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Furrow drive up to their house in the wee hours of the morning. lee furrow comes rushing into the house wearing cover alls 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 ryans parked in the driveway with other individuals in that 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 furrow s hatchet was missing from his tool belt. it would make sense that somebody like lee furrow would have killed the ryans. ....
Was invited to spend the night. on a hill overlooking chino, the scene of a multiple homicide. we have four fatal victims. one victim approximately 8 years of age. the eyes are open, however, there s no response. the next morning, chris hughes father discovered the lifeless bodies 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 airlifted to a nearby hospital. i first arrived with tidwell. each of the victims had a combination of hatchet and knife wounds. this was such a brutal crime. the severity of 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 and ....
He was a convicted murderer. he had strangled to death a young woman and throwed her body into a canal. but san bernardino police waited 11 months before questioning lee furrow. and when they did, they never asked him about his missing ax. they also seemed to accept furrow s word that he didn t own any overalls. tom parker thinks he knows why. the cover alls in fact had been destroyed. a deputy had taken them and thrown them in a dumpster behind the sheriff s department because it was unfounded that they were connected to the case. of course there had never been any blood testing or whatever to come to that conclusion. hiel now raised this destruction of evidence with judge huff. in a criminal prosecution, the prosecution is required to turn over to the defense any ....
Got names of any individuals that had escaped within the past week. all of a sudden, we had a suspect. kevin cooper. just two days before the murders, 25-year-old kevin cooper had escaped from the california institute for men, just five miles from the ryans home. police believe he hid at the rent house before killing the ryans and chris hughes. san bernardino 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. ....
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. he 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 he 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 ....