Anti-Abortion Extremist Had Rough Youth : Profile: Growing up in Westminster, Robert E. Cook was ‘a small kid with a big mouth’ who often got in fights, one neighbor recalls.

Robert E. Cook, the anti-abortion extremist arrested in Illinois with a storage locker full of weapons and a cache of stolen money, grew up on a Westminster cul-de-sac, ostracized by other children, according to neighbors and former schoolmates interviewed Friday.

At times he was a bully and picked on smaller children, and at other times he was the target of taunts and attacks.

“He was a small kid with a big mouth,” said one neighbor who grew up with Cook from grade school through their years at Westminster High School, and asked not to be identified. “He got beat up by everybody. Mostly it was his big mouth that got him in trouble, and it sounds like that’s what got him here.”

The anti-abortion movement’s leaders have described Cook as a loner who traveled around the country to hot spots in the abortion battle, openly making threats of violence.

His arrest Aug. 16 set him aside from other anti-abortion extremists who advocate violence because he allegedly pulled off a major robbery, looting an armored car of $260,000 in an effort to finance his anti-abortion campaign, authorities said.

From Orange County, Cook moved to Waukegan, Ill., where he married Ronda L. Kern in 1983, and then moved to South Carolina, where he served in the U.S. Navy on the Holland, a submarine tender, court records show.

He divorced in South Carolina in 1987 and eventually made his way back to Orange County, enrolling at Cal State Fullerton, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1992.

Fullerton residents who lived near Cook said he wanted to become a lawyer and was delivering pizza and taking a full load of classes to realize that dream.

“He always was ambitious,” said a landlady who rented Cook a room for two years when he was a student at Fullerton. The woman requested anonymity.

“He worked too hard. He was trying to make a living and go to school at the same time then,” she said. “I think he wore himself out, he got himself stressed out.”

In March, 1991, Cook was arrested by Placentia police on suspicion of obstructing an officer and giving false information to an officer, but pleaded to a lesser charge and paid a fine, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Mario Gonzales, one of the Milwaukee federal prosecutors handling the Cook case.

That same month, his ex-wife, Kern, filed suit against him in Orange County Superior Court seeking child support, claiming he owed $5,850 in back payments for the couple’s four children. He was ordered to pay $500 a month and the children’s health insurance payments, records show.

After the divorce in 1987, Cook was given custody of the couple’s two youngest children, but a Wisconsin family court judge returned custody to his ex-wife, who remarried, court records show. Kern lives in Wisconsin with her husband and the children.

*

Cook, 33, grew up on a Westminster street of tidy homes and longtime residents with his parents, two brothers and a sister. The family eventually moved out of the house and rented it out, and his parents divorced, but his sister later moved back to raise her own family there, neighbors said.

Cook graduated from Westminster High School, neighbors said, but he attended Fountain Valley High School his junior year.

Neighbors described the family Friday as devout Baptists, but did not recall Cook’s involvement in religious or political activities as a teen.

Instead, they recalled his trouble adjusting socially in school and in the neighborhood.

Neighbors said he was a rough-edged youngster, setting small fires and throwing rocks at homes in a display of rebellion that many teens share.

But the boy they remember as Bobby Cook took things one step farther than other kids, they said.

“He wanted attention. He was a bully and he picked on the younger kids,” said another neighbor, 28, who grew up with Cook. He too asked that his name not be used. “He was the outcast. He was pretty much isolated.”

When Cook was about 14, he ran away in the family’s Pontiac station wagon and tried to make a run for Las Vegas, but ran off the road instead, wrecking the car, a neighbor said.

Officials say Cook allegedly stole $260,000 last September from the armored car company where he used to work, shifted the money to an offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands, and amassed an arsenal of weapons for his war against abortion.

An affidavit filed in the Eastern U.S. District Court revealed that Cook had planned to say goodby to his children. Cook allegedly told friends in Portland, Ore., that he would kill an abortion doctor by Aug. 22 and vowed that he would rather die than be caught, the affidavit stated.

The affidavit said Cook rarely paid child support until after the robbery, and when he did pay, it was all in cash.

*

Since the robbery, Cook also paid more than $8,000 in cash for two cars, spent $1,500 on copies of his writings and donated at least $160 to an anti-abortion group, according to the affidavit. FBI officials said he did not appear to be working at the time.

Cook also set up a voice-mail service to help him recruit abortion opponents to join his cause, FBI officials said. And on several occasions, Cook allegedly told friends that he was waging a war against abortion, the affidavit said.

But his plans began to fall apart.

“Cook came to our attention because he was an employee [of the armored vehicle business],” said Richard Eggleston, FBI special agent in Milwaukee. “He had been a driver working that route. In the course of gathering evidence for the armored-car theft that came to light, all of this unfolded.”

At least on one occasion, Cook allegedly asked a mailbox service clerk to notify him if the FBI came in with a search warrant, the affidavit said.

He was cornered by the FBI and Waukegan police officers 10 days ago near a mail drop-off station that Cook often used to circulate his anti-abortion messages, Eggleston said.