9-1-1 do they place my medical my daughter's biggest so did she hang herself no she didn't hang herself but how old is she uh 11 years old on November 29 2001 12 year old Amanda cope was found strangled to death in her own bed in Rock Hill South Carolina sadly her own father Billy cope was the one to find her he immediately went into a State of Shock however when the police arrived to investigate they found a very suspicious scene who could have done such a thing to a sweet 12 year old child and who was the police main suspect in the case welcome back to mysterious 7 where we shed light on high profile and under the radar cases from across the globe today we'll be looking at the case of Billy cope a case with more twists in it than you would ever expect but first if you haven't subscribed to our Channel by now please consider hitting the Subscribe and like buttons now let's Dive Right In without any further ado no ma'am the thing was just wrapped around her neck was it her bed clothing or her sheet it was her blanket she just had a blanket layered it so unless she rolled over and wrapped around her neck it's a the green thing on the blanket she laid on the green block with a green blanket and it had a string wrapped around it uh the you know the the cut I gotta call my wife okay okay what kind of house do you live in sir what color is your house it's white so she's gone okay all right sir I'm alone that chilling recording you just heard was the 9-1-1 call the 37 year old Billy cope made when he found his daughter Amanda dead in her bedroom in the early hours of November 29 2001 in Rock Hill South Carolina Billy cope woke up with a start at around 3 A. M and immediately knew something was wrong in his house the hall light was on and he distinctly remembered turning it off before going to bed his wife Mary Sue was out at her overnight job where she cleaned offices so it was just him and his three girls Amanda Jessica and Kyla at home Amanda was the oldest at 12 years old while Jessica and Kyla were 11 and 7 respectively a devotely Christian family they'd missed the Wednesday church service they usually attended that night because Jessica was struggling with her math homework and needed some extra help to complete her assignment Amanda always the caring older sister had offered to help her and Billy agreed to let the two girls stay up as long as was needed to complete the work the youngest daughter Kyla had gone to bed at 9pm but Billy stayed up with the older two sisters till 1am helping them finish their schoolwork afterwards they all headed to bed to get some much needed rest and Billy had turned on his CPAP breathing machine that he used to keep his sleep apnea at Bay before drifting to sleep strangely just two hours later he was awokened by something still half asleep Billy went to check on his daughters Amanda's door was shut and he concluded that perhaps she was the one who turned on the hall light maybe she'd gotten up in the middle of the night for a drink of water the other bedroom door was open and he saw his two younger girls fast asleep in their beds with his mind more at ease he returned to his bed put his breathing machine back on and quickly fell back to sleep the following morning at 6 a. m Billy was a mocking by the blaring of his alarm clock he later stated that during those intermittent hours of sleep he dreamed about the rapture in his dream Jesus had returned to take his followers home he explained that in his dream he saw Amanda being taken and him being left behind with her saying the words bye daddy to him still feeling Jarred from his intense dream he quickly left his bed to check on his daughters he was overwhelmed with relief when he saw his two younger girls still sleeping peacefully in their beds but his comfort was short-lived as he tried to open Amanda's door it was caught on the open closet door behind it after using Force to get through the door he witnessed an unbearable sight Amanda's body was lying limp on her bed when he went to touch her she was ice cold and he knew that his nightmare had come true he then covered her and still in a State of Shock dialed 9-1-1 within minutes paramedics from the fire department arrived at the scene but their life-saving gear was useless Amanda was indeed gone Jason Dillon from The Rock Hill fire department asked Billy what he thought had happened and Billy told them that he thought she may have choked on her blanket as she had a history of rolling in her sleep detectives arrived soon after and secured the house as an active crime scene and began an investigation the detectives were immediately suspicious of Billy's reaction to his daughter's death his comp demeanor seemed unnatural and he did not display much emotion at all soon dozens of investigators filled the tiny house looking for Clues but the house was a mess with the family's belongings cluttering every room there were clothes piled on every surface tisha's overflowing out of the sinks cockroaches scurrying into the corners in the midst of this Amanda's body laid fully clothed on her bed surrounded by her books and recent school pictures that she'd just gotten back from the photographer when the body was examined investigators found that she'd been beaten and strangled to death after being assaulted there were bruises on her body and physical evidence was found on her clothes the evidence was collected in the hopes that it could be used in identifying the Killer while processing the house for Clues police found another Oddity after examining all the doors in the windows they realized that there were no signs of forced entry into the home all the entrances were locked from the inside this indicated to investigators that the killer likely came from within the house the detective spoke to Billy and asked him how he thought Amanda had died Billy claimed that she may have been strangled by her blanket in her sleep which was not in line with the evidence of the crime scene detectives knew they needed to dig deeper upon looking into his background they learned that two years prior he and his wife had both pleaded guilty to neglecting the proper care of their children this was the final piece of information that they needed along with his emotionless reaction to her death his bizarre explanation of how she died and the fact that there were no signs of forced entry into the house it seemed to the police that Billy was clearly the prime suspect in their case they immediately took him downtown to the police station for more intense questioning over the next few days detectives grilled Billy mercilessly he faced over 17 hours of interrogation over the next four days on the first day of interrogation the 29th of November 2001 the same day of the murder Billy was questioned for three and a half hours by Detectives as a result of this initial questioning detectives had no doubt that he had committed the terrible crime all they needed from him was a confession but on that first day Billy insisted that he was innocent again and again over 650 times according to the recordings of the interrogations he told the police that he loved his daughters and there was no way he would have ever heard Amanda he claimed that the only reason he didn't hear anything that night was because the machine he used for sleep apnea was very loud and it drowned out any outside noise this seemed unlikely to the investigators who continued to probe Billy to see if they could get a confession out of him however Billy would not admit to the crime they tried to use his faith against him saying he'd burn in hell for what he did they also tried to tell him what's the physical evidence they had collected came back as a match to him he'd have nowhere to hide yet no matter what they said Billy continued to deny any involvement in the murder of his daughter finally as they entered the fourth hour of questioning on the second day Billy asked for a polygraph or lie detector test believing it would be what finally convinced them of his innocence unfortunately this would be where it all began to unravel for Billy not long after beginning his polygraph the individual conducting the test slammed his hand down on the table and told the detectives that they had enough to end the test he looked Billy in the eye and told him he'd failed the test Billy was devastated following these results detectives pressed Billy further wanting to know why he'd done this terrible thing to his daughter slowly Billy began to talk Billy eventually confessed yet he seemed unsure of his own statements the first confession ended with him signing a written statement of what he'd done admitting to killing his own daughter but that would not be all by the end of the fourth day of the interrogation Billy had given a total of four different confessions to the police and none of them matched each other or aligned with the evidence at the crime scene in one Amanda was beaten with a broom but this was not mentioned in any of his other confessions some confessions included a dream yet in other statements the dream was excluded or a very different version of the dream was told none of the details from each individual confession lined up with one another regardless of this detectives accepted them as the truth even though they believed Billy to be severely mentally Disturbed the fourth and final confession was a video reenactment where the police took him back to his house and taped him as he went over what he did the night of the murder eventually due to his many confessions Billy was charged as the sole perpetrator in the murder of his daughter however after these long interrogations Billy retracted all of his confessions and again protested his innocence in court nonetheless the damage was done and Billy was sent to prison with no bond or any form of bail it seemed like the case was done and dusted A year had passed since the murder Billy had confessed to the crime and many people even those who knew him were now convinced that he was indeed guilty but Billy himself was now once again professing his innocence Phil Beatty a private attorney from Rock Hill was now charged to fight this case in court for him Phil admits that the first time he met Billy he thought he was guilty his strategy for the case was to try and get Billy the best plea deal possible and just put the case to rest however after speaking to Billy about the process of his interrogation in the initial days after the murder Beatty was disturbed by what he'd heard when his court assigned public defender B.
J baraklow had arrived at the police station the police did not allow him to the interrogation room to see Billy a clear violation of his rights they produced a note that Billy had allegedly signed which stated that he did not want to see his attorney at that time when Barrow Khloe argued that they could have coerced him into signing this note they simply refused to let him ask his client himself it was only after this fourth confession that his defense attorney B. J Barrow Khloe was allowed to see him when he asked Billy why he'd signed the confession Billy replied that the police had told him he'd get the death penalty if he didn't sign it Beatty was shocked at the clear violation of Billy's rights however since the confessions had been written and signed he was unsure if this information would Aid in his case in an unexpected turn of events in late 2002 Beatty got a call from the prosecutor's office asking for a meeting believing this was in regards to a deal for his client he agreed to meet with them but he could never have expected what they were about to tell him as they sat him down they explained to him that the DNA found on Amanda's body had finally been processed and to the surprise of everyone the DNA was not Billy's Beatty was shocked but also happy to hear this news because it now meant that his client was innocent and he had a real chance to win this case but what they would tell him next would shock him even more he was told that the police had been aware within a few weeks of the murder that the DNA was not a match to Billy but had kept this information to themselves for over a year this infuriated baby to no end he could not believe such a grievous miscarriage of Justice had been carried out and that no one had thought this information was important enough to inform Billy's lawyers about it before this time but then he stopped and asked why they decided to tell him this information now after all these months if they'd known it was not Billy's DNA all that time ago and that is when the final piece of information was revealed to him he was told that the reason he was being told all of this now was that the police had found a match to the DNA in the system and they knew whose it was it belonged to a man named James Sanders there's not much information known about James Sanders past where he came from or what he was doing prior to 2001. all that's known is he was a career Criminal Who had committed a variety of crimes prior to this horrific one he'd been released from prison and moved into the same neighborhood as the copes only about two weeks prior to him killing Amanda he lived in a house only two blocks away from where Billy and his family lived there's no evidence present that the two men knew each other and they certainly would have made an unusual pair Billy cope was in the words of his lawyer a socially isolated 385-pound white man he was also a devout Christian and aspiring preacher James Sanders on the other hand was an African-American career criminal and drug addict who'd recently gotten out of prison in the six weeks following Amanda's murder in November 2001 Sanders committed or attempted to commit four more sexual assaults in the neighborhood now that his attorneys knew there was another man whose DNA had been found at the scene of the crime they realized that Billy was factually innocent they then questioned him seriously as to why he'd provided false confessions to the police when he was interrogated right after the murder occurred Billy told his lawyers that when he was questioned by the police in the hours following the murder he had been sure of his innocence but he'd also been in a State of Shock having just lost his daughter in such a traumatic manner due to this he may have appeared emotionless to them he also told them that he'd provided false confessions in an effort to confuse the police he believed that his confessions would not carry any weight unless police were able to prove them and he didn't believe the evidence would point to any of his confessions being legitimate however in this matter he was wrong as the police were willing to accept his confessions even though none of them matched each other or indeed the evidence found at the scene despite Sanders being identified as being present the night that Amanda was killed Billy was still charged with a crime the case went to trial in 2004 and the trial was centered around both sides trying to prove what actually had taken place the night of the murder while Billy's lawyers argued that Billy was not involved in his daughter's death in any manner the prosecutors found a simple explanation for both Billy's confessions and the new DNA evidence that had been found they said that the only logical explanation was that both men were in on it and had carried out the crime together the prosecutors allege that this is why there were no signs of forced entry into the house as Billy had let Sanders in and then locked up again once he left Cope's attorneys said prosecutors were just trying to present the evidence in this manner so they could cover up their inappropriate interrogation tactics they argued that cope had mental issues and was so devastated by his daughter's death that detectives were able to manipulate him into confessing to a crime he did not commit the defense was also not allowed to present crucial evidence to the jury due to Judge John C Hayes III not allowing it on the grounds of it leading the jury to a logical fallacy the evidence that was excluded was the fact that in the forced sexual assaults that Sanders had committed or attempted in the week's following Amanda's murder there was never any sign of forced entry certainly appears that Sanders was a master at breaking and entering and left no evidence for even the most seasoned of detectives to find another key piece of evidence the defense lawyers were not allowed to present to the jury was the testimony from a jailhouse informant who claimed he had overheard Sanders say he had raped and killed a little girl in Rock Hill these sorts of testimonies are often Allowed by courts when they help prosecutors but in this case when it could have helped the defendant it was not allowed while it may seem clear to you that Billy was not involved in his daughter's death at all this is not how the jury ended up seeing it both Sanders and Billy were convicted and were charged with conspiracy which means they collaborated with each other to commit the crime they were each given life sentences without the chance of parole in 2004.
in April 2009 the verdict was appealed and a three-judge panel from the South Carolina court of appeals reversed the conspiracy conviction ruling that there was no evidence that copen Sanders knew each other however the South Carolina attorney general appealed this decision soon after and the decision was overturned in 2013 the state supreme court upheld Cope's conviction and the U.
