In the quiet mid-Atlantic City of Wilmington Delaware, in the late fall of 2001 (completely overshadowed by the experience of 9/11), a 32 year old insurance underwriter named Bill Cooke, was arrested, tried, and convicted of murder for setting fire to his psychiatrist’s… Anna Czuprynski’s… house, which resulted in her disfigurement, and the death of her husband, William.
After the Fire is the bizarre story of that event… the story of a doctor/patient relationship that got way out of control.
It is a story of love and rape… anger and desire … violence and denial… truth and untruth… and of inexperience and ineptitude.
Cooke confessed to the crime.
The trial was swift… and the death penalty was not un-expected. Cooke will be “hung by the neck until dead…” later this year.
But for the past five and one half years (since that original sentence was pronounced), mediagroup has interviewed… and re-interviewed… each of the characters in the story, searching for the underlying truth of what happened in this doctor/patient relationship… and why it went so horribly wrong.
We have found and interviewed numerous other characters as well… people who knew both Cooke and Czuprynski. And we have found old footage of them… from home movies to television interviews… that reveal all sorts of information about them… that we did not then know.
We know now what actually happened… and what Cooke actually confessed to. And we also know what role Anna Czuprynski played in this tragedy… and what she did not confess to.
It is the whole story of what happened before… and… After the Fire.
© mediagroup inc. January 2008