Phone records, surveillance video and DNA became central to a prosecution that ultimately ended without a capital murder trial.
MOORE, Okla. — A murder investigation built around cellphone data, surveillance footage, DNA and material recovered from a suspect’s phone ended three years later with Chace Cook pleading guilty to killing 18-year-old Madeline Bills and accepting life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Cook, 23, admitted first-degree murder with malice aforethought on July 28, 2026, ending a case that had been headed toward a death-penalty trial. Bills, a Moore High School senior and basketball standout, was found dead in a converted pool house behind her family’s home on April 22, 2023. The medical examiner concluded that she had been strangled and ruled the death a homicide. Authorities initially accused Cook, her former boyfriend, of both murder and first-degree rape. Prosecutors later sought capital punishment before reaching the agreement that produced a guaranteed life-without-parole sentence and a waiver of Cook’s appeal rights.
The investigation began at the Bills property, where relatives found the teenager unresponsive in the detached room she used as a bedroom. Detectives soon focused on the movements of a person captured by nearby surveillance footage. Police affidavits said investigators believed Cook could be seen climbing a fence into the backyard during the early morning hours. Other footage showed a Ford Fusion near the property, and investigators said Cook had been driving the same vehicle when police stopped him for a seat-belt violation about two months earlier. That link gave detectives another way to compare the scene with Cook’s movements before and after Bills was killed.
Cellphone evidence added a second track to the investigation. Detectives said Cook’s device was in the area of Bills’ home when the surveillance recordings showed the person entering the property. Authorities also said the phone had been near a convenience store close to the residence shortly before the vehicle arrived in the neighborhood. Those records undercut an explanation Cook initially gave investigators. According to an arrest affidavit, he said he had traveled to Galveston, Texas, for training related to becoming a Navy SEAL. Detectives noted discrepancies in the travel time he described and said the electronic location information put him back in Oklahoma during the relevant period.
The phone itself yielded more consequential evidence after investigators obtained authorization to search it. Police said they found a roughly three-minute recording that appeared to show Cook sexually assaulting Bills while she was unconscious. Investigators also testified about internet searches discovered on the device that they believed related to strangulation, sexual assault reporting and a substance that could cause unconsciousness. At the time those details emerged, they were allegations contained in police records and testimony rather than findings of guilt. Cook disputed the case before trial and formally entered a not-guilty plea in February 2024.
Physical evidence also became part of the prosecution. An affidavit said Cook’s DNA matched DNA recovered from swabs collected during the investigation and Bills’ autopsy. The Oklahoma medical examiner found that Bills died by strangulation and reported injuries consistent with sexual assault. Those findings were among the facts prosecutors relied on when they charged Cook with first-degree murder and first-degree rape. He was first arrested near Chicago on May 1, 2023, after leaving Oklahoma, and was later extradited to Cleveland County. A judge set bond at $5 million after prosecutors argued that the evidence tied him to the killing and that he presented a danger to the community.
The accumulating evidence received its first major courtroom test at a December 2023 preliminary hearing. Bills’ mother testified about finding her daughter in the pool house, while detectives described the surveillance recordings, cellphone material and other evidence collected during the investigation. A judge ruled that prosecutors had established probable cause and ordered Cook to stand trial. That ruling did not determine guilt; it meant the state had presented enough evidence for the charges to proceed. Prosecutors then moved toward a capital case, filing notice in January 2024 that they intended to seek the death penalty if Cook were convicted of first-degree murder.
The prosecution also included evidence about Bills’ state of mind before her death. Friends told investigators that she had expressed fear of Cook. According to the affidavit, she said she planned to sleep inside the main house rather than continue staying in the detached pool house because she was afraid he might come to the property and hurt her. Moore police later said they had not received a report before the killing that would have alerted officers to a specific threat from Cook. The statements to friends nevertheless became part of the timeline investigators reconstructed as they examined the former couple’s relationship and the events before April 22.
For more than two years after the capital filing, the case remained unresolved as it moved through Cleveland County District Court. The death-penalty notice significantly raised the stakes because a trial could have required separate decisions about guilt and punishment. That course changed in July 2026 when Cook agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder. District Judge Lynne McGuire accepted the plea and imposed life without parole, according to reports of the sentencing. The agreement removed the possibility of execution but also eliminated any prospect that Cook could later seek parole on the murder conviction.
Separate crimes committed while Cook was incarcerated were folded into the final disposition. Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty to possessing contraband in jail and received a 20-year sentence. He also admitted assault and battery tied to a 2026 incident behind bars and was sentenced to six months in the county jail. All of the sentences were ordered to run at the same time. Because the murder sentence carries no possibility of parole, the additional terms do not change the practical result that Cook is expected to remain imprisoned for the rest of his life.
The legal resolution came after Bills’ family had spent more than three years attending proceedings while also urging the public to remember who she was outside the criminal case. Bills had maintained a 4.0 grade-point average, was nearing graduation and had signed to play basketball at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College. She was a member of the Osage Nation and had been known at school for both academics and athletics. Her family described her after her death as a determined competitor and a caring person whose influence on others mattered more than the circumstances in which she died.
District Attorney Jennifer Austin said after the plea that the sentence brought certainty and accountability but could not restore what Bills’ family lost. The agreement also means evidence that had been assembled for a potential jury trial will not be tested in a full trial on the murder charge. Cook’s guilty plea supplies the conviction instead, while his waiver of appellate rights sharply limits further litigation over that judgment. What began as an investigation into a teenager found dead in a backyard bedroom has therefore ended with a final conviction and the state’s most severe prison sentence short of death.
The Moore Police Department’s investigation and the subsequent prosecution are now closed at the trial-court level. No capital trial will take place, and no parole hearing is available under Cook’s murder sentence. The case’s final legal record rests on his guilty plea rather than a jury verdict, bringing an end to proceedings that began with surveillance footage and cellphone records in spring 2023 and concluded with a life-without-parole judgment in summer 2026.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.