The Troubling Case Against Kevin Cooper

0:05You'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.

0:41There 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? Yeah. My throat was slashed, got stabbed here, hit by an axe 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. This occurred in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, horse country.

1:27Finding somebody to pin it on was very important, and Kevin Cooper was a convenient person to pin it on. The problem was they didn't have the evidence. There is an enormous amount of evidence that suggests three or four white perpetrators. I'm Tom Parker. I'm a retired FBI agent. I was brought into this case at the request of the lead attorney. The more I dug into it, I began to realize that there was something seriously wrong with the case. You believe that evidence was planted and tampered with. I don't believe that. I know that. They framed me. It's very hard for the system to try to correct a mistake.

2:06That was going to murder me. I think they got the wrong guy. But the state says its case closed. I am 100 % certain Kevin Cooper committed these murders. Not that I'm open every day. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I know I'm innocent. He's got a lot of people pulling for him, not only within the prison, but outside.

2:33We've been trying to get this evidence tested over the last 15 years I've been working in the case, and we've always been refused. In 2018, Kevin Cooper got his wish. California's governor ordered new DNA tests. But what do they reveal about Cooper's case? I was worried that there wouldn't be a lot of good data that could be obtained. We've had the DNA testing. We do have a profile. It's certainly not Kevin. The murder victims were all mutilated. It was a massacre. They were a close-knit family of four. Brutal and bloody. Authorities are completely baffled by the slaying. And more than three decades ago, it shattered the upscale horse community known as Chino Hills in Southern California.

3:24We 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 wonder today if the real killers got away.

3:45On 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.

4:08The 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? It 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. It's a 1977 Buick four-door station wagon.

4:55Neighbors reported they saw three people drive away in a car that looked like it. and Josh, still too wounded to speak, also indicated that there were three attackers when he was questioned by a deputy. When we got to the point of asking him how many people were there, I went one, two, three, and he squeezed my hand. Three people when things went crazy. Right. Josh thought the attackers were white or Mexican men, and yet police soon zeroed in on this one man, Kevin Cooper. The prime suspect, escaped prisoner Kevin Cooper, is still at large. Cooper was a career burglar who had escaped from prison and was on the run.

5:38He had been hiding out at a vacant house near the Ryan home before the murders. Authorities believed he killed the Ryans to steal their car. A hatchet was reported missing from the house where Cooper had been hiding. A hatchet sheath was later recovered there. The huge manhunt was finally over, with Cooper being sly enough to evade them for months. In case the people say the California versus Kevin Cooper. By the time Cooper went on trial, the memory of the only eyewitness, Josh Ryan, then 10, had changed. This is Sunday, December 9th, 1984. The district attorney at the time, Dennis Kottmeyer, questioned Josh.

6:23What did you see? I don't know if I saw the shadow or something. He no longer remembered three attackers. How many shadows did you see? Just one. Just the one? We, the jury of the above entitled cause, determined that the penalty shall be dead. Kevin Cooper was convicted and condemned to die, although he told the jury then what he later told me, that he was innocent. Why should someone believe you, Kevin? I'm not asking anyone to believe me. I'm asking people to look at the evidence. And the evidence does raise questions. Cooper's fingerprints weren't found anywhere at the crime scene. Neither were any of his hairs.

7:07But there were strands of light-colored hairs found clutched in Jessica Ryan's hand, her grandmother Mary Howell. When I saw that little hand, she must have fought terribly. And there were those multiple weapons that authorities say were used in the attack. How could one man wield at least three weapons? I still can't believe that one person could do all that to my family. There's five of them. And I just know that they didn't stand in line saying I'm next. The scene was incredibly bloody. There was spatter all over the walls. And yet the state's experts said he found only one single drop of blood that matched Cooper's blood type.

7:54It is on the tiny paint chip seen here in this evidence photo. A man walking his dog spotted the Ryan car in a church parking lot yesterday morning. And then there's the stolen family station wagon. Police eagerly searched the car for clues. Blood was found in the car, but if Kevin Cooper used it to get away, why was the blood found on three seats, not one? How are you doing? I'm winning. Mary Howell believed there had to be more than one killer. If somebody's out there that thinks that maybe Josh could identify him, if they went after Josh, they'd go after me too. I'm concerned. I'm a protective grandmother.

8:34After our first report on Cooper's case aired, the state agreed to conduct DNA tests. There wasn't enough DNA in the hairs, but cigarette butts found in the car, a tan t-shirt found near the scene, and that tiny blood-stained paint chip were all sent to the lab. In 2002, the results came in. And no one seemed more shocked than Cooper. The evidence tested positive for his DNA. It was devastating. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you. I thought I was going to walk out the door. Cooper was convinced that somehow investigators had tampered with and planted the evidence. But who would believe him? Not Josh Ryan.

9:22It's time to face it. The DNA is pointing to Kevin Cooper. So he was there. He needs to pay for his crime. So we have closure. Christopher Hughes' mother agreed. But Josh's loving and protective grandmother didn't see it that way. I haven't changed my opinions at all. I still am looking for the truth. I feel the killers are still out there somewhere. Kevin Cooper was scheduled to die by lethal injection on February 10, 2004. Would you go watch him die? Yes. You would need to do that? Yes. He was there, so he needs to pay for that. If Kevin Cooper is executed, you believe that they'll be killing an innocent man?

10:11Yes, I do.

10:31February 10, 2004. Kevin Cooper's date with death was set. And then, with just hours to go... The execution that was supposed to happen a few hours ago is now on hold. A surprise ruling late tonight that stayed his execution and stunned just about everybody. The Ninth Circuit Federal Appellate Court stepped in and saved Cooper's life. He later described that moment to me. How close did you come? I came within three hours and 42 minutes of being strapped down to that gun and physically tortured with equal poison. After the court stayed his execution, attorney Norman Heil, working pro bono, joined Cooper's defense.

11:20I think Kevin is innocent, and I also think that he was the victim of a horribly racist prosecution. And I just don't give up. Howell fought to get Cooper a new trial. For years, he petitioned court after court. But the boxes of legal documents continued to pile up. And that was her hairdo at that time. Mary Howell still refused to say it was over. Everybody knows that I want to know the truth. Why my family was killed. Who did it? Why? And I don't want to die without knowing it. Sadly, the 93-year-old grandmother never got the answer she hoped for. Love you, Grandma. In 2008, Mary Howell died.

12:10Kevin 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.

13:10In 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... I don't believe I saw, I almost like the shadow or something. His story was different. How many shadows did you see? Just one. Just the one? 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 the 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.

13:58Both 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. Repeatedly attacked with hatchet blows to the head by Kevin Cooper. 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.

14:42When he found out that he'd put the wrong blood type down and 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.

15:25And 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 7 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.

16:10Furrow 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 Ryan's home, not far from the Canyon Corral Bar.

16:55That'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. I realized at that time that he was just covered in blood, spattered in blood. Christine Sloniker and Mary Wolf, who are in the bar, spoke to us in 2004. It was spotted. He had a light colored shirt on, so it was, you know, it showed, it really, I mean, it showed up. It was, even though the bar was real dark, you could still see it. When you first heard that the Ryans had been murdered, what was your first thought? The guy's in the bar.

17:32Diana Roper died three years after we interviewed her. The bloody coveralls she turned over to the authorities were never tested. Instead, a deputy threw them out before Cooper's trial. This disposition report shows the coveralls were destroyed and described as having no value. I don't know that that happened. That did happen. When we spoke with Floyd Tidwell, who was sheriff at the time of the murders, He didn't seem to know anything about it. But doesn't that concern you, that maybe not all the evidence was available at Kevin Cooper's trial? I can't be concerned unless I know about it. But it was something that happened when you were sheriff.

18:13It was your sheriff's department. Let's bring this to a screaming halt right here, okay? That's enough of that crap. Kevin Cooper believes the coveralls could have helped his case. And so does Judge Fletcher. The bloody overalls were, to say the least, inconvenient, so the deputies threw them away. Kevin Cooper, the man now sitting on death row, may well be, and in my view probably is, innocent. Doesn't that give you pause? Doesn't that make you feel that you have to do whatever you can to make sure that the right person's being executed? The right person is being executed. Former District Attorney Michael Ramos inherited Cooper's case in 2003.

19:01It doesn't give me pause at all because you're talking about a standing judge of the Ninth Circuit Judge's Court of Appeals, which is, with all due respect, a very liberal circuit. The majority opinion was not only guilty, overwhelmingly guilty.

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19:52By 2010, Kevin Cooper, 52 years old, had been on death row nearly half his life. His appeals had run out. And then a newspaper columnist 3 ,000 miles away took notice. I'm Nicholas Kristof. I write op-ed columns for The New York Times. What caught Kristof's attention was Judge William Fletcher's dissent. I had never read an opinion like this. A respected circuit court judge arguing that somebody on death row had been framed. Kristoff is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer covering genocide and human rights issues. And there was something about Kevin Cooper's case that struck a chord. The prosecutors kind of seized upon him as, you know, he's sent by central casting.

20:46He looks the part that people had in their minds for a ruthless killer. And it is particularly problematic when a black person is charged with the killings of white people. And I think that made it a lot harder for Kevin Cooper to be tried fairly for this crime. Christoph and a team from the New York Times closely examined the evidence the state said tested positive for Cooper's blood in 2002. The tiny bloodstained paint chip and the tan t-shirt. Christoph's conclusion? You believe, as you're sitting here right now, that there was evidence planted. I believe that there was evidence planted. But if that's true, how did Cooper's DNA get on those items?

21:37Defense 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? I think he put either masalaba or blood in there or something in there.

22:25He had it out for 24 hours and you only sign it and date it when you open the container. And the date is on there. You know, I've seen the picture. Yes. And so that means he opened it. But why did he take it out the boat? 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?

23:09To see if there's any DNA there that can be tested. Later, the defense discovered something alarming about that vial of Cooper's blood the state had taken for evidence. It was tainted. The vial that contains Kevin Cooper's blood has a second unidentified person's DNA on it. Kristoff believes there's a suspicious pattern in Cooper's case. I think this is unusual in the enormous amount of evidence that suggests that Kevin Cooper was framed. The way consistently a place would be searched, no evidence would be found. And then once they knew they were looking at Kevin Cooper, then they would search again and abracadabra.

23:53They would find critical evidence that they needed against him. Former District Attorney Michael Ramos says claims of evidence tampering have been dismissed by both state and federal courts. As far as planning evidence, that's absolutely impossible. There was no evidence tampering at all. And yet, after Cooper's conviction, key people who had worked on the case got in trouble with the law. Crime lab director William Baird resigned amid allegations of stealing heroin from the property locker. Sheriff Floyd Tidwell was charged with a felony. Floyd Tidwell was found out to have been taking guns that the sheriff's department deputies took from people during their normal police activities and he sold them.

24:41That's the same Sheriff Tidwell who didn't want to answer our questions about destroying evidence. Hey, let's bring this to a screaming halt right here, okay? It does raise questions about the caliber of the work that was being done by the sheriff's office. Both Cooper's defense team and Nicholas Kristof called for new DNA testing and got a huge response from readers, politicians, even celebrities. Kim Kardashian West sent out this tweet. Governor Brown, can you please test the DNA of Kevin Cooper? And what was your reaction when she actually went on social media saying you deserve to get testing?

25:24I'm very thankful that she cared enough and took the time out of her busy life to do that. I understand even the Pope. The Pope weighed in. Yeah, how great is that? You saw the article written by Nicholas Kristof. Right. Is he wrong? Absolutely wrong. And I wish that he would have taken the time to go over the evidence, the evidence that was presented at the trial, the evidence that was presented to the appellate courts, the federal proceedings. I truly believe that he didn't do his homework before writing that one-sided, very one-sided story. So if you disagree with my conclusions, then test the evidence.

26:10The best response, if you don't like my argument, is to prove me wrong with the evidence that is sitting in lockers and has been for 35 years. The defense believes new tests will connect someone else to the murders. But they'll need the power of California's governor to make it happen.

26:42That's him. Kevin Cooper's lawyers have long believed Lee Furrow was involved in the murders of the Ryan family and Christopher Hughes. When we found him in 2000, Furrow had moved cross-country to Pennsylvania. Here I am, and I'm willing to talk to anybody about it. Furrow was a known killer. He had murdered that 17-year-old almost a decade before the Chino Hills massacre. Can I ask you point blank, did you kill the Ryan family? 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 bloodied coveralls that his ex-girlfriend gave to authorities.

27:30I 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 is seen here with a relative at a meeting that was secretly recorded by investigator Parker.