As Execution Nears, Family Relives Horror

A fifth-grader only days away from the 1983 summer break, Christopher Hughes hopped on his bicycle and waved goodbye to his mom as he rode off to a friend’s house for a Saturday night sleepover.

“Don’t forget,” his mother called out as he pedaled down their street in Chino Hills, “be home on time for church tomorrow.”

It was the last time Mary Ann Hughes and her husband, Bill, saw their son alive.

That evening, escaped prison inmate Kevin Cooper broke into the home of Doug and Peg Ryen and, armed with a hatchet and buck knife, savagely murdered the San Bernardino County couple, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes. Cooper also slit the throat of Christopher’s best friend in the neighborhood, 8-year-old Joshua Ryen, leaving the boy for dead.

Joshua survived. Not only did he testify against Cooper during Cooper’s 1985 murder trial, but he’ll also be sitting in the witness chamber in San Quentin State Prison when Cooper is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Mary Ann and Bill Hughes plan to be right next to Joshua.

“I don’t expect him to say he’s sorry; I don’t think he’s afraid to meet his maker,” Mary Ann Hughes said. “I don’t think there’s any forgiveness in him. I just think there’s evil in this world, and he’s part of it.”

On Sunday, less than 24 hours before the scheduled execution, demonstrators marched outside Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s home, and Cooper’s attorneys continued their last-ditch effort to win a delay.

About 60 protesters, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and actors Mike Farrell and James Cromwell, gathered outside the guard gate in front of Schwarzenegger’s estate on a hillside in Brentwood, carrying signs that read “Terminate the death penalty” and chanting, “Save Kevin Cooper!”

The protesters urged the governor to postpone the execution so that new evidence offered by the defense can be investigated. “If the governor really believed that -- not in the movie, but in real life -- that [Cooper] committed this crime,” Jackson said, “let him pull the switch himself.”

In a brief to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday, attorney David Alexander filed a declaration by a woman who says that, on the night of the murders, she saw two white men in Chino Hills wearing bloodstained clothing. Christine M. Slonaker, who now lives in Nevada City, Calif., said the pair walked into Canyon Corral Bar and were quickly asked to leave.

“We are not investigators, but those we’ve petitioned have the authority of subpoena, polygraph tests and putting people under oath,” defense counsel Lanny Davis said. “We’re asking to investigate this before you kill someone.”

Davis, who was President Clinton’s legal advisor during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, has joined Cooper’s team of Washington defense attorneys to help wage a fierce legal and public relations campaign to delay Cooper’s trip to the death chamber.

Holly Wilkens, a deputy state attorney general, called the appeal another “questionable” maneuver by the defense, and asked why Slonaker waited so long to come forward.

Late Sunday, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit rejected Alexander’s plea by a 2-1 vote, but it could go before the full court today.

Nearly 21 years after the murders, Cooper is steadfast that he is innocent, and a notable list of political figures and celebrities has taken up his cause.

Jackson has counseled Cooper on death row in San Quentin and helped lead rallies around Southern California calling for the execution to be postponed. Actors Denzel Washington, Sean Penn and Richard Dreyfuss signed a letter to Schwarzenegger urging clemency for Cooper.

Cooper’s attorneys and supporters have accused the police of planting DNA evidence at the murder scene and said other evidence that may prove Cooper’s innocence has been ignored. Five of the jurors who convicted Cooper have come out in support of delaying his execution until those questions and concerns can be investigated.

“For those who believe in capital punishment, there should be a strong degree of certainty that this man did the crime. Certainly, in the case of Kevin, that is not present,” Jackson said. “Five of the jurors say if they knew now what they didn’t know when they gave their verdict, they would change their vote.... At stake is Kevin’s life and the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

The only eyewitness, Joshua Ryen, apparently gave conflicting accounts of the murders shortly afterward, at first describing three white men as the possible assailants, and later referring to three Latinos.

But, today, Joshua Ryen says he has no doubt Cooper was solely responsible for murdering his parents, his sister and his best friend.

“The day Cooper dies will be the first day of what is left of my life,” he said in a recent letter to the governor. “The time has come for Kevin Cooper to pay for what he has done.”

On that Sunday in 1983, before the murders were discovered, Mary Ann and Bill Hughes knew something was wrong. Their son never returned home, and when Mary Ann drove to the Ryens’ house, no one answered the door. Her husband decided to drive over and check for himself.

“I tried the kitchen door that I would usually just walk into, but it was closed, so I started looking in windows,” Bill Hughes said. “I looked in from the sliding glass door into Doug and Peg’s bedroom. I saw Doug bent over the side of the bed, and Peg was lying flat on her back and nude at the foot of the bed. There was blood all over the ceiling and walls.”

Hughes spotted Joshua lying next to his mother’s body. He was badly wounded but still able to catch Hughes’ eye.

“Josh was in shock, but his eyes brightened when I looked at him,” Hughes said, “so I ran around back to the kitchen door and kicked it in.”

Hughes found Jessica Ryen’s disfigured body in a hallway. She was stabbed more than 40 times, and a zigzag pattern had been carved into her bare chest. Then he found his son, Christopher, lying dead against a living room wall, close to an exit door, perhaps trying to escape. He had been stabbed nearly 25 times and was the last to die.

“I knew Chris was dead,” said Bill Hughes, tears welling up as he discussed that day in a recent interview at his Chino Hills home. “I yelled to Josh, ‘Don’t move! I’m going to get help!’ ”

Today, inside the Hughes home, pictures of their young son still hang on the wall: Christopher popping a wheelie on his bicycle; dressed as a pirate for Halloween; a family portrait with Chris, a ring bearer, straining in his formal clothes. In the garage, there’s a trunk filled with Christopher’s belongings: trophies and swimming medals and other trinkets of childhood.

“You don’t forget anything,” said Bill Hughes, “but you learn to cope.”

At times, that has been difficult. Their former priest at the Roman Catholic church, Father Chris Ponnet, has been leading an anti-death penalty vigil for Cooper. Ponnet has been fasting for a week in protest.

“The pain of their loss, no one can undo,” Ponnet said, “whether in a church service or an execution.” Bill and Mary Ann Hughes say they are disturbed by Ponnet’s actions.

Joshua Ryen, who declined to be interviewed, lives an anonymous life in a Southern California town. He’s a construction worker, has a girlfriend and enjoys surfing.

“He doesn’t want to be in the public eye,” said his attorney, Milt Silverman of San Diego. “He just wants to be a normal guy. He just wants to try to live his life as best he can.”

That night, Joshua was awakened by screaming. His parents were bludgeoned with a hatchet, his sister stabbed to death. He was next.

Joshua suffered a slashed throat, two hatchet wounds and two stab wounds, and was left unconscious.

“Josh wakes up from the attack in the deathly still bedroom, where the stench of blood was nauseating,” Silverman said. “He put all four fingers in his neck to stop his bleeding while he was staring closely at his mother -- dead, and covered in blood. Josh laid there 11 hours.”

Joshua recently hired Silverman to review the entire case, including the grisly police crime scene photographs taken inside the home. Initially, Joshua and his grandmother expressed doubts that Cooper acted alone, but Silverman’s investigation left him convinced that Cooper was the lone killer.

The Ryens’ blood and hair was found in the shower and sink traps inside the unoccupied neighbor’s house where Cooper had been hiding. A shoe print matching prison-issue shoes also was found in that house.

Recent DNA tests, conducted at Cooper’s request, matched his DNA to that found in a drop of blood outside the Ryens’ bedroom and on two cigarette butts left inside the Ryens’ stolen station wagon, which was found abandoned in Long Beach.

Cooper’s attorneys, however, say some of that evidence was planted by police. They note that there is enough doubt about their client’s guilt that five of the jurors who heard the case now have second thoughts.

So far, no defense arguments have swayed an appeals court, or Schwarzenegger, all of whom have denied Cooper’s requests to postpone the execution. As for the last-ditch flurry of appeals, some are pending, including one to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Schwarzenegger stated in January, “Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming.... His is not a case for clemency.”

When he escaped the prison in Chino, Cooper was about to be extradited in a Pennsylvania rape case.

Now 46, he would be the 12th man executed since the state revived the death penalty in 1978.

“If he says he did it, or if he said he was sorry, it would be interesting,” Bill Hughes said. “This [execution] is not something I’ll relish, but it is something I need to see. For my son.”

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Times staff writer Joe Mathews contributed to this report.