Death in the Valley Part Two: October 26, 2013

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening,” Bethanee Cook said while a friend drove her to the emergency room at Shoshone Medical Center in Kellogg. “This isn’t happening.”

But it was happening, and it happened in a blur at the hospital. Bethanee thinks she saw her mom first, but isn’t sure. The next thing she remembers is her older brother, Tomas, telling her she shouldn’t go in the room to see her sister’s body. It was impossible for Bethanee to follow that warning.

She walked into a scene that reminded her of a movie — darkness intensifying a single bright light focused on Brianna’s body. For the second time that night, Bethanee fell to the ground crying.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Bethanee recalled her father, Arlen Cook, saying at the hospital to console her. “I tried to save her. I’m so sorry.”

Cook told The Press he was asleep in his bed at the Pinehurst home when Bethanee and Brianna arrived. He said he heard two loud bangs, likely the sound of the girls using the microwave, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“I usually sleep with my fan on and I’m used to my kids being noisy,” Cook said. “I just block it out; they know where my limits are.”

Around 1 a.m., Cook said he woke up to use the restroom and check on Brianna. The two had argued earlier in the day, Cook said, after Brianna became angry at her father’s absence throughout Bethanee’s birthday.

Brianna would frequently get heated, Cook said, and the family’s go-to strategy was to let the teen cool off for a while before attempting to make up.

When he opened the bathroom door, Cook said he was looking directly at Brianna. His daughter had an electrical cord tied around her neck, with another portion of the cord tied to the shower rod. The placement of Brianna’s feet in the small bathroom, which he said fit his small stature perfectly, stuck out to Cook. They were touching the floor, he said, and Brianna could have stood up at any time.

“But I already knew she was dead,” Cook said. “I saw it in her eyes. When you’re fixed, you’re fixed and your eyes are gone.”

Cook said he was struggling to maintain his composure while he attempted to hold his daughter up to untie her. When that didn’t work, Cook retrieved a knife and cut into the cord, leaving a portion tied around Brianna’s neck and another still tied to the shower rod.

He found seven pills, marijuana, and $60 on his daughter. But he could not find Brianna’s cell phone, which Cook said was never out of his daughter’s reach, to call for help. Without any other options, Cook scrambled to get dressed so he could drive Brianna to the emergency room.

“I grabbed my girl, dragged her out there and put her in the car,” Cook said. “Then I flew.”

Cook estimates that he arrived at the hospital at 1:27 a.m. Doctors pronounced Brianna dead at 1:49 a.m.

Former Shoshone County Deputy Coroner Dave Roose arrived at the hospital shortly after. Roose, a Silver Valley native who spent most of his career in mining and also worked as an EMT, said he fell into the position of deputy coroner after working as an apprentice at a funeral home for about eight months. He had held the deputy coroner position for more than a year when Coroner Lonny Duce, who was in Boise attending a weekend-long training seminar, called him and told him to go to Shoshone Medical Center.

“Dave we have a teenage girl, suicide, in the emergency room in Kellogg,” Roose recalls Duce saying on the phone.

It felt like an ordinary call, Roose said, and he didn’t think much of it as he prepared to head to the hospital. However, he added that years of experience as an EMT had taught him to listen closely to his gut instinct.

“If it feels wrong, something probably is wrong,” Roose said. “And my gut instinct told me that something was wrong when I walked into that hospital.”

A nurse recounted Cook’s narrative before she led Roose into the examination room. Upon touching Brianna’s corpse, Roose said he was struck by how cold the body was. Only a short period of time had passed from when Brianna was allegedly discovered to Roose beginning his examination, and the teen should have had at least a small degree of warmth left, he said.

“It was like touching a cold counter,” Roose told The Press. “It was like somebody that had been dead for five or six hours.”

A large contusion on the center of Brianna’s forehead was the next observation that set off alarm bells in Roose’s head. He said the wound was swollen, which to him indicated it had occurred before Brianna died. There were waffle-patterned marks on both of Brianna’s knees, which Roose said indicated to him that she died with her knees on something like a bath mat.

“That right away struck me as funny and I said, ‘Wait a minute, these are post-mortem marks, they’re set,’” Roose said.

Since he believed the story did not match his observations, Roose said he felt compelled to take several photos of Brianna, using his cell phone.

Meanwhile, Teresa Palin, Brianna’s mother, sat in the waiting room at the hospital. Her whole world had shifted after receiving the call informing her Brianna was dead.

Friends and family filled the waiting room, expressing their shock and grief. Palin continued to sit in the chair as numbness consumed her.

“I was super calm,” Palin told The Press. “I didn’t cry for I don’t know how long — hours and hours and hours.”

It would be weeks before Palin began recovering from the shock and was able to recall exactly what transpired in the hospital that night.

“Who’s the mom?” Roose asked as he waded through the crowded waiting room.

Friends and family quickly pointed to Palin.

“I’m so sorry,” Roose said to Brianna’s mother.

Palin accompanied Roose back to the room where Brianna’s body was located. The privacy enabled the deputy coroner to speak to Palin about how her daughter’s body would be taken to Spokane for a complete autopsy, which Roose said is required by state statute for anyone under the age of 18.

“She didn’t do this to herself,” Roose whispered to Palin.

Roose communicated the same message to Pinehurst Chief of Police Rocky Wilson after a brief examination of Brianna’s body. However, when Roose encouraged Wilson to take pictures of the body for his investigation, Wilson allegedly replied that he did not need to take photos “when it’s an obvious suicide.”

"I felt it in my heart and in my soul. I will go to my grave knowing that this girl was murdered," Roose told The Press. "There is no doubt in my mind. The whole thing didn't add up."

Chief Wilson pulled Cook aside at the hospital. Cook said that, through tears, he was able to recount the events leading up to his arrival at the hospital. Wilson didn’t say much at the hospital, but Cook said the law enforcement officer was apologetic and kind as he listened. The two arranged to meet that night at the Pinehurst home. Cook and two of his relatives met with Wilson that evening.

“I opened the door and showed him around,” Cook said. “He took like two or three pictures and that’s it.”

While Wilson was taking the photos, Cook said he noticed that the portion of cord left hanging on the shower rod after he’d cut Brianna down was missing. Wilson, according to Cook, told the family members he was sorry for their loss, then left. The house was not taped off or secured for further investigation, Cook added.

Brianna’s phone, which Cook had tried to find to call for help after cutting his daughter down, turned up the next afternoon under a loveseat in the teen’s bedroom.

According to family members, the phone had been factory reset and did not contain any messages or information on it.

“That was a huge big red flag for us,” Palin said. “Brianna was never out of sight of her phone. Her phone was in whatever room she was in and if she switched rooms, so did her phone.”

According to Cook, Wilson never contacted him again regarding the investigation.

In Wilson’s report on the incident, which was modified and approved on Dec. 10, 2013, the chief of police contradicts Cook’s narrative regarding the visit to the Pinehurst home.

“When I entered the bathroom I saw a cord hanging from the shower door slider,” Wilson wrote. “I took pictures of the bathroom and cord. I then pulled on the cord and it was secure, but the cut end of the cord was only approximately 4 feet off the floor.”

The report continues with Wilson stating he “couldn’t find anything in the residence that pointed at anything but suicide.” He adds that, after leaving the house and going to the hospital to question friends and family, “every one I spoke to said the same thing, they thought Brianna was bipolar and just not diagnosed as such.”

Approximately one month later, detectives with Idaho State Police met with Brianna’s father to discuss the incident. According to police reports obtained by The Press, ISP Detective Michael Van Leuven questioned friends and family members until February 2014.

There are two versions of Wilson’s report, with two different conclusions. In the version obtained through a public records request, Wilson’s report concludes with the police chief stating he is still waiting for the official autopsy report, but adds that he is “calling this a suicide as I have no evidence pointing otherwise.”

Two paragraphs are added to the version of the report given to The Press by Brianna’s family. In this version, Wilson writes that Van Leuven asked him for a copy of his report prior to launching the ISP investigation.

“At the end of his investigation he informed me that he came to the same conclusion as I did,” the report, dated Dec. 10, 2013, states. “This case will be closed.”