Serial killer granted release from prison
One of two Toledo TOLEDO — brothers who terrorized the city in the early 1980s with a series of killings was granted his freedom Thursday by a judge who said she was bound to follow the law.
Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Linda Jennings agreed to suspend the prison sentence of Nathaniel Cook as required under the terms of a 2000 plea agreement signed by her predecessor. The deal promised Cook, now 59, judicial release after he’d spent a full 20 years behind bars — a period that ended Feb. 13.
With family members of the Cook brothers’ victims looking on, the judge imposed a long list of conditions that Cook must abide by during five years of community control, including work release, electronic monitoring, and sexual offender classes. Any violations could send him back to prison, she warned.
Judge Jennings also classified Cook as a sexual predator who must register his address with the county sheriff for the rest of his life.
In 2000, Cook pleaded guilty to attempted aggravated murder and two counts of kidnapping stemming from the May 14, 1980 abduction of Tom Gordon, 24, and his 18-year-old girlfriend, Sandra Podgorski. Gordon was shot to death, while his girlfriend was raped and stabbed, though she survived.
As part of their plea deal, Cook and his older brother, Anthony Cook, now 69, gave full confessions — with immunity — and underwent polygraph examinations about the previously unsolved homicides they were responsible for in Lucas County. Anthony is serving two life sentences.
The Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office signed onto the unusual plea agreement with the Cook brothers as a way to finally close out a series of unsolved homicides from 1980 and 1981, many of them attacks on couples parked in cars or on young women abducted while walking down the street.
Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates did not oppose Cook’s motion for release from prison, saying she was bound to uphold the agreement her office made.
Retired Toledo Police Det. Frank Stiles, who worked the cases for years, called it “a horrible day.”
“We all knew that eventually this day could come, and there’s no getting around it,” he said. “We need to live by the rules.”