| Ray and Faye Copeland | |
|---|---|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Ray Copeland Faye Della Wilson |
| Born | December 30, 1914 (Ray Copeland) August 4, 1921 (Faye Copeland) Harrison, Arkansas |
| Died | October 19, 1993 (Ray Copeland) December 28, 2003 (Faye Copeland) |
| Cause of death | Natural causes |
| Sentence | Death |
| Killings | |
| Number of victims | 5-12 |
| Country | USA |
| State(s) | Missouri |
| Date apprehended | October 17, 1989 |
Ray Copeland (December 30, 1914 – October 19, 1993) and Faye Della Copeland (August 4, 1921 – December 28, 2003) became, at the ages of 76 and 69 respectively, the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States. They were convicted of killing five drifters. When her sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1999, Faye Copeland was the oldest woman on death row.
On November 1, 1990, 69-year-old Faye Copeland went to trial. According to articles in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Faye claimed she did not know her husband was a murderer. Although her marriage to Ray was fraught with abuse, the jury convicted her of four counts of murder and one of manslaughter. Faye had written a list of names that included the murdered drifters, each of whom had an X next to his name (as did 7 others, who remain missing). As Faye was sentenced to death by lethal injection, she sobbed uncontrollably. When Ray Copeland was told about the verdict on his wife his reply reportedly was, "Well, those things happen to some you know"; he apparently never asked about Faye again. Ray is rumored to have been a spoiled child, often demanding things. Although he came from a poor family, if Ray wanted something, it was said to have been soon acquired for him by any means possible. He was strongly disliked by neighbors, who believed he beat Faye and their four children. Prior to the murder convictions, Ray had a long history of crimes ranging from petty theft to grand larceny. He was convicted of writing bad checks on a number of occasions. The Copelands were caught and charged with murder after a drifter, named Jack McCormick, claimed to have spotted human remains on their land. Evidently, Ray had hit upon the scheme of hiring drifters, having them pay for cattle at auction with bad checks (which Ray by then was loath to do personally, given his prior convictions), then killing the drifters once they were no longer of any use, with a single bullet to the back of the head. It is unclear if Faye had any knowledge of this scheme, and her lawyers argued that she suffered from battered woman syndrome.
On August 10, 2002, Faye Copeland suffered a stroke, which left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Weeks later, in September 2002, Governor Holden authorized a medical parole for Faye, fulfilling her one wish that she not die in prison. She was paroled to a nursing home in her hometown. The following year, on December 28, 2003, she died aged 82 at the Morningside Center nursing home in Chillicothe, Missouri, from what Livingston County coroner Scott Lindley described as natural causes (disease). She left behind five children, seventeen grandchildren, and (at last count) twenty-five great-grandchildren.
Ray had died on October 19, 1993, of natural causes while awaiting execution.
