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Kimberly Cook sentenced to 36 years to life for abusing children, killing one

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Jim witmer/Photos from Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman's courtroom Thursday October 8, 2009. Kimberly Cook, convicted of killing her 3-year-old half-sister, was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison Thursday, Oct. 8.

By Lou Grieco Updated 6:50 AM Friday, October 9, 2009

DAYTON — Kimberly Cook, convicted of killing her 3-year-old half-sister, was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison Thursday, Oct. 8.

Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman called Cook’s crimes “reprehensible and beyond imagination.”

Kimberly Cook was accused of abusing her two half-siblings: Hope, 3, who died July 20, 2008 at Children’s Medical Center, and her brother, 6. Kimberly Cook was the legal guardian for both children. They were living at the family’s mobile home at Voyager Mobile Home Park, off U.S. 35, in Trotwood.

Her trial was last week. On Oct. 1, the jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before finding Kimberly Cook guilty of all indicted counts: two counts of murder, two counts of child endangering and one count of felonious assault.

Kimberly Cook was not charged with purposeful murder. Both murder counts stem from a “proximate result” of committing felonious assault and child endangering. Those four charges dealt with Hope’s injuries. The other child endangering charge dealt with the 6-year-old’s injuries.

Kimberly Cook did not show any emotion during the sentencing, and declined to speak. Her attorney, Scott Calaway, told Wiseman that the four charges dealing with Hope should merge into one. He asked Wiseman to sentence his client to 15-to-life on those counts, plus five years on the charge involving the 6-year-old, which he said should run concurrent to the other counts.

Assistant County Prosecutor Tracey Ballard Tangeman replied that none of the charges should merge and that it would be “offensive” to run concurrent sentences for charges involving two children.

Jamie Oliver, a victim-witness advocate with the prosecutor’s office, read an impact statement written by Amy Cook Wolfe, who is a half-sister of both Kimberly and the victims. The statement said that Kimberly Cook showed no remorse during the trial, and smirked until she was convicted, when she wept.

“We will never stop missing Hope,” Oliver read. “Hope’s death is like a deep wound that will never, ever heal.”

Wiseman said that, under law, the two murder charges would have to merge, but she did not merge the other counts involving Hope. She then sentenced Kimberly Cook to the maximum sentence for each of those counts, then ran them consecutively.

Wiseman said she did this for several factors, including the victims’ ages, and because the defendant had committed “the worst form of the offenses possible.”

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