06x15 - k*ller's 'Cattle' log"

[bunniefuu]

Narrator: the key to becoming a good cattleman

Is buying the right cattle at the right price.

In the s, one cattleman in missouri

Had a unique talent for choosing the very best cattle

And paying very little for it.

Some of his farmhands, however,

Paid a very steep price.

In chillicothe, missouri,

The local barbershop is still the place to hear news

And swap stories and even pick a few tunes.

It is also the place

Where farmers still make a living raising cattle

And selling them at auction.

[Auctioneer patter]

In the late s,

Cattle auction houses throughout the state were being swindled.

Buyers--who were mostly drifters and transients--

Would show up, make their purchase, pay by check,

And then disappear.

The checks were inevitably worthless.

It was odd that several of them would have checks,

And then when we went looking for 'em,

We couldn't find 'em.

We'd enter them into the computer,

But they never showed up.

Narrator: many of the buyers had, at some point,

Worked on this farm in moorestown, just outside of chillicothe.

The farm was owned by -year-old ray copeland

And his wife, faye.

O'dell: they appeared to be just

An elderly farm couple that were kind of shy

And didn't mix much with the people,

But, uh, never knew of 'em, you know,

Causing any problem here.

Narrator: the small farm wasn't enough to support the copelands.

Faye also worked in a factory,

And later, as a motel maid.

Faye copeland: we were just everyday people.

I was taught, from childhood on,

When you marry, you stay with him.

The husband was the boss.

And he was the boss.

Narrator: but it was a hard life,

And the family was poor.

Man: the only shoes we ever had

Were school shoes, too.

You'd have to go out there milking the cows barefooted,

And this was included in the wintertime.

Narrator: when the copeland children left the farm

To pursue their own dreams,

Ray looked for farmhands to help work the farm.

He was up in age, hard of hearing,

And wasn't a great businessman.

Al copeland: because ray could not read or write,

And with bookkeeping, writing names down,

Where they were at,

Things like this, I mean--

He needed somebody to write 'em down.

Narrator: to find workers,

Ray would go to local homeless missions.

Just ask people if they'd like to go out,

You know, make some money,

And you know, get paid at the end of the day.

Or...you know,

"We could help you get some finances started,"

And then go out, and you know, get people

And help get accounts started, you know, in a bank.

Narrator: these men were usually on the run themselves.

Many had addictions, family problems,

Or suffered from mental illness.

Most had been arrested for vagrancy,

Petty theft, or similar offenses.

Ray copeland paid them $ a day for their labor

And also provided room and board.

Woman: one of these men, who was offered that kind of money

And a place to live,

Especially, maybe, in a country setting,

Why, it would just be-- it would be paradise.

It would be something--

It would be a dream come true for a man like that.

Narrator: one of the men wanted

In connection with writing bad checks to cattle auction houses

Was -year-old dennis murphy--

A drifter from illinois

Who, for a time, had worked for ray copeland.

Ray, there's a sheriff at the door.

He's got questions.

Narrator: in , a sheriff's deputy asked ray copeland

If he knew murphy's whereabouts.

Copeland said murphy simply took off one day.

He just took off in the middle of the night.

Haven't seen him since.

O'dell: they would leave in the middle of the night,

And he didn't know where they went.

There again, he said, "you know how transients are.

"They're here today and gone tomorrow,

And they would just leave."

I understand that dennis murphy...

Narrator: when copeland was told murphy was a thief,

He wasn't surprised,

Because he had been swindled, too.

No, I don't.

Sheriff: we're looking for him.

He wrote some bad checks.

I know. He wrote one to me.

Here you are.

Narrator: copeland also had a check from murphy

Which had bounced because of insufficient funds.

In addition to murphy, other men were wanted

In connection with the cattle-auction check scam.

None could be located--

Until police received a call from nebraska.

The informant said

He knew where murphy

And the other transients had gone.

There were men wanted for writing bad checks

To cattle-auction houses in central missouri.

All had disappeared from the area

Without a trace.

Then police got a telephone call from jack mccormick,

A drifter and small-time con man

Who at one time had worked on ray copeland's farm.

O'dell: he was a transient.

He moved a lot, and he had a lot of stories.

I think he liked to tell a lot of stories...

Narrator: mccormick said he thought he saw some human bones,

Including a skull,

On the copeland farm.

The farm covered acres, including a pond,

A barn, fields and woods.

County deputies, chillicothe police,

The state highway patrol, and the county coroner

All searched the area.

Man: surveying the property,

Looking for possible burial sites on the property

And possible places

Where the deaths actually took place.

O'dell: and we had search dogs, backhoes,

And we'd punched a lot of holes around in the farm.

And we had really searched this farm.

Hadn't found a thing.

So, you know, you always think,

"Well, maybe this didn't happen."

Narrator: after days of searching without success,

They brought jack mccormick to the scene.

O'dell: I asked him, I said,

"Jack, just point to where these bodies,

Or where this skull and leg bone was."

And he got outside there, kind of beside the barn,

Looking off down through the pasture,

And finally he said, "well, really," he said, "I didn't see any."

He said it could have probably been

A dishpan or something down there.

Narrator: but a look into copeland's background

Showed an interesting coincidence.

Years earlier,

He had been arrested numerous times

For the same thing-- writing bad checks.

Faye copeland: every time he'd get arrested.

He would call me to come and bail him out.

I bailed him out of jail quite a few times--

Al copeland: about every months

Seemed like it was police out there,

And him being gone for a while.

It was common for us as growing up.

Narrator: but ray appeared to have settled down,

Because there had been no arrests

In the years since.

And he had never been arrested for any violent crime.

Police soon learned

That copeland worked on some other farms in the area

To earn extra money.

One was a farm just a few miles away.

In the barn,

Where copeland worked storing bales of hay,

Police discovered a shallow grave

And the badly decomposed bodies of men,

Lined up, head to toe.

They had probably been there for two or years

And were unrecognizable.

Lindley: they were just wrapped in blankets

In an earthen grave, that's what they were.

And in this situation, they were in some clay ground,

Which tends to kind of ward off decomposition

Because the air doesn't get to it as quickly

As if it was in, say, a different type of soil.

Narrator: the men had been k*lled by a g*nsh*t wound to the head.

But there was no evidence

Linking ray copeland or anyone else

To the crimes.

A few days later,

In another nearby barn on the same property,

Police removed hundreds of bales of hay,

And under a floorboard was another body.

Weeks later in a nearby well was yet another body.

The man was wearing a belt which said "dennis."

But was this dennis murphy?

And was the k*ller ray copeland?

Faye copeland: why would he do something like that?

When we had everything paid for.

We didn't owe for nothing.

We had the truck paid for, everything.

All the machinery and all...

The farm and everything.

Why would he turn around and do something like that?

If he did it...

Narrator: the bodies of men had been recovered

From a farm in missouri.

Jack mccormick,

A former employee of ray copeland's farm,

Told police that copeland was running a check-fraud scam.

He said copeland gave him

A few hundred dollars to open a checking account

And told him to use a post office box as his address.

[Moo]

Copeland then took mccormick to cattle auctions and sat in the stands,

Signaling mccormick when to bid on cattle.

[Auctioneer patter]

When he won the bidding,

Mccormick would pay for the cattle with a check.

O'dell: and sometimes the check would clear,

And then they would

Kind of have a standing at the sale barn.

They'd go back the next time and write a larger check,

With the pretense that he would make the check good.

And--but the check then, when it got to the bank, didn't clear.

Narrator: copeland sold the cattle bought in mccormick's name,

And before the check had time to bounce,

Copeland confronted mccormick with a g*n.

O'dell: ray had the pretense of a co*n

Being down in a hole there in the barn.

I think he's in that hole there...

O'dell: and he wanted jack to get down with a stick

And poke it out of the hole.

And jack said, when he got down there,

He said he was already kind of scared of ray,

But when he got down there,

He said he wouldn't take his eyes off of ray.

He kept looking up at him because ray had the . r*fle

And supposedly was going to sh**t the co*n

When he poked it out the hole.

Ray: I'll get a good shot at him.

Come on, keep trying, he'll come out, he'll come out.

There, he'll come right out.

I'll show you.

O'dell: jack said he looked up real fast,

And then when he looked back,

Ray had the r*fle pointed at him.

Narrator: mccormick said he talked copeland out of sh**ting him.

He promised copeland he would leave the area

And never come back.

Mccormick fled missouri and for months kept quiet

Because he feared copeland would k*ll him

If he ever told anybody about the scam.

When investigators searched the copeland's home,

They discovered an old .-Caliber r*fle.

And a full assortment of men's clothing--

None of which belonged to ray copeland.

O'dell: clothes from several different people, different sizes.

Shoes, suitcases--

There were numerous suitcases in the house.

None of them belonged to this family,

Or these clothes wouldn't fit ray or faye copeland.

Narrator: and hidden in a camera case

Was a list of men hired by ray copeland to work on the farm.

Of the names were marked with an "x,"

Which corresponded to the who were wanted

In connection with passing bad checks.

Investigators sent the skulls of the victims

To dr. Ronald gier, a forensic odontologist.

Dr. Gier photographed the skulls.

He performed a dental examination

And took x-rays

And created a transparent dental chart for each body.

And so you make a chart

Of everything you find in the premortem records

To match to the postmortem records.

Narrator: in this case,

The premortem records posed a challenge.

Gier: some of them have got sketchy and old,

And the biggest problem was that the records were old

And these people had not had dental treatment

In the period of time

From the time the records were made

Up to the time of their death.

Narrator: some of the transients' records almost o years old.

And the skulls were missing many teeth,

Which complicated the comparison.

Gier: and then it got down to the point,

I think, in some of them we had to look at the bone patterns.

I remember one of them had a condyle--

The joint in the jaw right up here--

That the condyle was misshapen.

Narrator: that matched a panoramic dental x-ray belonging to dennis murphy--

Positively identifying the body found in the well.

By comparing pre- and postmortem dental charts,

Dr. Gier identified the other bodies

As wayne warner,

Paul cowart,

Jimmy dale harvey,

And john freeman.

Cowart, harvey, and freeman

Were of the names on the copeland list

Marked with an "x."

Coroner scott lindley performed autopsies on all of the bodies

And discovered that the cause of death in each case

Was a g*nsh*t wound to the head from a small-caliber g*n

Shot at close range.

Lindley: if it's at close range,

The inside layer of the skull

Tends to break away or flake away,

And there's more cracking and damage to the skull.

Narrator: and inside the skulls,

Lindley found b*ll*ts and b*llet fragments.

Ballistics tests reveal

That the lands and grooves on those fragments

Matched the lands and grooves

From ray copeland's .-Caliber r*fle.

Police arrested ray copeland

As well as the person they believed was his partner in crime.

What surprised me more than anything else

Was them actually arresting mom for the same thing.

Narrator: but what role did -year-old faye copeland play in the murders?

Narrator: ray copeland was arrested

And charged with the m*rder of men

In what was believed to be

A modern-day cattle-rustling scheme.

They also arrested his wife, faye.

Faye copeland: but I was not with him

When he done his bad deeds.

I knew nothing about it...

And it didn't include me.

Narrator: while in prison,

Faye wrote a letter to her husband,

Assuring him that things would cool down soon.

Faye's handwriting matched the handwriting

On the list of the missing men.

But faye denied any knowledge of the murders.

Faye copeland: I asked no questions.

It wouldn't have done me any good if I had,

Because he'd have slapped me across the house.

Narrator: ray copeland's long history of v*olence

Had previously been hidden from everyone

But the copeland family.

Al copeland: there was one time he--

One of my brothers was scraping the bottom of his bowl to eat--

Where he had oatmeal.

He didn't like the sound and took a frying pan to him.

Myself personally... Milking cows--

The old cow kicked the bucket over,

He took a pair of metal cow kickers

And beat me with it... For no reason.

That was an everyday occurrence with him.

Narrator: faye and ray copeland were each tried separately.

These trials were the biggest news

To ever hit livingston county, missouri.

Prosecutors believe that ray copeland hired the workers

At the homeless mission.

He set up each one with a post office box and a checking account

And took them to the local cattle auctions.

[Auctioneer patter]

But before the checks could bounce,

Prosecutors say ray copeland would sell the cattle

And k*ll the worker and bury the body.

Al copeland: they were lower than anybody else.

He could care less about 'em.

They were on government payroll.

They didn't need to be there.

They didn't even need to be alive.

He had said that lots of times about transients.

Narrator: forensic tests proved that the men were all k*lled

With ray copeland's g*n.

Ray copeland was convicted of counts of m*rder

And sentenced to death.

Hurray.

Ray deserved it...

For what he done to the transients

And the people all through his life.

And he deserved the death sentence.

Narrator: faye copeland denied

Any involvement in the murders,

Saying she was an abused wife

Who only did what she was told.

Faye copeland: back then, I just dropped my head

And went ahead and took it.

I've carried bruises.

I've carried broken bones... From him.

But he was my husband legally.

I think she had some idea as far as the cattle scam going on.

As far as the killings, I don't know.

I don't think so.

I hope--pray to god-- she didn't know.

Narrator: the list of workers in faye copeland's handwriting

Helped seal the case against her.

Faye copeland was also convicted of m*rder and was sentenced to death.

Ray copeland: that is the only thing I think they convicted her on,

Was the piece of paper with the names on.

Narrator: before ray copeland could be ex*cuted,

He died in prison in .

In , after years on death row,

Faye copeland's sentence was commuted to life in prison.

I never go to bed, never close my eyes,

But when I relive a lot of my life over...

Wondering... Was I to blame?

No.

So why should I have to pay for something he done?

ifhe done it.

Narrator: ray and faye copeland don't get much sympathy

From the transients who live in the missions on commercial street.

I hope they keep her till she croaks.

I don't have any feelings for people like that at all.

Narrator: of the men on the copelands' list,

Thomas park, franklin hudson,

And dale brake are still missing.

Police believe they, too, were m*rder*d

And that their bodies are buried nearby...

Somewhere.