BALTIMORE _ Heather Cook, the former Episcopal bishop who garnered headlines around the world after fatally striking a Baltimore bicyclist with her car while driving drunk two days after Christmas in 2014, has been released from prison.
Cook, 62, served just over half of the seven-year sentence she was originally given on four criminal charges in connection with the crash that killed bicyclist Thomas Palermo, a software engineer and married father of two, on Dec. 27, 2014.
Released a little after 10 a.m. Tuesday from the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women, she will be on supervised probation for five years, according to her attorney, David Irwin of Towson.
Gerard Shields, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said Cook will be required to report within 24 hours to a Parole and Probation field office for intake.
"She will then be classified and assigned to an office location according to the home address she provides to us," he said in an email.
Cook will learn the exact conditions of her probation at the meeting.
Cook was the No. 2 official in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland at the time she struck Palermo, who was 41 and the father of two young children, with her 2001 Subaru Forester in Roland Park.
Witnesses said she left the scene of the crash and did not return until half an hour later. A Breathalyzer test at that point registered her blood alcohol level at 0.22%, nearly three times the legal limit for driving.
Cook resigned in May 2015, and the church deposed her from the ministry the same day.
She pleaded guilty later that year to four criminal charges, including failing to remain at the scene of a fatal collision. Baltimore Circuit Judge Timothy J. Doory sentenced her to 10 years on that charge, but suspended all but two years, a period he ruled would run in addition to a five-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter. The church's screening practices came under scrutiny after it emerged that Cook had pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge on the Eastern Shore four years before her elevation to bishop _ and that the search committee that selected her had been aware of that 2010 arrest.
Diocesan officials said that committee members were never told of the arrest in detail and that the panel left it up to Cook to tell her electors about it. Officials have said she alluded to the case in parish meetings, but only in vague terms.
Cook was told at a hearing last November that her release date was expected to be Aug. 6. She already had earned sentence reductions for good behavior and was seeking a sentence modification that would have changed two of her sentences from consecutive to concurrent status, making her eligible for immediate release.
At the hearing, Doory told the court he believed Cook had shown "substantial rehabilitation," but he still denied the motion.
Her release date was recently moved from August to May because once prisoners are within six months of their release date, the rate at which they accumulate those points accelerates, Shields said.
At that point, they're awarded credit for the points they would have earned during the rest of their sentence, Shields added.
Cook already had earned a more than three-year reduction in her original sentence by taking extensive part in prison programs. She organized and ran a weekly addiction-recovery meeting for fellow inmates, organized a prisonwide symposium on recovery that featured a lineup of outside speakers and wrote a column on recovery for the prison newsletter.
Shields said Cook has been earning extra credits in recent months for working in the correctional department's mail and distribution center.
She had applied for early release several times, including for parole in 2017, a work-release program in 2018, and home detention in 2018 and earlier this year. She was denied each time.
Members of the Palermo family vehemently opposed each of Cook's attempts to gain early release and criticized her behavior, including the fact that she had admittedly left the crash scene and did not return until 30 minutes later.
"Each of Cook's attempts to reduce her sentence _ applications for parole, house arrest, work release, now ... one for modification _ traumatizes my sister and her family anew," Palermo's sister-in-law, Alisa Rock, said of Palermo's widow, Rachel, and the couple's children in November. "This trauma will affect them all for the rest of their lives, and it's only appropriate that Heather Cook serve out her original sentence not only for the act of killing Tom, but for leaving him there. Especially for leaving him there, for abdicating responsibility for what she did."
Leah Rock, also Palermo's sister-in-law, said last month that Cook's performance in prison _ where drugs and alcohol are harder to come by than they are on the outside _ was insufficient to prove she has conquered the addiction problems she admits have plagued her.
Rock also said 3 { years in prison were not enough to atone for the damage her crimes have caused.
"(Tom's) children have a lifetime sentence of growing up without their father, and his friends and family have a lifetime sentence of missing him," she said.
Irwin has said that even though he has "great empathy" for the Palermo family, he believes Cook's efforts in prison suggest she is in fact rehabilitated and ready to help others.
"In no way do I minimize the tragedy of the offense which (Cook) committed, but I truly believe it's time for her to go to a different phase of her life seeking redemption," he said. "I'm glad she is finally being released. She has been a model prisoner who has done amazing things in the department of corrections to help other women."
Irwin said he didn't know exactly what Cook's plans were upon her release other than complying with the terms of her probation _ violations could land her back in prison _ and continuing what he called her mission of helping women living behind bars.
"All I know is that she wants to continue to help women who are incarcerated, even when she's not there," he said.
