After awhile, the children went to sleep, the boys in sleeping bags on the floor in Joshs room and Jessica in her room. So I would be with him. He entered the master bedroom and called out to Josh. As a teen she aspired to be become a veterinarian, but her mother persuaded her to follow in her footsteps. He said the bruising near her nose indicated that she was alive for one to three minutes after being hacked in the left cheek. A recently escaped convict, Kevin Cooper, was later arrested and found guilty. She told them that he came home late the night of the murder wearing blood-drenched coveralls and that his hatchet was missing from his tool rack. The Ryens, thanks to a $5,000 down payment provided by Dr. Howell, bought a home in Santa Ana with a backyard big enough to hold the Arabians. Peggy Ryen, also forty-one years old, was positioned in the middle of the bedroom with her arms straight out, her left leg straight out and her right knee slightly bent inward, much as though she had been nailed to a cross. On Christmas Eve 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown approved new DNA testing on four pieces of evidence: the tan T-shirt, the hatchet, the sheath, and an orange towel found near the Ryen home that matched ones from inside. Josh Ryen, just eight years old at the time, had had his throat slashed, his skull fractured by an ax, and his ribs fractured, among other injuries. Right now we are horse poor, but give us five years of our planned breeding program and well have only the best. In a post-Christmas letter to her half-sister Lillian Shaffer, she wrote, We cant wait for our big mama to have her babyWere hoping for a filly (girl) they sell for more.. At 11 a.m. she drove the short distance to the Ryens house, went to the front door and knocked. "I say this with all the confidence in the world," he says. It is important to note right away two things about this uncontested account. Even with a large amount of tainted evidence and clear misconduct on the part of the police and the DAs office, Negus still did not put together a coherent defense. Around 9:30 p.m. the Ryens and Chris returned to the Ryens rambling, split-level, pentagon-shaped home. Its forty-five square miles of rolling hills border Los Angeles County on its northwest side, Orange County to the south, and Riverside County to the southeast. Trending News In June 1983 four people were hacked to death with a hatchet and knife in a Chino Hills house in San Bernardino County. "She's been everybody to me," he says. Some of Jessicas hair was found on her mothers body. Evidence used to convict Kevin Cooper is being questioned more than 35 years later. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Chino Hills is nestled in the southwest corner of San Bernardino County. Her mare was pregnant. But later, one deputys fingerprints were found inside the closet, indicating he had been in the room and had lied about it, wrote Kristof. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. His father worked as a financial consultant. Two other weapons believed used in the murders, a knife and an ice pick or screwdriver, were never found. The big-screen heart-throb was hot property after starring in Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor, was named in People magazine's Most Beautiful People list and posters of his face decorated the walls of teenage girls everywhere. In fact, unlike Kevin Cooper, very few do. Josh, now living on his own, sees his grandmother every week. In 2004, Josh appeared on a 48 Hours episode on the crime and called for further evidence testing in the case. The little finger of her left hand was cut to the bone. Hughes ran around to another side of the house and kicked in the kitchen door. Deputies searched the Ryen home on June 6, the day after the crime, and found no evidence connecting Cooper to the case. "I don't know if they think I have the answers or that it's in my head. It is obviously not Cooper's and if not Jessica's, the hair may belong to another killer. Bill Hughes, an agriculture professor at Cal Poly Pomona, got in his Audi and drove up to the Ryens house. A crew of six from the Chino Fire Department three paramedics and three firefighters arrived and soon began treating Josh in the master bedroom about 12:30 p.m. Josh was lying on his left side, with his head turned toward the end of the water bed. "I wish I could remember," he says. Like her mother, Peggy attended the Palmer School of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, graduating in 1963 and then joined her mothers chiropractic clinic in Santa Ana. Theres five of them, and I just know that they didnt stand in line saying, Im next. Only onesingle drop of blood thatmatched Coopers blood type was found in the house. July 24, 2021 / 9:13 PM If this case seems interesting and you want to find out where Josh Ryen is today, we have got you covered. For eighteen months, Doug joined Peggy at her clinic, but when Peggy became pregnant they decided to sell the practice. This prevented any experts from reconstructing or reenacting what happened that night in the Ryens home. This witness also claimed that a hatchet was missing from her garage. College Days With The Kansas State Wildcats (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) Josh Freeman attended Kansas State University from 2006 to 2008. In 2001, Kevin Cooper successfully petitioned to have DNA tests done on key pieces of evidence from the case. Gavin Newsom confirmed what serious people knew about convicted killer Kevin Cooper: He's guilty of the 1983 Chino Hills slayings for which he was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. Since 1985, he has been on death row at San Quentin asserting his innocence in failed-after-failed appeal while awaiting his execution. This bias extends not only to the race of the defendants singled out for death sentences but also to the race of the victim. Background Info. I am indebted to Josh Robinson for planting the thought in my mind that is prompting me to write these words. Peggy Ryen was lying on her back naked in the middle of the room and Doug Ryen, also nude, was kneeling over by the edge of the bed. Jan 2, 2017. The Chino Massacre. Another obstacle is that, because Cooper technically still has appeals open to him, the San Bernardino County District Attorneys Office refused to discuss the case. He cleaned and sutured the wound. As Californias prison population exploded in the 1970s thanks in part to the crackdown on drugs and the overcrowding that produced throughout the states prison system CIM devolved to the traditional mode of simply incarcerating prisoners in maximum, medium, and minimum-security facilities. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick OConnor, the factsor a lack of themdidnt add up. "Cooper was there," says Josh. The minimum-security area, the only holdover from the Scudder days in terms of appearance, sits in an open, grassy area with dorms, surrounded by a waist-high, chain-linked fence. Four people were brutally murdered in Chino Hills, California, in 1983. After the murder, Josh was brought up by his maternal grandmother, Mary Howell, who won his custody in 1985. Except now the cigarette from the abandoned house was gone. Forty-one-year-old Doug Ryen was found slumped kneeling against his bed, the victim of thirty-seven hatchet and knife wounds. I did not kill those people, and all the evidence that we prove or use to prove that I didn't do it, they don't want to test," says Cooper, who spoke to 48 Hours over the phone because cameras were not allowed into San Quentin. He says he wonders sometimes how he ever managed to survive. This then is a book about a gruesome murder case, painfully recounted; all quotes are from either documents or interviews I conducted doing my research. The medic tore Joshs pajama top off and cut his clothes away and washed away some of the blood and fecal matter on him with a white towel another medic removed from the master bedroom bathroom. Ryan Leckey pursued his BA in communication at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown from 2001 to 2005 while also working as a reporter on WJAC-TV. It was produced by Ryen McPherson, with friends Zachary Bubeck, Kevin Zinter, Daniel J. Tanner, and Michael Slyman, as Indecline Films. Is Kevin Cooper the killer? Nice guy. The Nashville native, 41, took to. ", For all the publicity and media coverage about the use of DNA to free innocent inmates from wrongful convictions, the Kevin Cooper case is a powerful reminder of an important flip-side to DNA testing. At 1:50 p.m. Dr. Imad Shahhal, a neurosurgeon, began operating on Joshs head wounds as another team of surgeons began treating the wounds to his neck. #inline-recirc-item--id-a6052540-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { Guards do not patrol its perimeter. Over the next twenty years the area experienced rapid development. I don't remember the exact words that Josh used in his lesson, but I'm still thinking about the question he raised. What happened Josh Ryen? .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { In most ways it is the exact opposite of its glitzy neighbor to the west. Over the preceding ten years, escapes had occurred with unsettling frequency, ranging from eight to thirty per year. Sep 11, 2019 1. Also suggesting that Doug actively resisted the attack were a number of defensive-type wounds slashed into both of his arms, one of them fracturing the ulna of his right forearm above his wrist. Furrows girlfriend, Diana Roper, alerted authorities that she believed her boyfriend committed the murders. Blond or brown hairs were found in the victims hands, as if torn off in a struggle, wrote Kristof in the op ed. And he saw what was in that house. Peggy had owned her own horses since she was twelve years old, gifts from her twice divorced mother, Dr. Mary Howell. What San Bernardino County lacks in national lore, it makes up for in size alone. It was as equally unlikely that Doug Ryen would have died kneeling with his fingertips barely touching the front side of the bed as it was for his wife to have died with her body splayed straight out in a T. Jessica, who died with a clump of blond or light brown hair clutched in her fingers, sustained the most wounds, forty-six, and had the most defensive type wounds to her hands and arms. It was like something you see in a Helter Skelter movie.
