so i've asked him a couple times. he may be right here in oregon. vance always said, if you want to hide from the police, hide in plain sight. they never find you. on this episode of "death row stories," found brutally murdered and escaped convict is set to death. >> they should do away with it. >> but just hours before his execution, a few defense team raises doubts about his guilt. >> you let the evidence lead you to a suspect. what they did in this case was exactly the opposite. evidence destruction, evidence tampering. my client was framed. there's a body on the water. >> he was butchered and

murdered. >> many people proclaimed innocence. in this case, there are a number of things that stink. this man is remorseless. >> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> get a conviction at all costs, let the truth forward. >> chino hills is very rural, very peaceful. a lot of horse ranches. we all knew each other. we didn't lock our doors. just a quaint little community. >> the sleepy hallow of chino

hills sits less than 40 miles from los angeles. there, peggy ryan, a horse trainer, and her husband, doug, lives on a ranch with her children. 10-year-old and josh. josh's friend, chris hughes, was invited to spend the night. >> in chino, multiple homicide. we have four fatal victims. one victim, approximately 8 years of age. the eyes open, however, there is no response. >> the next morning, chris hughes' father discovered the lifeless lies of his son, chris, as well as doug and peggy ryan and their daughter, jessica. among the carnage, first responders also found 8-year-old josh ryan. he was still breathing but

barely. he was immediately air lifted to a nearby hospital. >> i had first arrived with sheriff floyd tidwell. each of the victims had a combination hatchet and knife. this was such a brutal crime. >> the crime puts it on another level. i think we'd be lying if we didn't say that. >> we were trying to figure out a motive for these killings. we couldn't come up with anything. nothing made sense. >> we heard there had been a murder up on the hill. as a community, our heart grieves for these people. they were horse people. >> how could anybody do this? it doesn't make sense. they were the type of people no

one could hate. never. >> on the same day, a chino hills residence stomaumbled on another discovery. one of the weapons lying on the side of the road. >> the hatchet had the victim's blood on it, but it didn't have any fingerprints on it. >> nearby, a tan bloodstained t-shirt was also found. as the search continued, police received a tip from the ryan's next door neighbor, larry lease. >> mr. lease said i think you might be interested in seeing my rental house. >> the rental house supposedly unoccupied at the time held a major piece of evidence. a sheathe that fit the ax used in the murders.

>> we knew whoever had been in the lease house committed the murders of the ryan house. and in the closet, we found the small box, prison issued tobacco from chino institution for men. we checked with prison authorities, got names of any individuals that had escaped within the past week. all of the sudden, we had a suspect. kevin cooper. >> just two days before the murders, 25-year-old kevin cooper had escaped from the california institution for men. a prison just five miles from the ryan's home. police believed cooper hid at the lease house before killing the ryans and chris hughes. with cooper still at large, san bernardino county sheriff floyd tidwell took to the air waves. >> we have evidence in our possession that places, kevin

cooper at the crime scene. and we have other evidence that gives us cause to believe that kevin cooper was responsible for the murders. >> police patrolled on both sides of the california mexico border today seeking the escaped convict, kevin cooper. >> tidwell launched one of the largest manhunts in state history. circulating photos of cooper and the ryan station wagon. >> there is growing fear in the california community of chino. >> i want to know what the state officials are going to do. >> as pressure mounted to apprehend cooper, police caught a break. >> we recovered the ryan station wagon from a church parking lot in long beach. cooper t eer used the car to es

>> the motive was clear. >> cooper's motive was to get the hell out of chino hills. if he had to kill people to cover his escape, then he would. >> the killer seemed to be within reach. but then the trail went cold. on july 30th, 1983, almost two months after, responded to a distress call near santa barbara. they arrived at a sailboat moored in a small marina, the scene of an alleged rape. >> when we got in the sheriff's station, the victim of the rape was walking by the wanted posters and saw cooper's wanted

picture. and said, oh my god, i've been raped by kevin cooper. >> kevin cooper escaped an almost 2 month long murder manhunt and police caught him trying to swim away from the scene of an alleged rape. >> the rape allegation was never pursued because cooper now faced four counts of first-degree murder. each carrying the death penalty. when cooper was returned to san bernardino, racial tensions boiled over. >> demanded cooper be sent to the gas chamber. >> shouldn't get away with it. >> seek the death penalty as we have all along. >> cooper's trial began on october 23rd, 1984. >> i cross examined cooper for a

day and a half. cooper said yeah, i was at the lease house but i never went up to the ryan house. it wasn't me. it must have been somebody else that did this. >> cot meyer showed the hatchet in the lease house and the bloody footprint found in the ryan's bedroom. >> the sheathe was a half bloody footpri footprint. those soles were unique and we were able to determine by a prison issue tennis shoe. >> blood found that the murder scene led back to cooper. >> a single drop of blood in the hallway and cooper matched it. >> finally cot meyer played the

emotional video tape, josh ryan. >> have you tried to forget what happened that night? >> yeah. >> what have you done to try to forget it? >> think happy thoughts. >> cooper argued he mishandled the investigation but after seven days of deliberations, the jury found kevin cooper guilty on all counts. >> there is no question. there is no doubt about the guilt of kevin coop er and spen the rest of his days in hell. >> we the jury determine the penalty shall be death. >> kevin cooper spend the next two decades on death row. but in 2003, a new defense team

investigated cooper's case and made a string of discoveries they felt proved kevin cooper's innocence. >> i began to learn all of the facts about the evidence destruction, the evidence tampering, the false testimony that was given and the failure of the defense team to put on evidence that showed who the real killers were. the state of california is about to execute an innocent man. th t and play equestrian sports. out on the veranda, we enjoy finger sandwiches and other assorted dainties. i wear nothing less than the finest designer footwear. wherever i go, the paparazzi capture my every move. yes, i am rich. that's why i drink the champagne of beers. no student's ever been the king of the campus on day one.

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by 2003, kevin cooper lost all his appeals for the 1983 murders of the ryan family and chris hughes. with his time running out and cooper still professing his innocence, the case came to the attention of the high powered law firm, oreck harrington and sutcliff. they fought death penalty cases on a pro bono basis. >> one thing i've learned in now 25 years of representing people on death row, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle and you have a client whose life is in the balance is a very heavy burden. >> what he could not dispute was cooper's criminal history, his escape from prison, and his proximity to the murders.

>> i lived on the main streets of pittsburgh when i was growing up. i became a car thief. i landed in the california institution for men in 1983 because of a burglary conviction in los angeles. i was there a couple months. i was out walking around and i just ran. there was a hole in the fence. >> mr. cooper walked through fa farps, pastors, off the roadways and ultimately found his ways to the lee's house. >> when i got to the lease house, i asked a couple girlfriends to send me money. tried to figure out what's next. but i did not murder those people. >> cooper said he'd already set out hitchhiking to mexico by the time the murders took place.

he went into hiding when he became the most wanted man in california. norm hiel hired fbi agent tom parker to look into cooper's case. >> when you're conducting an investigation, especially as one complex as this one, you essentially collect the evidence and let the evidence lead you to a suspect. what they did in this case was exactly the opposite. as word of the murders got out, the sheriff's department learned that kevin cooper had escaped and that started what we refer to in law enforcement as tunnel vision. sheriff tidwell held a big press conference. they started with a suspect and they didn't start collecting evidence to prove their theory. >> but if kevin cooper wasn't the killer, why did the hatchet and the prison issued tobacco link him to the murders?

>> a couple of deputies went over to the lease house, walked through it and really didn't see anything suspicious. a day or two later, other deputies were asked to go search the lease house again. by then, they knew the hatchet had been used in the murders and they found a sheathe to a hand axe laying right out in the middle of the floor in a position that the first deputying walking through the house could not have missed it. they would have been blind to miss that sheathe. >> cooper also said that during his two days in the house, he smoked multiple cigarettes. >> but when lease collected the evidence, they only collected one cigarette butt and the rest of the cigarette butts somehow disappeared. later on, when they found the ryan station wagon in long beach, the first time it was inspected, there were no

cigarette butts. the second time, they suddenly found two cigarette butts. clearly, they had been taken from the hideout house. >> and there was the blood evidence connecting cooper to the murders. this small speck labeled a-41. a-41 was examined by sheriff's department criminalist daniel gragonis. >> proper procedure is to do blind testing. you test something and you don't know what the other person's blood is, you were trying to see if it was the person or not but waited until he had kevin cooper's blood type. >> originally found a-41 did not match kevin cooper. but then he changed notes to show that it did. >> so in fact, the testing actually showed that the blood drop was not from somebody with kevin's blood type. >> other evidence prosecutors claimed linked cooper to the

murders was a bloody footprint on the priryan's bed sheet supposedly from a sneaker. >> claimed these were tennis shoes manufactured and sold only to prisons. in fact, it was a style of shoe that was readily available very common tennis shoes with a common shoe print. >> the question is whether these were innocent mistakes by investigators or something more. norm was about to learn before attention to cooper, police had given other solid leads including from the soul survivor. >> they said people who attacked him and his family were three white men. in fact, a picture was on television. he looked up and said that's not the one who did it.

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i work here at my namfive star auto care. in rocklin california. a lot of thought was put into the change to solar and we couldn't have done it without pg&e. pg&e is very committed to clean energy. working with five star auto care we looked at how we could make their business more energy efficient and save them money in the long run. with solar we have saved about 85% on our energy cost. with this extreme drought we're using the savings from our solar system to save every last drop of water. if you are looking for ways to save energy, your first step is to call pg&e. together, we're building a better california. kevin cooper had been on death row for nearly 20 years when norm heil began looking into his case. the cigarette butts in the ryan car, the bloody shoe print and the blood testing all had flaws.

but heil's biggest question involved motive and the prosecution's game that cooper killed the ryans in order to steal their station wagon. >> the problem with this theory is that if somebody such as kevin cooper had wanted to make an escape, they missed the fact that there was cash, credit cards, and other valuables left at the scene of the crimes. none of that was taken. if mr. cooper walked away from the prison with no money, all of it was right there for him to take and it was not touched. >> heil also disputed the prosecution's theory that the killer worked alone. the sheer number of wounds suffered by the victims, 140 in all, and the fact that doug ryan was an ex-marine with loaded guns in the bedroom suggested to heil that there had been more than one killer.

for a time, san bernardino police apparently agreed with that conclusion. >> the sheriff's department was told by two different bystanders that the night of the murders around the time that the murders had occurred, they had seen a car that matched the description of the ryan station wagon speeding down the road from the ryan's house and that in that car were white men. >> as it turned out, josh ryan, the sole survivor of the attacks also reportedly seeing multiple intruders. deputy dale sharp interviewed him in the hospital. >> he had at least one hatchet wound to the head and he had his throat slit. >> josh was unable to speak, so

deputy sharp di vised another method of communication. >> he would squeeze my hand for a yes and squeeze no for a no. i took his hand and let him know that i was his friend the best i could. we talked about baseball and got him comfortable with me. i asked, do you remember anything? and i would get a hand squeeze, yes. can you remember anyone coming to your house? yes. we ended up with three mexican guys or maybe three white guys. i ask, were these three men there when things went crazy? and the answer was yes. >> based on this information, police released this bulletin two days after the murders. but by the time of the trial,

josh ryan had changed his story. >> when josh was pressed to what he had seen, he was very specific. he saw one person with bushy, fuzzy hair. >> did you see him by the bathroom, what he was doing? >> no. >> how many shadows did you see? just the one? >> deputy sharp saw nothing suspicious about josh ryan's changing story. >> the victim interviews can change. especially with an 8-year-old boy, you don't know what he's seen. you don't know what he remembers. >> based on my 30 plus years experience in law enforcement, the initial comments of eyewitnesses are usually the most accurate. there's a very strong possibility that josh was coached.

>> norman heil felt he had enough evidence to fight for kevin's life. but as he prepared, another witness came forward. 20 years after the crime. >> i heard they're putting kevin cooper to death and i went, are you kidding me? >> on the night of the murders, kristen was eating at the canyon corral, a country western bar a couple miles from the ryan's home. >> as we were in the bar, come these three guys. i notice that one of them was covered in blood. not just little spots. this was like someone who had taken a paint brush and went

like this. it was splattered everywhere. their feet were sticking to the floor. they were so inundated with blood. at the time, we didn't know about the murder and we just thought, well, i don't know what they've been doing, slaughtering pigs or whatever. but we're out of here. >> never life-supporeported the because she claimed a uniform sheriff's deputy was at the bar and assumed he would follow up. filed a new trial in front of u.s. district court judge marilyn hough in san diego. in his appeal, heil presented kristine slonger's testimony and the state responded by inadvertently revealing unknown piece of evidence provided by a woman named laural epler who

lived by the bar. >> here was showing that laura epler called into the sheriff's department the day after the murders saying she had found a short sleeved blue shirt she thought had blood on it on the road near the canyon corral bar. one of the bar employees testified that one of the men in the bar that night might have had on a blue shirt. the bulletin showed they were looking for three white men and one of them was wearing a blue shirt. >> heil would argue that the neighbor's eyewitness testimony with the testimony of kristine sloniker and the original count pointed to three suspects. and in the new documents released by the prosecution, heil was about to discover the name of one of the three suspects and that man also happened to be a convicted murderer. points, points, our points.

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a whiwhile he fought for a trial, he found evidence that put a name to an alternate suspect. >> night of the crimes, a woman named diana roper had seen her

boyfriend, a man named lee furrow, drive up to their house in the wee hours of the morning. lee furrow comes rushing into the house wearing cover alls splattered with what looks to be spots of blood. he changes clothes and turns around and leaves. there were other people in the house and someone looked out the window and saw a white station wagon matching the ryan's parked in the driveway with other individuals in the car. diana roper called the sheriff's department and she gave them the cover alls. the bloody cover alls that they recovered were booked into evidence. >> when diana roper later learned that a hatchet was used in the murders, she again called police and said that lee furrows was missing from the tool belt. >> it would make sense that somebody like lee furrow would have killed the ryans.

he was a convicted murderer. he had strangled to death a young woman and thrown her body into a canal. >> san bernardino police waited 11 months before questioning lee furrow and when they did, they never asked him about his missing axe. they seemed to accept that he didn't own any overalls. tom parker thinks he knows why. >> the cover alls had been destroyed. deputy took them in to get rid of them because it was unfounded they were connected to the case. of course, there had never been any blood testing or whatever to come to that conclusion. >> heil now raised the destruction of evidence with judge hough. >> in a criminal prosecution, the prosecution is required to turn over to the defense any evidence that might be considered exonerating. it's a rule that if the

prosecution didn't do it, then they have committed what is called a brady violation and the trial must be reversed and a new trial given. tennis shoe situation. the blue shirt and the bloody cover alls were all brady violations and we put on evidence as to all of those. judge hough rejected it. >> kevin cooper was running out of time, so his defense team reached out to a new potential advocate. san francisco chronicle columnist debra saunders. >> as a supporter of the death penalty, i wouldn't want to see an innocent man executed, would i? so if there's a hint that somebody is not guilty be executed, i want to know about it. i want to write about it. my editorial board at the san francisco chronicle wrote an editorial saying, gee, maybe kevin cooper is an innocent man.

the defense attorneys laid out this case about a man had been unjustly convicted. >> cooper's defense told saunders for years they'd been unsuccessful in petitioning the courts for newly available testing which could exonerate cooper. >> kevin cooper kept saying i'm not guilty, do dna testing now that you can do it. if it shows i'm guilty, then you can go ahead and execute me. i walked out there thinking, whoa, i really made a case. >> he was handling cooper's appeals. >> we felt that the ongoing request by defense counsel in this case was just another delay tactic. there was no evidence at all that anybody but kevin cooper committed these horrendous murders. none. >> but in the early 2000s, new legislation in california would

grant kevin cooper the right to dna testing. >> all these years, my case was in the appeals courts. i never got a fair hand. i would always get denied for one reason or the next. came along and i had a shot. >> the state would perform dna tests on blood sample a-41 taken from the ryan's hallway and blood on the tan shirt thought to have been stolen from the station wagen. the results would determine whether kevin cooper lived or died. i am rich. on the grounds of my estate, i hob nob with the glitterati and play equestrian sports. out on the veranda, we enjoy finger sandwiches and other assorted dainties. i wear nothing less than the finest designer footwear.

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newly available dna testing was done on the evidence for the ryan murders. preliminary results showed that the blood from the ryan's hallway and on the tan t-shirt both came on the same person. that dna profile was compared to kevin cooper's. >> the analysis regarding this was 100% beyond shadow of a

doubt kevin cooper. et verified what you knew all along that kevin cooper committed these horrendous murders. >> only one out of 300 billion people could have matched a-41. you could go to galaxies far beyond the stars and still not find the match for a-41, that cooper supplies. >> once the dna test put kevin cooper in the home he said he never went into and on a t-shirt with doug ryan's blood on it, that was it for him. >> debra saunders, once convinced of cooper's innocence posts scathing reports about his guilt. the new pretension backfired on

cooper's defense. >> kevin cooper's shock and the shock, testing came back saying there was kevin's dna on a-41. >> but for heil, the dna results raised a red flag. >> back in 1983, the lab technician daniel had testified that he had consumed a-41 during his testing. now asked to make sure that a-41 still existed. >> we have a photograph of the envelope that shows the date he took it out and when he revealed it. showed he had a-41 on his person for 24 hours before he returned it. >> he also had nearby kevin cooper's blood taken from him when he was arrested. >> contrary to original testimony, the state now reported there was enough of

a-41 for additional dna testing. results from the tan t-shirt also changed drastically. at the original trial, the t-shirt was only shone to have doug ryan's blood on it. >> when the t-shirt was tested, at this time, there was additional blood located on the upper part of the t-shirt across the chest. it was previous to this time. >> cooper's defense argued that the new blood on the t-shirt and the newly discovered blood found on a-41 only could have come from one place. the bile of cooper's blood, lab technician gregonas had access to. by taking the vile to an independent lab for analysis. >> it was discovered that the vile that kevin cooper's blootd contained two different blood types and two different dna

types indicating without any doubt that additional blood from another person had been poured into the cooper's vile. the likelihood is that they poured somebody else's blood into it after they poured blood on to a-41 and the t-shirt. >> much like when teenagers drink their parents' alcohol in order to conceal that, they have to fill the bottle back up with something else. >> cooper and his team eventually brought their claims of blood tampering to judge marilyn hough requesting that daniel gregonas be called to testify but as in previous petitions, judge hough denied all of their requests. after more than 20 years on death row and numerous failed appeals, the course now set execution date for february 10th, 2004. by this time, news of the

controversy surrounding kevin's case had become widespread. >> people started not only seeing the evidence and learning about the evidence but they decided they wanted to expose the truth. >> no fact will change kevin cooper's, they're being spoon fed this story that doesn't hold up. and the kevin cooper legal team knew how to play that. >> you had those opposed to the death penalty saying he's an innocent man. >> wants to bring closure to the victims' families. he doesn't want to bring them truth, but closure. two different things. >> while the court of the public opinion may have turned in favor, his defense team was running out of options. >> we were working against the clock. we had to file up to the

california supreme court saying that kevin had been denied his rights and the prosecution had been improper. >> cooper's arguments hinged on plants of evidence and alternate suspects who were never pursued. cooper also appealed to governor schwarzenegger for clemency. >> for the clemency petition, a number of jurors came forward and said they were very uncomfortable. now that they had learned about the things that surfaced since the trial. peggy, ryan's sister even wrote a letter to the governor saying they believe kevin was not the killer and they should not execute him. >> ten days before the execution, governor schwarzenegger made his decision. arnold schwarzenegger made his first live or die decision as california governor. reject pleas to spare the life of a convicted killer. >> he said that kevin was clearly guilty and should be

executed. a few days before, the execution date, the california supreme court denied our request for a stay of the execution and the chance to file further appeals in kevin's case. >> san quentin guards escorted kevin to a new cell, adjacent to the death chamber. kevin cooper was about to become a dead man walking. that keeps us coming back. thing here's to friends who reach for better. fewer carbs, fewer calories, superior taste. michelob ultra. the superior light beer. i am totally blind. and sometimes i struggle to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. this is called non-24. learn more by calling 844-824-2424. or visit your24info.com.

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hours before his execution, he was strip searched and prepped for the death chamber. steadfastly refused to assist in his own execution, defiantly, began a hunger strike the week before. >> death row. >> we say hell no. >> death row. >> hell no. >> a crowd of several hundred demonstrators were behind the prison walls. >> they were going to attend the execution. finally, the family was going to have justice. >> with just hours to go, a frenzied back and forth was erupting in the courts.

>> a three judge panel of the ninth circuit court of appeals issued an opinion denying a stay of kevin's execution. >> a few hours later, the 11 judge panel issued a ruling stating his execution. >> though requests granted less than one of the time, the judge reversed the earlier opinion and gave kevin cooper a stay but their decision didn't sit well with california's attorney general. >> the attorney general immediately filed a request of his supreme court of the united states to reverse that stay. >> at 8:15 p.m., a phone rang in the death chamber. >> my lawyers told me that the united states supreme court in a

unanimous decision said i would not be murdered that night. i felt life to come back into my body because i honestly thought i was a dead man. >> finding out four hours before your client is going to be executed that he's not going to be executed is a tremendous sense of exhilaration, but it's not over. kevin was not off death row. >> two years after kevin cooper's brush with death, a judge imposed a moratorium on the use of lethal injection in california. no one had been executed in the states since 2006. meanwhile, kevin cooper continues to declare his innocence and though his appeals have all been denied, in 2009, a judge from the ninth circuit court wrote a scathing indictment of the prosecution's case.

from the majority, judge william flecher wrote, cooper is probably innocent of the crimes for which the state of california is about to execution him. if he is innocent, the real killers have escaped. they may kill again. they may have already done so. despite conflicting opinions about cooper's guilt, if and when california resumes executions, kevin cooper will be returned to the death chamber. >> if he were to be executed, i would still want to prove his innocence because our system often convicts innocent people and when you have the ultimate punishment, you've got to get another system. >> we save the death penalty for the worst of the worst. the people on death row, some of them are called monsters. everybody talks about the death row inmates and their rights,

but people forget about the victims and their families and their rights. >> this is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. the defense attorneys like to say, what was his motive? he could have just taken their car and gone. that's true. but he didn't. he killed this family. he deserves the death penalty. >> 1985, i was escorted to death row here in san quentin prison. and it's like i went to hell. but i am an innocent man. i did notanyone. >> all of the potential inaccuracies. the potential miscarriages of

justice, i can't correct. i can only tell you that personally, i was involved in this case from the very beginning. and personally believe that kevin cooper should die. back in 1981, i had the american dream. the beautiful wife. the house in the suburbs. and a beautiful 6-year-old son. and one day i went to work, kissed my son good-bye, never saw him again. in two weeks, i became the parent of a murdered child. and i'll always be the parent of a murdered child. i still have the heartache. i still have the rage. i wait the years for justice. i know what it's like to be there waiting for some answers. and over those years, i learned how to do one thing really wel