Karina Cooper murder trial postponed until February 2025 | News, Sports, Jobs

Karina Cooper

TOLEDO – Karina Sue Cooper’s first-degree murder trial has been postponed until February 2025.

On July 30, Assistant Attorney General Michael H. Ringle filed a motion to extend the 10-day jury trial that was scheduled to begin on October 1 of this year. The state requested the change of date because Ringle and Assistant Attorney General Israel Kodiaga were both scheduled to be tried on other matters. Karina Cooper’s defense attorney, Nichole Watt of the Waterloo Public Defender’s Office, did not resist the request.

While the state and defense requested that the trial be postponed until next January, on Aug. 13, Chief Judge Lars G. Anderson postponed the trial until Feb. 25, 2025. The trial will remain in Linn County as previously ordered.

Karina Cooper, a longtime rural Traer resident and mother, was arrested last February following a more than two-and-a-half-year investigation by the Tama County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation into the death of her husband Ryan Cooper, 42, who was found deceased in their shared home in the early morning hours of June 18, 2021, following a 911 call from the residence.

According to the criminal complaint in the case, a deputy found Ryan Cooper lying in a recliner with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the front of his face, while Karina Cooper was allegedly observed sitting on top of him.

In a written indictment filed March 14, Karina Cooper, now 47, pleaded not guilty to the single count of first-degree murder, a Class A felony.

In late April of this year, Huston William Danker, 26, a former Traer resident, was also arrested and charged with first-degree murder for acting “in concert with Karina Cooper to kill Ryan Cooper.” Danker has pleaded not guilty to the Class A felony alone. His trial is scheduled to begin on December 17, 2024, in Johnson County.

Karina Cooper and Danker both remain behind bars in the Tama County Jail on $1 million bail.

A first-degree murder conviction in Iowa carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole or probation.

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