Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I writer.
Speaker 2: And I'm Steve Drisen.
Speaker 1: Today we bring you the story of Billy Wayne Cope,
Speaker 1: a father and husband, a man of faith, and one
Speaker 1: of many innocents wrongfully convicted of murder. Even after DNA
Speaker 1: evidence pointed to the real killer, the police refused to
Speaker 1: pursue other leads. Instead, Billy was railroaded into falsely confessing
Speaker 1: to an unimaginable crime. This case will stay with you.
Speaker 1: It's certainly left a mark on Steve.
Speaker 2: I think about Billy Cope all the time. I think
Speaker 2: about how the justice system failed him, and I think
Speaker 2: about how we failed him. This is the most disappointing
Speaker 2: loss in my career, one of them. At least rest
Speaker 2: a little bit knowing that we had an incredible team
Speaker 2: of lawyers that fought his case with every ounce of
Speaker 2: strength that we had.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I've watched you throw yourself, heart and soul
Speaker 1: into the fight for Billy Wayne Cope. And what I
Speaker 1: have seen is not failure at all. What I see
Speaker 1: as a real heroism when I look at what you've
Speaker 1: done in this case, and.
Speaker 2: As trial lawyers were heroes too, you know they fought
Speaker 2: and fought. This was a group effort, but it didn't
Speaker 2: succeed in the end.
Speaker 1: There's something to being a lawyer where you're literally asked
Speaker 1: to hold someone else's life and future and reputation and
Speaker 1: story in your own hands and to fight for that story.
Speaker 1: And it can be devastating when you're not able to
Speaker 1: deliver the justice that so clearly is deserved in a case.
Speaker 1: And Billy Wayne Cope's is one of the stories that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a happy ending. Billy Wayne Cope's story starts
Speaker 1: in rock Hill, South Carolina, thriving city with lots of
Speaker 1: jobs and colleges and respectable people. But there are some
Speaker 1: parts of rock Hill on the outskirts that are different,
Speaker 1: run down. The people who live there maybe didn't finish school,
Speaker 1: maybe don't have great jobs. They're 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
Speaker 1: and one. Billy had a job delivering fast food chicken
Speaker 1: and his wife, Mary Sue, was a cleaning lady who
Speaker 1: worked nights. They were deeply religious. Billy was a born
Speaker 1: again Christian, the kind of guy who thinks the rapture
Speaker 1: is around every corner. Now, the Copes had their challenges.
Speaker 1: For one thing, they didn't keep a clean house. Dirty
Speaker 1: dishes would pile up and attract roaches. Years earlier, someone
Speaker 1: had called social services because the family's mobile home was
Speaker 1: so dirty, and their kids were put in foster care
Speaker 1: for a little while. But that was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, things were looking up for
Speaker 1: the Copes. They'd moved out of the mobile home and
Speaker 1: onto rich Street. Billy had even gotten a degree in
Speaker 1: computer electronics. Neighbors remember the family as loving and close,
Speaker 1: even if they didn't have money or social cachet.
Speaker 2: And Amanda in particular, she was the shining star of
Speaker 2: the family.
Speaker 1: Amanda was the oldest daughter, twelve years old. She was
Speaker 1: a straight A student who belonged to their church's Bible
Speaker 1: quiz team, which Billy coached. The family thought of her
Speaker 1: as their hope for the future.
Speaker 2: She was a kind of big sister who would help
Speaker 2: her little sisters. She would help them with their homework.
Speaker 1: Billy called her his special child, but Amanda's bright future
Speaker 1: would never materialize. It was Thursday November twenty ninth, Billy's
Speaker 1: alarm goes off at six am. His wife is still
Speaker 1: at work, so it's his job to get the kids
Speaker 1: ready for school. The night before, Billy and Amanda had
Speaker 1: stayed up late helping one of the younger girls with
Speaker 1: her homework. Now, Billy had sleep apnea because he was overweight,
Speaker 1: so he used a seapap machine every night to help
Speaker 1: him breathe. But the machine made noise. It hissed, it thumped,
Speaker 1: it drowned out pretty much anything quieter than the alarm clock.
Speaker 1: When Billy goes to wake his daughters, he doesn't hear
Speaker 1: from Amanda. Billy walks into her room to find Amanda
Speaker 1: on the bed, partially clothed, with a strip of her
Speaker 1: favorite green blanket wrapped tightly around her neck. Billy unwraps
Speaker 1: the blanket for a minute he holds her. Amanda's body
Speaker 1: is cold to the touch. Billy calls nine one one.
Speaker 1: The police rushed to the scene, and right away they
Speaker 1: suspect Billy. He's willing himself to stay calm for the
Speaker 1: sake of his two other daughters, but the police misread
Speaker 1: this as coldness. They ask him what he thinks happened
Speaker 1: Billy's in a day. All he can come up with
Speaker 1: is that Amanda might have tossed and turned in the
Speaker 1: night and strangled herself with the green blanket. This guest
Speaker 1: is light years off the mark. Amanda had been sexually assaulted, beaten,
Speaker 1: and strangled, not with the blanket but with someone's hands.
Speaker 1: Police gather forensic evidence seamen on her pants and saliva
Speaker 1: from a bitemark on her chest, and later that evening,
Speaker 1: at about ten o'clock, police bring Billy Waynecope to the
Speaker 1: station for questioning. Police start this interrogation by accusing Billy
Speaker 1: of Amanda's murder, but he vehemently denies it. Six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty times, Billy insists he never harmed his daughter.
Speaker 3: Never.
Speaker 1: Police ask what he'll say if the seaman turns out
Speaker 1: to be his, but Billy's ready for it. It won't
Speaker 1: match because I have not ever done any very much.
Speaker 3: You can check every part of my body, you can
Speaker 3: do a lead forensic study of everything anything.
Speaker 4: You won't find.
Speaker 3: Any evidence, only because I did not do it.
Speaker 2: Now, Billy had faith in polygraph exams. He taken them
Speaker 2: in the past for jobs like working behind the counter
Speaker 2: at a gas station, so he asks the police for
Speaker 2: a polygraph to prove his innocence.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you, you get a polygraph here, and
Speaker 3: I will be willing to take anything you want to
Speaker 3: do with me, and you won't see I didn't want
Speaker 3: any one single thing. Can never come under I tell
Speaker 3: any physical work. Never.
Speaker 1: For the time being, police avoid his request. They keep
Speaker 1: questioning Billy for four hours until he finally gets a
Speaker 1: break at two point thirty in the morning. He's brought
Speaker 1: to a jail cell, where he struggles to get a
Speaker 1: few hours of sleep. Now let's stop for a moment.
Speaker 1: Police are focused on Billy like a laser, but by
Speaker 1: letting tunnel vision take over, they're ignoring other leads. Billy's
Speaker 1: wife's pocketbook was found next to Amanda's body on our bed.
Speaker 2: What was it doing there? This was powerful evidence that
Speaker 2: a burglar was involved in this crime. And you know
Speaker 2: what else they found. They found a flashlight in the home.
Speaker 1: And of course this is a flashlight that didn't belong
Speaker 1: to the Koch family.
Speaker 2: Not a single member of the family could identify ever
Speaker 2: having seen that flashlight.
Speaker 1: But they're ignoring the pocketbook, They ignore the flashlight. They're
Speaker 1: focused on Billy. At nine point fifteen the next morning,
Speaker 1: after almost no sleep, Billy's brought to a polygrapher.
Speaker 2: He takes the polygraph and he's told that he failedailed.
Speaker 2: You know, this is reminiscent of so many other cases.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most powerful steps in the pathway
Speaker 2: to a false confession.
Speaker 1: And of course we know the polygraph, the lie detector
Speaker 1: test is notoriously unreliable, but it's being presented to Billy
Speaker 1: as this infallible arbiter of truth. Billy, you failed it.
Speaker 1: That means you're lying. And when they tell him this,
Speaker 1: it shakes Billy to his core. Billy begins to doubt
Speaker 1: himself and he starts asking himself, could I have somehow
Speaker 1: done this and not remembered it. Billy described the rest
Speaker 1: of the interrogation as an exercise in which the polygraph
Speaker 1: examiner was pulling images out of his head, images that
Speaker 1: Billy couldn't come up with until the polygrapher suggested them,
Speaker 1: one after another after another.
Speaker 4: I've seen a lot of false confessions and wrongful convictions
Speaker 4: in my life, and the Billy Wayne Cope case has
Speaker 4: haunted me for years.
Speaker 1: Casin, one of the leading experts on the psychology of
Speaker 1: false confessions.
Speaker 4: At every step of the way, it was clear that
Speaker 4: Billy Wayne Cope's innocence didn't matter, and in fact, it
Speaker 4: mattered less and less as the process moved forward. Police
Speaker 4: formed a very strong impression of Billy Wayne Cope's guilt
Speaker 4: immediately without evidence and for no good reason. And even
Speaker 4: when evidence came in that contradicted that presumption of guilt,
Speaker 4: they didn't stop in their tracks and reassess. And that
Speaker 4: is true the whole way through.
Speaker 1: According to that confession story that Billy eventually signed, he'd
Speaker 1: gotten up at three am to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: He started to masturbate, and when he heard Amanda laugh
Speaker 1: at him, he attacked her, choking her with his hands
Speaker 1: and eventually violating her. He even agreed that he'd abused
Speaker 1: his other kids on other occasions too.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when police used certain highly suggestive and misleading tactics
Speaker 4: lead somebody not only to confess to a crime they
Speaker 4: didn't commit, they can cause that person to create a
Speaker 4: belief in their own guilt, to get confused about their innocence,
Speaker 4: and then to actually confabulate false memories of the thing
Speaker 4: they didn't do. These are called internalized false confessions. He
Speaker 4: used words like I had a feeling like I assume,
Speaker 4: well you told me so, I guess this is the
Speaker 4: way it must have been. Those are not the words
Speaker 4: of a confession. Those are words of somebody trying to
Speaker 4: put pieces together of an event they have no direct
Speaker 4: memory of.
Speaker 2: Billy would go on to give something like four or
Speaker 2: five different variations of this confession, and by the end
Speaker 2: he was so broken down that he was agreeing to
Speaker 2: anything that was suggested to him.
Speaker 4: He said, first he woke up and he assaulted and
Speaker 4: killed his daughter, and then he went back to sleep
Speaker 4: and didn't remember it, and then he woke up again
Speaker 4: and remembered it, but then forgot it again. Well, that's
Speaker 4: just psychologically impossible.
Speaker 1: This fabricated story was so horrifying to Billy that when
Speaker 1: the police threatened him with the death penalty, he welcomed it.
Speaker 1: People with authority were telling him that he had done
Speaker 1: terrible things, even if he didn't remember doing them. He
Speaker 1: still thought he deserved to die. So Billy is charged
Speaker 1: with the murder of his daughter, and of course this
Speaker 1: is a big news story. It's everywhere, and the narrative
Speaker 1: that's being painted in the media and in the prosecution
Speaker 1: is that Billy is garbage. He's just not worth as
Speaker 1: much as others. He's one of those throwaway people. There's
Speaker 1: a problem though, with a case against Billy Wayne Cope.
Speaker 1: After he's arrested, DNA testing proves that the saliva and
Speaker 1: seamen left on Amanda did not come from him. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were left by some other man. The police collect
Speaker 1: DNA samples from everyone who knew the Cope family, even
Speaker 1: their preacher, but they can't find a match. It takes
Speaker 1: them seven months to figure out that the DNA left
Speaker 1: on Amanda Cope's body belonged to a man named James Sanders.
Speaker 1: James Sanders is a career burglar, a serial rapist, and
Speaker 1: a drug addict from North Carolina. He'd recently been released
Speaker 1: from prison and moved to South Carolina, to Rock Hill
Speaker 1: in particular. In fact, as of the date of Amanda's death,
Speaker 1: James Sanders lived two blocks away from the Cope family,
Speaker 1: and while Billy Wayne Cope sat in prison for Amanda's death,
Speaker 1: James Sanders was out on the streets and he was
Speaker 1: horribly busy. Between December twelfth, two thousand and one and
Speaker 1: January twelfth, two thousand and two. In that one month period,
Speaker 1: James Sanders was implicated in four burglaries and multiple sexual
Speaker 1: assault in rock Hill, three of them within a mile
Speaker 1: of the Cope home. On December twelfth, he robbed and
Speaker 1: raped an elderly disabled woman. On December sixteenth and December nineteenth,
Speaker 1: there were two more attempted rapes, and on both occasions,
Speaker 1: the victims identified James Sanders. This guy is on a
Speaker 1: literal crime spree, breaking into homes and assaulting females in
Speaker 1: Amandicope's neighborhood within weeks of Amandicpe's death.
Speaker 2: He was brazen. He would go into these homes to
Speaker 2: try to find money, but if there was a woman
Speaker 2: in the home, he would attack her. He even assaulted
Speaker 2: some of these women while other people were sleeping in
Speaker 2: the home.
Speaker 1: Now, James Sanders also had a signature m. He would
Speaker 1: target homes after dark. He would break in without leaving
Speaker 1: any signs of forest entry. That was his specialty, and
Speaker 1: in each case James Sanders acted alone. Sanders was arrested
Speaker 1: for one of these other rapes. It was only at
Speaker 1: that point that prosecutors discovered that his DNA matched the
Speaker 1: Cope crime scene too.
Speaker 4: Now that renders Billy Wayne Cope's confessions false because he
Speaker 4: doesn't indicate the presence of a James Sanders in his scenarios,
Speaker 4: so his confessions were simply factually wrong. Somebody else raped
Speaker 4: his daughter. That same DNA that excluded Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 4: 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 of the scene.
Speaker 4: Their first act was to go to his wife and
Speaker 4: to tell her that that DNA in the seamen was
Speaker 4: Billy Wayne Cope's. They lied to his wife and then
Speaker 4: wired her up to try and get him to give
Speaker 4: a better, more accurate confession because his prior confessions were
Speaker 4: factually incorrect. Why would you send his wife in to
Speaker 4: get a fifth confession unless you realized that the other
Speaker 4: four were worthless. She died shortly thereafter as a result
Speaker 4: of complications and surgery, and they never corrected the record
Speaker 4: for her. She died believing that Billy Wayne Cope's DNA
Speaker 4: had been found inside of their daughter.
Speaker 1: The prosecution searched for any connection between Billy and Sanders,
Speaker 1: and they found nothing.
Speaker 2: There was zero evidence he and Cope had ever met
Speaker 2: that alone joined forces.
Speaker 4: The DNA contradicted the prosecution of Billy Winko, and instead
Speaker 4: of moving in that direction, they concocted a theory that
Speaker 4: essentially had he and the rapist involved together, and they
Speaker 4: just made it up.
Speaker 2: Four weeks before the start of this trial, Sanders wrote
Speaker 2: a letter to the prosecute in this case, and in
Speaker 2: that letter he complained about his own defense attorney, and
Speaker 2: one of the complaints he had was, He's not even
Speaker 2: talking to me about this other man. I'm going to
Speaker 2: trial with someone I'm not even acquainted with.
Speaker 1: But even Sanders letter didn't deter prosecutors. They told the
Speaker 1: jury that Billy Wayne Cope had pimped out his daughter
Speaker 1: to James, that Billy must have led James into the
Speaker 1: home in order to attack Amanda, and so the two
Speaker 1: of them went on trial together.
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe that Billy Wayne Cope had to sit
Speaker 4: in court with his daughter's rapist and murderer. The individual
Speaker 4: whose seamen was found inside his daughter.
Speaker 1: Now, Billy Wayne Cope's case was gaining the attention of
Speaker 1: national experts in false confessions, as well as some of
Speaker 1: the leading lawyers in South Carolina, and Billy's lawyers were
Speaker 1: committed to fighting back at trial. Billy's legal team tried
Speaker 1: to tell the jury about James Sanders crime, but the
Speaker 1: judge refused to let them, saying that Sanders' other crimes
Speaker 1: weren't relevant because they hadn't involved a twelve year old girl.
Speaker 1: Billy's lawyers also tried to introduce that letter Sanders had
Speaker 1: written saying he didn't know Billy, but the judge rejected
Speaker 1: that too. Billy's defense is hamstrung.
Speaker 4: The jury saw James Sanders there, but they were not
Speaker 4: permitted to know that James Sanders was about to stand
Speaker 4: trial for another crime he committed in almost exactly the
Speaker 4: same way and in the same neighborhood. In their minds,
Speaker 4: James Sanders and Billy Wayne Coope came together for this
Speaker 4: one time only novel crime, when in fact, James Sanders
Speaker 4: was a serial offender.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the trial that Billy has to endure, it's
Speaker 1: hellish every time the prosecutors mentioned Billy's name, James Sanders
Speaker 1: starts laughing. Finally, Billy could bear no more. He takes
Speaker 1: the witness stand in his own defense and he explodes
Speaker 1: at James Sanders, you.
Speaker 4: Hate you for what you did. Bible says, love your
Speaker 4: enemies and do good to so help me, God, I've tried.
Speaker 4: I hate him.
Speaker 3: I hate him so bad I can't stand.
Speaker 2: In the end, it wasn't enough. The jury deliberated only
Speaker 2: five or five and a half hours. Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 2: was convicted. Both he and Sanders went down for this crime,
Speaker 2: and they were both sentenced to life in prison. That's
Speaker 2: when I got involved. I had been following the case
Speaker 2: and I was stunned that Billy Wayne Cope had been convicted.
Speaker 2: I decided to see if Billy Wayne Cope's defense team
Speaker 2: could use some help.
Speaker 1: Steve joined Billy's appeal team, which also included legendary lawyers
Speaker 1: David Brooke and Alison Flohm, and at first Billy's appeal
Speaker 1: seemed like it'd be successful. The appellate court ruled that
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough evidence that Billy and James Sanders had
Speaker 1: worked together, but the prosecution appealed.
Speaker 2: That ruling, and I was optimistic. I thought we have
Speaker 2: checks and balances in our system, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: of South Carolina is not going to let this conviction stand.
Speaker 2: But I was wrong.
Speaker 1: The South Carolina Supreme Court declined to throw out Billy's
Speaker 1: conviction by a single vote, and the US Supreme Court
Speaker 1: refused to intervene.
Speaker 4: I can't tell you how many cases I've seen just
Speaker 4: like this. An innocent person gives a confession. Subsequent to
Speaker 4: the confession, DNA is found. The DNA identifies the perpetrator,
Speaker 4: who has nothing to do with the individual who confessed,
Speaker 4: and rather than redirect the investigation, admit the mistake and
Speaker 4: move on, the prosecutor's office chooses instead to create some
Speaker 4: new theory that brings together the rapist and the innocent confessor.
Speaker 4: And I just find that shameful. It's a disgrace.
Speaker 1: Well, the legal team was prepared to keep on fighting, right.
Speaker 1: We don't let losses in any court, whether it's the
Speaker 1: trial court or the US 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 ninth, twenty seventeen, Billy
Speaker 1: Wayne Cope died in prison of what the prison said
Speaker 1: were natural causes.
Speaker 4: When I heard years later that Billy Wayne Cope had
Speaker 4: died in prison, my heart just sunk. While this case
Speaker 4: haunted me, I harbor the hope that at some point
Speaker 4: in time, at some level and in some way, an
Speaker 4: appeal would be successful.
Speaker 1: He was only fifty three years old, and from a
Speaker 1: legal perspective, that means that Billy Wayne Cope's case is over.
Speaker 1: It's done. There are no options left to clear his name. Now,
Speaker 1: we want to tell you uplifting stories of exoneration, of
Speaker 1: justice that's delayed but not denied. We all like those stories.
Speaker 1: They keep us fighting, but not every case turns out
Speaker 1: that way.
Speaker 2: In this podcast episode, it's our attempt to change Billy's legacy.
Speaker 1: We're not here to tell you that Billy Wayne Cope
Speaker 1: was an angel, but that's one of the dangers of
Speaker 1: telling stories about wrongful conviction. There's always a temptation to
Speaker 1: paint the defendant as a perfect human and Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect, not by a long shot. But our justice
Speaker 1: system is supposed to make judgments based on evidence and logic,
Speaker 1: not on character, assassinations, or whispers that someone might have
Speaker 1: been white trash.
Speaker 2: Billy deserves the truth as much as anyone else does.
Speaker 4: Billy Wayne Cope did not sexually assault his daughter. He
Speaker 4: did not rape his daughter. He did not murder his daughter.
Speaker 4: His greatest indiscretion, if you will, was that he called
Speaker 4: nine one one founder dead in the morning.
Speaker 1: We want to tell you now a little bit about
Speaker 1: the man Billy Wayne Copeman. You knew, right, Steve, I.
Speaker 2: Did know him. You know, throughout this ordeal he remained upbeat,
Speaker 2: even hopeful. He had dedicated himself to doing God's work
Speaker 2: in prison. He taught Hebrew, he preached, He served as
Speaker 2: a hospice minister to inmates that were dying or ill.
Speaker 2: When he died, his legal team got together and we
Speaker 2: wrote a statement about his death. And this is what
Speaker 2: the statement said. In the years we represented Billy, he
Speaker 2: was unfailingly polite. He was optimistic and full of faith,
Speaker 2: and he maintained these qualities in the long years that
Speaker 2: followed his conviction. Billy confessed to a dreadful crime he
Speaker 2: did not commit. When DNA later proved the act actual
Speaker 2: killer was a career burglar and serial rapist named James Sanders,
Speaker 2: law enforcement should have faced up to the truth and
Speaker 2: admitted they had obtained a false confession from the grieving
Speaker 2: and psychologically vulnerable father of a murdered child. Billy, I
Speaker 2: want you to know that even though we lost your case,
Speaker 2: these cases of unrequited innocence, these are the ones that
Speaker 2: give me the strength and energy to continue the fight
Speaker 2: for other innocent people.
Speaker 1: Billy, with your evangelical fervor, We sure hope you're somewhere
Speaker 1: where you gonna hear us. Justice belongs to every man,
Speaker 1: not just the rich, powerful, or respectable. This podcast episod's
Speaker 1: for you and for everyone like you, in the name
Speaker 1: of justice. Join us next week when we bring you
Speaker 1: to the Bronx in nineteen eighty nine 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 Flamm and the team at Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 1: Executive producer Kevin wardis Senior producer and Pope and additional
Speaker 1: production and editing by Connor Hall. Special thanks to Jogi
Speaker 1: Hammer for additional script editing and for wrangling and writing
Speaker 1: like a mad woman. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter at Laura Nywriter,
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 2: Can follow me on Twitter at s Drisen.
Speaker 1: For more information on the show, visit Wrongfulconviction podcast dot
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Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast,
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