he went into hiding when he became the most wanted man in california. norm hile hired former fbi agent tom parker to look into cooper s case. when you re conducting an investigation, especially one as 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
by this time, news of the controversy surrounding kevin s case had become widespread. people care to start seeing the evidence and learning about the evidence, but they decided they were not going to let these people murder me without exposing the truth. save kevin cooper! no fact will change kevin cooper s groupies. they re being spoon-fed this story that doesn t hold up, and the kevin cooper legal team knew how to play that. you have those opposed to the death penalty saying this execution should be stayed. he s an innocent man. ramos said he wants to bring closure to the victims families. he doesn t want to bring them truth. he wants to bring them closure, which is two different things. but while the court of public opinion may have turned in kevin s favor, his defense team was running out of options.
norman hile now felt he had enough evidence to successfully fight for kevin s life. but as he prepared his appeals, yet another witness came forward, fully 20 years after the crime. i hear on the tv set that they re going to put kevin cooper to death, and i went, are you kidding me? on the night of the murders, christine slonaker was eating at the canyon corral, a local country/western bar just two miles from the ryens home. as we were eating, in through the back swinging doors of the kitchen come these three guys. i noticed that one of them was covered in blood. not just little spots. this was like someone had taken
cooper s defense. to kevin cooper s shock and the defense s shock, the testing came back saying that there was kevin s dna on a-41. but for hile, the dna results raised a red flag. back in 1983, the lab technician, daniel gregonis he testified that he had consumed a-41 during his testing. now gregonis was asked to make sure that a-41 still existed. we have a photograph of the envelope that shows the date that he took it out and when he resealed it. so we know that he had a-41 on his person for 24 hours before he returned it. he d also had nearby, in the lab, the vial of kevin cooper s blood that was taken from him when he was arrested. contrary to gregonis original testimony, the state now reported there was enough of
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 gregonis. gregonis was a rookie at the time. proper procedure is to do blind testing. you test something and you don t know what the other person s blood is, and you re trying to see whether it s that person or not. but gregonis waited until he had kevin cooper s blood type. gregonis 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 claim linked cooper to the murders was a bloody footprint