The agreement resolved the Madeline Bills murder case without a capital trial and included a waiver of Cook’s appeal rights.
NORMAN, Okla. — A Cleveland County murder prosecution that once placed Chace Cook at risk of execution ended instead with a negotiated guilty plea, a life-without-parole sentence and no future jury trial over the April 2023 killing of Moore High School senior Madeline Bills.
The July 28, 2026, disposition represents the final turn in a case that moved through nearly every major stage of a serious felony prosecution: arrest, charging, a high bond, a preliminary hearing, a not-guilty plea, a death-penalty filing and years of pretrial proceedings. Cook, 23, ultimately admitted first-degree murder with malice aforethought and waived his right to appeal. The court sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors also resolved two offenses arising while he was incarcerated. The agreement guaranteed permanent imprisonment while taking the death penalty off the table and eliminating the need for the state to prove the murder charge to a jury.
Prosecutors had not always planned to resolve the case that way. In January 2024, the Cleveland County District Attorney’s Office filed a bill of particulars, the formal document used to announce aggravating circumstances supporting a request for capital punishment. The state characterized Bills’ killing as especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. Then-District Attorney Greg Mashburn said at the time that the decision to seek death had followed a review of the evidence and discussions with Bills’ family. A capital prosecution would have required prosecutors first to obtain a murder conviction and then persuade jurors, in a separate punishment phase, that death was the appropriate sentence under Oklahoma law.
The legal posture had developed over the preceding eight months. Bills was found dead April 22, 2023, inside a detached pool house converted into a bedroom at her family’s Moore residence. The medical examiner determined that the 18-year-old died by strangulation and classified the death as homicide. Investigators also reported evidence of sexual assault. Police arrested Cook near Chicago on May 1, and Oklahoma prosecutors later charged him with first-degree rape and first-degree murder. At an early court appearance, a judge set his bond at $5 million after prosecutors argued that the strength of the evidence and the nature of the allegations made him a danger to the community.
Before the state could move toward trial, it had to establish probable cause. That happened at a December 2023 preliminary hearing. Bills’ mother testified about finding her daughter, and detectives described evidence gathered from the home, neighboring surveillance systems and Cook’s electronics. A judge ruled that the prosecution had met the lower preliminary-hearing standard needed to bind Cook over for trial. The ruling was not a conviction and did not decide whether the state had proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It allowed the charges to advance. In February 2024, Cook stood silent as the court entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf, setting the stage for continued litigation.
The evidence prosecutors expected to use at trial included several independent categories. Investigators said surveillance footage captured a person entering the Bills property by climbing a backyard fence during the relevant early-morning period. A Ford Fusion associated with Cook was also seen near the home, authorities said. Cellphone-location information placed his device in the area. Police reported that DNA collected during the investigation matched Cook. Detectives further said they found a recording on his phone that appeared to show him sexually assaulting Bills while she was unconscious. Those claims formed part of the state’s case while Cook still legally remained presumed innocent of the pending charges.
Investigators also described statements and phone activity they believed strengthened the prosecution. Bills had told friends before her death that she was afraid of Cook and was thinking about sleeping in the family’s main house rather than the separate pool house because she feared he could harm her, according to an affidavit. Detectives said Cook initially claimed he was in Galveston, Texas, for training associated with becoming a Navy SEAL, an account they said conflicted with electronic evidence. At the preliminary hearing, investigators also discussed internet searches recovered from his phone that they believed related to strangulation and reporting sexual assault.
As a death-penalty case, the prosecution carried procedural consequences beyond those in an ordinary murder trial. Capital litigation commonly requires extensive pretrial work because jurors may be asked to make both a guilt determination and, after a conviction, a separate life-or-death sentencing decision. Here, that process never reached a jury. More than two years after Cook’s not-guilty plea, the parties reached an agreement under which he accepted the harshest prison sentence short of execution. His life-without-parole term means there is no later parole board decision that could shorten the murder sentence.
The plea also supplied something a trial never guarantees: certainty about the immediate outcome. District Attorney Jennifer Austin, who announced the resolution after years of proceedings, said the plea and sentence provided accountability while recognizing that the legal system could not repair the family’s loss. Cook’s waiver of his appeal rights further limited the prospect of the ordinary direct appellate challenges that follow many contested convictions. The agreement therefore traded the possibility of a death sentence after trial for an immediate murder conviction, permanent incarceration and a substantially more final resolution at the trial-court level.
That resolution included crimes that occurred after Cook was jailed. Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty to possessing contraband in jail and received a 20-year Department of Corrections sentence. He also pleaded guilty to assault and battery stemming from a 2026 incident and was sentenced to six months in county jail. The court ordered all sentences to run concurrently. Although those convictions form part of Cook’s criminal judgment, they do not extend his practical time in custody because the murder sentence already requires imprisonment for life without parole.
Behind the procedural history was the death of a teenager who had been preparing to graduate. Bills was a Moore High School senior with a 4.0 grade-point average, a standout basketball player and a member of the Osage Nation. She had signed to play women’s basketball at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College. Her family repeatedly urged the public to remember the person she had been rather than allow the criminal case to become her defining story. During the final sentencing proceedings, relatives again described the enduring absence created by her death and remembered her as a source of light in their lives.
The plea means several questions a jury would have confronted will never be answered through verdict forms. Jurors will not be asked to evaluate each piece of evidence, decide the original rape charge, determine guilt on murder after a contested presentation or weigh a capital sentence. Instead, Cook’s admission to first-degree murder supplies the legal finding of guilt necessary for judgment. The original sexual-assault allegations remain part of the investigative and procedural record, but the final disposition reported by prosecutors centers on the murder plea and the additional jail offenses.
For the District Attorney’s Office and Moore police, the agreement ends a prosecution that began in spring 2023 and continued through multiple stages of judicial review. For Cook, it means a lifetime in state custody without parole and with his appeal rights waived under the deal. For Bills’ family, the court process has reached its formal endpoint even as the consequences described during sentencing remain. No capital trial is pending, and the life-without-parole judgment now stands as the final trial-court resolution of the murder case.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.