Chino Hills Murders and Arrest
On the morning of June 5, 1983, Bill Hughes arrived at a semi-rural home in Chino Hills, California where his 11-year-old son Christopher had spent the night. Inside, he found Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and his own son dead. They had been chopped with a hatchet, sliced with a knife, and stabbed with an ice-pick. Josh Ryen, the 8-year-old son of Douglas and Peggy, had survived. His throat had been cut. The family station wagon was gone; it was discovered several days later in Long Beach, California, about 50 miles west of Chino Hills. The mother's purse was in plain sight on the kitchen counter, but no money had been taken.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies who responded to the call decided almost immediately that Kevin Cooper was the likely killer. He had admittedly hidden out in the vacant house next door, the Lease house, 125 yards away, for two days. He had made repeated calls from this house to two female friends asking for money to help with his escape, but they had refused. Cooper testified at trial that he had left that house as soon as it got dark on June 4 and had hitchhiked to Mexico. It was established that Cooper checked into a hotel in Tijuana, about 130 miles south of Chino Hills, at 4:30 pm on June 5.
There, Cooper befriended an American couple who owned a sailboat. He hitched a ride on the boat with them as a crew member cruising the Baja and Southern California coasts; he was arrested after seven weeks on the run when the boat sailed to Pelican Bay, Santa Cruz Island near Santa Barbara.
A blood-stained khaki green button identical to buttons on field jackets issued at the state prison from which Cooper escaped was found on the rug at the Lease house; tests revealed the presence of blood in the Leases' shower and bathroom sink; hair found in the bathroom sink was consistent with that of Jessica and Doug Ryen; a hatchet covered with dried blood and human hair that was found near the Ryens' home was missing from the Lease house, and the sheath for the hatchet was found in the bedroom where Cooper had stayed; Cooper's semen was found on a blanket in the closet of the Lease house; plant burrs found inside Jessica's nightgown were similar to burrs from vegetation between the Lease house and the Ryen house and to burrs found on a blanket inside the closet where Cooper slept at the Lease house, and in the Ryen station wagon; two partial shoe prints and one nearly complete one found in or near the Ryens' house and in the Lease house were consistent with Cooper's shoe size and Pro-Keds Dude tennis shoes issued at CIM that Cooper did not deny having; a hand-rolled cigarette butt and "Role-Rite" tobacco provided to inmates at CIM were in the Ryens' vehicle.
Read more about this topic: Kevin Cooper (inmate)
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