In this episode of FBI Case File Review, retired agent Jerry Spurgers reviews his investigation of the mysterious disappearance of federal witness Susan Cooper from Malvern, Arkansas. The case involved drug conspiracy, witness intimidation, and murder.
He worked the case with a team of local officers, sheriff’s deputies, and an intelligence analyst by using traditional police skills and new technologies. Jerry, a member of the Little Rock Division’s Evidence Response Team and an experienced death investigator, also reviews the steps taken to collect evidence at the crime scene of a murder or accidental death.
Jerry is the author of Murder at Midnight: The FBI’s Battle With Violence and Drugs In A Small Southern Town, a true crime book that recounts the investigation of the murder of federal witness Susan Cooper. He is writing about other cases he worked in Arkansas and plans to release his second book in the spring of 2026.
“ It was common knowledge within the drug culture in that area that Susan Cooper, in their terminology, was a snitch. In our terminology, she was a cooperating witness who was making drug buys. Tammy and Susan Cooper, our victim, had gone to dinner, and at some point, Susan leaves with someone else. Two or three days later, Tammy realized she hasn’t heard from her friend Susan. She tries to call her. She doesn’t get an answer, and so then she calls the sheriff’s department and files the missing person report, and she tells them that a lady named Donna Mason had picked Susan up and was taking her somewhere.”
“So the officers go and find Donna, talk to her, and she says, oh yeah, I saw her that night. We were going to party, but she decided she wanted to go somewhere else, so she dropped her off at a house on Hoover Street. Susan had lived there in the past, but Susan had an intense fear of the dark, lots of reasons behind that. As soon as Donna said that she had dropped Susan off at this Hoover Street house, Tammy knew she wasn’t telling the truth because there was no electricity at the house. And there’s no way Susan would’ve willingly gone there in the middle of the night.”—Retired Agent Jerry Spurgers
Special Agent (Retired)
Jerry Spurgers
5/1997–1/2021
Retired agent Jerry Spurgers served in the FBI for 24 years. After graduating from the FBI Academy, he was assigned to the Little Rock Field Office, where he worked on the Violent Crime squad. His duties ranged from working automobile “chop shops” and interstate theft cases to extortions, kidnappings, bank robberies, and homicides in which the federal government had jurisdiction. He was promoted to supervisory special agent and managed the squad for several years before stepping down.
For most of his career, he was a member of the Evidence Response Team (ERT), a collateral duty he assumed in addition to his violent crime work. This duty allowed Jerry to process a variety of crime scenes in Arkansas as well as to respond to the Egyptian Airliner crash in 1999, to the Staten Island landfill following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He also taught forensic classes to state and local officers in Arkansas and international students in El Salvador and homicide investigators in Vancouver, Canada.
Jerry’s favorite aspect of ERT was assisting other agencies in homicide cases, which afforded him the rare opportunity as an FBI agent to participate in over 25 death investigations. While most of these were local matters, some were prosecuted in the federal system. Five of those investigations involved serial killers.
After Jerry retired from the FBI, he was hired by the Arkansas House of Representatives as the Chief Security Officer/Sergeant at Arms.
The following are links to news articles about the investigation into the disappearance and murder of federal witness Susan Cooper:
U.S. Attorneys Eastern District of Arkansas – 5/11/2022: Two Drug Dealers Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murder of Federal Witness
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette – 9/10/2021: Trial begins in Little Rock for two men charged in murder of federal drug informant
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette – 9/15/2021: Witness in federal trial over Malvern woman’s shooting death says he buried the body
WTLO.com – 9/23/2021: 2 men convicted in 2016 death of federal witness in Arkansas
The Knewz – 9/27/2021: Drug Dealers Plotted To Murder Federal Witness, Face Life …
National Litigation Support Blog – 11/02/2021: NELOS – Inside The Black Box: Excluding Evidence Generated by Algorithms
Read my blog post – When Does the FBI Investigate Murder?
Read my blog post – When Does the FBI Investigate Missing Person?
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