LITTLE ROCK — Second in a series
In the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 1982, Jackie Cooney told Little Rock police she had no doubt that her ex-husband, Kenneth Cooney, had abducted her oldest daughter, Carmeletta Green.
Jackie and Kenneth had gone through a bitter divorce after less than a year in a tumultuous marriage.
She felt he’d do anything to punish her — even hide away her 12-year-old little girl.
This is part 2 of a 6-part series. View all stories here as they become available.
Their relationship had not always been so antagonistic. When they’d met in the Arkansas National Guard, Kenneth seemed like a regular guy who might be a good stepfather to Carmeletta and her younger siblings.
Jackie and Kenneth had dated about a year, then married in March 1979.
They divorced six months later. Jackie, her oldest son, Orlando Green, and others who knew Kenneth say he was violent when he and Jackie were together. Orlando remembers Kenneth poking him and his siblings with an electric cattle prod.
But Kenneth reserved the most abuse for Jackie, grabbing her around her throat and squeezing until she almost passed out.
Carmeletta often intervened in the fights.
She would beg Kenneth to just leave.
I hate you, she’d say. I hate you.
Jane, Carmeletta’s childhood friend and neighbor who still lives in Little Rock, believes that Carmeletta had another reason to be angry at Kenneth.
Carmeletta had confided that Kenneth was molesting her, says Jane, also a victim of sexual abuse whose name has been changed to protect her identity.
Carmeletta revealed her secret after Jane told her that Kenneth’s adult nephew Larry Cooney had been raping her for years.
Larry and Kenneth were close in age and spent a lot of time together. The night Carmeletta disappeared, the two men had stopped by Jackie’s house while she was working the night shift at a pizza parlor.
Kenneth was supposed to baby-sit Jackie’s children, but he and Larry stayed only 20 minutes, then left to resume a night of partying with friends.
CRIMINAL HISTORY
In the two decades after his marriage to Jackie, Kenneth amassed a string of arrests, mostly for nonviolent crimes.
When Carmeletta disappeared, he was working for a private security guard company, one of many jobs he had found and left over the years.
In 1995, a judge placed him on probation for first-degree domestic battery. The same year, a former girlfriend sought an order of protection after Kenneth broke down her front door, hit her in the face, then grabbed her around the neck.
How we got this story
As part of a six-month investigation, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette interviewed 38 people and reviewed dozens of court and police documents to tell Carmeletta Green’s story.
Information about Jackie and Kenneth Cooney’s marriage came from interviews with Jackie, her son Orlando Green, and their divorce records. Orlando and Jackie provided personal accounts of abuse at Kenneth’s hands. Two of Carmeletta’s childhood friends gave similar descriptions of how Kenneth treated Jackie and her children. Information about Kenneth’s criminal record came from Little Rock police and court records.
Information about Carmeletta’s allegations that Kenneth sexually abused her came from a childhood friend whom the Democrat-Gazette has named Jane.
Jane was a victim of sexual abuse by Larry Cooney, who was sentenced to prison as a result. She talked about the abuse during an interview with the newspaper. She also reported the abuse and the threat to Little Rock police and Pulaski County prosecutors. According to the prosecutor’s office, the file in her case was destroyed.
Information about Larry’s military career came from U.S.
Marine Corps records as well as a court deposition taken during a libel lawsuit that Larry filed against the newspaper in 1989. A judge ruled that the newspaper wasn’t guilty of malice toward him.
Information about Larry’s criminal record came from police and court documents and newspaper archives. Attempts to contact Larry have been unsuccessful. One phone number for him and his mother had been disconnected. A message left at another phone number for his mother was not returned. His father had no telephone number for Larry. The father said he did not believe that his son was involved in what happened to Carmeletta.
The newspaper sent letters to Larry urging him to contact reporters, twice by certified mail and once by courier, to multiple addresses linked to him.
Larry had an even more troubled past than his uncle. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in the summer of 1972. He received basic training at Camp Pendleton in Southern California.
Less than a year later, he returned home. The details of his unusually brief military service and the terms of his discharge are confidential, but he was under a psychiatrist’s care during his time on the base, and he received disability payments and further psychiatric care upon his discharge. The military declined to characterize his discharge as honorable, dishonorable or general.
Not long after his return to Little Rock, Larry had the first of more than a dozen run-ins with police.
In 1975, officers found him with an unregistered sawedoff shotgun. A judge convicted Larry and sentenced him to a youth correctional program.
Four years later, Little Rock police arrested him again, this time on allegations of rape.
A jury acquitted Larry after a cabdriver testified that the woman, who by then had joined the Navy, had a reputation as a prostitute. Larry was awaiting trial on another rape charge from July 1982 when Carmeletta disappeared. That charge was later dropped.
Larry began sexually abusing Carmeletta’s friend, Jane, in about 1978. Often, he drove her to a secluded spot on Arch Street Pike and molested her in the back of his car.
Sometimes, he’d borrow Kenneth’s car.
Jane endured the abuse for years before she told police in 1987. Her testimony led to a nineyear prison sentence for Larry. He later pleaded guilty to raping twin 10-year-old girls and was sentenced to 20 years.
ABOUT MISSING CHILDREN
The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 800,000 children a year are abducted or disappear. Most are taken by relatives and are found alive, the agency says.
On average, 115 children a year are taken by strangers who hold them overnight, demand ransom or kill them.
The Justice Department notes that the murder of an abducted child is rare, with about 100 cases in the United States each year. Seventy-six percent of those children are killed within three hours after they disappear.
Federal law defines a juvenile as anyone younger than 21.
Carmeletta Green is among more than 2,000 children reported missing nationally since 1982 who are still unaccounted for, according to a National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s database.
The Arkansas Crime Information Center lists five missing and “endangered” juveniles in the state.
In Arkansas only one other child has been missing longer than Carmeletta.
Tony Allen, 16, was reported missing from Fort Smith in October 1978.
Recently published articles about Allen and other Arkansas missing-person cases can be found at www.arkansasonline.com/news/previousfeatures/missing/.
Jane says she considered telling police sooner, but Larry threatened her.
Soon after Carmeletta disappeared, Larry drove Jane down Arch Street Pike, past his usual spot to a dark, isolated piece of land off Hilaro Springs Road. He parked, pulled down the tailgate of his borrowed pickup and turned to the girl. Did she want to tell someone what he was doing to her? he asked. No, she said, over and over. He called her a liar. “I’ll take your mother****ing ass out just like I took Carmeletta out.” She believed him.
Tomorrow: Police question Kenneth and Larry Cooney.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/07/2009