Faye Copeland

Infobox Serial Killer
name=Faye Copeland


image_size=100px
caption= Faye Copeland
birthname=Faye Della Wilson
alias=
birth=1921
location=Harrison, Arkansas
death=December 30, 2003
cause=natural causes
victims=5 confirmed; suspected to be as high as 12
country=USA
states=Missouri
beginyear=
endyear=
apprehended=October 17, 1989
penalty=Death

Faye Copeland (1921 - 30 December 2003) and her husband Ray were the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States at the age of 69 and 75, respectively. Faye was the oldest woman on death row, until her sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1999.

On November 1, 1990, 69-year-old Faye Copeland went to trial. According to articles in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Faye claimed she did not know her husband was a murderer. Although her marriage to Ray was fraught with abuse, the evidence proved her guilty. Fay had written a list of names that included the murdered drifters. As Fay was sentenced to death by lethal injection, she sobbed uncontrollably. When Ray Copeland was told about the verdict of his wife his reply was, "Well, those things happen to some you know," he apparently never asked about Faye again. Ray is rumored to have been a spoiled child, often demanding things. Although he came from a poor family, if Ray wanted something it was soon acquired for him by any means possible.

Their modus operandi was to hire unskilled drifters as farm hands, involve them in a scheme to buy cows at auction with fraudulent checks, and then kill them.

She died on December 30, 2003, of natural causes.

In other media

Their story has been fictionalized in a comic book, "Family Bones", written by Faye Copeland's nephew, Shawn Granger.

References

* Book, "The Copeland Killings", by Tom Miller

External links

* [http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/morg9908.html Mayhem Net]
* [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/partners/copelands/index.html TruTV Crime Library]