EVANSVILLE — Minutes after Evansville police publicly disclosed on Wednesday that a Henderson, Kentucky, woman was wanted for allegedly fabricating a string of reported sexual assaults and kidnappings, she was arrested and booked into Henderson's jail, where on Thursday she was awaiting extradition to Indiana.
A Vanderburgh County judge issued a warrant for Megan Nicole Cooper's arrest July 31 after prosecutors levied charges of obstruction of justice, a Level 6 felony, and false informing, a Class B Misdemeanor, against Cooper. The 34-year-old was processed at the Henderson County Detention Center just after 12:10 p.m.
Evansville police accused Cooper of falsely claiming to have been the victim of violent attacks that she is alleged to have staged at Wesselman Park: the popular recreation area on Evansville's East Side. According to court records, investigators believe Cooper may have orchestrated similar fabricated assaults in Kentucky.
Henderson County court records on Thursday did not list when Cooper would appear before a judge. She was being held on "no bond," the records state, and is listed as a "fugitive from another state."
Evansville Police Department Sgt. Taylor Merriss confirmed Cooper's arrest in Henderson was in connection with the warrant issued out of Vanderburgh County.
What law enforcement says happened
The unusual case traces back to at least mid-July, when Evansville 911 dispatchers received a report that Cooper had been sexually assaulted and was bound inside a vehicle at Wesselman Park.
EPD Detective Cameron Werne, who authored Cooper's arrest affidavit, wrote that responding officers found Cooper tied up in the back seat of her blue Subaru SUV.
"Officers observed that Megan's ankles were duct taped to a closet/shower rod and she had brown twine wrapped around her legs/ankles," the affidavit states. "Some of the brown twine was also wrapped around the front part of her neck."
The officers said Cooper was swaying in and out of consciousness as she attempted to communicate with them.
"Megan indicated in her statements that she was abducted at gunpoint, tied up and sexually assaulted," the affidavit states. "There was a large law enforcement response due to the serious nature of the incident."
In an EPD news release published Wednesday, Merriss said investigators at first believed the reported kidnapping and assault to have been "factual," but that changed upon further investigation, court records show.
A witness reportedly told detectives that several days before the July 11 incident, Cooper messaged them on Facebook at 2:40 a.m. to say she was stuck in Wesselman Park and needed help.
According to the affidavit, the witness drove to Wesselman, flashlight in hand, and located Cooper chained to a tree with her hands tied behind her back. The witness said Cooper was bound to the three with what appeared to be a dog chain.
"(The witness) stated (Cooper) had a zip tie around her neck pressed up against her skin, skin-tight, and a ball-gag sex toy sort of device in her mouth," Werne wrote in the affidavit. "(The witness) stated he went to his truck and got a pocket knife and returned to cut (Cooper) free from the zip ties."
But what reportedly happened next caught the attention of investigators: Cooper did not want the witness to contact the police, detectives said.
Detectives said the witness returned to Wesselman Park around midnight on July 11 after Cooper failed to pick up a friend's son at a previously agreed-upon time. At first, the witness reportedly said they located Cooper's vehicle but not Cooper. Upon further inspection, the witness and his mother found Cooper "tied up in the back seat," Werne wrote.
During subsequent police interviews, detectives said Cooper at first blamed the apparent attacks on an unnamed man who had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her on at least 15 different occasions, at times holding her at gunpoint and forcing her to take an "inhalant" that gave her memory loss.
But searches of Cooper's vehicle, analysis of cell phone location data and witness interviews caused detectives to not believe Cooper's account.
Inside Cooper's car, detectives allegedly recovered a receipt from Walmart in Henderson dated July 6 that included "zip ties, a dog collar chain and padlock" – some of the same items Cooper allegedly identified as those employed by her attacker.
Surveillance footage obtained from a Dollar General store in Henderson turned up footage of Cooper purchasing twine and, according to detectives, stealing a roll of duct tape on July 10.
"The items (Cooper) purchased/stole are the same type of items she was found tied up with approximately three hours later in Wesselman Park," Cooper's arrest affidavit states. "Megan is on surveillance video two separate times buying items of confinement. ... Megan advised during her interview that the suspect always brought these items ..."
According to detectives, messages obtained from Snapchat showed Cooper had told a man the day she was allegedly abducted that she wanted to be "raped," "tied up" and "gagged," telling the person she would soon purchase duct tape and twine.
"It was discovered (Cooper) had made numerous kidnapping and sexual assault reports in the past with other police agencies, including the Henderson Police Department and Bowling Green Police Department dating back to 2009," Werne wrote. "I read the police reports ... they are vastly similar to the report made here except she named the suspect 'Joe' instead of 'Mark.'"
On July 24, Werne spoke to Cooper over the phone after reading a Miranda warning.
"(Cooper) stated she lied about the events that happened that night," Werne wrote in Cooper's arrest affidavit.
Cooper reportedly went on to claim that she did meet with a man named "James" on the night of the supposed attack and that the pair engaged in sexual role-playing before the arrival of a passing car caused James to run away.
"I asked (Cooper) about contact information for James so I could try to verify this new version of events, and she did not want to give me contact information for the person named James," Werne wrote.
As of Thursday evening, Cooper had not been extradited to Vanderburgh County.
Statistically tracking instances of fabricated sexual assault and rape accusations is difficult, researchers say, due to shifting definitions of what constitutes a sexual attack, barriers to reporting sensitive crimes and inconsistencies in the methods employed across studies.
But the consensus is that such cases are rare. A 2009 study by Dr. Kimberly Lonsway, Dr. David Lisak and retired San Diego Police Department Sgt. Joanne Archambault found that of 2,059 cases of sexual assault examined, only 7.1% were deemed to have been "false."
According to research cited by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, that figure could be as low as 2.1%.
"When we investigate crimes, we lean on victim statements, witness statements and evidence to build a case that provides answers and closure for the victim," Merriss wrote in an EPD release discussing the incident. "We never want to discredit a victim’s statement of any crime. Unfortunately, in this case the victim of Sexual Assault and Kidnapping became the offender."
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated where the incident occurred: It was Wesselman Park, not Wesselman Woods.
Houston may be contacted at houston.harwood@courierpress.com
