Opinion ID: 3064677
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: A bloody shoeprint made by a Pro-Ked Dude

Text: shoe on a sheet in the master bedroom of the Ryen house, a matching shoeprint on a spa cover outside the Ryen house, and another in the pool room at the Lease house. (4) Role-Rite prison-issue cigarettes and tobacco found in the Lease house and in the Ryens’ abandoned station wagon. (5) A missing hatchet from the Lease house, and a hatchet sheath found on the floor of a bedroom in the Lease house. (6) A button found in the Lease house that matched a prison-issue jacket. (7) An empty beer can in the field between the Ryen house and the Lease house. (8) Burrs on Jessica Ryen’s nightgown. (9) Positive Luminol tests in a shower in the Lease house. COOPER v. BROWN 5449 I discuss each piece of evidence in turn.
At trial, the jury heard two recorded statements by Josh, one stating and one suggesting that he saw only one man on the night of the attack. However, when Josh first arrived at the hospital, he was able to communicate to a clinical social worker that the assailants were three or four young white males. Deputies misrepresented his recollections and gradually shaped his testimony so that it was consistent with the prosecution’s theory that there was only one killer.
A single drop of blood in the hallway outside the Ryen master bathroom — several feet away from any of the victims — had characteristics consistent with Cooper’s genetic profile and inconsistent with the victims’. The crime lab conducted serological testing of this blood drop (entered into evidence as A-41) under suspicious circumstances. The criminologist who conducted the testing arrived at one result, and then altered his records to show a different result that conformed to Cooper’s known blood characteristics. The drop of blood has a history of being “consumed” during testing and then inexplicably reappearing in different form for further testing when such testing would prove useful to the prosecution.
Within the first few days after the murders, deputies discovered two distinctive matching shoeprints tying the crime scene to the Lease house. Later, a deputy in the crime lab discovered a bloody shoeprint on a bedsheet that had been collected from the Ryen master bedroom. At trial, the prosecution presented evidence that the shoe that likely made those shoeprints — a Pro-Ked Dude tennis shoe — was nowhere available for retail sale and was only available 5450 COOPER v. BROWN through institutions such as CIM. The prosecution also presented evidence that Cooper had been issued such shoes at CIM. The shoeprints on the sheet in the master bedroom of the Ryen house, on the spa cover outside the Ryen house, and in the Lease house were discovered after a suspicious delay. The shoeprint on the sheet was not discovered at the Ryen house, but rather in the SBCSD Crime Laboratory. Deputy Stockwell testified that he discovered the print after re-folding the sheet in the lab to match the way it supposedly had been folded, or crumpled, on the floor of the bedroom. 11/19/84 RT 3506-07. Deputy William Baird was the manager of the lab where the sheet was kept when the shoeprint was discovered. Baird provided critical testimony at trial connecting the shoeprint on the sheet to the shoeprint in the Lease house. He also testified that the shoeprints were made by Pro-Ked Dude shoes. ER 1676-77, 3195-3201. He testified that he already had a ProKed Dude shoe in his lab, which he matched to the print on the sheet. Pro-Ked Dude shoes were manufactured and distributed by Stride-Rite Corporation. Deputy Baird admitted at trial that he might have told the Stride-Rite official who testified at trial that the SBCSD wanted information from him so they could “shut down certain defenses.” ER 3200. Soon after Cooper’s trial, Baird was caught stealing heroin from the evidence locker at the Crime Laboratory. He stole the heroin both for his personal use and to sell to drug dealers. ER 1714-16. Two additional facts discovered after trial render the shoeprint evidence particularly dubious. First, Pro-Ked Dudes were, contrary to the testimony at trial, available (though not in large quantities) at retail stores in the United States. Second, an inmate who testified at trial that he had issued ProKed Dudes to Cooper shortly before his escape recanted his trial testimony in a sworn declaration supporting Cooper’s application to file his second habeas application. COOPER v. BROWN 5451
Cooper admitted to smoking “Role-Rite” prison-issue tobacco while he was in the Lease house. Tobacco consistent with Role-Rite was found on the floor between the front passenger seat and the front passenger door of the Ryens’ station wagon. Two cigarette butts were also found in the station wagon, and blood typing tests could not exclude Cooper as the donor of the saliva on the butts. One of the butts contained tobacco that was consistent with the characteristics of the Role-Rite brand. The station wagon was discovered in a parking lot in Long Beach, 45 miles west of the Ryen house, on June 11. When the station wagon was discovered, dust prints indicated that someone had recently closed the hood. ER 808-09. Cooper arrived in Tijuana, 125 miles south of the Ryen house, at 4:30 p.m. on June 5, the day after the murders, and stayed continuously at the same Tijuana hotel until June 8. 1/7/85 RT 5874. Cooper then went to Ensenada, Mexico, where he found work on a private boat. He worked on the boat from June 8 until the day of his arrest. 1/3/85 RT 5468-75. The station wagon was processed by the police under suspicious circumstances. Some cigarette butts from the Lease house were never processed into evidence. Some of those cigarette butts could have easily been planted in the car. Moreover, after initial forensic testing, paper from a hand-rolled cigarette butt supposedly found in the station wagon was described as consumed. That same paper later “reappeared” and was offered into evidence. When the paper “reappeared,” it was significantly larger than the paper in the cigarette butt that had been tested.
On the day the bodies were discovered, detectives recovered a bloody hatchet beside the road not far from the Ryen house. People who had previously used the Lease house testified that a similar hatchet was now missing from the house. 5452 COOPER v. BROWN Investigators found a sheath for the hatchet in the Lease house near the closet in the bedroom previously used by Kathleen Bilbia (“the Bilbia bedroom”), where Cooper had slept on June 3. Fingerprint evidence strongly suggests that the hatchet sheath was planted in the bedroom soon after the hatchet was discovered. Further, the owners of the hatchet provided inconsistent testimony about the location of the hatchet before it disappeared.
Deputies discovered a green, blood-stained button near the closet in the Bilbia bedroom. It resembled buttons found on certain “camp jackets” issued at CIM. The blood on the button was type A, consistent with Cooper and Doug Ryen. The green button was discovered under the same suspicious circumstances as the hatchet sheath, strongly suggesting it was planted in the Bilbia bedroom after Cooper had become a suspect. Further, its color showed that it came from a green prison-issued jacket. Uncontradicted evidence at trial showed that Cooper was wearing a brown or tan prison-issued jacket when he escaped.
In the refrigerator in the Ryen house, there was a six-pack of Olympia Gold beer with one can missing. Another can in the refrigerator, as well as the wall of the refrigerator, were smudged with reddish stains. Deputies found a stained, nearly empty can of Olympia Gold in the field between the Ryen house and the Lease house. The stain on the can in the field and on the wall of the refrigerator tested positive for blood. The blood stains on the beer cans were so degraded that the lab could not conduct any further tests, and deputies failed to collect the stain on the wall of the refrigerator as evidence. No one analyzed the contents of the nearly empty beer can. COOPER v. BROWN 5453
Two burrs adhered to the inside of Jessica Ryen’s nightgown approximately ten inches up from the bottom hem. The prosecution argued to the jury that because the top of Jessica’s nightgown did not have holes corresponding with some of Jessica’s post mortem chest wounds, at some point an assailant must have raised Jessica’s nightgown, and, in the process of inflicting those chest wounds, deposited the burrs. The prosecution also presented evidence that similar burrs were found on the inside of the Ryen station wagon and on a blanket found in the closet where Cooper slept on June 3. Plants producing the burrs grew in the field between the Ryen house and the Lease house. The plant that produces the burrs is common in Chino Hills. It is a relative of alfalfa and is a common ingredient in horse and cattle feed. It is unusual for such burrs to transfer from one fabric surface to another. Once the burrs have adhered to a surface, typically they must be physically plucked in order to be removed. 2/4/85 RT 7483-85, 7576-77. Moreover, the coroner found a small beetle in Jessica’s body bag. This beetle is nocturnal, suggesting that Jessica may have been outside during or soon before the murders, when she could have picked up the burrs. 9. Positive Luminol Tests in the Shower in the Lease House Detectives tested the shower and sink in the bathroom adjoining the Bilbia bedroom in the Lease house for traces of blood. Luminol testing revealed the possible presence of blood on the shower walls in a broad band from approximately two feet to five feet above the floor of the shower. When Kathleen Bilbia moved out of the Lease house a short time before the murders, she had cleaned her bathroom with bleach. Bleach reacts with Luminol in the same way that 5454 COOPER v. BROWN blood does. In order to exclude the possibility that a Luminol reaction is caused by bleach, rather than blood, a two-stage test is required. The evidence suggests that the detectives only conducted a one-stage Luminol test. Moreover, the staining pattern in the shower is not consistent with a person cleaning up after being covered in blood. The Luminol test did not indicate blood in the bottom portion of the shower, and it did not reveal patterns of drainage in the shower. One would expect the blood rinsed from a person’s body to travel downward in the shower, rather than moving horizontally in a broad, uniform, 3-foot horizontal band. Hence, the Luminol reaction in the shower is probably attributable to Bilbia’s cleaning materials, not to the presence of blood. There was no indication that any bloody clothing was placed anywhere in the vicinity of the shower.