‘She should have been warned’: Family’s anger at failure to stop abusive ex left free to kill two women
A grieving family have revealed police missed a string of chances to stop an “evil and controlling” ex-boyfriend who murdered two women in just 16 months.
Handyman Carl Cooper, 66, was branded a danger to women when he was jailed for 35 years for murdering former partners Naomi Hunte, 41, and Fiona Holm, 48, whose body has never been found. Both women had reported Cooper to the police for domestic abuse before they were killed.
In their first interview about the case, Fiona’s heartbroken family hit out at the Met for not stopping the abusive killer sooner and failing to alert the mother of four about his violent past.
Under the “right to know” section of Clare’s Law – also known as the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme – officers are allowed to disclose information about an abuser’s history if they fear for a new partner’s safety. But in a report this month, police inspectors found the Met is failing to make proper use of the law and is only making 3.3 disclosures per 100,000 people under the right to know scheme – far below the national average of 17.5.
The domestic abuse charity Refuge slammed the “woefully low” figures, adding: “This is consistent with what we hear from many domestic abuse survivors, as well as in Domestic Homicide Reviews, and begs the question, why aren’t women being supported when they report their abusers and disclose concerns, especially if their perpetrator is already known to the police?
“We need to see police forces acting earlier, listening to women’s voices and taking their concerns seriously, enacting vital safety planning to protect them. The focus needs to be on prevention, not issuing apologies when it’s too late.”
In a series of damning developments in the Cooper double murder case, The Independent can reveal:
During a four-week trial at Woolwich Crown Court, it emerged that Ms Hunte had repeatedly told officers she was frightened of Cooper, who had been stalking her, during four separate calls alleging abuse between November 2020 and October 2021.
She was found stabbed to death on her blood-soaked sofa on Valentine’s Day in 2022. Cooper was arrested on suspicion of her murder by police who later found her blood on his coat. But – for reasons grieving relatives still struggle to fathom – he was released under investigation and left free to start a new relationship with unsuspecting mother of four Ms Holm.
When she also reported him to the police for threatening her with a crowbar and stabbing her with a screwdriver in April 2023, she had no idea the man she was dating was a murder suspect.
Cooper was handed a 28-day Domestic Harm Prevention Order but Ms Holm vanished without trace after it expired the following month, leaving her children, aged 27, 22, 17 and six, without their mother.
Police later discovered traces of her blood in multiple locations, including the walls, door and wifi router of Cooper’s flat, which he had redecorated to cover his tracks, but her body has never been found.
Ms Holm’s devastated family said the vulnerable mother, who had autism and ADHD, changed after she started seeing Cooper on New Year’s Eve in 2022.
They warned her to stop seeing him after she came home with puncture wounds from a screwdriver, and thought she was staying with a friend when she went missing on 20 June last year.
At the beginning of weeks of frantic searches, the family visited Cooper’s flat in Catford, southeast London, to look for her but found the windows had been painted over. They began scratching some of it away only to find Cooper staring back at them from inside.
“It was like something out of a horror film,” her daughter Savannah recalled.
Cooper, who insisted he had not seen Ms Holm, was not arrested until several weeks later when the family returned on 11 July to find him selling her clothes to a market trader and called the police.
“I smelled my sister on the coats,” Elise said. “I knew something was wrong.”
It was only then that they learned he was also implicated in the murder of Ms Hunte.
