Whatever happened to Josh Ryen, the sole survivor of the Chino Hills Massacre?

Warning: The following article offers with delicate and violent topics.

In 1983, when he was 8 years outdated, Josh Ryen’s existence changed eternally. His parents, his sister, and his easiest pal have been brutally murdered within his home in Chino Hills, California, and he himself, used to be attacked and almost killed. 

On the evening of the crime, Josh Ryen and his best possible good friend, Christopher Hughes had been having a sleepover at Josh’s area. Josh instructed police that he used to be woken up in the middle of the night via the sound of his mother’s screams. 

The subsequent morning, Christopher’s father confirmed up at the Ryens’ space looking for his son. Many hours had passed since he’d heard from the boy, and he used to be beginning to concern. When he peered through the kitchen’s sliding glass door, all he noticed used to be pink. He kicked the kitchen door down and ran inside, and that’s where he found Doug and Peggy Ryen stabbed to dying, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, bloody and dead, and his son, Christopher, still and chilly.  

Josh Ryen, just eight years old at the time, had had his throat slashed, his skull fractured by way of an ax, and his ribs fractured, among different injuries. He used to be moving feebly on the ground. 

Kevin Cooper, a occupation burglar, were hiding out in a vacant house close to the Ryen home at the time of the incident. He’d simply escaped a minimum-security prison close by. The police found no fingerprints matching Cooper’s at the crime scene, nor any strand of hair, just a tiny drop of blood that Cooper believes was planted there via police. 

The incident, referred to as the Chino Hills Massacre, is the rest but easy, but the case grew more complicated in 2017 when Nicholas Kristof, an American journalist, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times claiming Cooper, the Black guy sentenced to death for the crime, may had been framed via the San Bernardino’s Sheriff’s division.

Why did Kim Kardashian and the Pope become involved?

After Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed, the Chino Hills Massacre won nationwide consideration from the likes of celebrities and public figures reminiscent of Kim Kardashian and Pope Francis. Kim Kardashian retweeted a hyperlink to Kristof’s op-ed, announcing, “Governor Brown, are you able to please check the DNA of Kevin Cooper?”

Pope Francis weighed in on the matter as neatly due to the proven fact that Kevin Cooper used to be mere days clear of being executed on loss of life row, a fate that used to be sooner or later stayed. The Pope’s presence and Kim Kardashian’s fortify brought public consideration to the evident irregularities within Cooper’s conviction and the Chino Hills Massacre as a complete. 

What evidence is there that Cooper was framed?

For starters, Josh Ryen to start with instructed police that he saw 3 white males within the area. “Blond or brown hairs have been present in the sufferers’ palms as though torn off in a struggle,” wrote Kristof in the op-ed. Upon the preliminary inspection, the police discovered no suspicious evidence connecting Cooper to the case. However, after authorities located Cooper in a nearby deserted home and realized of his criminal previous, that every one changed.

Deputies searched the Ryen house on June 6, the day after the crime, and located no proof connecting Cooper to the case. But the next day, after learning of Cooper’s previous, a “bloody green button from a prison uniform materialized on the flooring together with a hatchet sheath. Deputies claimed they had no longer entered that room prior to. But later, one deputy’s fingerprints have been found inside of the closet, indicating he were in the room — and had lied about it,” wrote Kristof.

The Ryens’ circle of relatives station wagon was once found 30 miles away with blood within of the automobile in 3 different places: the entrance seat, the passenger seat, and the again seat. A thorough seek found no proof, once more, connecting Cooper to the case.

That is, until a cigarette butt showed up in the automotive’s back seat days later, the similar cigarette butt government had found in the abandoned space Cooper were hiding in. Except now the cigarette from the abandoned house was once long past. 

Further evidence suggesting there were three killers emerged when police situated three homicide weapons. One of those weapons, a hatchet, it seems that belonged to a person named Lee Furrow. Furrow’s girlfriend, Diana Roper, alerted government that she believed her boyfriend committed the murders. She advised them that he came home past due the evening of the murder wearing “blood-drenched coveralls” and that his hatchet was lacking from his software rack. She also stated he got here home in a station wagon resembling the Ryens’.

Furthermore, a T-shirt found at a nearby bar, person who Roper remembered laying out for Furrow that very morning, was once discovered with Ryen’s blood on it. 

The police never examined the “blood-drenched coveralls”. Instead, they threw them out, literally, before the case went to trial. Muddling issues even more, a vial of blood were taken from Cooper years ahead of due to his previous burglary crimes. In 2019, after the case gained newfound consideration, authorities went to take a look at the blood once more, but the vial was empty.

Where is Josh Ryen now?

Josh Ryen is not a family identify, and it seems that the now forty-seven-year-old needs to keep it that way. After being raised by his maternal grandmother, Josh spent months following his circle of relatives and best possible friend’s homicide and cooperating with the police. In 2004 the then twenty-nine-year-old interviewed with 48 Hours‘ Erin Moriarty regarding the attainable framing of Kevin Cooper.

Josh instructed Moriarty he has few reminiscences of that horrific night. “I want I could take note… it just gained’t come again to me though.” Nevertheless, he’s held firm to his trust that Cooper is answerable for his circle of relatives’s murder, despite to start with telling police he saw 3 white men in the space. His grandmother, Mary Howell doesn’t think Cooper did it.

“I still can’t imagine that one person … could do all that to my circle of relatives. There’s five of them, and I simply know that they didn’t stand in line announcing, ‘I’m next’.” Only one single drop of blood that matched Cooper’s blood sort used to be present in the house.

Since his appearance on 48 Hours in 2004, Josh Ryen has maintained 0 social media presence and lives an overly private existence. There have been no reports on his whereabouts or existence cases since then. According to CBS News, alternatively, in 2018, proper around the time Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed gained public attention, Josh wrote a letter to California Governor, Jerry Brown reaffirming his ideals that Cooper was once in charge and deserved to be punished for his crimes.

Josh has no longer spoken out since then, Kevin Cooper nonetheless stays in the back of bars, and Lee Furrow has now not been convicted of any crimes.

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