Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer,
Speaker 1: and I'm Steve Drissen. Today we bring you the story
Speaker 1: of Billy Wayne Cope, a father and husband, a man
Speaker 1: of faith, and one of many innocence, wrongfully convicted of murder.
Speaker 1: Even after DNA evidence pointed to the real killer, the
Speaker 1: police refused to pursue other leads. Instead, Billy was railroaded
Speaker 1: into falsely confessing to an unimaginable crime. This case will
Speaker 1: stay with you. It's certainly left a mark on Steve.
Speaker 1: I think about Billy Cope all the time. I think
Speaker 1: about how the justice system failed him, and I think
Speaker 1: about how we failed him. This is the most disappointing
Speaker 1: loss in my career, one of them. At least I
Speaker 1: can rest a little bit knowing that we had an
Speaker 1: incredible team of lawyers that fought his case with every
Speaker 1: ounce of strength that we had. Well, look, I've watched
Speaker 1: you throw yourself, hard and soul into the fight for
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne Cope, and what I have seen is not
Speaker 1: failure at all. What I see as a real heroism.
Speaker 1: And I look at what you've done in this case,
Speaker 1: and his trial lawyers were heroes too. You know, they
Speaker 1: fought and fought. This was a group effort, but it
Speaker 1: didn't succeed in the end. There's something to being a
Speaker 1: lawyer where you're literally asked to hold someone else's life
Speaker 1: and future and reputation and story in your own hands
Speaker 1: and to fight for that story. And it can be
Speaker 1: devastating when you're not able to deliver the justice that
Speaker 1: so clearly is deserved in a case. And Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: Copes is one of the stories that doesn't have a
Speaker 1: happy ending. Billy Wayne Cope story starts in rock Hill,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, a thriving city with lots of jobs and
Speaker 1: colleges and respectable people. But there are some parts of
Speaker 1: rock Hill, on the outskirts that are different, run down.
Speaker 1: The people who live there maybe didn't finish school, maybe
Speaker 1: don't have great jobs. There are people who are too
Speaker 1: easy to forget. Our story starts in a shabby house
Speaker 1: on Rich Street, where thirty eight year old Billy lived
Speaker 1: with his wife and three daughters in late two thousand one.
Speaker 1: Billy had a job delivering fast food chicken and his wife,
Speaker 1: Mary Sue, was a cleaning lady who worked nights. They
Speaker 1: were deeply religious. Billy was a born again Christian, the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who thinks the rapture is around every corner. Now,
Speaker 1: the Copes had their challenges. For one thing, they didn't
Speaker 1: keep a clean house. Dirty dishes would pile up and
Speaker 1: attract roaches. Years earlier, someone had called social services because
Speaker 1: the family's mobile home was so dirty, and their kids
Speaker 1: were put in foster care for a little while. But
Speaker 1: that was a long time ago. In two thousand one,
Speaker 1: things were looking up for the Copes. They moved out
Speaker 1: of the mobile home and onto rich Street. Billy had
Speaker 1: even gotten a degree in computer electronics. Neighbors remember the
Speaker 1: family as loving and clothes even if they didn't have
Speaker 1: money or a social cachet, and Amanda in particular, she
Speaker 1: was the shining star of the family. Amanda was the
Speaker 1: oldest daughter, twelve years old. She was a straight A
Speaker 1: student who belonged to their church's Bible quiz team, which
Speaker 1: Billy coached. The family thought of her as their hope
Speaker 1: for the future. She was a kind of big sister
Speaker 1: who would help her little sisters. She would help them
Speaker 1: with their homework. Billy called her his special child, but
Speaker 1: Amanda's bright future would never materialize. It was Thursday November nine,
Speaker 1: Billy's alarm goes off at six am. His wife is
Speaker 1: still at work, so it's his job to get the
Speaker 1: kids ready for school. The night before, Billy and a
Speaker 1: man had stayed up late helping one of the younger
Speaker 1: girls with her homework. Now, Billy had sleep apnea because
Speaker 1: he was overweight, so he used a c PAP machine
Speaker 1: every night to help him breathe. But the machine made noise.
Speaker 1: It hissed, it thumped, it drowned out pretty much anything
Speaker 1: quieter than the alarm clock. When Billy goes to wake
Speaker 1: his daughters, he doesn't hear from Amanda. Billy walks into
Speaker 1: her room to find Amanda on the bed, partially clothed,
Speaker 1: with a strip of her favorite green blanket wrapped tightly
Speaker 1: around her neck. Billy unwraps the blanket for a minute
Speaker 1: he holds her. Amanda's body is cold to the touch.
Speaker 1: Billy calls. The police rushed to the scene, and right
Speaker 1: away they suspect Billy. He's willing himself to stay calm
Speaker 1: for the sake of his two other daughters, but the
Speaker 1: police misread this as coldness. They asked him what he
Speaker 1: thinks happened. Billy's in a day is all he can
Speaker 1: come up with is that Amanda might have tossed and
Speaker 1: turned in the night and strangled herself with the green blanket.
Speaker 1: This guess is light years off the mark. Amanda had
Speaker 1: been sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled, not with the blanket
Speaker 1: but with someone's hands. Police gather forensic evidence semen on
Speaker 1: her pants and saliva from a bite mark on her chest,
Speaker 1: and later that evening, at about ten o'clock, police bring
Speaker 1: Billy Waynecope to the station for questioning. Police start this
Speaker 1: interrogation by accusing Billy of Amanda's murder, but he vehemently
Speaker 1: denies it. Six hundred and fifty times. Billy insists he
Speaker 1: never harmed his daughter never. Police ask what he'll say
Speaker 1: if the seamen and turns out to be his, but
Speaker 1: Billy is ready for it. It won't matchcase. I have
Speaker 1: not ever done anything much. You can check every part
Speaker 1: of my body, can do forensic studio, everything, anything. You
Speaker 1: won't find any evidence, only because I didn't want to. Now,
Speaker 1: Billy had faith in polygraph exams. He'd taken them in
Speaker 1: the past for jobs like working behind the counter at
Speaker 1: a guest station, so he asks the police for a
Speaker 1: polygraph to prove his innocence. I'm just telling you, you
Speaker 1: get a polygraph and you're only willing to take a
Speaker 1: prah anything you want to do to me, and you
Speaker 1: will see I didn't want any one singles. Thing can
Speaker 1: never come, did I never. For the time being, police
Speaker 1: avoid his request. They keep questioning Billy for four hours
Speaker 1: until he finally gets a break at two or thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning. He's brought to a jail cell where
Speaker 1: he struggles to get a few hours of sleep. Now
Speaker 1: let's stop for a moment. Police are focused on Billy
Speaker 1: like a laser, but by letting tunnel vision take over,
Speaker 1: they're ignoring other leads. Billy's wife's pocketbook was found next
Speaker 1: to Amanda's body on her bed. What was it doing there?
Speaker 1: This was powerful evidence that a burglar was involved in
Speaker 1: this cry. And you know what else they found. They
Speaker 1: found a flashlight in the home. And of course this
Speaker 1: is a flashlight that didn't belong to the Coke family.
Speaker 1: Not a single member of the family could identify ever
Speaker 1: having seen Dad flashlight. But they're ignoring the pocketbook, They
Speaker 1: ignore the flashlight. They're focused on Billy. At nine fifteen
Speaker 1: the next morning, after almost no sleep, Billy's brought to
Speaker 1: a polligrapher. He takes the polygraph and he's told that
Speaker 1: he ailed. You know, this is reminiscent of so many
Speaker 1: other cases. It's one of the most powerful steps in
Speaker 1: the pathway to a false confession. And of course we
Speaker 1: know the polygraph, the lie detector test is notoriously unreliable,
Speaker 1: but it's being presented to Billy as this infallible arbiter
Speaker 1: of truth. Billy, you failed it. That means you're lying.
Speaker 1: And when they tell him this, it shakes Billy to
Speaker 1: his core. Billy begins to doubt himself and he starts
Speaker 1: asking himself, could I have somehow done this and not
Speaker 1: remembered it. Billy described the rest of the interrogation as
Speaker 1: an exercise in which the polygraph examiner was pulling images
Speaker 1: out of his head, images that Billy couldn't come up
Speaker 1: with until the polygrapher suggested them, one after another after another.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of false confessions and wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: in my life, and the Billy Wayne Cope case has
Speaker 1: haunted me for years. That's all, hasn't One of the
Speaker 1: leading experts on the psychology of false confessions. At every
Speaker 1: step of the way, it was clear that Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: Cope's innocence didn't matter, and in fact, it mattered less
Speaker 1: and less as the process moved forward. Police formed a
Speaker 1: very strong impression of Billy Wayne Cope's guilt immediately without
Speaker 1: evidence and for no good reason. And even when evidence
Speaker 1: came in that contradicted that presumption of guilt, they didn't
Speaker 1: stop in their tracks and reassess. And that is true
Speaker 1: the whole way through. According to that confession story that
Speaker 1: Billy eventually signed, he had gotten up at three am
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. He started to masturbate, and
Speaker 1: when he heard Amanda laugh at him, he attacked her,
Speaker 1: choking her with his hands and eventually violating her. He
Speaker 1: even agreed that he'd abused his other kids on other
Speaker 1: occasions too. Sometimes when police used certain highly suggestive and
Speaker 1: misleading tactics, they and lead somebody not only to confess
Speaker 1: to a crime they didn't commit, they can cause that
Speaker 1: person to create a belief in their own guilt, to
Speaker 1: get confused about their innocence, and then to actually confabulate
Speaker 1: false memories of the thing they didn't do. These are
Speaker 1: called internalized false confessions. He used words like I had
Speaker 1: a feeling like I assume, well you told me so,
Speaker 1: I guess this is the way it must have been.
Speaker 1: Those are not the words of a confession. Those are
Speaker 1: words of somebody trying to put pieces together of an
Speaker 1: event they have no direct memory of. Billy would go
Speaker 1: on to give something like four or five different variations
Speaker 1: of this confession, and by the end he was so
Speaker 1: broken down that he was agreeing to anything that was
Speaker 1: suggested to him. He said, first he woke up and
Speaker 1: he assaulted and killed his daughter, and then he went
Speaker 1: back to sleep and didn't remember it, and then he
Speaker 1: woke up again and remembered it, but then forgot it again. Well,
Speaker 1: that's just psychologically impossible. This fabricated story was so horrifying
Speaker 1: to Billy that when the police threatened him with the
Speaker 1: death penalty, he welcomed it. People with authority were telling
Speaker 1: him that he had done terrible things, even if he
Speaker 1: didn't remember doing them. He still thought he deserved to die.
Speaker 1: So Billy is charged with the murder of his daughter.
Speaker 1: And of course this is a big news story. It's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and the narrative that's being painted in the media and
Speaker 1: in the prosecution is that Billy is garbage. He's just
Speaker 1: not worth as much as others. He's one of those
Speaker 1: throwaway people. There's a problem though, with a case against
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne Cope. After he's arrested, DNA testing proves that
Speaker 1: the saliva and seaman left on Amanda did not come
Speaker 1: from him. Instead, they were left by some other man.
Speaker 1: The police collect DNA samples from everyone who knew the
Speaker 1: Cope family, even their preacher, but they can't find a match.
Speaker 1: It takes them seven months to figure out that the
Speaker 1: DNA left on Amanda Cope's body belonged to a man
Speaker 1: named James Sanders. James Sanders is a career burglar, a
Speaker 1: serial rapist, and a drug addict from North Carolina. He'd
Speaker 1: recently been released from prison and moved to South Carolina,
Speaker 1: to Rock Hill in particular. In fact, as of the
Speaker 1: date of Amanda's death, James Sanders lived two blocks away
Speaker 1: from the Cope family, and while Billy Wayne Cope sat
Speaker 1: in prison for Amanda's death, James Sanders was out on
Speaker 1: the streets and he was horribly busy. Between December twelfth,
Speaker 1: two thousand one and January twelve, two thousand two, in
Speaker 1: that one month period, James Sanders was implicated in four
Speaker 1: burg leries and multiple sexual assault in rock Hill, three
Speaker 1: of them within a mile of the Cope home. On
Speaker 1: December twelve, he robbed and raped an elderly disabled woman.
Speaker 1: On December sixteenth and December nineteen, there were two more
Speaker 1: attempted rapes, and on both occasions the victims identified James Sanders.
Speaker 1: This guy is on a literal crime spree, breaking into
Speaker 1: homes and assaulting females in Amanda Coopes neighborhood within weeks
Speaker 1: of Amanda Coope stath. He was brazen. He would go
Speaker 1: into these homes to try to find money, but if
Speaker 1: there was a woman in the home, he would attack her.
Speaker 1: He even assaulted some of these women while other people
Speaker 1: were sleeping in the home. Now, James Sanders also had
Speaker 1: a signature m O. He would target homes after dark.
Speaker 1: He would break in without leaving any signs of forest entry.
Speaker 1: That was his specialty, and in each case James Sanders
Speaker 1: acted alone. Sanders was arrested for one of these other rapes.
Speaker 1: It was only at that point the prosecutors discovered that
Speaker 1: his DNA matched the Cope crime scene too. Now that
Speaker 1: Renders Billy Wayne Cope's confessions false because he doesn't indicate
Speaker 1: the presence of a James Sanders in his scenarios, so
Speaker 1: his confessions were simply factually wrong. Somebody else raped his daughter.
Speaker 1: That same DNA that excluded Billy Wayne Cope identified the assailant.
Speaker 1: At this point, the whole case against Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 1: should have been reevaluated from top to bottom. Instead, prosecutors
Speaker 1: theorized that Billy and Sanders attacked Amanda together, even though
Speaker 1: Billy's confession doesn't mention an accomplice, and even though only
Speaker 1: sanders DNA is left at the scene. Their first act
Speaker 1: was to go to his wife and to tell her
Speaker 1: that that DNA in the seamen was Billy Wayne Copes.
Speaker 1: They lied to his wife and then wired her up
Speaker 1: to try and get him to give a better, more
Speaker 1: accurate confession because his prior confessions were factually incorrect. Why
Speaker 1: would you sent his wife and to get a fifth
Speaker 1: confession unless you realized that the other four were worthless.
Speaker 1: She died shortly thereafter as a result of complications and surgery,
Speaker 1: and they never corrected the record for her. She died
Speaker 1: believing that Billy Wayne Cope's DNA had been found inside
Speaker 1: of their daughter. The prosecution searched for any connection between
Speaker 1: Billy and Sanders, and they found nothing. There was zero
Speaker 1: evidence he and Cope had ever met that alone joined forces.
Speaker 1: The DNA contradicted the prosecution of Billy Wynko, and instead
Speaker 1: of moving in that direction, they concocted a theory that
Speaker 1: essentially had he and the rapist involved together, and they
Speaker 1: just made it up. Four weeks before the start of
Speaker 1: this trial, Sanders wrote a letter to the prosecute just
Speaker 1: in this case, and in that letter he complained about
Speaker 1: his own defense attorney, and one of the complaints he
Speaker 1: had was, He's not even talking to me about this
Speaker 1: other man. I'm going to trial with someone I'm not
Speaker 1: even acquainted with. But even Sanders letter didn't deter prosecutors.
Speaker 1: They told the jury that Billy Wayne Cope had pimped
Speaker 1: out his daughter to James, that Billy must have led
Speaker 1: James into the home in order to attack Amanda, and
Speaker 1: so the two of them went on trial together. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that Billy Wayne Cope had to sit in
Speaker 1: court with his daughter's rapist and murderer. The individual who
Speaker 1: semen was found inside his daughter. Now, Billy Wayne Cope's
Speaker 1: case was gaining the attention of national experts in false
Speaker 1: confessions as well as some of the leading lawyers in
Speaker 1: South Carolina, and Billy's lawyers were committed to fighting back
Speaker 1: at trial. Billy's legal team tried to tell the jury
Speaker 1: about James Sanders crime spree, but the judge refused to
Speaker 1: let them, saying that sanders other crimes weren't relevant because
Speaker 1: they hadn't involved a twelve year old girl. Billy's lawyers
Speaker 1: also tried to introduce that letter Sanders had written saying
Speaker 1: he didn't know Billy, but the judge rejected that too.
Speaker 1: Billy's defense is hamstrong. The jury saw James Sanders there,
Speaker 1: but they were not permitted to know that James Sanders
Speaker 1: was about to stand trial for another crime he committed
Speaker 1: in almost exactly the same way and in the same neighborhood.
Speaker 1: In their minds, James Sanders and Billy Wayne Cope came
Speaker 1: together for this one time only novel crime, when in fact,
Speaker 1: James Sanders was a serial offender. And meanwhile, the trial
Speaker 1: that Billy has to endure it's hellish. Every time the
Speaker 1: prosecutors mentioned Billy's name James Sanders starts laughing. Finally Billy
Speaker 1: could bear no more. He takes the witness stand in
Speaker 1: his own defense and he explode at James Sanders, hate
Speaker 1: you for what you did, Bobo says, love your enemies
Speaker 1: and do good to so help me. God, I've tried,
Speaker 1: but I hate him. I hate him so bad a case.
Speaker 1: In the end, it wasn't enough. The jury deliberated only
Speaker 1: five or five and a half hours. Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 1: was convicted. Both he and Sanders went down for this crime,
Speaker 1: and they were both sentenced to life in prison. That's
Speaker 1: when I got involved. I had been following the case
Speaker 1: and I was stunned that Billy Wayne Cope had been convicted.
Speaker 1: I decided to see if Billy Wayne Cope's defense team
Speaker 1: could use some help. Steve joined Billy's appeal team, which
Speaker 1: also included legendary lawyers David Brooke and Alison flam And
Speaker 1: at first, Billy's appeal seemed like it'd be successful. The
Speaker 1: appellate court ruled that there wasn't enough evidence that Billy
Speaker 1: and James Sanders had worked together, but the prosecution appealed
Speaker 1: that ruling, and I was optimistic. I thought we have
Speaker 1: checks and balances in our system, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: of South Carolina is not going to let this conviction stand.
Speaker 1: But I was wrong. The South Carolina Supreme Court declined
Speaker 1: to throw out Billy's conviction by a single vote, and
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how many cases I've seen just like this.
Speaker 1: An innocent person gives a confession. Subsequent to the confession,
Speaker 1: DNA has found the DNA identifies the perpetrator, who has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the individual who confessed, and rather
Speaker 1: than redirect the investigation, admit the mistake and move on,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor's office chooses instead to create some new theory
Speaker 1: that brings together the rapist and the innocent confessor. And
Speaker 1: I just find that shameful. It's a disgrace. Well, the
Speaker 1: legal team was prepared to keep on fighting, right. We
Speaker 1: don't let losses in any court, whether it's the trial
Speaker 1: court or the U. S. Supreme Court, stop us from
Speaker 1: fighting for justice. But in this case, we weren't able
Speaker 1: to continue the fight. On February nine, Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 1: died in prison of what the prison said were natural causes.
Speaker 1: When I heard years later that Billy Wayne Cope had
Speaker 1: died in prison. My heart just sunk. While this case
Speaker 1: haunted me, I harbored the hope that at some point
Speaker 1: in time, at some level and in some way, an
Speaker 1: appeal would be successful. He was only fifty three years old,
Speaker 1: and from a legal perspective, that means that Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: Cope's case is over. It's done. There are no options
Speaker 1: left to clear his name. Now we want to tell
Speaker 1: you uplifting stories of exoneration, of justice that's delayed but
Speaker 1: not denied. We all like those stories. They keep us fighting,
Speaker 1: but not every case turns out that way, and this
Speaker 1: podcast episode it's our attempt to change Billy's legacy. We're
Speaker 1: not here to tell you that Billy Wayne Cope was
Speaker 1: an angel, but that's one of the dangers of telling
Speaker 1: stories about wrongful conviction. There's always a temptation to paint
Speaker 1: the defendant as a perfect human and Billy Wayne wasn't perfect,
Speaker 1: not by a long shot. But our justice system is
Speaker 1: supposed to make judgments based on evidence and logic, not
Speaker 1: on character assassinations or whispers that someone might have been
Speaker 1: white trash. Billy deserves the truth as much as anyone
Speaker 1: else does. Billy Wayne Cope did not sexually assault his daughter.
Speaker 1: He did not rape his daughter. He did not murder
Speaker 1: his daughter. His greatest indiscretion, if you will, was that
Speaker 1: he called nine one one one found her dead in
Speaker 1: the morning. We want to tell you now a little
Speaker 1: bit about the man Billy Wayne Coperman. You knew, right, Steve,
Speaker 1: I did know him. You know, throughout this ordeal he
Speaker 1: remained upbeat, even hopeful. He had dedicated himself to doing
Speaker 1: God's work in prison. He taught Hebrew, he preached, He
Speaker 1: served as a hospice minister to inmates that were dying
Speaker 1: or ill. When he died, his legal team got together
Speaker 1: and we wrote a statement about his death, and this
Speaker 1: is what the statement said. In the years we represented Billy,
Speaker 1: he was unfailingly polite. He was optimistic and full of faith,
Speaker 1: and he maintained these qualities in the long years that
Speaker 1: followed his conviction. Billy confessed to a dreadful crime he
Speaker 1: did not commit. When DNA later proved the actrual killer
Speaker 1: was a career burglar and serial rapist named James Sanders,
Speaker 1: law enforcement should have faced up to the truth and
Speaker 1: admitted they attained a false confession from the grieving and
Speaker 1: psychologically vulnerable father of a murdered child, Billy, I want
Speaker 1: you to know that even though we lost your case,
Speaker 1: these cases of unrequited innocence, these are the ones that
Speaker 1: give me the strength and energy to continue the fight
Speaker 1: for other innocent people. Billy, with your evangelical fervor, we
Speaker 1: sure hope you're somewhere where you gonna hear us. Justice
Speaker 1: belongs to every man, not just the rich, powerful, or respectable.
Speaker 1: This podcast episodes for you and for everyone like you,
Speaker 1: in the name of justice. Join us next week when
Speaker 1: we bring you to the Bronx in to meet Hugh Burton,
Speaker 1: a good kid who happened to live in the apartment
Speaker 1: above a truly bad guy. Until then, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer
Speaker 1: Jason Slam and the team at Signal Company Number one
Speaker 1: Executive producer Kevin Wardace, Senior producer and Pope, and additional
Speaker 1: production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to jog
Speaker 1: Hammer for additional script editing, and for wrangling and writing
Speaker 1: like a mad woman. Our music was composed by j Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura
Speaker 1: night Rider and you can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: s Drisen. For more information on the show, visit Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast dot com and be sure to follow this
Speaker 1: show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction m