BROADCASTS.com

b"

In June 1983, two separate stories met at a ranch house in Chino Hills, California.\\xa0 The first story is the brutal stabbing/axing/icepicking mass murder of Doug Ryen, his wife Peggy, their daughter Jessica and Christopher Hughes, the 11 year-old best friend of the Ryans' son, Josh - Josh himself was near death, but eventually survived.\\xa0 The second story is that of one Kevin Cooper. a full-time convicted burglar and part-time convicted rapist, just escaped from the California Institution for Men - also known as the Chino Hills Men's Prison.\\xa0 Cooper, who had holed up in a house just a few hundred feet away from the Ryen home before (he claims) he headed for Mexico the night before the Ryen murders took place, was convicted of the slayings and sentenced to death.\\xa0 Seems like an open and shut case.\\xa0 Until one takes even a cursory look at how the case was handled.\\xa0 In this first of two parts on Kevin Cooper and the murder conviction that has him sitting on death row today, Melissa examines Cooper's history of burglary, his various name changes and escapes, including the escape from Chino Men's Prison that led him to his fate.