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Chapter 1: What happened during the 1983 Chino Hills murder case?
You've been with us for the two decades that we've investigated the case of Kevin Cooper, the California death row inmate who has always professed his innocence. Tonight, there are new developments that may help Cooper in his bid for freedom. Our investigation began with letters from San Quentin Prison outside San Francisco.
I'm Kevin Cooper. I'm on death row.
He claimed he had been framed for the murder of four people. There was a terrible home invasion in Chino Hills, California, one night in 1983.
Family of four with a young boy who was an overnight guest.
Authorities say more than one weapon was used in the brutal murders.
Four of them died. One survived even though his throat had been cut.
Did you have some injuries?
My throat was slashed, got stabbed here, hit by an ax here, screwdriver, punctured my back, my lung, broke three ribs.
The authorities then arrested and sentenced to death a young black man named Kevin Cooper for the crime.
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Chapter 2: Who is Kevin Cooper and what are the claims against him?
They were a close-knit family of four. Brutal and bloody.
Authorities are completely baffled by this.
And more than three decades ago, it shattered the upscale horse community known as Chino Hills in Southern California.
We have evidence that places Kevin Cooper at the crime scene.
Many wondered back then if the right man had been convicted for the crime. And even more wondered today if the real killers got away.
Responding to 2951 English Road, 2951 English Road.
On June 4th, 1983, Peggy Ryan, her husband Doug, and their 10-year-old daughter Jessica were stabbed and slashed to death inside their home. An 11-year-old neighbor spending the night, Christopher Hughes, also lost his life. The only one who miraculously lived through that night was Josh Ryan, then eight and a half years old. I spoke to him in 2003.
What does something like this do to a person's life? Changes your life. You lose somebody and it hurts. There was strong evidence pointing to multiple assailants. A bloody hatchet was discovered near the Ryan's Arabian horse ranch. Investigators believed it was just one of three weapons used. And according to the coroner, the victims had some 140 wounds.
The Ryan's family car is missing and presumed taken by the murder suspects.
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Chapter 3: What new developments occurred in Kevin Cooper's case since 2018?
Sadly, the 93-year-old grandmother never got the answer she hoped for. In 2008, Mary Howell died. Kevin Cooper had been on death row for 23 years. One year later, Cooper finally got a break. His case was back in front of the Ninth Circuit Court with 27 judges. While the majority refused to review his case, 11 of them disagreed.
There is not a single case in U.S. history where 11 appellate judges said that they felt that the person had not gotten a fair hearing.
One judge, William Fletcher, wrote in a scathing 100-page dissent, the state of California may be about to execute an innocent man. And there is substantial evidence that three white men, rather than Cooper, were the killers.
Please join me in welcoming Judge Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit.
In a lecture, he pointed to contradictions in the only survivor's account. Josh Ryan first indicated the assailants were three white or Mexican men.
By trial, his story was different.
How many shadows did you see? Just the one?
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Chapter 4: What were the results of the DNA tests ordered by the governor?
Judge Fletcher believes Josh's memory was influenced by a deputy who had visited Josh approximately 20 times during the hospital stay. The deputy got Josh to change his story so that he no longer said three or four white men did it. The judge also noted Josh never identified Kevin Cooper.
During his stay in the hospital, Josh twice saw a picture of Cooper on television. Both times, he said Cooper was not one of the killers.
It's what Cooper's lawyers have been saying all along. As soon as they identified Kevin Cooper, a black escaped prisoner, in the house down the hill from the Ryans, they stopped looking for those people and focused entirely on proving that Kevin Cooper had killed the Ryans. Judge Fletcher also questions the key piece of evidence in this case.
That tiny drop of blood the state says proves Kevin Cooper was inside the Ryan home. At first, the criminalist said it was one blood type, and later, he said it was another. When he found out that he'd put the wrong blood type down, that he had not matched it to Kevin, he changed his notes to say it was the same blood type as Kevin's.
The judge says the criminalist altered his lab notes and claimed that he had misinterpreted his results. And that's not all. Remember those cigarette butts found in the Ryan station wagon? Defense attorney Norman Heil believes they came from the home where Cooper had been hiding out. When they found the Ryan station wagon, they planted those two cigarette butts.
Those butts weren't found until sheriff's deputies did a second search of the car. And according to Heil, one of the butts inexplicably grew from one test to another. The previous tested cigarette butt was four millimeters long, and the one in 2002 was seven millimeters long. Judge Fletcher says deputies discounted, disregarded, and discarded evidence pointing to other killers.
Like evidence provided by this woman, Diana Roper. Days after the murders, she called the sheriff's office after she found bloody coveralls left in her closet. I tried to tell them, hey, this has to do with the Channel murder. She said they belonged to her ex-boyfriend, a parole killer by the name of Lee Furrow. Furrow had murdered 17-year-old Mary Sue Kitts on the orders of a gang leader.
He strangled her and threw her off a bridge in a river. Just an evil, evil person. Roper said she told investigators that Furrow also owned a hatchet that looked like the weapon used on the Ryans and Christopher Hughes. Well, he kept all of his tools on the back porch hanging on nails. And as soon as they said I walked back there in his hatchet, it was the only thing missing.
And she said that on the day of the murders, Furrow was wearing a T-shirt. It was like a beige, light brown colored beige. A tan shirt was found down the road from the Ryans' home, not far from the Canyon Corral bar. That's significant because on the night of the murders, three white men were seen in that bar, one of them in a light colored T-shirt and another in bloody coveralls.
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Chapter 5: What evidence suggests multiple assailants in the Ryan family murders?
I believe that there was evidence planted.
But if that's true, how did Cooper's DNA get on those items? Defense attorney Norman Heil has a theory.
When Kevin Cooper was arrested, they took blood from him. And that's the blood that they could have used.
And according to court documents, before the DNA tests were done, this glassine envelope, which contained the paint chip, was checked out overnight, signed out to the same criminalist who had matched the blood on it to Cooper. His reason? He said it was to assure there was enough evidence to test.
Kevin, what do you believe happened when he took out the single drop of blood that they say connects you to the case?
And the date is on there.
You know, I've seen the picture. As for the T-shirt, a judge who held a hearing on evidence tampering after the DNA test determined that the shirt had not been checked out or looked at by anyone prior to DNA testing. But that's not accurate. The state showed us the T-shirt a year before the DNA tests were done, when we first started looking at the case. Can you turn around and hold it though?
Right, yeah. If you were going to test this shirt here, you would test it for what?
To see if there's any DNA there that can be tested.
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Chapter 6: How did Kevin Cooper become the prime suspect?
No, I did not. Or Christopher Hughes? No, I did not. I had nothing to do with any of this. I asked Furrow about those bloody coveralls that his ex-girlfriend gave to authorities.
I never had any coveralls.
Furrow said that at the time of the murders, he had been at a concert. Former San Bernardino District Attorney Michael Ramos.
He was 30-plus miles away from the crime scene when this murder occurred.
In 2018, Furrow agreed to give Cooper's team a sample of his DNA. Were you surprised that he was just willing to hand over his DNA?
I was astonished that he would be willing to do that.
Defense investigator and retired FBI agent Tom Parker.
And I asked him why, and he said he really had nothing to hide.
Furrow was seen here with a relative at a meeting that was secretly recorded by investigator Parker.
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