This episode may contain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and
sexual violence against adults, children, and animals. Listener discretion is advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Talia and I'm Tanya, and together we are Crimes and
Consequences, a true crime podcast. Welcome back, everyone to another episode of
Crimes and Consequences. I'm Tanya and I'm Tealia, and this should be the
first episode that we have put on our YouTube channel. Yes, so,
if you found us on YouTube, thanks for watching. Please hit the like,
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So today I have a story about Ray and Faye Copeland and I don't know
it. She doesn't know it. Ray Copeland was born December thirtieth, nineteen
fourteen. It's a little bit of an older story to parents, Jess and
Laney Copeland. He was raised in Oklahoma in the Ozark Mountains. The Copelands
were poor and they moved around quite a bit, so Ray didn't really complete
school. He just worked a lot, like to help his family. He
was known to be very stubborn and he never paid attention to anyone that was
in charge. He was that kind of kid. Ray's mom, Laney,
had given birth to two more children. So, like I said, he
dropped out of school when he was in the fourth grade, and that's when
he began working. Fourth grade. I know, Coplands ran a tiny farm.
So he began his life a crime by stealing cattle when he was a
kid in livestock and then he would steal them from his father's farm, sell
them, and then give the money to his family without I guess his parents
knowing what I know. Eventually he did move on to stealing other people's other
people's cattle instead of stealing his dad's. Maybe his dad caught on, who
knows, Like I got cattle missing and you're giving me money. Yeah,
So I don't know, but that was the extent of most of his petty
crimes. Is just you know, stealing cattle. Don't even know how to
steal a cow, but I don't either. So when Ray was in his
early twenties, he found other ways to make money and this these methods were
a lot more serious. When he was twenty two, which was nineteen thirty
six, so we are in the heart of the Great Depression. I think
he was arrested for forging checks and he was sentenced to serve one year behind
bars at the local jail in Harrison County. Soon after he was released in
nineteen forty, he moved back in with his parents at their farm, and
it would appear that he stayed out of trouble for at least a little while.
But one day, when Ray was at a routine doctor's appointment, he
met nineteen year old fay Della Wilson. Fay was born in nineteen twenty one
to her parents, Rufus and Gladys Wilson. Wilson's were from Harrison, Arkansas,
and they were known to be just really hard working people. Like the
Copelands, the Wilsons were poor, but they somehow succeeded in raising seven children
while living in a cabin that had dirt floors. Oh so Ray meets Faye
and it is instant, right, and he's like, what twenty one,
she's nineteen, Yeah, you know, he's about seven years older than she
is. Oh, it is yeah, he was born nineteen fourteen and she
was in nineteen twenty one, so he's a little bit older. But after
meeting the connected like instantaneously, she just you know, still his heart.
They were smitten. Ray made a promise to her during their relationship and he
said that he was always going to protect her. Okay, So a few
months later, Ray and Fay got married and within a year of marriage,
they started a family. Their first child was a son named Everett, and
within the next two years, Fay would give birth to another son that they
named Billy Ray. Four years into their marriage, the Copeland family relocated to
California in Fresno County, and within the next two years the family would get
even bigger with the birth of their first and only daughter, named Betty Lou.
She was born in nineteen forty five. Betty Lou, Billy Ray,
Beutdy Lou and Billy Ray. Yep. They had a third son named Elvia
A l v I A Elvia Alvia. He was born in nineteen forty seven,
and so Ray and Fay have this blossoming family with all of these children.
Right, they have four kids and in nineteen forty nine, Ray decided
he needed to go back to his old ways to make extra money. Then
to steal some cattle. Yeah, he was suspected of stealing a couple of
horses, Yeah, from another farm who was close to where they lived.
Although no charges were ever filed against Ray for horse theft, his entire reputation
now around the county, it was just shattered. It's like a Yellowstone episode.
Yeah, I'd never watched yellow Stone. You should, I should.
A few months later, Fay gave birth to another child. Now it's their
fifth, and this is William Wayne. And since Ray's reputation is garbage,
he can't find a job and farming was really all he knew, but nobody
try trusted him around their livestock. So no money's coming in to this household
of seven, and the Copelands decide to leave California and go back to Arkansas
for a fresh start. However, this fresh start didn't go as planned because
Ray is a criminal, and he was arrested within the first month of being
there for stealing cattle. With his arrest, he was charged with grand larceny
and he had to serve a year behind bars. So what is she supposed
to do? I know, rightis what do you do? I don't know?
I mean, she had to do something right. I'm sure she got
a job she had to of Hopefully there was family that could help to since
they moved back to Arkansas. True. Once he was released from this now
second year long stint that he's had in his life, the family moved from
Arkansas to Missouri, you know, fresh start, And in nineteen fifty one,
Ray was arrested again surprise, seiling cattle. Surprising, and instead of
going to prison, he was sentenced to hard labor. But the hard labor
was working on the Judges farm for a year. Isn't they crazy? You're
not going to ja. Sorry, that's funny as how, Yeah, you
need to do some physical labor to work for me. You're gonna work at
my farm and for none of my cattle better. Yeah, I'm gonna count
them every night stolen. After another release, Ray felt, okay, we
need another fresh start. I gotta do it again. You gotta move again,
gotta move again, and they went to Illinois. And in Illinois they
would move from town to town over the next eight years. On three different
occasions, Ray was arrested for forging checks. Even more of jail time he
had to pay fines. I mean, nothing stopped him. He would continue
forging checks, and in nineteen sixty one he wrote a check, a bad
check for a little over twenty nine hundred dollars, which would be a lot
of money. Yeah, and it was for a herd of twenty cows,
so it was a lot of money. They think he's gonna get away with
that. He's gonna bounce and he's gonna have He's gonna sell them, right,
Yeah, he sold the cows. Well, his thing was he would
sell them right away, like before, like the bank caught up with him
and everything. So by the time, you know, yeah, the time,
by the time they were come to him, he had already made the
money. But obviously, yes, he's being a resident a restitution and oh
yeah. He had to go back to prison for another nine months, and
after he was released, Ray finally came to the conclusion that he needed to
get his shit together, like, okay, we like this ain't working anymore.
I need to do something different. So he was in jail more than
he was out living free. So getting his shit together he had a different
meaning that it would mean to you or me. Usually, you know,
it means somebody, Okay, I'm gonna turn over a new leave I'm going
to turn my life around. Straight path. Yeah, straightened my path out.
But you know that didn't happen. Ray had a different plan. He
was still going to commit crimes, but he was going to use a different
method. Okay, So while he's ironing out these details of his new game
plan, you know, he did remain on the straight and narrow until he
got this plan together. It's now the summer of nineteen sixty six, and
Ray decided, okay, we need to move one more time, one more
time, I promise, Yeah, this is it. So they landed on
a forty acre farm in a town called Moorsville in Livingston County, and I
believe this is still in Missouri. The six thousand dollars farm consisted of a
small farmhouse where his family lived. There's a few barns, and Faye decided
to get a job working at Midwest Quality Glove Corporation. I'm not sure what
she did, but forty acres and a farmhouse for six grand nineteen sixty six.
So while finding their way to the farm, Ray and Fay got to
know the owners of the neighboring farms and they these neighbors started to notice some
things about the Copelands, and it became known years later that Fay and their
five children were being abused physically by Ray. And Faye was raised in a
good Christian home. She stayed with them. Yeah, she'd been raised to
believe that divorce wasn't an option and that it was sin. She was raised
by her parents to love and support her husband no matter what, and that
the man was always the head of the household. And you know, the
Bible says she needed to submit to her husband. So Fay said, even
though Ray was mean and you know, beat her, she remained a good
and loyal wife to him, even though he would end up at some point
ruining her life. But that's spoiler alert. Since Ray knew he wasn't getting
anywhere writing bad checks, he was still sorting out this new plan that this
brainchild, I guess that he's going to hatch. In the early seventies,
he had an eye for cattle, obviously, since that's really all he knew.
But his issue was that he never had money to do anything with them.
He had, you know, spent a lot of money bert purchasing this
farm that they were living on, and they needed cattle for the farm.
But he was adamant that he wasn't going to go back to jail. The
potential of getting arrested again was not something that Ray was ready to risk because
if he went back to jail, it would definitely have been longer than like
nine months or a year long, because now he's got like this record,
right, But if he got a job and saved his money, yeah,
you know, to buy some cattle. A job is too boring to want.
You need instant money when you have these problems, apparently, right,
it's much easier to steal it. I guess, is it. I don't
know. I don't steal. The consequences you've described seem easy to me.
One fucking day jail. Look, I tell on every crime I ever knew
anybody Tony went through a stop sign. Yes, thanks, Lea, sell
me out. So eventually he comes up with this devious plan. Ray knew
he needed to find someone else to write the bad checks for him, and
this person needed to be someone that nobody had ever seen before and that nobody
knew. This person also needed to be able to disappear immediately after the deed
was done, and he knew exactly where to find such people on the side
of the road hitchhiking. Oh yeah, you know, you're just blowing through
town. He's got a job for you. And as crazy as this sounds,
Ray was able to pull this scheme off several times. He'd get the
various men to go to auctions for cattle and he would hire them, obviously
to work for him. He would pay them fifty dollars a day, which
I think was probably really good money. Yeah, And after all the details
were ironed out, Ray and the mystery man, you know, they started
showing up to these auctions once the cattles were brought. Once the cattle was
brought out to be shown, Ray and you know, mister Mystery they would
be on separate ends of the corral, they wouldn't stand together. And Ray
would give him like a signal like these are the ones we want to buy,
okay, So he would bid on them and win them in the auction,
and the mystery man would then write out a check from Ray's checkbook and
sign Ray's name to the check. So each check that was written when he
pulled this off was between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars. So he's still
using Ray's checkbook though. Yeah, but it's not Ray writing the check.
It's the guy now committing this crime. Right, Oh, Ray didn't do
anything wrong, right, checkbook was probably still yeah, then put the guy
up to it, right. The check would be handed over to the auctioneer.
Ray would take the newly purchased cattle home. He would you know,
sell the cattle by the time that the check bounced, and you know he
didn't do it. I wasn't me, and the guy who wrote the check
would be gone. So when this happened one time, law enforcement comes to
Ray's house about another bad check. But Ray just played stupid and he acted
like, you know, it's not my handwriting. I don't know what happened.
And since the hitchhiker signed Ray's name, Ray just pointed out, you
know, that's not my handwriting. I didn't do it, so I didn't
do anything wrong, but that no charges could be filed against Ray since he
wasn't the person who wrote it out. But everybody knows, I mean,
yeah, it's pretty much his m out right steel cattle whatever. So after
each of these and there was like a he did this dozens of times,
you know, they would completely vanish as Ray had previously instructed them to do.
They would just blow out of town and that would be that. After
Ray pulled this off too many times to count, he thought he was in
the clear. Like he thought he had now committed like the perfect crime he
he had planned it. Never catch me, Yeah, they'll never catch me,
Like this is this is gold This is a golden plan. He had
planned out everything so perfectly, every little detail. It's always when you get
too greedy and you'd just stop, Yeah, taking the cattle. Then had
built a nice farm, Yeah, you'd think keep going. And I'm thinking,
he's got to have a lot of money, Like, what are they
blown? They've blown through all this money, thousands of dollars and they got
cattled. Yeah, but they sell them right, but they keep some on
their farm too, I think probably. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But
Ray wasn't counting on was that a local police officer was catching up to one
of the hitchhikers that had did the scheme with Roy Ray. The hitchhiker was
named Gerald Perkins. So Gerald was asked about Ray, what Ray had asked
of him, and he cooperated with law enforcement. He blabbed, he just
told him the whole story. So Gerald led the police back to Ray's house
and Ray was arrested yet again, and he was sentenced to serve two years
in prison for forgery. So he's gone these two years, and once he
was released, he still working on fine tuning the scheme because okay, it
was almost perfect, and now what can I do? I already know what
he can do? Yeah, Now what can I do to make it absolutely
perfect? Yes? Right? Yeah? And he was banished from attending auctions,
so he needed to find a new way. By nineteen eighty five,
Ray had come to the conclusion that he completely fine tuned this scheme and he
was excited to test it out. This has been like what forty years?
Yeah, this has been like yeah, thirty years of stealing for sure,
right. Yeah. By this time in his life, Ray was in his
seventies. Jesus Us, yes, and Ray, Ray and Fay were empty
nesters. Here he's still going at it to see him just get some so
securedy and honestly it's the truth. What the hell his hearing was going.
Both of them are growing older. They needed help around the farm, so
they began to hire men as farm hands. Oh boy, Rai's new plan
still had drifters writing bad checks, but the checks wouldn't have Ray's name on
them. Ray would take the men to the local post office to get to
get a PO box in their name. The next step Ray would then take
him to the bank and they would open checking accounts in their own name.
And the final step with Zen to make them write a check from their new
account. You know that's going to bounce. And Ray lied to the men
and told them, you know, they would be writing checks for him because
he'd cover it. Yeah, he was going to cover it. Yeah,
cover it because he's not allowed to go you know, the people at the
auction hated him, so he's not allowed to go there anymore. So once
this transaction was complete, Ray had a plan to make sure that the police
would never catch up to another one again. He began murdering, as you
probably have guessed, murdering these farm hands that he bought, that he brought
to his farm. So once he got them to complete the scheme, he
shot each man and he killed them so there'd be no possible way that they
could blab to the police ever again in nineteen I still have these checks,
m h. And you don't have those people, And so the police are
going to investigate, maybe where those people are? You would think, right,
That's what I would think. I would think in nineteen eighty nine,
So about four years later, this has been going on about four years.
The Copelands hired a farm hand and his name was Jack McCormick and he was
fifty seven. Ray initially found him at the Victory Mission, which is a
nonprofit organization whose mission is to help those who are struggling and in need of
food and shelter. So it's like a shelter. Jack had been recovering from
alcoholism and when Ray offered him a job, he jumped at it like this
is his chance for his fresh start. Ray knew he could take advantage of
the situation and you know, use these guys. So Jack had been hired
to open a checking account. He was instructed to put a small deposit that
Ray gave him into the account to start. Jack was told that Ray needed
help at the auctions because Ray was hard of hearing. Oh, so Jack's
job was to bid for him. Under Ray's instructions, Jack went to the
post. You know, he got his po box and he began using Ray's
money like for the starter tucks so then, you know, Jack went to
the auction and he bought cattle for Ray. After the auction, Ray convinced
Jack to come back to the house because he said, there is a raccoon
in the barn and I need your help trapping it. So as they're walking
to the barn, Ray had his rifle with him, and Jack noticed that
one of the tractors from the farm was backed up close to the barn with
a small trailer attached to it. And He's like, hmm, I'm a
small trailer. There was a shovel along with a big sheet of plastics.
Oh okay, all right, So Jack's like, oh, thank you.
You know, Ray had every intention of killing Jack because this transaction is over,
and digging his grave, wrapping his corpse up, you know, burying
it. So after Jack set up the recoup the raccoon trap, he turned
around and Ray was pointing a rifle directly at his head. Somehow, though
I'm not sure how, Jack was able to convince Ray not to shoot him.
Jack said, I'm going to leave Missouri. I'm gonna, you know,
hi, tail it out of here. I'm out and I'm never going
to talk about this to anyone, and if you're wondering where Fay is during
this, she had left to go to work at her part time job.
She worked at a holiday inn. And but she she's not I have a
feeling she knows what's going on and she just doesn't want to be there when
it all comes down. How could you not figure out? I know,
right, obviously got a life of crime because this was an issue when they
when when the law finally catches up with them, it was how much does
Fae know? And I'll tell you a little bit later. So after Jack
promised to leave Missouri. Oops, wait a minute, sorry, After Jack
promised to leave Missouri, Ray agreed to shake Jack where you needed to go,
like I'll drop you off wherever. But they were going to make a
quick stop at the courthouse that was located in that county. When the two
of them got to the courthouse, Fay was waiting there, so when she
saw Jack, she seemed shocked because he should be dead and buried. At
this point, Ray told Faye that he and Jack were headed to the bank,
and so Faye followed them. Once Jack and Ray got to the bank,
the checking account was closed, even though there was an outstanding check for
a little over eleven hundred dollars. Jack told Ray that there was no need
for him to head back to the farm. You know this is good.
I've closed this account. Yeah, just let me go. Yeah, even
though he still had clothes and other belongings there. He's just like, I
don't care if I go back to that farm, he's going to kill me.
Y I'm dead. Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't really willing to
risk his life. So Ray and Fay leave, They go home. Jack
is now on his own and a little bit later that day, he meets
a friend named Rose at a nearby bar. The two of them Jack Jack,
two of them are chatting it up, and Jack told her everything he
had just experienced at Ray's farm. Even though he promised not to tell anyone,
I know, he told her, you know I would. I missed
my deaf by this much. Right. He's like, if I go back
there there, he's probably gonna kill me. But he's still in town.
Yes, he's still in town. He's supposed to be leaving Missouri. So
Rose told Jack, Okay, let's go back to the house together to get
your belonging. No, yeah, no, part of what I've just told
you, are you not understanding? And they go back I will be killed.
Yeah, I'd be like, no, that's okay, I can leave
it. What's wrong with Rose? I'm not going back to a house where
I think someone could be murdered. But she maybe she thinks because she's there,
they won't do it. No, no, down right, no no
no no no no no no no no. So they when they right to
the house, they were greeted by both Fay and Ray and they were just
cursing Jack and Rose up and down, like what are you doing here?
Jack introduced Rose to them. He told them that she was his sister,
but Fay wasn't buying it. She kept trying to make Rose tell her her
name for some reason, and she wrote it down along with the license plate
from the car that they came in. They ended up leaving with their lives
still, Jack and Rose. But the very important no, they didn't know
any of Jack's belongings because I think they get there and they have this confrontation
and they leave, and Jack did move. He left Missouri and he went
to Nebraska good. And after Jack left, Ray tried to use the same
scheme on two other men. One caught on and left as fast as he
could, but the other did as he was instructed, but before Ray could
kill him, he was arrested. So we have Jack in Nebraska and he
gets there and he is thinking about what happened, and he's really feeling like
he needs to expose Ray. So he makes a call to crime stappers in
Nebraska, and while on the phone, he said, you know, I
was working on this farm and while I was there, I accidentally uncovered some
bones and I think they were human. Okay, okay, he said.
On August sixth of that year, he took a little stroll behind one of
the Copeland's barns, and while he was making his way, Jack looked down
and thought he saw a human skull along with either an arm or a leg
bone, and get the fuck out of there, amen, right, I
don't know. He saw these bones coming out of the soil behind the barn,
and Ray and Fay must have seen him walk back there, because when
he went when he got back to the house, both of them were extremely
upset at him and the fact that he walked behind the barn, and he
was angrily told that he was not allowed to walk over there again. So
he tells the hotline in this story, this Crime Stoppers hotline, and they're
a little skeptical. They're like, hmm, I don't know, Like,
Okay, you came across some human bones. But because you know, the
Copelands are elderly, so they're thinking, hmm, he's got to be in
his mid to late seventies, right, yeah, right, And but but
I think what crime suppers does is they take the tip and they pass it
along to law enforcement. And that's exactly what they did. They passed it
along to Missouri's law enforcement for that area so that they could check it out.
After the Missouri detectives heard about what Jack had seen on the farm,
they took this information really serious because Ray had a criminal record, and so
they they would then spend two much gathering all the information that they could find
out about the Copelands. After taking this time to secretly investigate them, they
were able to use everything they found, along with the Jack statement, to
get a search warrant for the farm. Oh, I can't wait to hear
what you tell me they find. The raid of the Copelands farm took place
in October of nineteen eighty nine, and since this was such a large area
to cover, like it's forty acres forty acres a lot. The sheriff,
along with forty officers, units of bloodhounds, and a full bulldozers took Ray
and Faye by surprise. They show up with a search warrant and they're like,
oh shit, we're fucked. Yeah. The team of officers and bloodhounds
scoured the farm for an entire week and they came up with nothing, not
even by the barn, He said, what happened. They went as far
as searching the property that surrounded the farm, but they still came up empty.
Many of the officers then thought that tip was bullshit, right and this
was how all just either wild goose chase, some kind of misunderstanding. But
a few days later their luck would turn around because the bulldozers come out.
So a few few bulldozers went into the nearby farm that Ray often used,
and when police started digging, three bodies were unearthed. These bodies were of
twenty seven year old Jimmy Dale Harvey, twenty one year old Paul Jason Cohort,
and twenty seven year old John W. Freeman. Each of these men
had died from a single gunshot to the back of their head. Two bodies.
Two more bodies were found a little bit later. The body of Dennis
K. Murphy had been found in a well located on the property and his
body was badly decomposed and it was chained to a forty pound block of concrete.
Oh man, so yeah, so somebody tossed that concrete into the well
and down went Dennis. It's like a bad mood, scary moon well with
my right. The other body was of Wayne Warner, and his body had
also been found near the barn, but instead of being buried next to the
other three, his body was placed in the barn under just bales of hay
that had been stacked Florida ceiling. Now they're getting careless, yeah right,
like not even burying the victims. And all the men had been shot with
a twenty two caliber rifle. Is that six? Then six? According to
court records, each of the victims were homeless men who were hired by Ray
to participate in his illegal livestock dealings. At the auctions, because you know,
Ray's not giving this up. Ray would put in some of his own
money into their newly created checking counts, but before the checks bounced, the
victims were murdered, so there'd be no trace of them, and he got
away with this. I mean, yeah, he's already lived out a huge
chunk of his life. Yeah, exactly. And I'll tell you a little
bit about some of the evidence that was found. When police searched, they
found two blank checks that were inside a phase purse when she was arrested.
One of them was from Jack and the other one was the last man that
Ray used con people. His name was James Page. All of these findings
showed, you know, they knew she participated, They knew in these financial
transactions. She knew every detail right, including the murders. Funny enough,
Fay had gone to the bank on her own after a check after John Freeman's
mail from the bank was sent to the Copeland address. John had had some
remaining cash in that account and he's one of the victims that they found,
but the amount was obviously not enough to cover that check that was written for
the cattle. So after the check bounce, the bank took it upon themselves
to close the account, and then they sent a check for the money that
John had in the account and sent it to Ray and face House. So
fake out her hands on this check and she actually sent it back to the
post office. But then you know, she goes to the post office and
she's like, I don't know who this John Freeman is. Where did he
get my address? She just you know, trying to deny any kind of
knowledge of that. Also, while searching the home, police found a handwritten
list of names and they were the names of the victims. Why well,
Ray couldn't read or write. The list was in phase handwriting. She wrote
the name the point I have no idea because next to their names she would
mark an ax next to their names, and like I said, they correlated
with the men that were hired murdered. There were twelve names on the list,
but only five of them had an axe. All other names listed are
names of people who are still missing. They're missing and no remains of theirs
have been ever been found. Wow, these are two right alleged cerial alleged
serial killers. The murder weapon that twenty two caliberal caliber rifle that was found
inside of Ray and Faye's farmhouse, and after ballistics tests were done it was
determined that yes, it was the murder weapon. Okay, this is kind
of weird. Another thing that they found. Okay, it was a quilt
that Fay had sown. It wasn't just an ordinary quote though, it was
made from clothing that didn't belong to either Ray or Faye. They had taken
the clothes from the victims and sown them into a quilt. When police found
this quilt, they felt like it proved she's involved. Yeah, she's totally
involved, and that she acknowledge again because you know, when they get arrested,
she denies. And that's weird shit, I know who to make a
quilt out of victims clothes, out of victim's clothes, Like what you're snuggling
up at night with that quilt? Fuck? Why would you do that?
Why would you want to remember that? Right? You were against it and
horrified you what your husband was doing. And let's say she didn't know,
like, okay, you're coming up with clothing that doesn't belong to you,
or you just show up with some clothes on, help me to make a
quilt? Add all the little things up, I mean thing, Yeah,
I don't know them. Checks are coming to her place, right, people's
names, and you don't ask Ray about it? You don't she's not asking,
I mean maybe not but come on now, I know that's a weird
thing. So eventually, when they are arrested, they get charged with five
counts of murder in the first degree. Bays trial began November one, nineteen
ninety and during the trial, her attorneys did everything that they could to show
that she was suffering from battered wife syndrome. That's right, she was,
she had been been mm hm. They also made it a point to make
sure that the court was fully aware that she was in her right mind and
she didn't have any mental disease or defect. According to Fay, she had
no knowledge of the murders and she was just an innocent bystander. However,
the jury didn't believe that, and she ended up being found guilty on all
five counts. She was sentenced to death whoa by lethal injection, I know,
for four out of the five counts. For the fifth count, she
was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. After Fay heard
her sentence, she uncontrollably cried her eyes out, Oh hell yeah, and
loud sobs were heard throughout the courtroom. That makes sense, mm hmm.
On the morning after Fay had been sentenced, Ray was taken in for a
mental evaluation at a Kansas City hospital. On the way to the hospital,
the sheriff began to ask Ray if he'd heard about Fay's verdict, and Ray's
like, no, I haven't heard a year. No, I'm surprised.
He's like, well, what has happened. The sheriff told Ray about her
being sentenced to death, and Ray responded, quote, well, those things
happened to some you know, un quote, and he never asked about Fay
ever. Again. Well, I thoughs he might be real worried, right.
His trial started March seventh, nineteen ninety one, and the prosecution brought
forth many witnesses along with the ballistics tasks on the rifle the bullets that were
found. There was a bullet found lodged in one of the victim's skulls.
The testimony went on for weeks, and after the jury heard everything, they
also found Ray guilty on all five counts. He too, was sentenced to
death by lethal injection for all five of them. When Ray heard a sentence,
he muttered, I'm okay, No, you're not No, you're not
no body. Yeah, you're not. No. Ray and fake Copeland are
the oldest people to ever be sentenced to death in the history of the US.
Oh Ray died on death row two years after he'd been sentenced. Yeah,
see that's not there. No. In Faye's death sentence was overturned on
August sixth, nineteen ninety nine, her lawyer came forward and said that ray
Or Fay was barely guilty of anything. He continued, Yeah, she didn't
at the standard, and she's barely She's just a little bit guilty. He
continued to say that she was just there when the murders took place, and
she never killed anyone, Like I just happened to be there. She's kind
of confessing to what happened though, right, yeah, because she's saying,
yeah, people were murdered. I mean yeah, I was just there.
I didn't participate in it. Her appeal centered around the fact that the Duram
were not given the opportunity to hear any evidence that could prove that she suffered
from battered wife syndrome. Although the death penalty was taken off the table,
she was still ordered to spend the rest of her natural life behind bars.
In November the following year, the Missouri Attorney General tried to get phased death
sentence reinstated, and at the proceedings, Fay was asked if she had anything
to say, and she did. She said, quote, God will forgive
me for everything I've said or done? End quote. Oh well, why
don't you share with us? Yeah? Everything you yeah, please please do
tell. The judge upheld the overturned death sentence, so the death penalty was
not restored. She's old anyway, right, Yeah. On August tenth,
two thousand and two, she suffered from a massive stroke and it paralyzed her.
She was never able to speak again. So she was given parole,
yes, and released to a nursing home. I don't know if it was
Pearl, but they released her to a nursing home in her hometown, where
she died December thirtieth two. Sometimes when you're gonna die, yeah, they
let They let her die at the nursing home. And that is the story
of Fan Ray Copeland, the oldest people sentenced to death Here, crazy stupid
story. Cattle over Yeah, like the horses. I mean, I like
that. He just worked years and years on the scheme, Like, well,
you got I mean he got away with it a lot. I mean,
he did time but as much as I mean he managed to survive and
support a family. Yeah, I mean, I guess stealing and stealing and
then eventually murdering murdering. Well yeah yeah, So anyway, that's horrible.
It is horrible, And I wonder about the other where the body, the
other missing people, Yeah, the missing people, Like it's just coincidental that
their names happened to be on a list, and then again they were training.
It sounds like they were transient, so yeah, I could anything could
have happened to them. You're right, but it's awful coincidence, yeah,
kind of h Anyway, Well, thank you all for listening or watching us
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