Kellie Ballew, the other woman, testifies in Cooper trial II

The first degree murder trial of Fred Cooper continues today in Saint Petersburg.

Kellie Lynn Ballew, 29, testified today and told jurors that her boyfriend, Fred Cooper, was distraught, if not devastated, when she ended their relationship in December 2005. She and Cooper had been together for 6-and-a-half years and had a daughter together.

He wrote personal notes for her and left them around the Bonita Springs home they shared. He threatened to kill himself at one point, grabbing a gun and ammunition from a closet and running to the basement. She talked him out of it.

Ballew hid her new relationship with Steven Andrews, 28, a married coworker, from Cooper. On the night of Dec. 26, 2005, when she left home to meet Andrews at their office and have sex with him, she told Cooper she was meeting a friend.

“I didn’t feel as if he was stable enough mentally and emotionally to know I was meeting Steve,” she said.

The bodies of Steven Andrews and his wife, Michelle, 28, were discovered in their Gateway bedroom the next morning. Steven Andrews died of a gunshot wound to the head. Michelle Andrews was badly beaten and asphyxiated to death.

Cooper, if convicted of the killings, could face the death penalty. His first trial, in October 2008, ended when a Lee County jury failed to reach a verdict. The case was moved to St. Petersburg to escape heavy media coverage.

See previous post for more details on Kellie Ballew.

More on today’s testimony, Here.

Posted:  02.24.09