By: Mat Cloak
The Parsons Advocate
In conjunction with last week’s remembrance of Trooper Brown, January is the 40th anniversary of the murder of Ida Mae Cooper.
While in the Tucker County Jail, Frederick Dean Hamilton, the man convicted of murdering Trooper Brown, asserted his influence over a young Mountaineer High School dropout, David Mills.
Mills was 19 when he was arrested for stealing a car. He was a resident of Davis and had worked for the Cooper’s the previous summer. M.L. “Red” Cooper was the mayor of Davis at the time, and his wife, Ida Mae, was an active community member.
Darl Pine was the sheriff in 1978. His wife, Katherine Pine, lived at the Tucker County Jail. She interacted with both, Hamilton and Mills. “Hamilton seemed very nice as far as talking to him and acting in jail. You would’ve never dreamed he would do something.” She remembers Mills as less than innocuous. “David Mills wasn’t as friendly as Hamilton. He was kind of talky, like,” Pine said. Mills was described as a misfit in high school, a less than cooperative student who was often getting into fights.
Mills was released on probation after serving time with Hamilton. Witnesses recalled seeing Mills immediately start hitchhiking in the direction of Davis. Mills made it to the Canaan Valley, entered the unlocked Cooper residence, and waited for someone to come home. Ida Mae returned from town in the afternoon.
According to a February 1978 edition of The Parsons Advocate, “Mills called the Elkins Inter-Mountain and demanded that $750,000 in small bills be placed in a four-wheel drive vehicle outside Tucker County jail and that Hamilton be released.”
Retired West Virginia State Trooper George Worden remembers getting a call from his detachment commander ordering him to head to Canaan Valley. “We started patrolling, I guess that maybe I had the advantage over some of the other troopers that were in the area because I was born and raised in Tucker County,” Worden said.
When Mills placed another call to The Inter-Mountain to check on the status of his demands, officials were able to trace the call to a pay phone. Worden received this information, and with his knowledge of the area, he and three other troopers headed to the Canaan Valley State Park ski area.
When Worden arrived at the ski area, he recognized the Cooper’s vehicle. Mills attempted to flee in the vehicle, crashed, and then ran. The four troopers, including Worden, pursued. “We converged on him, and was able to take him into custody,” Worden said. Worden recalled being able to hear the hum of engines as scores of law enforcement vehicles flooded the area.
Mills was arrested less than 12 hours after he was released on probation. After he was taken to jail, a search for Cooper ensued. Later in the night of January 26, Cooper was discovered in a swampy area off Laneville Road. She had been shot twice with a shotgun.
At the time of the trial, The Parsons Advocate reported that Mills testified he was “mesmerized” by Hamilton. Through the trial, it came to light that Hamilton had given Mills explicit instructions on each step of the crime: the kidnapping, the call to the newspaper, and the ransom demand. Hamilton reportedly told Mills to “leave no witnesses.”
Hamilton and Mills were both charged with kidnapping and murder and were sentenced to life in the state penitentiary. In 1986, another inmate stabbed Mills to death.
Worden recalled how the Hamilton and Mills crimes affected the community. “Some of my family still resided up there, everybody took it serious.” Magistrate Mont Miller had just returned to the area from law school when Mills’ case when to trial. “It was a terrible, terrible tragedy. Nobody could believe it,” Miller said.
