Brooklyn Park police said Thursday that it will be at least a couple of weeks before their department sends its case on the death of Klaressa Cook to the Hennepin County attorney for consideration of charges.
Authorities on Wednesday identified Alberto P. Palmer, who is charged in the death of another woman, as the suspect in Cook's death. Her body was found in the trunk of a car May 20, about five weeks after the vehicle was towed from a Rainbow Foods in Brooklyn Park to Wrecker Services Inc. in Minneapolis.
Police won't say what evidence they have that makes Palmer the suspect. They also have not released the time or manner of death for Cook, 24.
Palmer has been in the Anoka County jail since early March, when he was arrested in the beating death of 18-year-old Brittany Clardy of St. Paul. Her body was found Feb. 21 in a car towed from a Brooklyn Park apartment complex to a Columbia Heights impound lot.
Palmer previously lived in Georgia, where he is charged with violent physical and sexual assaults against three women from September to December of last year.
Officials from the Brooklyn Park and Minneapolis police departments and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department said they don't know of any other cases at this point in which Palmer is a suspect.
Cook lived in Gainesville, Ga., before coming to the Twin Cities. On Wednesday, a younger sister, Arianna Russell, said she had last heard from Cook on Jan. 19. In that phone conversation, Cook said she was in Minnesota, had a job at a car dealership and was living in a hotel. Both Russell and another sister said they had never heard of Palmer.
Police said Clardy and the three women he is accused of assaulting in Georgia were working as prostitutes. They said he met them through an adult-oriented website, backpage.com. His next court appearance in the Clardy case is June 27.
