A Las Vegas woman was found guilty of shooting her eldest son with the very same .357 Magnum she had used to kill her ex-husband two decades earlier. Linda Cooney said the first shooting was self-defense and the second was an accident. The case is unusual because the weapon in both shootings turned out to be the same one, and because of how it ended up back in her hands.
A marriage that turned violent
Cooney grew up on a farm in Wisconsin before moving to Florida, where she married Palm Beach attorney Jim Cooney. The couple had two sons, Kevin and Christopher, but the marriage became physically violent. They divorced nine years later and fought a bitter custody battle.
The night in 1992
One evening in 1992, Jim came to Linda’s home to pick up the boys. While they packed in a bedroom, Kevin heard a disturbance outside. Looking through a gap in the door, he saw what he believed was his father approaching with a shiny object. Then his mother shot him with a .357 Magnum.
Linda was charged with first-degree murder. Her defense was that Jim had threatened her with a knife. Investigators suspected she had placed the knife in his hand after his death. At trial, Kevin said he had seen a "glary shine" on his father’s hand, though he could not say what it was. Linda was cleared of all charges, and the family moved to Las Vegas.
A possessive mother
As the boys grew up, former girlfriends said Linda constantly interfered in their love lives. When Kevin began dating MMA athlete Karina Taylor in 2011, Linda allegedly started harassing her with phone calls.
The second shooting
On the morning of June 28, 2011, Linda called the police to report that her 30-year-old son had a gunshot wound to his neck. She said the two had argued over his new girlfriend, that Kevin had hit her before she went to bed, and that she had heard no shot.
At the scene, officers found a blood-stained .357 Magnum. It was the weapon used to kill Jim Cooney, which Linda had managed to retrieve from police evidence storage 20 years before.
Three days later, Kevin woke in hospital and said: "No mom. I’m afraid of mom. Mom shot me."
Changing stories
Before the trial, Kevin changed his account, saying he had attacked his mother and the shooting was an accident. Prosecutors suspected he was trying to protect her.
Other witnesses undermined that version. Kevin’s ex-girlfriend Clarita Kendall said Kevin told her in hospital that he had been sitting on the couch when his mother shot him without warning. Doctors noted the shot was fired at a downward angle, which did not fit his later story.
The jury found Linda guilty of attempted murder, battery with a deadly weapon, intimidating Kevin before his testimony, and stalking Karina Taylor. Kevin still insisted she had been wrongly convicted, writing that it was his own actions that had put him in his present condition.
Image credit: LVMPD Office of Public Information Office
Source: Daily Express US
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