Part 2: Kimi Cooper, a severely mentally disabled child, from age 7 until she was located to testify falsely against her mother at a Cook County Probate Court hearing

Part 2:  Severely mentally disabled child served as a vessel to facilitate alleged abuse and corruption in the Cook county Probate court System:  Kimi Cooper, age seven to when she testified against her mother, Beverly Cooper, in front of Judge Lynn Kawamoto, which started the chain reaction that ended with the death of Beverly Cooper’s mother, Alice Gore, as a pauper in February of this year.

From age seven to age 17 Kimi was sent from one foster home or group home to another — 54 in all — stemming from innumerable written reports detailing Kimi’s erratic behavior.  Once Kimi attempted to microwave a dog.  Another time Kim suggested to her foster mother that there was a medicine that smelled like almonds that could be put in her foster father’s coffee to get rid of him.  After jewelery and silverware were discovered missing, one foster family hired a private investigator to search their Northbrook home to locate the cleverly hidden hiding places Kimi had found to stash her loot. 

While a resident at the Price Group Home in Chicago in 1984, it was reported that Kimi kept banging her head with a phone, cut off her circulation with a rubber band, threatened to kill herself, slit her wrists, and tried to set the Price Home on fire.

Every month the Coopers were ordered to show up in the Lake County Court for a Juvenile Court hearing.  Whenever Kimi was moved to another foster home or group facility because of unacceptable behavior the Coopers would be informed, but were never told of her new location.

The Assistant State Attorney who handled Kimi’s Juvenal Court hearings from age seven to age ten was Gail Tular Friedman.  In her position as Assistant State’s attorney, Gail Tular Friedman was the recipient of a letter from the Cooper’s pediatrician, Dr. Arnold Goldstein, describing Kimi as being severely mentally ill and the Coopers as good parents.   *Gail Friedman, however, withheld this vital physician document from Kimi’s court records.  Instead, Friedman wrote on the front of Kimi’s court records outside jacket:  “Parents are all fucked up and mental.  Child normal.” 

*Not only did Assistant States Attorney, Gail Tular Friedman, keep an important document out of Kimi’s court record, but the letter containing the diagnosis of consulting psychiatrist, Sydney B. Eisen of September 2, 1981, was likewise kept under wraps.  The twenty or so judges the Coopers faced when present at Kimi’s many Juvenile Court hearings in Lake County had knowledge of Kimi’s severe mental disability as related by psychiatrist Sydney B. Eisen.

Just why were these important medical documents kept out of Kimi’s official court records?  After all, not only was Kimi removed from her family at a young age never to return again, but Ken and Bev Cooper went though untold stress which resulted in a heart attack for Ken Cooper. 

For Assistant States Attorney, Gail Tular Freidman, it was a political decision. She had aspirations for a judgeship.  In regard to the many judges the Coopers encountered in the Lake County Juvenile Court System, there were financial expectations to be realized from soaking Social Services in the State of Illinois with the continued expense of repeatedly moving Kimi from one foster or group home to another.

Prospective foster parents were never told by Family Services of Kimi’s history of severe mental disabilities documented by psychiatrist Dr. Robert Zirpoli at age five and by psychiatrist Dr. Sydney B. Eisen at eight years of age.  Instead, foster parents were told that Kimi had been subjected to abuse by her parents when a small child.

What was known to the Coopers is that from age thirteen to twenty years of age Kimi stayed with professional foster parents in Crystal Lake, IL.  It was also at age thirteen that Lake County Juvenal Court Judge, William Block, told the Coopers that Kimi was old enough to decide whether or not she wanted to see her parents.  When Beverly Cooper protested Judge Block’s order to allow a thriteen-year-old to make such a drastic decision, he had Beverly arrested and jailed for contempt of court.

Another Lake County Judge, Emilio B. Santi, made this famous quote, that was included in an article on the Cooper’s in Reason Magazine in the 1980’s.  This is an exact quote from the certified court record of Sept. 5, 1985:   i

Judge Santi: “…Under the unnatural situation regarding the one child in a home of seven seemingly being rejected, it seems like the mystery of nature where the mother puppy or the mother dog has seven puppies and allows six of those puppies to nurture upon her breasts for her milk, shuns the seventh puppy and pushes that puppy away, and is subjecting that puppy to certain death because the puppy can’t nurture, can’t get milk, can’t live.  That was the analogy that I drew as I read through these volumes.”

These two questions must now be addressed:  1) How could a severely mentally ill individual get appointed to Guardian ad Litem position even for a short while? and 2) How was Kimi located to appear before Judge Lynne Kawamoto to testify against her own mother and the best interests of her grandmother, Alice Gore, when Ken and Bev Cooper had no idea where Kimi was living after the age of twenty?

The answers to the two questions have their genesis in attorney Karen Bowes, Kim’s attorney for many years throughout her Lake County Juvenile Court hearings and the Coopers trusted attorney for twenty seven years.  In this dual lawyer role, attorney Karen Bowes and attorney and associate Bruce Lange had prior knowledge from court documents and appearances with Kimi in the Lake County Juvenile Court System that Kimi was unqualified to serve as a guardian.  This knowledge was shared with her friend and attorney, Miriam Solo, already described as a on-call GAL for the Cook County Probate Court System.

Accordingly, the removal of Beverly Cooper as guardian of her mother, Alice Gore, was allegedly contrived by attorney Karen Bowes and friend and attorney Miriam Solo through the manipulation of the Coopers court-documented, mentally disabled daughter, Kimi Cooper.  *Attorney Miriam Solo, functioning as an on-call GAL for the Cook County Court System, was at the same time was known to the Katten Muchen Law Firm.  It is believed that attorney Miriam Solo obtained the Katten Muchen Law Firm to represent Kimi as a ploy to have Beverly Cooper removed as her mother’s guardian.

*Attorney Miriam Solo has since changed her primary work from a stand-in GAL to Divorce Court.    Supposedly Solo’s name was becoming too controversial in its association with the 18th floor of the Daley Building.

Kimi was briefed to give false sworn testimony in front of Judge Lynne Kawamoto of the Cook County Probate Court that her mother had appropriated funds from her mother’s estate.  Kimi’s false testimony  resulted in attorney Miriam Solo, as a stand-by GAL, of being appointed as Alice Gore’s Guardian ad Litem by Judge Kawamoto, thereby setting the stage for the alleged collusion which resulted in the death of Beverly Cooper’s mother, Alice Gore, as a pauper in February of this year.  Still unaccounted for is what happened to Alice Gore’s and her $1 million.

In reality Kimi was taken away from Ken and Beverly Cooper and her siblings and raised like an orphan.  Kimi remains a mentally disabled woman and a danger to herself and society.  Kimi’s where abouts are still unknown to the Coopers, even while the Coopers try to make sense out of it all.

Had Kimi’s treatment been appropriate to the condition when first diagnosed at a young age, or if the many judges in the Lake County Juvenile Court System had elected not to ignore their knowledge of Kimi’s severe mental disability, Kimi might have experienced a more normal life in the loving care of parents Ken and Bev Cooper and her six siblings.

According to the Coopers, once Kimi was removed from her home setting under the guise of parental abuse by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, their six other children likewise became viable candidates for adoption.  It mattered not that Kimi was never abused and later failed to be adoptable.

But enough about the what ifs!  The sorry past cannot be undone.  It falls upon all of us to be on the lookout for the abuse of the most vulnerable in our society, the elderly and children.

Please feel free to contact Beverly and Ken Cooper so abuse of the most vulnerable is brought out in the open by those with the authority to investigate and to prosecute those involved in this egregious behavior which is occurring nationwide. Beverly Cooper; Ken Cooper