Escapee Accused in 4 Slayings : Closing Arguments Given in Cooper Murder Trial

The murder case of Kevin Cooper, accused of killing four people in a Chino Hills home in 1983, went to the jury Thursday after prosecutors warned jurors not to be fooled by Cooper’s “lies,” and the defense argued that the evidence against the defendant was fragmentary and unconvincing.

Cooper, 27, an escapee from the Chino Institution for Men, is charged with murdering Doug and Peg Ryen, both 41; their daughter, Jessica, 10, and Christopher Hughes, 11, in the Ryen home. The victims were hacked with an ax and stabbed with a hunting knife and ice pick, authorities testified.

The parents of the Hughes boy wept quietly in the courtroom audience during the closing argument of San Bernardino County Deputy Dist. Atty. John Kochis.

Kochis, who delivered the first of the prosecution’s two closing arguments, began his presentation by showing the jury two large color photographs of the Ryens when they were alive. One photo showed the family posing together, laughing. The other showed a smiling Joshua Ryen, alone.

“All of these hopes and dreams were lost by the nightmare that Kevin Cooper brought to Chino Hills,” said Kochis. Then he quickly replaced the family pictures with graphic photos of the victims as they were found, each body covered with blood.

Christopher Hughes’ face was shown completely covered in blood from several ax wounds to the face and head.

Pointing to a tennis shoe sole pattern lifted from the scene of the slayings, Kochis told jurors:

“With this pattern you can follow Kevin Cooper from the prison to the hide-out to the murder scene (Cooper) at the center of the slaughter.”

Cooper escaped from the prison in Chino on June 2, 1983, three days before the bodies were discovered by young Hughes’ father. Joshua Ryen, the Ryen couple’s 9-year-old son, survived the attack despite having his throat slashed and being beaten on the head.

Matching footprints were found at a house near the murder scene, a house where Cooper admitted hiding for two days after his escape. The shoes themselves, however, were never found.

Then, referring to several aliases that Cooper used while in prison and after his escape, Kochis said:

“You know that Kevin Cooper lies about who he is and what he does, where he comes from. He lies about what he’s done. He’s good at lying. Don’t let him fool you.”

David Negus, a public defender who is representing Cooper, told jurors the evidence against his client is circumstantial, and repeated allegations that authorities botched the investigation.

Negus called the case a jigsaw puzzle put together with circumstantial evidence by prosecutors. He told jurors that the law compels them to vote for acquittal if most of the evidence presented by the prosecution is circumstantial.

“The (puzzle) box was dropped. some have been lied about,” said pieces that have been changed. Too many pieces that have been forced together. Too many pieces that are missing.”

Acknowledging to jurors Cooper’s background as a convicted burglar and that he is probably not the kind of person they would want to associate with, Negus said, “That, however, does not make him a killer.”

He also emphasized that the prosecution failed to present a motive for the slayings.

San Bernardino Dist. Atty. Dennis Kottmeier “has presented no evidence during this trial as to why this crime was committed,” said Negus. “There is no evidence. There may be speculation. There may be rhetoric, but there is no evidence that Mr. Cooper committed the murders.”

Noting that Kottmeier at one point during the trial suggested that Cooper committed the killings out of a need for money and a car to flee the area, Negus stressed that the Ryen home had not been ransacked and that investigators found money on a counter a few feet from a refrigerator prosecutors say was opened by Cooper after he committed the murders.

Cooper testified that he hitchhiked to Tijuana on the evening of June 4, 1983. The Ryen station wagon was found a few days later in a church parking lot in Long Beach.

Responding to Negus’ statements, Kottmeier said, “There can be no explanation for this kind of crime.” Kottmeier said Negus’ claims of a botched investigation were “only (the) words of a defense attorney.”

In his remarks, Kochis took the jury step-by-step through the evidence found at the murder scene and at the house where Cooper stayed.

The prosecutor said that traces of Doug Ryen’s blood were found on a button that fell off Cooper’s prison-issued jacket at the hide-out house and on a piece of rope found in a closet where Cooper slept. He said that traces of Joshua Ryen’s blood were found on a beer can that Cooper allegedly took from the Ryen refrigerator after committing the murders.

But Negus countered that some of the evidence was built around conflicting testimony from the prosecution’s witnesses.

Kottmeier told the jury that Cooper took the blood-stained rope from the hide-out house. But a woman who used to live at the house testified that she had never seen the rope in the house. One of the three owners of the house, who visited periodically, testified that the rope was kept in the house.

Another owner testified that the ax allegedly used by Cooper in the killings was kept on the fireplace mantle. But his wife testified that she had stored the ax in a drawer.

Joshua Ryen’s grandmother, Dr. Mary Howell, offered testimony that helped Cooper’s case, and contradicted the testimony of an investigator. Hector O’Campo, a detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, testified that he never questioned young Ryen about the killings before June 14, 1983. But Howell testified that O’Campo questioned Joshua on June 6, 1983, when the boy identified his attackers as three Latino men.

At the preliminary hearing, O’Campo testified that he might have destroyed his notes from the June 6 interview. But at the trial the burly policeman said he did not remember taking notes at his June 6 meeting with the youth. However, O’Campo did say that he had decided sometime “between June 6 and 9, 1983” that Cooper was the killer.

Cooper was formally charged with the killings on June 9, 1983. He was arrested July 30, 1983.

During the five-month-long trial, prosecutors said that one particular piece of evidence undeniably linked Cooper to the slayings. Investigators said that grass burrs found on the blanket used by Cooper at the hide-out house match the grass burrs found on Jessica Ryen’s pajamas.

On Thursday, Kochis said that Cooper’s clothes picked up the burrs when he walked in the field between the two houses. He theorized that one of the burrs was transferred to Jessica’s clothing when Cooper pulled up her pajamas to carve on her chest, after killing the girl.

On June 5, 1983, after he was airlifted to the emergency room at Loma Linda University Hospital, Joshua Ryen told a deputy and a clinical social worker that his attackers were three white men. Later the boy described them as Latinos. Cooper is black.

Kottmeier explained the inconsistent statements from the youth as “a little boy trying to make sense of a senseless act.”

Negus struck hard at what he said was the prejudicial manner in which the prosecution put its case together to convict Cooper. He charged prosecutors with failing to look for other suspects after Cooper was charged--despite the statements from Joshua Ryen offering varying descriptions of his attackers.

Almost 800 pieces of evidence and 141 witnesses were introduced by both sides during the trial. Cooper testified in his own defense, repeatedly denying that he committed the crimes.

The trial was moved to San Diego because of pre-trial publicity in San Bernardino. Cooper faces the death penalty if convicted.