MINNEAPOLIS - A sister of the Gainesville woman whose body was found earlier this month in the trunk of a car in Minneapolis left home several months ago.
Arianna Russell told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Wednesday the last time she heard from Klaressa Lorayne Cook was about five months ago. Russell said her sister told her she was living in Minnesota and was working at a car dealership.
Cook's mother, Regina Dean of Gainesville, told another Minneapolis area newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, that her daughter's source of income was prostitution and that she had tried unsuccessfully to talk the 24-year-old out of that lifestyle. Brooklyn Park police have not said whether Cook was working as a prostitute at the time of her death.
Russell says the family was informed of her sister's death last Friday.
Brooklyn Park, Minn., authorities on Wednesday released Cook's name and said a man with Georgia ties - Alberto Palmer, 24 - who has already been charged with another Minneapolis area murder is a suspect in her death. Russell told the Star Tribune that the family had never heard of Palmer.
The cause of Cook's death is still being investigated.
The car in which her body was found had been towed from from Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, to a wrecker lot near downtown Minneapolis.
The case is similar to another one Palmer faces charges in.
Palmer has indicted in Anoka County on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Brittany Clardy, 18, of St. Paul, who was reportedly working as a prostitute. Clardy's body was found Feb. 19 in a car at a Columbia Heights, Minn., impound lot.
In addition, the St. Paul newspaper reports that Palmer is wanted in Chamblee, Ga., on charges he violently attacked at least three prostitutes there last year.
(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
Sunday
July 13th, 2025
3:39AM
