Accused Chino Slayer of 4 Testifies, Denies Killings

SAN DIEGO —  A cool and confident Kevin Cooper took the witness stand Wednesday and under careful questioning by his attorney denied committing the bloody murders of four people in Chino Hills in June, 1983.

Cooper, 26, responded politely and without hesitation to questions from his attorney, San Bernardino County Public Defender David Negus. Cooper, a former mental patient, admitted that he escaped from the California Institution for Men in Chino on June 2, 1983. But he denied killing Doug and Peg Ryen, both 41; their daughter, Jessica, 10, and Christopher Hughes, 11, who were hacked and stabbed to death.

“No, sir, Mr. Negus, I didn’t,” answered Cooper when asked by his attorney if he had killed the victims.

The bodies of the four were discovered in the Ryens’ Chino Hills home on June 5, 1983. The Ryens’ 9-year-old son, Joshua, survived a slashed throat and a beating on the head with an ax. Cooper was charged with the killings on June 9.

On Wednesday, Cooper testified that he “just walked out” of a minimum-security section of the prison on June 2, and hid atop a roof at a nearby lumber yard until the late afternoon. Cooper said that later in the evening he made his way to an unoccupied ranch house located down the hill from the Ryen home.

Cooper testified that he hid in that house for two days before leaving on June 4.

The massacre was discovered the next day by William Hughes, father of victim Christopher Hughes.

Prosecutors have failed to produce any evidence that ties Cooper directly to the murders. However, San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Dennis Kottmeier has introduced circumstantial evidence lifted from the murder scene and from the Ryen station wagon, which was found in Long Beach, in an attempt to link Cooper to the killings.

Cooper said that he never approached the Ryen home while hiding in the nearby house, which he said he entered through an unlocked garage door.

The bespectacled defendant said he made several long distance phone calls from the house. Records of the calls have been entered as evidence by the prosecution.

Cooper said that he decided to stay at the house because he knew that authorities would concentrate their search for him in the area around the prison “for about 48 hours.”

“I was buying time . . . If I stayed there a little while longer my chances of getting away were that much better,” Cooper said. “I had already successfully escaped. I was trying to complete my escape.”

Television Commercial

It was while watching a television commercial at the house that he decided to escape to Mexico, Cooper said. The commercial for a local cruise line advertised a “two- or three-day vacation in Mexico,” he testified.

Cooper said he decided to leave his hide-out after Virginia Lang, who was in the process of moving out of the house, returned on Saturday to pick up her sweater. Lang walked into the house while Cooper was preparing to shower, but did not see him, the defendant said.

Eventually, Cooper testified, he made his way to Ensenada, where he signed on as a deckhand on a 32-foot sailboat owned by Owen and Angelica Handy. Cooper was captured on July 30, 1983, in an island bay, 20 miles south of Santa Barbara.

The trial was moved to San Diego County because of extensive publicity in San Bernardino County.

Cooper’s testimony will continue today, when questioning by his attorney resumes.