Madeline Bills was nearing graduation and a college basketball career when she was killed at her family’s Oklahoma home.
MOORE, Okla. — Three years after Madeline “Maddie” Bills was killed days before the end of her senior year, the former boyfriend charged in her death has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received life in prison without parole, closing a case that followed her family from graduation season into years of court proceedings.
Bills was 18 when relatives found her dead April 22, 2023, in the converted pool house where she slept behind the family home. At Moore High School, she had earned a 4.0 grade-point average and established herself as a standout basketball player. She had signed a letter of intent to continue playing at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami, Oklahoma, and was preparing for a transition from high school to college that never came. Her family repeatedly asked that she be remembered for those parts of her life — her relationships, determination and effect on other people — rather than only for the crime that ended it.
The criminal case reached its conclusion July 28, 2026, when Chace Cook, now 23, admitted first-degree murder with malice aforethought. A judge sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. The plea ended the prospect of a death-penalty trial, which prosecutors had been preparing after formally announcing in 2024 that they intended to seek capital punishment. Cook also waived his right to appeal under the agreement. District Attorney Jennifer Austin said the resolution provided accountability and certainty, but she stressed that no sentence could return Bills to her family or replace the future that disappeared with her death.
Bills’ family had placed that future at the center of its public statements from the beginning. After her death, relatives described a young woman who competed intensely on the basketball court while looking for good in other people. They said the attention surrounding the homicide should not eclipse how she had lived. Bills was also a member of the Osage Nation. Her obituary described the impact she made on people around her, and her family later established a scholarship in her name. Friends, coaches and relatives spoke of a teenager whose identity reached well beyond a court file — a student, athlete, daughter and friend approaching one of the biggest milestones of her life.
Behind those remembrances, detectives were assembling a case against Cook, who had previously been in a relationship with Bills. Investigators learned that she had told friends she was afraid of him before her death. According to a police affidavit, Bills was considering sleeping inside the main residence instead of the detached pool house because she feared Cook might come to harm her. Moore police later said officers had not received advance information that would have caused them to monitor Cook as a specific threat. The statements to friends became part of the evidence used to reconstruct what Bills had been experiencing before she was killed.
The Oklahoma medical examiner determined that Bills died from strangulation and ruled the death a homicide. Investigators also found evidence consistent with sexual assault. Police arrested Cook near Chicago on May 1, a little more than a week after Bills’ body was discovered, and he was returned to Oklahoma. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder and first-degree rape. Authorities said a search of his cellphone uncovered a recording that appeared to show him sexually assaulting Bills while she was unconscious. The allegation was part of the state’s original case; Cook’s eventual guilty plea specifically resolved the first-degree murder count along with unrelated jail offenses.
Other evidence described by police connected Cook to the neighborhood during the period when investigators believed Bills was killed. Surveillance video showed a person climbing the fence into her family’s backyard, and authorities said Cook’s cellphone was in the area at the same time. Investigators also identified a Ford Fusion seen near the property as a vehicle associated with him. DNA recovered during the investigation matched Cook, according to a police affidavit. When detectives interviewed him, they said he initially claimed to have traveled to Galveston, Texas, for training connected to becoming a Navy SEAL. Investigators said electronic evidence contradicted that account.
The evidence was aired in greater detail during a preliminary hearing in December 2023, when Bills’ mother testified about finding her daughter and detectives described what they had recovered from surveillance systems, Cook’s phone and the investigation at the property. The judge ruled that prosecutors had established probable cause for the charges to continue toward trial. Cook later pleaded not guilty. In January 2024, prosecutors filed notice that they would pursue the death penalty, describing the homicide in court documents as especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. Bills’ family supported the decision at the time, according to public statements released during the case.
The capital filing meant the family faced the prospect of a lengthy trial centered on some of the most painful evidence collected after Bills’ death. Instead, the proceedings ended with Cook’s guilty plea. He received the most severe prison punishment available in the agreement: life without parole. The outcome guarantees that he cannot seek release through the parole process, although it does not impose the death sentence prosecutors once intended to request. His waiver of appeal rights also gives the judgment a degree of finality that a contested capital conviction could have taken years of litigation to reach.
The sentencing hearing returned attention to Bills herself. Prosecutors said her relatives remembered her as a light in their lives and spoke about how her absence continued to reach into ordinary moments and imagined milestones. That focus was consistent with the family’s message in 2023, when relatives said they wanted Bills’ life to be defined by how she treated people and by what she gave to those close to her. For a teenager whose final weeks should have included graduation and preparations for college basketball, her family has continued to frame her story around the years she lived rather than the hours surrounding her death.
Cook’s time in jail also produced separate criminal cases that were resolved alongside the murder charge. Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty to possessing contraband while incarcerated and received a 20-year prison term. He also pleaded guilty to assault and battery related to a 2026 jail incident, for which he received six months in county jail. Those sentences will run concurrently with the murder sentence. As a result, the life-without-parole term remains the controlling punishment and ensures Cook will stay in prison for the rest of his life.
For Cleveland County prosecutors, the plea ended more than three years of hearings, filings and preparations. For Bills’ family, the legal ending is separate from the personal consequences that remain. Austin said prosecutors and victim advocates had worked with the family throughout the case, along with the Moore Police Department and court personnel. The sentence answers the legal question of who is responsible for Bills’ killing through Cook’s own guilty plea, but it does not alter the loss repeatedly described by those who knew her.
No murder trial is now scheduled, and Cook has no parole eligibility under the sentence imposed. The proceedings therefore end with Bills’ name attached not only to a completed homicide prosecution but also to the life her family has tried to preserve in public memory: an honors student, an Osage citizen and a basketball player who had already chosen the college where she intended to continue her education and athletic career.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.