Mercer students’ killings in ’95 to be featured on cable network

It’s been 12 years since Andrew Allen Cook was sentenced to death for the 1995 fatal shooting of two Mercer University students on the shore of Lake Juliette.

Details of the investigation into the deaths of 22-year-old Grant Hendrickson and 19-year-old Michele Cartagena will appear Monday night on an episode of the Investigation Discovery Network’s “Unusual Suspects” series.

Executive producer Lisa Bourgoujian said researchers for the series discovered the case while scouring newspapers, books and other sources while looking for stories for the series.

“Unusual Suspects” made its debut in June and features cases in which the perpetrators were found to be people least expected to be criminals, according to a news release.

The Lake Juliette case was chosen in part because soon after the killing, investigators found themselves “looking for a needle in a haystack,” Bourgoujian said.

“It’s a case with a lot of twists and turns,” she said. “What draws us to a lot of these stories is, how did they figure it out?”

In time, evidence led investigators to Cook, an unusual suspect because his father worked as an FBI agent at the time.

Cook later confessed to his father, who testified at his son’s trial.

A Henry County jury convicted Cook of using a 9mm pistol and an AR-15 assault-style rifle to shoot the students as they sat in a Honda Civic in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, 1995.

Bourgoujian said interviews were filmed in fall 2009, and one of the law enforcement officers featured in the episode is Monroe County Sheriff John Cary Bittick.

Bittick said he’s participated in dozens of interviews about the case over the years.

“I guess people found it interesting because it was two young college students, and the victims and perpetrator had no relationship,” he said.

Cartagena was a Mercer University sophomore who planned to major in physical therapy. She played tennis, belonged to a sorority and volunteered with the Red Cross and Humane Society.

Hendrickson, Cartagena’s boyfriend, was a senior pursuing degrees in electrical engineering and physics.

He was active in church, belonged to a fraternity, participated in student government activities and played multiple sports.

Each episode of “Unusual Suspects” lasts an hour. Half of Monday’s episode will focus on the Lake Juliette case, Bourgoujian said.

The show will air at 10 p.m. Monday on Cox Communications channel 104.

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398.

This story was originally published August 16, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Mercer students’ killings in ’95 to be featured on cable network."