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the key to becoming a good cattleman is
00:00:09
buying the right cattle at the right
00:00:11
price
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in the 1980s one cattle man in missouri
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had a unique talent for choosing the
00:00:20
very best cattle and paying very little
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for it
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some of his farmhands however
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paid a very steep price
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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[Music]
00:00:51
[Applause]
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[Music]
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in chillicothe missouri the local barber
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shop is still the place to hear news and
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swap stories and even pick a few tunes
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it is also the place where farmers still
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make a living raising cattle and selling
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them at auction
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in the late 1980s cattle auction houses
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throughout the state were being swindled
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buyers who were mostly drifters and
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transients would show up make their
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purchase pay by check
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and then disappear
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[Music]
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the checks were inevitably worthless
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it was odd that several of them would
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have checks and then when we went to
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look at forum we couldn't find them
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we'd enter them into the computer but
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they never showed up
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many of the buyers had at some point
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worked on this farm in moorestown just
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outside of chillicothe
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the farm was owned by 78 year old ray
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copeland and his wife faye
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they appeared to be just an elderly farm
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couple that were
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kind of shy and didn't mix much with the
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people but
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never knew of them you know causing any
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problem here
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[Music]
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the small farm wasn't enough to support
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the copelands faye also worked in a
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factory and later as a motel maid
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we were just everyday people i was
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taught from
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childhood on you married you stayed with
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them
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husband was the boss
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and he was the boss
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but it was a hard life and the family
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was poor
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the only shoes we ever had was school
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shoes too
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and you'd have to go out there mucking
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the cows barefooted
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and this was included in the wintertime
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when the copeland children left the farm
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to pursue their own dreams ray looked
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for farm hands to help work the farm
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he was up in age hard of hearing and
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wasn't a great businessman
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because ray could not read or write
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and with bookkeeping
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writing names down where they were at
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things like this i mean he needed
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somebody to write him down
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to find workers ray would go to local
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homeless missions
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just ask people if they'd like to go out
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you know make some money and you know
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get
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paid at the end of the day or
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you know we can help you
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get some finances started
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and they go out you know
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get people and
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help them get it uh account started
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you know in a bank
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these men were usually on the run
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themselves
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many had addictions family problems or
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suffered from mental illness
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most had been arrested for vagrancy
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petty theft or similar offenses
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ray copeland paid them fifty dollars a
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day for their labor and also provided
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room and board
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one of these men uh who was offered that
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kind of money and a place to live
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especially maybe in a country setting
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why it would just be it would be
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paradise it would be something it would
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be a dream come true for a man like that
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one of the men wanted in connection with
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writing bad checks to cattle auction
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houses was 27 year old dennis murphy a
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drifter from illinois who for a time had
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worked for ray copeland
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[Music]
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in 1986
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a sheriff's deputy asked ray copeland if
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he knew murphy's whereabouts
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copeland said murphy simply took off one
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day
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he just took off in the middle of the
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night i haven't seen him since
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they would leave in the middle of night
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and he didn't know where they went he
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said there again he said you know how
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transits are they're here today and gone
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tomorrow and they would just leave i
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don't know
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i understand it that's murphy when
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copeland was told murphy was a thief he
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wasn't surprised because he had been
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swindled too
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no i don't
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we're looking for him we wrote some bad
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checks i know you wrote one to me
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it's in that drawer
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here you are copeland also had a check
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from murphy which had bounced because of
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insufficient funds
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in addition to murphy
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seven other men were wanted in
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connection with the cattle auction check
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scan
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none could be located
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until police received a call from
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nebraska
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the informant said
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he knew where murphy and the other
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transients had gone
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[Music]
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there were eight men wanted for writing
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bad checks to cattle auction houses in
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central missouri
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all had disappeared from the area
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without a trace
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then police got a telephone call from
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jack mccormick a drifter and small time
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con man who at one time had worked on
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ray copeland's farm
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he was a transit he moved a lot he had a
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lot of stories and i think he liked to
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tell a lot of stories
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mccormick said he thought he saw some
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human bones including a skull on the
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copeland farm
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the farm covered 40 acres including a
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pond a barn fields and woods
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county deputies chillicothe police the
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state highway patrol and the county
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coroner all searched the area
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surveying the property and looking for
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possible burial sites on the property
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and possible
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places where
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the deaths actually took place we had
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search dogs
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backhoes and we'd punched a lot of holes
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around in the farm and we had really
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searched this farm
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hadn't found a thing so
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you know you always think well maybe
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maybe this didn't happen
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after nine days of searching without
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success
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they brought jack mccormick to the scene
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i asked him i said jack just point to
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where these bodies or where this
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skull and leg bone was
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and he got outside there kind of beside
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the barn looking off down through the
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pasture and finally he said well really
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he said i didn't see any
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he said it could have probably been a
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dish pan or something down there
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but a look into copeland's background
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showed an interesting coincidence
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20 years earlier he had been arrested
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numerous times for the same thing
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writing bad checks
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every time he get arrested he would call
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me to come and bail him out
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i bailed him out of jail quite a few
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times
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about every 18 months seemed like his
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police out there and him being gone for
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a while it was common for us as growing
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up
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but ray appeared to have settled down
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because there had been no arrests in the
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20 years since
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and he had never been arrested for any
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violent crime
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police soon learned that copeland worked
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on some other farms in the area to earn
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extra money
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one was a farm just a few miles away
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in the barn where copeland worked
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storing bales of hay
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police discovered a shallow grave
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and the badly decomposed bodies of three
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men
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lined up head to toe
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they had probably been there for two or
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three years
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and were unrecognizable
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they were just wrapped in blankets and
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in an earthen grave is what they were
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in this situation they were in some clay
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ground which tends to kind of
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ward off decomposition because the air
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doesn't get to it as quickly as it was
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in say a different type of soil
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three men had been killed by a gunshot
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wound to the head
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but there was no evidence linking ray
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copeland or anyone else to the crimes
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a few days later in another nearby barn
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on the same property
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police removed hundreds of bales of hay
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and under a floorboard
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was another body
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six weeks later in a nearby well was yet
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another body
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the man was wearing a belt which said
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dennis
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but was this
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dennis murphy
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and was the killer
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ray copeland
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why would he do something like that when
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he had we had everything paid for we
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didn't know for nothing
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he had we had truck paid for everything
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all the machinery and all for arm and
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everything why would he turn around and
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do something like that if he didn't
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[Music]
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the bodies of five men had been
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recovered from a farm in missouri
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jack mccormick a former employee of ray
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copeland's farm told police that
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copeland was running a check fraud scam
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he said copeland gave him a few hundred
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dollars to open a checking account
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and told him to use a post office box as
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his address
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copeland then took mccormick to cattle
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auctions and sat in the stands signaling
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mccormick when to bid on cattle
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when he won the bidding mccormick would
00:11:20
pay for the cattle with a check
00:11:23
and sometimes the check would clear and
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then they would kind of have a standing
00:11:27
at sale barn they'd go back the next
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time and write a larger check
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with the pretense that he would make the
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check good
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and but to check then when he got the
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bank didn't clear
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copeland sold the cattle bought in
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mccormick's name
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and before the check had time to bounce
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copeland confronted mccormick with the
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gun
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ray had the pretence of a
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[ __ ] being down in the hole there in the
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barn
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around here trying to be nice i think
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he's in that hole
00:12:03
he wanted jack to get down with the
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stick and poke it out of the hole
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and jack said when he got down there he
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said he was already kind of scared of
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ray uh but when he got down there he
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said he wouldn't take his eyes off a ray
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he kept looking up at him
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because ray had the 22 rifle and
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supposedly was going to shoot the [ __ ]
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when he poked it out of the hole
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i get a good shot at him come on keep
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trying he'll come out he'll come out
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yeah he'll come right out i'll show you
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jack said he looked up real fast and
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then when he looked back ray had the
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rifle pointed at him
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mccormick said he'd talk copeland out of
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shooting him he promised copeland he
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would leave the area and never come back
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mccormick fled missouri and for five
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months kept quiet
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because he feared copeland would kill
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him if he ever told anybody about the
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scan
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when investigators searched the
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copeland's home
00:13:02
they discovered an old 22-caliber rifle
00:13:06
and the full assortment of men's
00:13:08
clothing
00:13:09
none of which belonged to ray copeland
00:13:13
clothes from several different people
00:13:15
but different sizes shoes
00:13:19
suitcases there was numerous suitcases
00:13:21
in the house none of it belonged to this
00:13:23
family or these clothes wouldn't fit
00:13:25
ray or faye copeland
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and hidden in a camera case
00:13:30
was a list of men hired by ray copeland
00:13:33
to work on the farm
00:13:35
four of the names were marked with an x
00:13:38
which corresponded to the four who were
00:13:40
wanted in connection with passing bad
00:13:43
checks
00:13:44
investigators sent the skulls of the
00:13:47
victims to dr ronald geyer a forensic
00:13:50
odontologist
00:13:52
dr geyer photographed the skulls
00:13:55
he performed a dental examination and
00:13:58
took x-rays and created a transparent
00:14:02
dental chart for each body
00:14:05
so you make a chart
00:14:07
of everything you find in the premortem
00:14:09
records to match to the postmortem
00:14:12
records
00:14:13
in this case the pre-mortem records
00:14:17
posed a challenge
00:14:19
some of them are kind of sketchy and old
00:14:23
and the biggest problem was that the
00:14:25
records were old
00:14:27
and these people had not had dental
00:14:29
treatment
00:14:30
in the period of time from the time
00:14:33
the records were made up to the time of
00:14:35
their death
00:14:36
some of the transients records were
00:14:38
almost 30 years old and the skulls were
00:14:41
missing many teeth which complicated the
00:14:44
comparison
00:14:45
and then
00:14:46
it got down to the point i think that
00:14:48
some of them we had to look at the bone
00:14:49
patterns and i remember one of them had
00:14:52
a condyle the joint
00:14:54
in the jaw right up here that the
00:14:56
condyle was misshapen
00:14:59
that matched a panoramic dental x-ray
00:15:01
belonging to dennis murphy
00:15:04
positively identifying the body found in
00:15:07
the well
00:15:09
by comparing pre and postmortem dental
00:15:12
charts
00:15:13
dr guyer identified the other four
00:15:16
bodies as
00:15:17
wayne warner
00:15:19
paul cowart jimmy dale harvey
00:15:22
and john
00:15:24
freeman coward harvey and freeman were
00:15:28
three of the four names on the copeland
00:15:31
list marked with an ex
00:15:36
coroner scott lindley performed
00:15:38
autopsies on all of the bodies and
00:15:41
discovered that the cause of death in
00:15:43
each case
00:15:45
was a gunshot wound to the head from a
00:15:47
small caliber gun shot at close range
00:15:52
if it's at close range the inside layer
00:15:54
of the skull tends to break away or
00:15:56
flake away and there's more cracking and
00:15:59
damage to the skull
00:16:01
and inside the skulls lindley found
00:16:04
bullets and bullet fragments
00:16:07
ballistics test revealed that the lands
00:16:09
and grooves on those fragments matched
00:16:12
the lands and grooves from ray
00:16:14
copeland's 22-caliber rifle
00:16:17
police arrested ray copeland as well as
00:16:21
the person they believed was his partner
00:16:23
in crime
00:16:25
what surprised me more than anything
00:16:27
else was them actually arresting mom
00:16:29
for the same thing
00:16:31
but what role did 68 year old faye
00:16:34
copeland play in the murders
00:16:39
[Music]
00:16:40
ray copeland was arrested and charged
00:16:43
with the murder of five men
00:16:46
in what was believed to be a modern day
00:16:48
cattle rustling scheme
00:16:51
they also arrested his wife faye
00:16:55
but i was not with him when he'd done
00:16:57
his bad deeds
00:16:59
i knew nothing about it
00:17:02
and it didn't include me
00:17:05
while in prison
00:17:07
faye wrote a letter to her husband
00:17:09
assuring him that things would cool down
00:17:12
soon
00:17:15
faye's handwriting
00:17:16
matched the handwriting on the list of
00:17:19
the missing men
00:17:21
but fade denied any knowledge of the
00:17:23
murders
00:17:25
i asked no questions
00:17:27
wouldn't have done me any good if i had
00:17:28
him because he just slapped me across
00:17:30
the house
00:17:31
ray copeland's long history of violence
00:17:34
had previously been hidden from everyone
00:17:37
but the copeland family
00:17:39
there was one time he uh one of my
00:17:41
brothers was scraping the bottom of his
00:17:43
boulder
00:17:44
it had oatmeal he didn't like the sound
00:17:46
took a frying pan to him
00:17:49
myself personally
00:17:51
milking cows
00:17:53
the old cow kicked the bucket over he
00:17:54
took a pair of metal cow kickers and
00:17:56
beat me with
00:17:58
for no reason uh
00:18:00
that was everyday occurrence with him
00:18:03
faye and ray copeland were each tried
00:18:06
separately
00:18:08
these trials were the biggest news to
00:18:11
ever hit livingston county missouri
00:18:15
prosecutors believe that ray copeland
00:18:17
hired the workers at the homeless
00:18:19
mission
00:18:20
he set up each one with a post office
00:18:23
box and a checking account and took them
00:18:25
to the local cattle auctions
00:18:28
[Music]
00:18:32
but before the checks could bounce
00:18:35
prosecutors say ray copeland would sell
00:18:37
the cattle and kill the worker
00:18:40
and bury the body
00:19:01
so
00:19:13
they were lower than anybody else they
00:19:16
could he could care less about him
00:19:18
they were on government payroll they
00:19:20
didn't need to be there
00:19:22
they didn't even need to be alive he had
00:19:24
said that a lot of times about
00:19:25
transients
00:19:26
forensic tests proved that the men were
00:19:30
all killed with ray copeland's gun
00:19:35
[Music]
00:19:37
ray copeland was convicted of five
00:19:40
counts of murder and sentenced to death
00:19:46
hooray
00:19:48
ray deserved
00:19:50
for what he done to the transits and the
00:19:53
people
00:19:54
all through his life
00:19:56
and he he deserved a death sentence
00:19:59
faye copeland denied any involvement in
00:20:01
the murders saying she was an abused
00:20:04
wife who only did what she was told
00:20:07
back then i just dropped my head and
00:20:09
went ahead and took it
00:20:11
i've carried bruises of carried broken
00:20:13
bones
00:20:14
from him
00:20:16
but he was my husband legally
00:20:19
i think she had some idea as far as the
00:20:20
cattle scam going on
00:20:23
as far as
00:20:24
the killings
00:20:25
i don't know i don't think so i hope
00:20:28
pray to god she didn't know
00:20:31
the list of workers in fayette
00:20:33
copeland's handwriting helped seal the
00:20:35
case against her
00:20:38
faye copeland was also convicted of
00:20:40
murder and was sentenced to death
00:20:43
that is the only thing i think they can
00:20:45
victor on was the piece of paper with
00:20:47
the names on
00:20:48
before ray copeland could be executed
00:20:51
he died in prison in 1993.
00:20:57
in 1999 after 10 years on death row
00:21:01
faye copeland's sentence was commuted
00:21:04
to life in prison
00:21:06
i never go to bed never close my eyes
00:21:08
but when i relive a lot of my life over
00:21:12
one dream was i to blame
00:21:15
you know
00:21:17
so why should i have to pay for
00:21:19
something he does
00:21:21
if he didn't
00:21:24
ray and faye copeland don't get much
00:21:26
sympathy from the transients who live in
00:21:29
the missions on commercial street
00:21:32
i said i hope they keep her till she
00:21:33
croaks
00:21:35
don't have any feelings for people like
00:21:37
that at all
00:21:40
of the eight men on the copeland's list
00:21:42
thomas park franklin hudson and dale
00:21:46
break
00:21:47
are still missing
00:21:48
[Music]
00:21:51
police believe they too were murdered
00:21:54
and that their bodies are buried nearby
00:21:58
somewhere
00:22:01
[Music]
00:22:11
[Music]
00:22:15
so
00:22:17
[Music]
00:22:32
you
