Ray and Faye Copeland

Active: 1986–1989
Region: Mooresville, Missouri, USA
State: MO
Kind: Serial
Status: Convicted
Victims: 5

Ray and Faye Copeland, an elderly farm couple near Mooresville in northwest Missouri, hired drifters as farmhands in the late 1980s and used them to buy cattle with bad checks; Ray had a long record of fraud. After a former farmhand called Crime Stoppers in August 1989, officers searched the area that October and found the bodies of five men, all shot with the same .22 rifle, which was found in the Copelands' home. Faye was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder in 1990 and Ray in 1991; both were sentenced to death. Ray died in prison in 1993. Faye's death sentence was overturned in 1999 and replaced with life without parole; she died on medical parole in 2003.

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Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Dennis K. Murphy · October 17, 1986
Wayne Warner · November 19, 1986
Jimmy Dale Harvey, 27 · October 25, 1988
John W. Freeman, 27 · December 8, 1988
Paul J. Cowart, 20 · May 1989
Sources give May 3 or May 4, 1989.

Timeline of locations

October 1989
Copeland farm and nearby farms, Mooresville (Recovery site, approximate area)
The five men worked for the Copelands near Mooresville. In October 1989 searchers with bloodhounds found their bodies on farms in the area, including three in a barn Ray Copeland used. The rifle was found in the Copelands' home.
November 1990
Livingston County Courthouse, Chillicothe (Court / trial)
A Livingston County jury convicted Faye Copeland of five counts of first-degree murder after less than four hours of deliberation and recommended death on four counts.
1991
Potosi Correctional Center (Prison)
Ray Copeland died of natural causes on death row at Potosi on October 19, 1993.

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.