stephencookejr.com
Evidence
The Keys
There were accusations that a set of keys was missing. Bennett claimed that Stephen left a key for him under a mat in front of the basement door on the day of the murder. The State tried to make a case at trial that a set of keys was missing since Stephen only returned two sets of keys to the rental company upon moving out of the house. This is simply not true. Heidi’s family had the “missing” set of keys. It was given to them by the police and was testified to by a police officer during his trial.
About a week before Heidi was murdered on April 13, 2000, Stephen noticed some damage done to the basement door around both locks. He called the rental company and requested a new door to immediately be installed. The rental company eventually sent a maintenance man out on April 19, 2000. However, the maintenance man showed up with only a new set of locks. Stephen called the office complaining that new locks were useless because the chipping completely surrounded the locks, and insisted that a new door be installed. The rental company agreed to order a new door and offered to put metal lock guards on the door until the new door came in. However, the maintenance man didn’t have the lock guards with him.
On April 20, 2000, just hours before Heidi was murdered, the maintenance man returned with lock guards, but they were the wrong size. He offered to return later that evening or the next day with the correct size. Stephen said he wouldn’t be there later that evening and that the maintenance man should return the next morning when Stephen would be home. It was not possible for the maintenance man to return that evening because Stephen and Heidi weren’t going to be there. Since they owned a Rottweiler, their lease explicitly denied anyone access to the property unless Stephen or Heidi were home.
Upon replacing the locks on April 17, 2000, the maintenance man gave Stephen three sets of keys. The deadbolt on each door was a different key than the doorknob lock so it took two keys to lock and unlock a door. However, the front and back doors matched so Stephen was given three sets of the same two keys. He gave one set to Heidi later that day.
After Heidi was murdered, police took her car and her car keys. As the picture clearly shows Heidi’s set of house keys was on her key ring. When Stephen left the police department after being questioned, the police kept Heidi’s house keys. When Stephen eventually returned the keys, Heidi’s set was “missing.” This fact was testified to by Baltimore County detective Kurt Wilhelm when he stated on the stand that he gave the keys to Heidi’s family. For some reason, prosecutors, Heidi’s family and others choose to completely ignore this fact and limit their statements solely to “he only returned two sets of keys.”
It should also be noted that Bennett testified he was given one key, not a set of keys. In order for this to be true, Stephen would have to have left one lock unlocked for Heidi’s killer, but locked the other one. Why would anyone do this? If someone were leaving a door unlocked for a killer, why would he unlock only one of the locks? It’s insane to suggest that Stephen locked one lock to keep out potential burglars while giving a key to a killer. Why lock the doors at all?
Email Messages
Bennett testified that Lewis and Stephen met online and communicated through email messages. There has never been a single email message gathered or introduced as evidence. Nor has there even been a single piece of evidence that these emails ever existed. The whole issue of emails is nothing more than Bennett’s claims. The State also never provided a single piece of evidence to suggest how Lewis or Bennett ever met Stephen online. There is only Bennett’s claim that Lewis and Stephen met in a chat room.
The only working computer Stephen and Heidi owned was one they were buying through a Gateway credit purchase in Heidi’s name. Heidi’s parents took possession of this computer after her death.
Although the police claim they never took the computer into their possession for evidence, they did look at it while investigating the crime scene. In an official report, an officer who had inspected the computer said the internet (AOL) had not been accessed since the Tuesday morning prior to the murder, about 55 hours before the murder was committed.
In an attempt to gather further information, the police served a search warrant to America Online on April 26, 2000. This search warrant did not produce any email activity.
Email Messages
Bennett testified that Lewis and Stephen met online and communicated through email messages. There has never been a single email message gathered or introduced as evidence. Nor has there even been a single piece of evidence that these emails ever existed. The whole issue of emails is nothing more than Bennett’s claims. The State also never provided a single piece of evidence to suggest how Lewis or Bennett ever met Stephen online. There is only Bennett’s claim that Lewis and Stephen met in a chat room.
The only working computer Stephen and Heidi owned was one they were buying through a Gateway credit purchase in Heidi’s name. Heidi’s parents took possession of this computer after her death.
Although the police claim they never took the computer into their possession for evidence, they did look at it while investigating the crime scene. In an official report, an officer who had inspected the computer said the internet (AOL) had not been accessed since the Tuesday morning prior to the murder, about 55 hours before the murder was committed.
In an attempt to gather further information, the police served a search warrant to America Online on April 26, 2000. This search warrant did not produce any email activity.
Vodka Bottle & Dog Collar
After about 15 hours of questioning, Stephen left the police department on the afternoon of Friday, April 21, 2000. He rode with his sister and his father back to the house he shared with Heidi in Dundalk. Five minutes after Stephen arrived home, Detective Meyer came waking through the front door while Stephen, his sister and father were upstairs. Meyer informed Stephen that the house was still considered a crime scene so Stephen packed some clothes and went to live with his sister in Baltimore City.
On April 24, 2000 (3 days later), Stephen returned to the home at Codd Avenue with a moving truck to collect his personal belongings. This was after the police had completed their investigation and said the house was no longer a crime scene. As he was emptying the refrigerator and freezer he found an empty vodka bottle in the freezer. It was a bottle Stephen and Heidi purchased in anticipation of a game night they were going to have with a couple from one of their pool teams.
The game night never happened and the vodka bottle was never opened. Neither Heidi nor Stephen drank vodka and since the couple who did drink vodka never came to the house, the vodka bottle stayed in the freezer. So it seemed strange to Stephen that it was empty when he noticed it in the freezer on the day he was moving out.
Despite the fact that it seemed ridiculous the bottle could be related in any way to Heidi’s murder, Stephen still saved the bottle and notified the police he had it. When he handed it over to the police, he told them that it may seem strange, but he believed the killer may have actually drank the vodka. This is because he was sure the police didn’t drink it and nobody else could have except the killer. He gave the bottle to police and asked them to test it for the presence of DNA.
Although the police took custody of the bottle, they didn’t immediately test it for DNA. Instead, they set it on a shelf for 13 years, before finally deciding to test it for DNA. By the time they tested it, the DNA had partially broken down and they weren’t able to positively connect it to Bennett.
However, they were able to positively exclude Heidi and Stephen as the source of the DNA. On the stand, a crime lab technician testified that there was a partial match to Bennett. Although the partial match isn’t proof, when it’s added to the facts that Heidi and Stephen were excluded as the source of the DNA and the only people in the house were Bennett, Heidi, Stephen, police officers and maintenance man, who was supervised by Stephen, it becomes pretty obvious and convincing that Bennett was indeed the source of the DNA.
In October of 2013, Rockelle Buchanan, an inmate at the County jail with Bennett, told police that Bennett said he was only worried about two things, the DNA under Heidi’s fingernails and the vodka bottle he drank from in the victims house.
Why is the Vodka bottle a big deal?
It’s a big deal for several reasons:
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It shows that Stephen was actively trying to help police catch Heidi’s killer. Police had investigated the crime scene and released the house, thereby abandoning everything in it. Stephen found the bottle, preserved it and held onto it until the police finally collected it weeks later. If Stephen were involved in the crime, he would have just tossed the bottle in the trash and nobody would have known anything about it. If he were involved in the crime, he certainly wouldn’t not have given a possible sample of the killers DNA to the police.
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It shows that Bennett is hiding something. When did he have time to sit around and finish off a whole bottle of vodka? Why is he admitting to killing Heidi, but denying he drank from the bottle even though his DNA was on it and he confessed to drinking it to a fellow inmate?
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It shows the prosecutors and/or police also may be hiding something. They know the DNA is there. They know Bennett admitted to drinking the vodka. So why did they hide this from the jury? Why did prosecutors refer to the bottle as a “red herring” when mentioning it in closing arguments after defense introduced it?
Bennett never claimed to have drank the vodka when he claimed to have met Stephen or when he broke in he also didn’t say anything about drinking it on the day of the murder. This means he must have been in the house on at least one other occasion. If this is true, why was he there and who was he with?
In contrast to this, Heidi’s family found a sticker inside of her car that they believed had blood on it. They requested the police to test it. The sticker was quickly tested, but no relevant evidence was found. Why wasn’t the same thoroughness given to the vodka bottle back in 2000?
Suspicious Block Watch Person
On the night Bennett approached Heidi as a block watch person, Stephen was still at work. However, Heidi mentioned the incident to Stephen when he arrived home. Together they tried to call the long-distance number left behind by the block watch person, but it was out of service.
Heidi provided a description to Stephen that included an approximate height, a light-skinned black male, a hair style and a tattoo on the left forearm. Stephen relayed this description to the police on the Friday before Heidi was murdered. He explained the incident of a stranger posing as a block watch member and providing Heidi with an out of town phone number that was not in service. He again gave this description to the police after Heidi was murdered.
Bennett is a match to the description Stephen provided the police. This is further proof that Stephen was not only trying to assist in the investigation, but also tried to prevent anything bad from happening in the first place. If Stephen had been involved in the crime, he certainly would not have provided police with such an accurate description of the actual killer.