Anderson Cooper recalls teacher Yves Volel’s 1987 killing in Haiti
Cooper says the killing of his Dalton algebra teacher deepened his connection to Haiti, in a new 60 Minutes Overtime account.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
The Anderson Cooper Yves Volel assassination story is back in focus after Cooper described how the 1987 killing of his former algebra teacher shaped his enduring interest in Haiti. In a 60 Minutes Overtime video published March 15, Cooper recalled Volel as a teacher who spoke vividly about his homeland and wanted to return there to help it.
Volel taught Cooper at New York’s Dalton School in the mid-1980s. Cooper told CBS News that he was not especially drawn to math, but he paid attention to Volel’s accounts of growing up in Haiti. He said Volel also worked with Haitian people living in New York to build support for their country.
Who was Yves Volel and what happened to him?
Volel returned to Haiti and became a candidate in the country’s 1987 presidential election, according to CBS News. He was an outspoken critic of the military-backed interim government led by Henri Namphy.
On July 3, 1987, Volel showed CBS News reporter Victoria Corderi a vehicle that had been damaged by gunfire. He said he believed it was an attempt on his life by men associated with former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. That belief was Volel’s account, and the material available does not establish who was responsible.
Three months later, on October 13, Volel was speaking with reporters outside a police station when he was shot and killed, CBS News reported. The network said police at the scene ordered journalists to destroy recordings, though CBS News aired audio from just before and after the shooting on the CBS Evening News the following day.
The available CBS reporting does not identify the person or people who carried out the killing, establish a motive or give the outcome of an investigation.
Why did Volel’s death stay with Anderson Cooper?
Cooper had graduated from Dalton two years before the shooting. He said seeing and hearing that a teacher he knew had been killed was an extraordinary experience for him as a teenager, and that it added to his desire to learn more about Haiti.
His comments came alongside reporting on Have Faith Haiti, an orphanage in Port-au-Prince founded by author Mitch Albom. The segment drew on Cooper’s years of reporting from Haiti, but the March 2026 remarks centered on a much earlier and personal connection: the teacher whose plans for Haiti had long been familiar to his students.
Readers can watch CBS News’ 60 Minutes Overtime interview with Cooper for his account of Volel and the archival footage.
This story draws on original reporting from CBS News.