Framed for rape and murder, Cook spent 20 years on death row. Now, one of the most famous wrongful-conviction victims in American history seeks justice and closure in federal court.
TYLER, Texas — The harrowing story of Kerry Max Cook’s wrongful conviction and imprisonment has been told in an award-winning off-Broadway play, a cable-TV movie, his own Edgar-Award nominated memoir, and a new nonfiction book by best-selling author John Grisham. (“If it were fiction no one would believe it,” Grisham has said of Mr. Cook’s story.)
Now, the next chapter of Mr. Cook’s quest for justice will be written in U.S. District Court, where his attorneys today filed a federal lawsuit against the officers who conspired to frame Mr. Cook for a crime he did not commit.
“For over 20 years I fought for my life from a death row cell,” says Mr. Cook, now 68. “After being kicked out the back door of Smith County’s legal system in 1999, I fought for another 25 years to clear me and my family’s name. This year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals finally declared me ‘actually innocent,’ but my struggle does not end there. Today, I am pressing forward with a civil suit against the officers who framed me, and against the broken Tyler and Smith County police agencies that let it happen.”
Mr. Cook was convicted of the 1977 rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards, whose mutilated body was discovered by her roommate Paula Rudolph in the unit the women shared at the Embarcadero Apartments in Tyler. Edwards, a secretary in the English Department of Texas Eastern University, had been staying with Rudolph in the aftermath of a messy affair with the school’s married head librarian, James Mayfield. A few weeks before the crime, Mayfield had abandoned his wife and family to move into an apartment with Edwards, only to return to his family a week later. Edwards had attempted suicide, and the resulting scandal caused Mayfield to be fired from his job.
On the night of Edwards’ murder, Rudolph came out of her room after midnight and saw a figure standing bare-chested in their apartment that she recognized as Mayfield, whom she knew well. “Don’t worry, it’s only me,” she called out to him. In her initial statements to police, her description of the figure also matched Mayfield perfectly.
Despite such an obvious suspect, investigating officers chose instead to focus on Mr. Cook, who had been staying with an acquaintance in the Embarcadero. Mr. Cook had met Ms. Edwards earlier in the week and been invited back to her apartment. Fingerprints he left on the sliding glass door of her apartment during that visit became the entire basis for a bizarrely fabricated case against Mr. Cook, which today’s complaint describes as “a homosexual witch-hunt” based on the officers’ belief that Mr. Cook was gay.
The complaint alleges that the investigating officers fabricated evidence to make their case against Mr. Cook. They presented bogus fingerprint analysis, withheld exculpatory evidence, and coerced false statements and testimony from witnesses—including a notorious jailhouse snitch named Edward “Shyster” Jackson.
Based on this fabricated case, Mr. Cook was convicted in 1978 and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Mr. Cook, however, never stopped fighting for his life and freedom: at one point, in 1988, he was 11 days from his scheduled execution when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Texas to review the case. After multiple appeals and two new trials—in one of which he was convicted and sentenced to death again—Mr. Cook accepted a no-contest plea with credit for the 20 years he’d served, and he was released in 1999.
“This today is no admission of guilt,” Mr. Cook said at the time. “I didn’t have 10 more years to give them fighting as an innocent man on death row.”
Two months later, DNA tests found Mayfield’s semen in the victim’s underwear, proving that Mayfield had consistently perjured himself by claiming he had not had sex with the victim since before he returned to his wife. Additional items from the apartment were submitted for analysis in 2012: Mr. Cook was excluded as the source of the DNA on all of them.
Finally, in June of 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Mr. Cook’s conviction and declared him innocent.
“This case is riddled with allegations of State misconduct that warrant setting aside Applicant’s conviction,” wrote Judge Bert Richardson, in the order. “And when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all: uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury, and new scientific evidence.”
Today’s lawsuit names the City of Tyler, Smith County, and fifteen current or former law enforcement officers as defendants. The suit asks a federal jury to determine damages for multiple violations of Mr. Cook’s rights under U.S. law, including violations of due process, malicious prosecution, destruction of evidence, and conspiracy.
Mr. Cook is represented in his suit by attorneys Anand Swaminathan, Jon Loevy, and Alison Leff of the civil rights law firm Loevy + Loevy.
“The layers upon layers of police misconduct in this case are staggering,” says Swaminathan. “Each time investigators learned of more evidence pointing to Kerry’s innocence or pointing to Mayfield’s guilt, they ignored it and instead made up new evidence to support their bizarre fantasy of a homosexual ‘lust-murder.’ They were so committed to this baseless theory that they ignored the obvious suspect, one with a clear motive and opportunity. Kerry’s 47-year nightmare is a stark reminder of what happens when the justice system cares more about winning at all costs than it does about the truth.”
James Mayfield has never been arrested or prosecuted for the murder. In 2016, in exchange for a promise of immunity, he admitted that he had lied under oath for decades to conceal the fact that he had sex with the victim shortly before she was murdered.
In the time since his release, Mr. Cook has married his wife Sandra and had a son they named Kerry Justice. He has become an inspirational speaker, talking to kids and adults worldwide on overcoming adversity and the importance of hope, family, and never giving up. His 2008 memoir, Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit, was a finalist for the Mystery Writers of America’s “Edgar” award for Best True Crime Book. Mr. Cook has been played by Richard Dreyfuss in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated, (2000) and by Aidan Quinn in that play’s 2005 television adaptation. Last month, Mr. Cook’s incredible story was featured in two chapters of John Grisham and Jim McCloskey’s Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions, which is currently on the New York Times Best Sellers List.
For Mr. Cook, however, after his 47-year ordeal, it is still a story without an ending.
“My civil suit seeks justice and accountability for the injustices done to both Linda Edwards’ family and mine by framing me for a crime I didn’t commit,” Mr. Cook said. “But it’s also for the many others who have suffered injustice at the hands of Smith County’s dark history.”
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A copy of the complaint can be found here.
To request interviews with Mr. Cook and his attorneys, or for photographs to use in news coverage, please contact Michael McDunnah at 312.371.5871, or mcdunnah@loevy.com.
