tony, who's married with a child and attending Florida Atlantic University to become a teacher, has had the same dream over the years - that police find his mother's body. She's buried toward the back of the house, behind the garage.
Gladys Barefoot has the same dreams.
They wake her up and she can't get back to sleep. That's when it gets bad, she said.
When Mary Cook first disappeared, the Barefoots took care of little Travis and Tony. On weekends, Earl returned from Palm Beach County to stay with them.
But it became unbearable for Gladys after detectives told her they suspected Earl.
"Police had me watching him, making sure he didn't say or do anything suspicious," she said. "My nerves couldn't take it no more, thinking he did it. It was like sitting here with my daughter's killer and not knowing."
Gladys finally sat Earl down and asked him, "Did you kill Mary?"
Earl didn't answer. He grabbed Travis and Tony and walked out. He's never answered her question, she says.
"I've prayed for 32 years to know what happened to her," she said. "I just want some closure. Maybe those prayers will be answered.
"I'm a Christian. If Earl had anything to do with it, I'd like to know that he's paying for it before I leave this Earth. If he didn't do it, then I'm praying for him, 'cause I know he's hurting, too."
Staff researchers Dorothy Shea and Sammy Alzofon contributed to this story.
scott_mccabe@pbpost.com[/font]