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Tobacco found at larry lease's home link him to the murders? >> 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 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 ho...

>> we knew whoever had been in the lease house committed the murders of the ryan house. and in the closet, we found the small box, prison issued tobacco from chino institution for men. we checked with prison authorities, got names of any individuals that had escaped within the past week. all of the sudden, we had a suspect. kevin cooper. >> just two days before the murders, 25-year-old kevin cooper had escaped from the california institution for men. a prison just five miles from the ryan's home. police believed cooper hid at the lease house before killing the ryans and chris hughes. with coop...

>> i cross-examined him for a day and a half. he said yeah, i was at the lease house, i never went up to the ryan house. it must have been someone else who did this. >> cot mire showed the jury the hatchet found in the lesion house and the bloody footprint found in the ryans' bedroom. >> in the folds of that sheet was a half-bloody footprint. now those soles were unique. and we were able to determine that the shoe print was made by a prison-issue pro ked tennis shoe. >> blood found at the murder scene also led back to cooper. >> a-41 was a single droch blood in the hallway and cooper matched i...

>> i lived on the main streets of 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 i just ran. there was a hole in the fence. >> mr. cooper walked through fa farps, pastors, off the roadways and ultimately found his ways to the lee's house. >> when i got to the lease house, i asked a couple girlfriends to send me money. tried to figure out what's next. but i did not murder those people. >> cooper said he'd already set out hitch...

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