Two men indicted in 2019 by a federal grand jury in the death of a Malvern woman whose body was found in a Hot Spring County pasture in the summer of 2018 -- nearly two years after she disappeared -- had their case go to trial this week in federal court in Little Rock.
Donald Bill Smith, 37, of Malvern and Samuel "Big Hit" Sherman, 38, of Batesville were indicted in September 2019 on several charges in the shooting death of 44-year-old Suzen Cooper.
Cooper, who federal officials said was a confidential informant at the time of her death, was last seen Sept. 26, 2016, in Malvern and was reported missing shortly after. Her skeletal remains were found in early August 2018 in a field off Grigsby Ford Road, a few miles west of Malvern.
In February 2017, her former sister-in-law, Racheal Cooper, was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded guilty in August 2018 to a reduced charge of hindering apprehension or prosecution. She was sentenced in Hot Spring County Circuit Court to 25 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
On Thursday, as Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall summarized the case for the jury of eight women, four men and three alternates.
Opening for the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner said Smith and Sherman were cousins and had grown up near each other in Malvern.
Gardner said that in 2015, Samuel Sherman had been released from federal prison after serving time for drug distribution and was on supervised release, and eventually moved to Batesville.
"After that, Suzen Cooper purchased methamphetamine from Sam Sherman," Gardner said. "In May 2016, Sam Sherman was arrested on charges for selling drugs to Suzen Cooper, and his federal supervised release was going to be revoked."
Gardner said Sherman made a deal with federal investigators to work as an informant and was released from jail, but none of his information ever panned out. In the meantime, she said, Racheal Cooper and Smith were both living in the Malvern area, with Racheal Cooper buying methamphetamine from Smith, and Gardner said Suzen Cooper had gained a reputation as an informant.
"A number of people living in the Malvern area believed that Suzen Cooper had worked as a snitch," Gardner said. "That she had worked for law enforcement and set up individuals and bought drugs from drug dealers."
Gardner said several people in the area had begun threatening Suzen Cooper, "and one of those people was Sam Sherman."
On Sept. 27, 2016, Gardner said, Racheal Cooper drove Suzen Cooper to where she was killed on the pretext of giving her a ride to exchange hydrocodone pills for methamphetamine.
"Unbeknownst to Suzen," Gardner said, "this drug trade was to be made with Don Smith."
Once the two arrived at the Grigsby Ford Road location near the pasture where Suzen Cooper's body was found nearly two years later, Gardner said Smith shot her to death to prevent her from testifying against Sherman in a supervised release revocation hearing scheduled for the following month.
Blake Hendrix, one of Smith's defense attorneys, said that as a confidential informant, Suzen Cooper's activities were far from secret.
"There was nothing confidential about Suzen Cooper's informing," he told the jury. "She had informed on a lot of people, and she was getting threats from a lot of people. And she was scared."
But, he said, two people she was not informing on were Smith and Sherman. He said Racheal Cooper's story about Suzen Cooper's activities and what happened the night she was killed had changed numerous times.
"She's given so many versions of this," he said. "She can't keep her story straight. Liars can't keep their stories straight."
In subsequent testimony, jurors heard from a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, now assigned to New Orleans but who was assigned to Little Rock at the time of Suzen Cooper's death. The agent said that although Sherman was signed up to be a confidential informant, he never provided any information of value and was soon terminated.
Suzen Cooper's boyfriend at the time, Rusty Joyner, said he was in prison at the time that Suzen was killed. He testified that when he got out of prison that he and Suzen were "supposed to leave here forever."
Joyner said he and Suzen Cooper had participated in some 40 controlled drug buys for drug investigators in an effort to minimize his own legal problems.
Testimony continues Monday in the trial. The jury was released today to give Marshall and the attorneys in the trial time to iron out some legal issues before resuming the prosecution's case.