Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson here with Pushing Up Lilies. In this episode, I’m digging into the unsettling story of Faye and Raymond Copeland—the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States. Despite their advanced age, the Copelands orchestrated a chilling murder-for-profit scheme that shook the nation. Join me as I explore how they lured unsuspecting victims, the evidence that ultimately exposed them, and the twisted dynamics that led this seemingly ordinary couple down a path of greed, betrayal, and cold-blooded murder. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey guys, I want to talk to y'all a little bit about something that I'm pretty passionate about called Nokbox.
0:40 It's N-O-K-B-O-X and this is a box that was designed by a young lady named Maria and she's a teacher and also a real estate agent and she's a mother.
0:52 She's from Colorado and I guess about 4 years ago, her dad passed away.
0:58 And she went up to his house in New York where he lived and had to take on the responsibility of planning the funeral and the obituary and all those things that you have to do when someone passes away, but they had to figure out what to do with all of his things and had to go through local probate court because he had some real estate.
1:22 They really didn't know what to do.
1:24 So he did have a will.
1:27 And that helped him a little bit, but again, they had to go through probate court and they had to learn how to manage all of his bank accounts and he had some investments and they're digging through his phone and laptop and all of his file cabinets and drawers, which, you know, I've had to do before because I've told y'all stories about me having to go to people's houses and look through things, even just to find family.
1:52 They apparently spent a lot of time trying to guess his passwords and just couldn't find a camper that he owned.
2:01 They found a golf cart but couldn't find the keys.
2:05 It was just a lot.
2:06 I mean, it's a lot.
2:08 And so Nokbox is a system of checklists and it kind of helps you go through the process when someone passes away, cause there's so much to do.
2:20 There's so many legalities and everyone has belongings and passwords and bank accounts.
2:28 So Nokbox helps you to organize things.
2:32 They have several different options and that's what I love.
2:37 They have a fireproof option, which I think is always the best option, but the original one comes with color coded labels, instructional checklists.
2:49 It comes with a document protector bag and then a keyed bag that has 10 key tags.
2:57 You just get a lot of things.
2:59 I encourage you to look on their website.
3:02 Now I do have an affiliate link that I'm going to post on my Facebook page, which is Pushing up lilies, and I really like to support her small business because this is important.
3:13 I know that when we go on death scenes many times, number one, we don't even know who family is, but it's so hard for family.
3:22 If there's not a will and they're not on the bank accounts and just to know what to do, there are so many things that have to be taken care of.
3:31 Some people have told their family, well, I've made funeral arrangements, but they can't find the information.
3:36 They can't find the paperwork.
3:37 They don't know what funeral home they went to.
3:40 They're calling around funeral homes.
3:42 They can't access the bank account to see who they paid or when for a funeral.
3:47 It's just like you're at a loss.
3:50 It's so stressful anyway, and if you're like me and you feel like you're somewhat unorganized and you really want to have things where they belong for your family in case something does happen, I think this is a great opportunity for you to get one of these.
4:08 Again, look for my affiliate link on my Facebook page.
4:13 I would love for you to take advantage of that opportunity to start getting things organized for your family, because you never know.
4:21 You never know when you might have a car accident or, I mean, heaven forbid, I hate to even think that, but I just know what a struggle it is for families, and I know sometimes even what a struggle it is for death investigators to get the information that we need when someone passes.
4:38 Yesterday I had an overdose, and I wanted to talk to y'all a little bit about something that we noticed in overdose cases that a lot of people may not have ever heard of.
4:52 It's kind of interesting and it's cool to see, but it's called a foam cone.
4:58 A foam cone is a potential, and remember I said potential sign of an opioid overdose.
5:06 It is a frothy build up around the nose or mouth.
5:10 This is one reason why we take photos at the scene.
5:15 If someone has a foam cone and we walk up on them and say they're deceased in bed, and they have this frothy build up around their nose.
5:26 We know that when we put them in the body bag, that's going to go away.
5:30 I mean, just because, you know, you move them, things get shifted, it's not going to be there anymore.
5:37 This is important as far as our scene photographs because our doctors may not be able to visualize that once the body gets to the medical examiner's office and because we see it at the scene and provide that picture at the time of our scene walkthrough.
5:54 Because you know it's going to be obliterated.
5:57 Once the body is moved, the doctor's not going to be able to see that anymore.
6:02 It's a consequence of anoxia or lack of oxygen after pulmonary edema.
6:09 It is basically opioid overdoses, that can cause respiratory depression.
6:14 This slows the breathing, which can be fatal.
6:18 Opioid overdose can cause pulmonary edema, and then a fluid leak that fills up the air spaces of the lungs, and then that fluid can cause foaming of the mouth.
6:28 It's interesting to see and it's kind of neat that there are things that we can observe when we get to the scene initially that kind of lead us one direction or another.
6:42 And it's something that not everyone knows about.
6:45 Unfortunately, I see this often.
6:48 We all know drug use is rampant, and I like to use this platform as a way to educate as well.
6:55 I encourage you, if you're at all interested to go online and just look for an image when you Google phone cone after death.
7:04 If you Google phone cone and don't put after Death in there, you're going to get Styrofoam craft cones at all the local craft stores.
7:13 So don't do that.
7:14 You had to mention the word death in there and it'll let you see images.
7:18 It's really interesting, again, you know, a lot of times the family will say, what does it look like?
7:24 What do you think happened?
7:26 And if there's a phone cone there, we can ask, is there a history of opioid abuse that can sometimes open a conversation that needs to be had.
7:38 It's an uncomfortable conversation many times with family, but it's one that has to take place.
7:44 And so I think I've often said that one thing I like about this job is the fact that I get to be nosy, and I get paid for it.
7:52We all want to ask questions, but we just can't always because literally it's none of our business, but in this case, it is my business.
8:02 I kind of like asking questions, trying to get answers, and of course the more we put in our report, the easier it is for our pathologist to try to determine what happened.
8:14 I also want to tell y'all I'm super excited that I have ordered the serial boxes.
8:21 I'm not sure how long it's going to take them to come in, but I have already ordered the items that are going to be in the first box.
8:30 There are going to be a total of 7 items, they're going to be valued at well over $120.
8:39 And we will be putting it online soon for the first box to come out.
8:46 If you can go on my Facebook page.
8:49 I'd love for you to like my Facebook page and my Instagram.
8:52 But if you'll go on there and private message me that you would like one of the first boxes, I will sign it for you.
9:00 I will sign the box, and we'll send it to you.
9:04 I'll let you know exactly what the cost is.
9:07 My guess is going to be probably around $69 plus shipping.
9:14 And that's just a guess, but that is something that I'm working on because I want to make it affordable for everybody, but I can tell you it's going to have amazing items in it.
9:23 Is that I want for myself and that I don't already have.
9:27 I think it's going to be exciting, and I love when I posted it on my Facebook, how many people reached out and said that they couldn't wait.
9:35 If you love true crime like I do, you're going to absolutely love it.
9:40 It is the first true crime subscription box and it's going to be exciting.
9:46 I found a case that goes back to the 80s that kind of sparked my attention.
9:51 Because it's a couple, Faye and Raymond Copeland, and they were the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States.
10:00 They were at the time, 69 and 76, and you don't expect that.
10:07 You don't see that much, especially couples, but the two were convicted of killing five drifters at their farm in Mooresville, Missouri.
10:19 They, the wife.
10:21 Her sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1999 and prior to that, she was the oldest woman on death row.
10:30 Now, a little bit about them.
10:32 Ray Copeland was born in Oklahoma in 1914 and of course we know that a lot of the people who turned to crime have a rough upbringing, and his family moved frequently, struggled to survive during the Great Depression.
10:49 And he began committing crimes at a pretty early age.
10:53 He began stealing livestock, forging checks, and then he was eventually caught and served a year in jail.
11:02 After he was released in 1940, he met Faye.
11:05 They go back a long ways, and the crimes happened in the 1980s.
11:09 The two were married soon after they met, and they had several children.
11:14 And because Ray had been in trouble before and had a bit of a criminal reputation, they had to move around quite a bit.
11:21 His reputation followed him everywhere he went.
11:24 During that time, Ray was jailed several times again.
11:30 Until he came up with a plan to improve his illegal moneymaking methods to be undetected.
11:38 Instead of stealing and being discovered and going to jail, he came up with a way to do it under the radar basically, believing that he was not going to get caught.
11:50 Now, because of his reputation, he was unable to buy and sell cattle.
11:56 I mean, you kind of run fast from people that you don't trust.
12:01 To get around this problem, he began to pick up drifters and hobos and employed them as farmhands on his property.
12:11 He would take these employees to the market at the sale barns.
12:16 And they would use his bad checks to buy cattle for him.
12:22 And then after the cattle were purchased, Ray would sell them quickly so that he could get the money before the check cleared, which wasn't good, and then the farmhands would mysteriously disappear without a trace.
12:39 Now this worked for a little while, but once he was caught, of course, he went to jail again.
12:45 But when he was released, he continued his criminal activity, but he realized that his farmhands had to be not quite as connected to him as before.
12:58 His antics continued until a previous employee named Jack McCormick called Crime Stoppers hotline in August of 1989 to tell them about the Copelands.
13:11 We've all heard of Crime Stoppers.
13:13 He reported that he had seen human bones on the farm when he worked there, and that he claimed that Ray had even at one time tried to kill him when he worked there as a farmhand.
13:24 Now at first the police didn't really believe him, but they started checking Ray's criminal record and realized that he probably really wasn't the upstanding citizen he pretended to be.
13:36 And so they decided to investigate him a little bit further.
13:40 Police visited the farm with a search warrant, and again this is in October of 1989, and they had dozens of officers and bloodhounds with them.
13:50 Now in the beginning, nothing was found, but after searching more, the bodies of three young men were discovered in a nearby barn, creepy.
14:01 Further into the search, more bodies were found, and all of them were men, and they were all killed with a 22-caliber marlin rifle which was later found in the Copeland home and found to belong to Ray.
14:17 And it became clear that Ray killed his employees to try to get money, but Fay's actions were initially questioned.
14:26 Initially it was like, does Fay really have anything to do with this?
14:30 Although we kind of know, like if my husband all of a sudden had a lot of money, I would wonder where he got it.
14:37 I would know something was up.
14:40 And I mean, that's just we pay attention to what's going on around us and to our spouse's spending habits.
14:47 And I mean, if you're paying any attention at all, you're going to know when they come into some money and start making purchases that are unexpected.
14:56 Faye went to trial in November of 1990, and she painted the picture of a little dutiful wife and mother who was beat up by her husband on a regular basis and treated poorly by him.
15:10 Now, and that may have still been true, but the jury still convicted her of 5 counts of first-degree murder, so she was given 4 death sentences and 1 life sentence for the murders.
15:25 Now in March of 1991, Ray went on trial, and he was convicted of 5 counts of murder, and he was sentenced to death.
15:33 After hearing that Faye had been sentenced to death as well, he showed no emotion.
15:40 His comment was, well, those things happen.
15:44 Ray died of natural causes on October 19th of 1993 and his family had him cremated and then Faye's attorney appealed her conviction, stating that the jury wasn't allowed to hear the evidence that Ray had abused her for years.
16:02 And guess what?
16:03 Ray's not alive to say that that didn't happen anymore.
16:07 On August 6th, 1999, a judge overturned the death sentence and commuted her sentence to five consecutive terms of life without parole, so she's still in prison for life, but she's not on death row.
16:23 On August 10th of 2002, she had a stroke that left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak and so weeks later, Governor Bob Holden authorized a medical parole for Faye, fulfilling her one wish that she not die in prison.
16:40 I mean, I don't know.
16:41 What are your thoughts on that?
16:43 She did help her husband commit these crimes.
16:46 They did murder 5 people at least.
16:51 I mean, I don't know.
16:53 I hate to sound uncaring, but you're a murderer, and I'm sorry you're sick, but you were sent to jail for a reason.
17:03 Anyway, she was paroled to a nursing home.
17:06 In Chillicothe, Missouri, where she ended up dying of natural causes at the age of 82.
17:13 She did have 5 children and 17 grandchildren, so I am happy that maybe they were able to see her during her last days.
17:22 The victims were Dennis Murphy of Normal, Illinois.
17:26 He was killed October 17th of 1986.
17:30 Wayne Warner of Bloomington, Illinois was killed November 19th of 1986.
17:36 See, this was a long time ago.
17:37 That's the year I graduated high school.
17:39 Lord have mercy.
17:40 Jimmy Dale Harvey was a 27-year-old from Springfield, Missouri who was killed in October of'88.
17:48 John Freeman was 27 from Boonville, Indiana, and he was killed in December of'88.
17:56 And then Paul Cowart was a 20-year-old from Dardanelle, Arkansas who was killed in May of 1989.
18:07 Jack McCormick was one of the guys who, the one that we talked about, had gone to Crime Stoppers.
18:16 He was told to obtain a post office box in the nearby town of Brookfield, Missouri, and then open a checking account at the bank in the same community, using the Copeland's money.
18:28 He received the starter checks or the ones you get, you know, for free that they print out.
18:33 And was asked to sign a blank one.
18:35 And over the next few weeks, McCormick would go with Ray to multiple cattle auctions, and they would purchase cattle using the starter checks.
18:46 Which, you know, a lot of people don't even take those checks until you get your real ones.
18:50 They don't take the starter checks.
18:52 But on August 6th of 1989, while walking behind the barn, McCormick saw what he believed to be a human skull and an arm or leg bone.
19:03 He couldn't tell which it was, but they were protruding from the ground.
19:06 I mean, I would have run.
19:07 I don't know about y'all, but I'd be like, peace out.
19:10 I'm not confronting anybody about this.
19:13 But he returned to the house, and he was met by Fay, who was upset that he had been behind the barn and instructed him that Ray did not want anyone back there and that he was not to go back there again.
19:28 On August 8th of 1989, the printed checks for his account came in, and so Ray took him back to an auction in Green City, Missouri and told McCormick that he was basically unhappy with his buying skills.
19:43 And so McCormick willingly terminated the working relationship, and he asked Ray to take him to the bank to close the checking account.
19:53 The next morning, Faye was making excuses to leave the farm like something was going to happen and she didn't want to be there, claiming that she was going to go to her part-time job where she worked at the Holiday Inn.
20:05 Not sure what she did, but apparently there was a Holiday Inn in the area and Faye worked there.
20:11 Ray lured McCormick into the barn after Faye left and told him he needed help finding a raccoon.
20:20 While in the barn, Ray was armed with a 22-caliber rifle.
20:26 If I'd already seen the bones, I'm not going in the barn with you.
20:30 I'm sorry, I mean, he was cautious but not cautious enough.
20:35 He noticed that a tractor had been backed up near the barn and there was a trailer attached to it, but in the trailer, there was a shovel and a big piece of plastic.
20:48 Now hello, if I had seen bodies back there already and he's got a rifle and here's a shovel and plastic, put 2 and 2 together.
20:58 But anyway, while they were in the barn, McCormick turned around at some point and saw Ray with the rifle pointed directly at him.
21:07 Somehow McCormick persuaded Ray to take him back to Brookfield, and Ray agreed, but they wanted to go to the courthouse first, and Faye was there.
21:20 She seemed surprised to see McCormick because she left because she expected Ray to kill him, but Ray did not.
21:28 Now Fay followed Ray and McCormick to the bank where the checking account was and closed the account, and there was a check for a little over $1150 outstanding at the Green City auction barn from a sale.
21:45 Now McCormick, and this is where he finally got smart, he refused to return to the barn for his belongings.
21:52 So his business relationship with the Copelands was ended.
21:56 He's really lucky he got out of the barn in the first place.
22:00 I can't believe that Ray took him to the bank and allowed him to close his account.
22:07 It's obvious to me that Fay knew something was up.
22:11 Because she left, she may not have directly killed him, but she definitely knew it was going to happen.
22:18 Later that day, McCormick and the Copelands parted ways.
22:23 He went to a bar, and he met a girl named Rose Clevinger, and he told her about the Copelands, and he told her that if he went back to their house, he believed he would be harmed.
22:34 He told her that he had seen what looked like bodies behind their barn, that Ray had pointed a rifle at him, that Ray had a trailer by the barn that had a shovel and plastic in it.
22:47 And I mean, he was obviously he woke up, he knew then what was going on, but Rose agreed to take McCormick to Mooresville to get his stuff.
22:59 Now upon arriving, Ray came out and started cursing.
23:04 And McCormick introduced Rose, the girl he'd met at the bar as his sister.
23:09 Now Ray didn't believe him, so Fay wrote down like her name and the license plate number and all this stuff.
23:18 And then two weeks later, McCormick went to Nebraska, and when he got to Nebraska, that's when he called the Crime Stoppers hotline and reported that he had seen at least 3 or 4 bodies at the Copeland farm.
23:32 Now he was arrested in Oregon for the hot check he wrote at the livestock sale barn and for auto theft.
23:40 I don't know what he took, but anyway, he was later arrested for that hot check and the Copelands tried the same scheme used on McCormick with a couple of other guys, Lothar Borner, and James Page.
23:54 But like I said, everybody in town was kind of on to Ray.
23:58 When he would bring these men to the bank and to the post office to try to get them to get post office box and open a checking account, the bank and the post office didn't want anything to do with them.
24:09 Borner was going to come to work for Ray in August of'89 and because he couldn't get a post office box or a bank account, he became concerned, and he returned home.
24:21 He's like, yeah, something's up.
24:24 I don't know what's going on, but I don't want to be a part of it.
24:26 And he returned home.
24:28 Now, in September of'89, James Page agreed to buy cattle for Ray and again, they were unable to get a post office box for Paige.
24:37 But he obtained one in another town, and then he was able to open a checking account and order checks just like all the other guys.
24:46 Now he signed a blank starter check over to Ray, and then Fay took him to the sale barn, but on the way, they stopped at a restaurant.
24:55 And it was really weird because Fay told Paige that if anyone asked who she was to tell them that she was his wife.
25:03 She obviously had something to do with this, and I think what it's boiling down to is her attorneys were trying to again make her look like this pitiful wife who was abused, but in reality, she played a very big role in what happened.
25:18 Now after Page's printed checks arrived, he signed two blank checks over and then Faye and Ray told Page that they tore up the starter check, and they deposited $2000 of Copeland’s money into his checking account.
25:33 Page purchased cattle at sales, and Faye was there.
25:38She knew exactly what was going on.
25:41 She'd also taken him to the bank on occasion.
25:44 Cattle again were continuously bought and sold before checks could clear, and finally, a few days later, Ray was arrested.
25:54 Finally, acting on McCormick's tip, a search warrant was obtained for the Copeland farm.
26:01 This is the weird stuff.
26:02 The guest bedroom closet was filled with clothing, all different sizes, and some were later identified as belonging to some of the murder victims.
26:11 Luggage also identified as belonging to one of the victims was also found in the guest room closet.
26:17 Police found pieces of notebook paper where Faye had written down bank information and a small piece of paper was found inside a Polaroid camera with a list of names.
26:30 They were the names of the victims, and it was in Fay's handwriting and next to the names was a notation that said back or X.
26:39 Next to the three dead men there were X's and again the list was in Fay's handwriting which was helpful in proving that she was part of the scheme.
26:52 Inside her purse there were signed blank checks from all these guys and then acting on tips, police discovered several shallow graves in a barn on the farm where Ray had done odd jobs and then on another farm, police found the body of Wayne Warner buried in a shallow grave beneath hay bales.
27:15 The body of Dennis Murphy was also found at the same farm.
27:20 Murphy was chained to a 40-pound concrete block at the bottom of a well.
27:26 Now autopsies revealed that all victims died of gunshot wound to the head and one bullet was recovered and it was positively identified as being fired from the 22-caliber rifle found in the Copeland's home.
27:41 For these reasons, the court rejected this suffering wife syndrome or battered wife syndrome at the time of the murders, and so that's the reason that Faye was convicted along with him.
27:57 Again, she was originally supposed to get the death sentence, and she was the oldest woman on death row, but when they commuted her sentence after she got sick and after Ray was no longer alive to defend himself, she was allowed to be discharged to a nursing home and die there, hopefully surrounded by her family.
28:21 I mean, I don't know what I would do if my parents were criminals and I mean, we want to think we wouldn't have anything to do with them, but again, they're your parents and if you're able to be there when they're on their deathbed, I don't know.
28:33 I don't know how I feel about that.
28:34 Anyway, I want to go a little further into this story about these different guys, but again, they were all hobos.
28:41 They were all people that I guess the Copelands thought no one was going to miss.
28:46 Luckily, McCormick spoke up and reported it and all this came to an end because I'm sure there would have been more people killed.
28:55 I thought that was just kind of a crazy story.
28:57 Again, it's from a while back.
28:59 I like covering them sometimes when it's not something that you see on TV or that everybody else is not talking about.
29:07 It's just kind of weird, but I mean they were serial killers when you think about it, and they were an older couple.
29:13 Anyway, I hope the county is good to us this week.
29:16 We did, I know y'all know had some snow here in Texas and finally it cleared off, but it's kind of funny how everything just kind of closes down.
29:27 I was going stir crazy and I tried to go shopping the second day we had snow, and everything was closed, and I was like, are you kidding me?
29:35 I really wanted to spend some money, but no one would let me.
29:39 Please shoot me a message on Facebook and let me know if you would like to be put on the list to order one of the first serial boxes.
29:47 I believe initially there's only going to be 30 going out and I would love to get you one.
29:53 Again, you can volunteer to be on my podcast as a guest.
29:57 If you go on my website, pushinguplilies.com.
30:01 You can always email me at julie@pushinguplilies.com, and I hope that you all have an amazing rest of your week, and I look forward to talking to you next week.
30:11 Bye.
30:13 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
30:17 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast.
30:24 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
30:28 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.