The calls, they said, had him “scared to death.”

Authorities have not identified the girlfriend. She had tried unsuccessfully to kill herself with an overdose of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug that can be fatal if the dose is large enough. That’s what the girlfriend’s family members told Cooper’s mother.

Moreover, the girlfriend told a doctor that if she couldn’t be with Cooper or see him she would kill herself the next time, according to what the girlfriend’s family members told Cooper’s mother.

Cooper got four or five calls threatening his life Thursday, says his mother’s sister, Jane Robbins of Mocksville.

“I think the child was scared,” she says. “Men’s voices were cursing him and telling him they were going to kill him. They were going to shoot him, and while he was on the phone, the deputy came and rang the doorbell.

“I do not know personally who the calls were from.”

But, she says, when the Davidson County Sheriff’s deputy “came to serve the warrant, I think he was scared to death.”

Sheriff Gerald Hege says the killing “has nothing to do with a girl or taped conversations or threats. The officer had no knowledge of any of those things. This was a cold-blooded killing.”

Ironically, Deputy Todd Cook had not gone to Cooper’s home on Beechwood Drive to serve a warrant though that has been reported in the news media and apparently is generally believed.

He had gone there to advise him that he needed to go see the magistrate at the courthouse in Lexington because his girlfriend’s mother had taken out a warrant for second degree trespass. While he was there, Lexington Police also intended to question him about statutory rape.

But his stepfather told WFMY, Channel 2, in a Friday night interview, that his answering machine had recorded four or five calls that day. Three were played during the broadcast.

“What they played,” Robbins said, “was enough to scare the young’un to death. What could he do? Whoever this was was just kind of screaming on the phone.”

The three calls were taped from the television newscast by an old family friend, Betty Owens of Thomasville. The caller’s voice is the same in each call, and the level of agitation increases with each call.

“Chris, pick up thephone. Now!” the voice says in the first tape. “They’re going to kill you. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

The next one says, “Chris, Chris, you’re in a situation. Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone now! Chris pick up the phone. You’re going to get shot if you stay in that house. Do you realize that? Screw it.”

The third one repeats the warning.

“Pick up the phone. You’re going to get killed. Otherwise go out of the house.”

His stepfather, John Cook, who is not related to Deputy Todd Cook, says, “The deputy came in. He — Chris — was a cornered, scared man and that’s when it all happened.”

The 30-year-old deputy was shot at least five times, apparently as he walked through the front door of the Beechwood Drive home. His gun was still strapped in his holster.

Cooper later led law enforcement vehicles in a chase that exceeded 100 mph. In less than an hour, Cooper had stopped his car on the Linwood-Southmont Road, put his assault rifle in his mouth and shot himself.

Barbara Houck, another aunt who lives in Lexington, heard the “hollering” broadcast on television and says she believes “there was a bunch of harassment — by the sheriff’s department and the girl’s family. He would never have done what he did” without it.

“He found out the girl was pregnant, and he was going to try to marry her if the family would let her,” she says, but the girl’s mother objected. “He went to see her again to talk about marrying her and they run him off, started cussing him and threatening to kill him.”

“The kid wasn’t bad,” Robbins says. “He was like all kids. He’d go out with his friends. Some of them are easily influenced. I think that’s what happened with his other troubles. ... He was there sometimes at the wrong place with the wrong crowd.”

Court records show 17 prior incidents involving Cooper, most for traffic violations. But Robbins says she kept him occasionally when he was a baby. “I never had a minute’s problem.”

And she still thinks he was not a bad kid, but believes the girlfriend’s family ignited the spark that led to two deaths.

“And that girl,” she adds. “I think she’s a lot of the cause of all of it, of Chris getting scared and what he did, and the deputy getting killed. Chris was going to do the right thing. John said he had talked to Chris, and he was going to marry the girl. Maybe they didn’t want her to marry him and have the baby.”

After the deaths, Cooper’s mother found letters the girl had written him.

“He’s got a bunch of them there in a box,” Robbins said, “about how she wanted to have his baby and get married and then when she found out she was pregnant, saying ‘I’m having your baby... ’ ”

The 15-year-old found out she was pregnant a week ago, Robbins says, and Robbins learned about it when Polly Cook, Chris Cooper’s mother and her sister, called her. Polly Cook hasn’t been available for comment.

Robbins says the 15-year-old’s grandfather “called Polly and told her the girl had tried to OD on Xanax pills. They took her to the hospital, and they told her she was pregnant. I’ve heard two tales, and I don’t know which was right. They sent her from there to Charter in Greensboro, and she told the doctor there she thought she was pregnant, and he examined her and she was. She told the doctor if she couldn’t be with Chris or see him, she would kill herself the next time.

“The grandpa told Polly all this. The grandpa told Polly she was just a young’un herself and couldn’t take care of the baby, and him and his wife couldn’t take care of a baby, and the mother couldn’t take care of the baby.”

And then those calls came.

“What would you do if you were in the house and you got a call like that, and during the time of it, the doorbell rang and you saw a deputy standing there? What would you do? He just didn’t know what to do. I guess he was just protecting himself.”

Robbins is also concerned because she heard Davidson Sheriff Gerald Hege refer to her nephew as a “scum bag” on Channel 8 news from High Point.

“Hege doesn’t know our family at all,” she says. “I sympathize with the deputy and his family. I really do. I know how it is with loved ones. I lost a child, too. But when a person doesn’t know a family, he shouldn’t talk about them as though they’re low lifes. They don’t know us.”

She says she sympathizes with Todd Cook’s family.