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Case. >> when you're conducting an investigation, especially one as complex as this one, you essentially collect the evidence and let the evidence lead you to a suspect. what they did in this case was exactly the opposite. as word of the murders got out, the sheriff's department learned that kevin cooper had escaped, and that started what we refer to in law enforcement as tunnel vision. sheriff tidwell held a big press conference. they started with a suspect. and they didn't start collecting evidence to prove their theory. >> but if kevin cooper wasn't the killer, why did the hatchet sheath an...

Pittsburgh when i was growing up. i became a car thief. i landed in the california institution for men in 1983 because of a burglary conviction in los angeles. i was there a couple months. i was out walking around, and there was a hole in the fence, and i just ran. >> mr. cooper started wandering through farms and pastures, areas that were off of the roadways. and ultimately found his way to the lease house. >> when i got to the lease house, i called a couple ex-girlfriends, asked them to send me money. tried to figure out what's next. but i did not murder those people. >> cooper said he'd alr...

See anything suspicious. a day or two later, other deputies were asked to go search the lease house again. by then. they knew the hatchet had been used in the murders. and they found a sheath to a hand ax laying right out in the middle of the floor in a position that the first deputies walking through the house could not have missed it. they would have had to been blind to miss that sheath. >> cooper also said that during his two days in the house, he smoked multiple cigarettes. >> but when police collected the evidence, they only collected one cigarette butt. and the rest of the cigarette but...

>> a couple of deputies went over to the lease house, walked through it and really didn't see anything suspicious. a day or two later, other deputies were asked to go search the lease house again. by then, they knew the hatchet had been used in the murders and they found a sheathe to a hand axe laying right out in the middle of the floor in a position that the first deputying walking through the house could not have missed it. they would have been blind to miss that sheathe. >> cooper also said that during his two days in the house, he smoked multiple cigarettes. >> but when lease collected th...

Day and a half. cooper said yeah, i was at the lease house but i never went up to the ryan house. it wasn't me. it must have been somebody else that did this. >> cot meyer showed the hatchet in the lease house and the bloody footprint found in the ryan's bedroom. >> the sheathe was a half bloody footpri footprint. those soles were unique and we were able to determine by a prison issue tennis shoe. >> blood found that the murder scene led back to cooper. >> a single drop of blood in the hallway and cooper matched it. >> finally cot meyer played the