Mind of a Serial Killer - Ray and Faye Copeland Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

After a lifetime of petty crimes, Ray Copeland turned to murder in the 1980s as part of a scheme to defraud cattle auctions. Although his wife Faye might not have participated in the violence herself, she seemed to be in on the scheme. But the Copelands weren't sophisticated killers -- and their sloppiness threatened to reveal their true nature as a pair of elderly serial killers. Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House Original. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @crimehouse for more true crime content. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. Aristotle once said, poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Which is to say, when people are struggling to get by, they're more likely to get desperate. That's what happened in the case of Ray and Faye Copeland. While they appeared to be nothing more than a pair of elderly farmers scraping to get by, Ray and Faye were something much, much darker. Because of their age, no one suspected that the Copelands were capable of harming anyone, and they used that to their advantage to lie, cheat, steal, and murder. The human mind is fascinating.

It controls how we think, how we feel, how we love, and how we hate. And sometimes the mind drives us to do something truly unspeakable. This is Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original. Every Monday we'll be taking deep dives into the minds of history's most notorious serial killers and violent offenders. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Mind of a Serial Killer wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly matters. And to enhance your Mind of a Ser serial killer listening experience, subscribe to Crime House

Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free and instead of having to wait for each episode of a two-part series, you'll get access to both at once, plus exciting bonus content. I'm Vanessa Richardson. And I'm Dr. Tristan Engels. As Vanessa takes you through our subject stories, I'll be here helping her dive into these killers' minds as we try to understand how someone

can do such horrible things. This is the first of two episodes on the senior serial killers, Ray and Faye Copeland. From 1986 to 1989, at least five farmhands went missing after working on the Copeland's 40-acre farm. Authorities later discovered that Ray and Faye had murdered them, cementing the Copelands as the oldest serial killer couple to be sentenced to death in the United States. In today's episode, we're going to explore the Copeland's turbulent past and the desperate

circumstances that drove them to commit serial murder. Next time, we'll see how the Copeland's crimes were revealed, how they were finally caught and their ultimate fates. And as always, we'll be asking the question, What makes a serial killer? Ray Copeland was born in 1914 in Oklahoma. His parents, Jess and Laney, were hardworking people, always looking for ways to support Ray and his siblings. It's not exactly clear what they did, but even

though Ray's parents worked hard, money wasn't easy to come by, and neither were jobs. Constantly in search for work, Jess and Laney spent the better part of Ray's childhood moving the family to whatever part of the country seemed the most promising. Eventually, they settled in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. So let's talk about that. A lot of research has been done on the effects of poverty on child development. And there's been overwhelming evidence that indicates a correlation with poverty and worse outcomes in all aspects, like physical mental health, educational achievement, gainful employment, and also delinquency.

This is largely due to the amount of disadvantages that they are faced with in comparison to children who are above the poverty line, not just financially, but in their social environment. So, for example, parents experiencing economic hardships are at an increased risk of experiencing their own psychological distress, which can then create inter-parental conflict. And then this can lead to parental detachment and domestic violence because there is an intersection of domestic violence and poverty, meaning high correlations of that exist in homes with economic hardships. So children raised in poverty are at an increased risk of dropping out of school to work and help provide for the family, which leads them into the cycle of poverty because it reduces their resources and their ability to make economic advancement

without formal training or education. And so that being said, these are correlations, they're not causations. There are millions of children who are raised below the poverty line who overcome these statistical odds and live very healthy and productive lives. So while there isn't much information about Ray's childhood, he likely wasn't happy. And that life wasn't easy on him. When Ray was in the fourth grade, he dropped out of school and started working on the family farm. As Ray got older, he grew frustrated with his family's struggles. In order to make extra money for himself, he gravitated toward petty

crime. Ray wasn't above stealing from his own family, either. He stole hogs from his father and government checks from his brother. So we're already starting to see some potential conduct disorder here where he's engaging in what we would consider antisocial behavior towards his own family. So this is very interesting and significant. Ray concocted one failed scam after the other. It just continued, which landed him in trouble on multiple occasions. His first arrest came in 1939 at the age of 24 or 25. He spent a year in jail. When he got out in 1940, Ray's life changed forever when he

met 19-year-old Faye Wilson. Faye was born in 1921 to a modest couple, Rufus and Gladys Wilson. They lived in a small town called Harrison, Arkansas, less than an hour away from where Ray spent much of his childhood. Rufus and Gladys were religious people who were rich in love, but not in money. As one of seven children raised in a dirt floor cabin, Faye was no stranger to economic hardship. She understood how it felt to struggle. And when she met Ray in 1940, she didn't find his criminal history off-putting. Quite the opposite, in fact. For her, part of the attraction

was Ray's resourcefulness and willingness to do whatever it took to remain afloat. The couple quickly married and almost immediately got pregnant. With a baby on the way, Ray couldn't afford to get arrested again, so the Copeland's started moving wherever Ray could find steady work. In 1944, they briefly relocated to Fresno County, California. The area was known for its farms and ranches, and had plenty of opportunities for people like Ray. Things seemed to go well, and by 1947, the couple welcomed two more children into the family. But honest work didn't always pay the bills. The Copeland's were constantly plagued by

financial instability. Poverty wasn't just their past, it was their present, shaping their worldview. I mentioned the cycle of poverty or the poverty of trap earlier, but just to break it down, when there's been two or more generations that have lived in poverty, they feel trapped because of the lack of financial advantages or education, even connections. So Ray dropped out of school to go to work, making any employment advancements more difficult for him without educational training. It's possible that Ray recognized this trap, possibly felt some hope in the idea that if he relocated to Fresno, where there were more opportunities, that he and his family could maybe break that

cycle. Hope is a very powerful tool and can certainly reinforce positive changes. However, maintaining that hope also requires realistic versus idealistic expectations. How much is Ray expecting to advance financially by moving there and expanding his family at the same time. Also, he's already displayed a pattern, like I said, of antisocial behavior or conduct related issues even toward his own family, which makes me less inclined to believe that any positive changes he is making will last. Though that's not to say it's not possible in some cases. last. Though that's not to say it's not possible in some cases. Well Ray had put in real work with almost nothing to show for it. Perhaps feeling like

he had no other choice, he returned to petty crime. In 1949, 35-year-old Ray was accused of stealing horses from a farm in Fresno. No charges were filed so at least he wasn't going to jail. But Ray's reputation in the area was shot. No rancher in his right mind would work with an alleged horse thief. So he decided to move his family back to Arkansas. That didn't mean Ray was giving up a life of crime, though. Shortly after returning to Arkansas, he was arrested for cattle theft and spent a year in prison.

When he was released, Ray moved the family over 250 miles away to Rocky Comfort, Missouri. Rather than steal cattle again, Ray decided this time he was going to buy them. The problem was he didn't have the money. However, he had a way around that. Whenever there was a livestock auction, Ray would pay for the animals by check, then quickly flip them to another buyer. The idea was to get enough money to cover his initial purchase by the time the bank cashed the check. Ray's idea was better in concept than in execution. Over the next 15 years, he was arrested and jailed several more times, mostly for writing bad checks at catalogs.

By the time Ray was released from his latest prison stint in 1966, he decided it was time for another fresh start. In 1967, when Ray was 53 and Fay was 46, the couple put down roots on a farm in Morseville, Missouri. They appeared to live a peaceful rural life on the 40 acres of land they purchased, but things weren't as calm as they appeared. Neighbors heard rumblings of domestic unrest at the Copeland property. There's that intersection between poverty and domestic violence. There were rumors that Ray was a nasty, tight-fisted tyrant. People whispered that he was violent and abusive.

Later, Faye and the children would confirm the rumors to be true. But Faye never left Ray's side. There are so many sociological layers here. So I mentioned earlier that intersection of domestic violence and poverty, that in and of itself can create a cycle, and that's the cycle of abuse. When there is poverty, the ability to imagine a way to survive,

especially as a single mother without a provider or additional income, that further entraps them in that abuse. And this is also 1967. So at this time, women weren't even able to open a bank account on their own. Or to obtain a credit card or a loan, women were expected to have their husband's approval and co-signature. So obviously, back then, this was exponentially more difficult for survivors to leave their abusive situations. And abusers want to financially isolate their victims so that they are dependent on them and can't leave. Survivors are encouraged to begin safety planning before they leave their abusers, and part of that means putting money aside.

So that's something that was very difficult for Fay to do given that Ray was the sole provider. What we know about domestic violence is that abuse is a learned behavior. Often, it's learned from within their own family system, or it can also be learned externally from society. So again, it's 1967 and around the second wave of the feminist movement. So women were trying to challenge the strong patriarchal views that control their bodies, families, and careers. So it's more likely than not that Ray was indoctrinated with a very strong patriarchal view from his own family and externally from society.

And there's also a correlation between low self-esteem and poverty, which likely impacted how he behaved towards his family after real or perceived financial failures, as well as Faye and her difficulties in leaving or even conceptualizing the idea of leaving. So with that said, I also want to make it very clear here that although we know that abuse is a learned behavior, it is also a myth to assume that all who are abused go on to abuse others, because that's simply not true. Well, at this point, it must have been clear to Ray that Faye would stick with him through thick and thin. So instead of reconsidering his approach after so many years in and out of prison, he doubled down. By the late 60s, all of Ray and Faye's children had moved out. The Copeland's needed extra help on the farm, so they started hiring farm hands.

But there wasn't much money to pay them, so Ray turned to unhoused workers for help. The men tended to struggle with problems like bad mental health, family issues and substance abuse. But Ray sold them the dream of reclaiming their lives through hard work. He'd promised the men free room and board, along with a modest but stable salary. For those with nowhere else to go and nothing left to lose, an offer like that seemed like a miracle. And he would be a great salesman for that, given that he knows what that's like. But clearly, Ray wasn't really interested in helping them. He was using them.

And eventually, his intentions turned deadly. Starting in the 1970s, Ray Copeland, now in his mid-50s, started hiring unhoused, down-on-their-luck men to work on his farm in Morseville, Missouri. Once they were settled in, Ray would send the men to cattle auctions to execute the same scam he'd been trying to pull off for years. And finally, it worked. For a while at least. Many of the men went along with Ray's instructions, maybe due to desperation or naivete, while others flat out refused.

But eventually the authorities linked the workers to the Copeland farm. After that, Ray was arrested yet again. He served almost two years for check forgery. Yeah, let's talk about the impact of Ray being in and out of prison. It appears obvious, at least until this point, that his criminal motives are purely financial, which tells me that he might be motivated by not necessarily desperation, but more importantly, greed. Especially since he still has not been deterred by the legal consequences of his actions.

Every time he is incarcerated, he's setting himself and his family back financially. Two years is a long time for him to leave an operational farm unattended by him. And every time he's released, he's going to have to work that much harder to make up for the time that he's lost. His legal record will impact his ability to obtain viable legal employment outside of what he's already doing, and not

to mention the negative impact that this can have on any relationships he's had within his community and his family. So going in and out of prison will further affect his sense of self-worth, and he's likely to have an increased sense of hostility towards society, like projecting blame onto society for his circumstances, which would ultimately serve to rationalize any future crimes. Well, following this latest prison stint, Ray actually went several years without any legal troubles. He may have had enough of living in a prison cell or he was just lying low while he

refined his check fraud scam even further. Because once things got tough again, Ray went right back to it. And this is very common with with regard to recidivism, right? Because that time spent in prison, he's now lost all that time to make money and support his family and to get closer to his goals. So now he has to work that much harder just to meet where he left off. Plus in the 1980s, the US entered a recession. So at that point, Ray was even more desperate than ever. Now in his late 60s, he vowed to find a better way to hide his crimes and make sure nothing could be traced back to him.

Ray frequented local homeless shelters again, looking for more workers to do his bidding. Ray offered them not just the promise of honest work, but a chance to open their own bank accounts to help build themselves up financially. I wonder if he learned this while incarcerated. Oh, maybe. Sometimes that does happen. We see people go in and out of prison.

They learn how to be more versatile in their criminality when they're housed among other offenders. Well, Ray's real plan was to have the unhoused workers use these bank accounts to write bad checks at cattle auctions. That way he would keep his hands clean of any crimes. Ray would tell them that the auctioneers disliked him. If they knew they were selling livestock to Ray, they wouldn't give him a fair price. Whether or not the workers thought he was being truthful, they didn't ask too many

questions. In October of 1986, 72-year-old Ray hired a worker named Dennis Murphy and set up a checking account for him using a P.O. box as an address. Ray deposited a couple hundred dollars into the account to get it started and promised Dennis more money was on the way. After that, Ray took him to a cattle auction, where Dennis purchased 14 head of cattle on Ray's behalf. A week after that, Ray and Dennis purchased over two dozen more. Ray told Dennis the appropriate funds would be deposited into his account to cover the

cost of the animals. But he had no intention of actually doing that. Ray sold the cattle within a few days of the original sale, before Dennis' bad checks were cashed. Ray then pocketed all of the money from flipping the cattle, which left Dennis' account overdrawn. But before Dennis figured out what was going on, Ray sent him to work at a barn close to the Copeland farm. Unseen, Ray followed Dennis to the barn, snuck up behind him with a.22 caliber rifle, and shot Dennis in the back of the head.

Dennis Murphy was Ray's first confirmed victim, which makes Ray Copeland a statistical anomaly when it comes to serial killers, because most commit their first murder at a much younger age. It is very atypical for a serial killer to start killing at that age, and especially after a life of nonviolent crimes. So why now? To answer that, we have to conceptualize what we know until this point.

So Ray's in poverty. He was forced to drop out of school in order to work and support his family. We know that poverty is correlated with low self-esteem, delinquent, and abusive behaviors, and feeling trapped in poverty. He exhibited a pattern of entitlement at a young age, which began with stealing from his own family. He is motivated by greed and likely has a lot of resentment towards society and anyone or anything that prevents him from breaking out of poverty. His crimes have been nonviolent until this point and he's likely justified them and truly did not believe that he was victimizing anyone, but

rather he was the victim of society and circumstances. So now he's 72 years old and he's seeing how he's still struggling to accomplish the life he set out to get when he was young. He likely did not think he had anything else to lose. That if he was going to make this work, he will no longer toe the line of legal versus illegal. He will do what it takes. And since he's 72 years old, his children were grown, his life span's limited. He likely wasn't worried about the consequences of his actions, just the immediate results. On that same note, since he's already 72 years old, I don't think that the motivation is still greed. He doesn't have his entire life to experience

the fruits of his labor anymore. I think the motivation is resentment and to prove to himself he can break out of poverty before he dies. Whatever pushed Ray to murder Dennis Murphy, once the killing started, there was no going back. After Ray shot Dennis, he stripped the farmhand of all his clothing, along with any identifying information. He wrapped Dennis' body in plastic and dropped him into an abandoned well on a neighboring property.

Then, Ray burned all of Dennis' information and brought Dennis' clothing back to Faye to dispose of as she saw fit. While Faye may have been horrified by the task, she did as she was told without question. The last thing Faye wanted was more conflict, including more beatings from her husband. Which may be why, instead of turning Ray in, she became his accomplice. Everything had gone as Ray had planned. He'd successfully scammed the catalogtion, and nobody was the wiser. For the next three years, he repeated his deadly scheme, periodically hiring

unhoused farmhands and killing them before they were caught. It's believed Ray killed five men between 1986 and 1989, including Dennis Murphy. Over the years, the police knocked on the Copeland's door a few times to ask if Ray had seen any of his former employees. But even though they were suspicious of Ray, there wasn't any sign of foul play. These men weren't expected to stay in one place for long,

especially once the authorities realized they'd written bad checks. So even though the police suspected Ray and Faye were up to some kind of scam, they had no idea what kind of horrors transpired on the Copeland working together to keep their fraud operation a secret, they managed to kill at least five farmhands between 1986 and 1989. While Ray was the one committing the actual murders, it seemed like Fay was helping him get away with it. With the police totally unaware of their crimes,

it looked like nothing could stop Ray and Fay. So this is frustrating to hear just because Ray has a history of check fraud scams. So clearly there's something that he's doing with his employees. But also Ray moved a lot. He moved from Arkansas to Fresno, back to Arkansas, then to Missouri.

And sometimes agencies don't talk to each other. So I'm wondering if they even know about his previous arrests for that reason. And that's why they haven't quite been able to connect this. But it's working out better for Ray than he might have planned, which would serve to embolden him even more. But this is the first time that Faye has participated in raised crimes, at least to our knowledge. So maybe enlisting her in these string of crimes

boosted his confidence and his overall feeling of success, or at the very least allowed him to continue to justify them. But on that note, let's process Faye's involvement in this. When a serial killer is caught and it's discovered that they have a wife and a family, many times, more often than not, people are asking the question, how did the wife not know? In this case, we can confidently say she did know, and yet remained loyal to her husband.

We don't know much about Faye, other than she also grew up in poverty and longed for a better life. She was attracted to Ray's resourcefulness and probably thought he could offer that for her. She married him. He was abusive. Despite this, she stood by him and his multiple prison terms. So we can certainly see how their economic hardship may have contributed

to her feeling trapped into a cycle of abuse, as we discussed earlier. Her husband was physically abusive and now he was murdering people. And surely that made her very afraid for her own life if she wasn't obedient. So she helped. And when the police came to the door, I'd imagine she was afraid to turn him in because she would be turning herself in too at this point. But all that said, it's hard to say if she really is a victim of her circumstances anymore when she had the opportunity to say something and didn't. But given the situation, the abuse, the fear for her own life, I think we can see why she might not have made the right choice, and she made the choices that she did.

But even though nobody suspected what the Copelands were truly capable of, Ray and Faye weren't exactly sophisticated criminals. Perhaps realizing he couldn't drop all his victims into a well, Ray hid the other bodies on a remote corner of a neighboring property where he frequently worked. Most of them were buried in shallow graves, but since the property wasn't frequented by anyone except Ray and his farm hands, the bodies and the stench went unnoticed. As for Faye, she wasn't working very hard to dispose of their victims' belongings. She sewed pieces of the men's clothing together to make a quilt.

Wow, that's very significant. Yeah, maybe it was as a reminder of what they'd done or a bizarre way to conceal the evidence in plain sight. The couple also kept a registry of the unhoused farm hands who worked for them. 12 names were scrawled in Faye's handwriting next to a big letter X. They're not doing a very good job at concealing evidence here.

This is just speculation, but both Faye and Ray are in their 70s. We all have normative cognitive decline as we age, which means our executive functioning, like our decision-making or problem-solving and our attention to detail can be affected. Not to mention their physical capabilities are limited. So it's really surprising to me that Ray at his age was able to dispose of any bodies at all. So I'm not surprised that he started to take shortcuts here because he's limited in his physical strength. I don't think they were wanting to get caught, but rather felt confident that they wouldn't. Because like you said, so far, these areas are only frequented by Ray and his farm hands. But Faye, so it's very significant to me that she started making quilts out of the

clothing of the victims, rather than burning the clothing or disposing of them in another way. It's hard to really pinpoint what that significant is without knowing more about Rey, but is this a trophy of sorts? I'm less inclined to believe that because she was not a serial killer herself. She was not doing the kill herself. She was not doing the killings. But was this her conscience talking maybe? Like this was a form of a memorial for them, a way to honor them and alleviate her own guilt? Was it maternal instinct? It feels to me like

it might have been a coping mechanism for her. But again, that's just what we know now and what little we do know about her. Well, whether it was that cognitive decline or the Copeland's secretly maybe wanted to be caught, nobody seemed to be onto them. But in the summer of 1989, their methods hit a snag. One of their farmhands managed to escape, because Ray let him. In the summer of 1989, Ray hired another down-on-his-luck farmhand named Jack McCormick. Like their previous victims, the Copelands gave Jack a fresh start and set him up with his own

bank account. Once everything was in place, Ray took Jack to a cattle auction. He told Jack which cattle to bid on and for what price. Jack followed his directions perfectly and successfully purchased a number of cattle. When the sale concluded, Ray told Jack to write a check for the animals and promised he would put the appropriate funds into Jack's account to cover the cost. Of course, that was a lie. Later that evening, Ray asked Jack to help him catch a stray animal he said was lurking inside a nearby barn. Though he was a bit tired from the day, Jack agreed, happy to be of service to his employer. Once the sun had set, the two

men walked toward the barn together. Jack was unarmed, but Ray carried his.22 caliber rifle by his side. Jack and Ray searched the barn for a short while without any sight of the menacing animal. And then, feeling the hair stand up on the back of his neck, Jack quickly turned around to find Ray pointing the rifle right at his head. Jack dropped to his knees and pleaded with Ray not to shoot him. Jack said he was a nobody and no one would believe him even if he tried to turn Ray in. Jack promised he would leave town and never come back. He would never speak of this incident again.

As a further gesture of good faith, Jack said he wanted to make good on the check he'd written at the cattle auction. He explained that he would put his own wages into his bank account to make sure the check wouldn't bounce. Ray sized him up and finally lowered his rifle. This is an interesting turn of events. So Ray's MO until this point has been the same from what we understand. He lures his unsuspecting employee out somewhere on his farm and then shoots them, but he shoots them from behind. With Dennis, he shot him from behind. And I imagine that was

likely the same MO he had been doing with all the other victims, which indicates to me, this isn't personal, this is business. That's the kind of feeling I get from that. But that is until Jack. Jack turned around, Jack faced him and pleaded with him. And that is seemingly new, at least from what we know. So this might've been why Ray deviated here. But I don't

think it's due to a sudden sense of empathy. If anything, I think he was probably tired. He's an elderly man, and if he could get what he wanted without having to kill another person and dispose of the body on his property or the neighboring property, he was willing to entertain that, even if that decision was too risky. Whatever Ray's reasons were for letting Jack go, he went beyond just lowering his gun. He gave Jack a ride to the bank, seemingly to address the financial promises Jack had made. But Jack had no intention of following through on them. When Ray pulled up to the bank, Jack hopped out as Ray watched him walk

inside. As soon as he was out of sight, Jack bolted out the back door. Jack made his way to a used car lot not far from the bank, where he convinced a salesperson to let him take a car for a test drive. But instead of a quick spin around the block, he drove the car all the way to Nebraska. Wow, what a fear response. That's a significant fear reaction, un-proportionately, given the circumstances. Once he felt safe enough to stop, Jack anonymously called the crime stoppers' tip line. He told them human remains could be found on the Copeland farm. The question was, would they believe him?

Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time to discuss the investigation into Ray and Faye Copeland and how they became the oldest serial killer couple to be placed on death row. Mind of a Serial Killer is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Mind of a Serial Killer wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple

podcasts. You'll get every episode of Mind of a Serial Killer ad free, along with early access to each thrilling two-part series and exciting bonus content. We'll be back next Monday. Mind of a Serial Killer, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios, is executive produced by Max Cuddler. This episode of Mind of a Serial Killer was produced by Ron Shapiro, directed by Stacey Warenker, written by Meredith Allen, edited by Alex Benedon, fact-checked by Sarah Tardiff,

and included production assistance from Paul Libeskind and Sarah Carroll. Mind of a Serial Killer is hosted by Vanessa Richardson and Dr. Tristan Engels.