Fred Cooper is on trial in the Gateway murder case.

Submitted

Steve and Michelle Andrews, the couple that was killed in December 2005 in the Gateway community in Fort Myers.

RELATED STORIES

• GATEWAY MURDER TRIAL BLOG: Jurors hear tapes of statements Cooper made to detectives
• Woman linked romantically to both victim and defendant takes stand in Gateway murder trial
• BLOG UPDATES: Kellie Ballew testifies in Gateway murder trial
• Cooper trial shifts to testimony of family, friends this week

Related Links

• GATEWAY MURDER TRIAL BLOG: Neighbors continue testimony

More Bonita

• Bonita City Council to vote on proposed disabled veterans benefit
• Lee County Police Briefs: Dec. 3, 2008
• Lee County Sheriff’s Office searching for attempted robbery suspect of San Carlos CVS store

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Share and Enjoy [?]

BONITA SPRINGS — He wore a camouflage jacket but he didn’t blend in.

Several neighbors of Steven and Michelle Andrews testified Tuesday on the third day of the Gateway murder trial about seeing an unfamiliar man walking through their gated community. Three teenagers recalled seeing a man wearing a camouflage jacket walking toward the Andrewses’ home the night before the murders became national news.

On Dec. 26, 2005, Ben Potter, Colin Baird and Ryan McCurdy had been hanging out watching movies at Potter’s house, enjoying the holiday break from school.

About 10:45 p.m., they left Potter’s house to walk Baird home.

When Potter went out the front door, he testified that he saw a white man with a camouflage jacket and a shaved head about seven or eight feet away from him.

“I had just walked out the screen door,” Potter said. “He looked at me and then turned and put his hood up and continued to walk.”

He had “a little hair on his chin,” Potter said. “I made eye contact and looked at him for a few seconds.”

Bonita Springs resident Fred Cooper, 30, had a goatee when he was arrested nearly three years ago and charged with the Andrewses’ deaths. Now on trial facing two counts of first degree murder, Cooper still has a goatee and a bald head.

Yet on cross-examination, Cooper’s defense attorney Ken Garber questioned Potter about his attention to detail on the night before the murder.

“You didn’t really remember what his face looked like, did you?” Garber asked.

Potter agreed that he didn’t, though his friends all gave similar descriptions of the man in question.

When Cooper stood before the witnesses, each of them said the defendant’s appearance was not inconsistent with the man they saw in their Gateway neighborhood.

“I could tell you he was a white male around 6 feet tall. Really short hair,” Baird, now 17, said. “As I walked out, he was turning away and putting his hood up.”

At the time, Baird would have been 14. His friends were 15.

Baird said he saw the man for “two or three seconds.”

McCurdy, who didn’t live in the same neighborhood and who didn’t notice the man until he was near an entrance gate to the community, said he just got a glance.

“He was almost 6 foot, white male wearing a camo hooded jacket and a backpack,” McCurdy said.

Much of the testimony has focused on a camouflage jacket, even though the jury hasn’t seen one nor has one been introduced into court as evidence. But several witnesses — including Kellie Ballew, Cooper’s longtime girlfriend and Steven Andrews’ lover — have been asked to look into a paper bag and identify what is believed to be a camouflage jacket. Discovery showed that Sheriff’s detectives had confiscated a camouflage jacket from Cooper.

As the trial neared the end of the first week, jurors also heard from other Gateway residents who noticed an unfamiliar man in their neighborhood the next morning.

Al Lukomski was leaving for work between 6:30 and 7 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2005.

He testified that he was waiting at the community’s exit gate when a man walked past his truck. The man passed him about three or four feet away.

“The person was bundled up. It was a cool morning,” he said. “I tried to look to see who it was, and they didn’t look at me.”

There was enough light at that hour, he said, that he didn’t need headlights to drive.

The man he saw had a backpack and what appeared to be a goatee.

“I couldn’t see his face very well. He was dressed up in a camouflage jacket,” Lukomski said.

He tried to catch the man’s eye, but the man kept looking straight ahead.

“I thought it was odd. Most folks in the neighborhood would look at you,” he said.

A little after 7 a.m. that morning, a 911 call brought authorities to the Andrewses’ home. Their bodies were found inside their bedroom. Their 2-year-old son was found unharmed and holding the phone.

Doug Jimmo was a neighbor of the Andrewses in 2005. He testified about seeing a man he didn’t recognize wearing a camouflage jacket walking past him about 25 to 30 feet away a little before 7 a.m. Dec. 27, 2005.

He was later shown a photo lineup by Detective Walter Ryan. While other witnesses said they couldn’t pick anyone out of a similar photo lineup, Jimmo said the man he saw looked like the man in the third photo, but he wrote at the time that he could not be positive.

In the courtroom Tuesday, Jimmo pointed to Fred Cooper as the man he had seen that morning.

Jimmo and Lukomski both noted the man they saw was wearing a camouflage jacket. Both said they were familiar with different types of camouflage, and described the type of jacket they saw as not military-style camouflage. Lukomski said it was the type of camouflage used for hunting in this part of the state, as the style was meant to blend in with pine trees and oak trees.

Late Tuesday, jurors heard from William Kalstrom, one of the detectives with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office who helped investigate the case.

He arrived at the Andrewses’ home in Gateway about 8 a.m. Dec. 27, 2005. He helped with a neighborhood canvass, then helped interview Kellie Ballew that afternoon.

He said Ballew was never a suspect, but from what Ballew told him, he said, “it became quite clear Fred would become someone of interest in this case.”

When Cooper came to the main Sheriff’s Office later that day at Ballew’s request, they went to talk in a small, square interview room with bare walls, a table and a few chairs.

“Mr. Cooper came down voluntarily,” Kalstrom said. Cooper did not appear to be under the influence of any drugs or alcohol, he said, and Cooper gave a taped statement over the next hour and a half.

Prosecutor Anthony Kunasek asked if Cooper said during that statement what he was doing between 10:30 p.m. and midnight on Dec. 26, 2005.

“He said he was tinkering with his motorcycle in his garage,” Kalstrom said.

Later that day, Kalstrom followed him and Ballew back to their home in the Village Walk development in Bonita Springs. Kalstrom said he searched the home, looking for a weapon and for a camouflage jacket.

Jurors also heard from a crime scene technician who helped search the house, and they heard about how the security gate system at Village Walk would have captured the times when residents entered the community.