Murder of Mrytle Cooke in Vinton Iowa 1925

Myrtle Cook

Myrtle Cook’s murder had everything police hate—politics, booze, the Klan, and an estranged husband whose alibi kept springing leaks. On September 7, 1925, someone walked up to the living-room window of her Vinton, Iowa home at 703 Third Avenue, confirmed she was sitting at her desk writing a speech for the next day’s W.C.T.U. meeting, and put a bullet straight through her heart.

She stayed alive long enough to whisper a name to her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Cook—a name the town didn’t expect. A man the local police practically trusted with the keys to the city. Detectives didn’t buy it. They chalked it up to shock, pain, and wishful thinking.

Her husband, Clifford B. Cook, wasn’t so dismissive. He said the family reenacted the shooting angle. If Myrtle saw the shooter, she could have identified him. That made everything messier.

Investigators first chased the obvious suspects: rumrunners. Myrtle was one of the loudest prohibition activists in Iowa. She harassed mayors, sheriffs, and state officials. She wrote down license plates and took notes on her neighbors. She treated Prohibition like a personal crusade and made enemies the way some people collect stamps.