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, subscribe whatever button. And if you're listening to us audio, then also you hit like and subscribe and thumbs up to yeah, thumbs whatever. That's like. So that's like I call it thumbs up, thumbs ups up. 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 on our own YouTube channel, which is what Crimes and Consequences on YouTube. Yeah, you'll find us, typick Crimes and Consequences on YouTube and you'll find us. Yeah, don't forget to hit the like or subscribe a button on whatever app you're listening to us, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Apple Podcasts,
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