Around 6AM on November 29th, 2001, Billy Wayne Cope called 911 from his house in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He told the call taker that his 12-year-old daughter was dead. Amanda Cope was laying lifeless on her bed, an obvious victim of sexual assault and a brutal murder. Her father, within a week of the murder, had confessed to the rape and murder of his daughter, not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. Despite his three detailed confessions to police, Billy Wayne Cope denied that he was involved in his daughter’s death. Another man’s DNA was found on Amanda’s body, with no physical evidence directly linking him to Amanda’s murder, yet the State of South Carolina didn’t budge. They believed that Billy Wayne Cope had welcomed a child murderer into his home that night and gave him his daughter.
Who Was Amanda Cope?
Amanda Renee Cope was born on April 14th, 1989 to Mary Sue Davis Cope and Billy Wayne Cope in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She was the oldest of three girls, with Jessica being the middle child, and Kyla being the youngest. The family of five lived in a small house that was just under 900 sq. ft. and had only one bathroom. Amanda was a bright, young girl who seemed to always be in a good mood. She attended Sylvia Circle Elementary School before moving on to Sullivan Middle School.
The seventh grader was described by her sisters as intelligent and loving. She had an unmatched passion for God and only wanted the best for the people around her. Her laugh was infectious and always put a smile on everyone’s face. Amanda hoped to one day own a farm with horses. She dreamt of being a large animal veterinarian. In addition to her love for animals, Amanda was gifted in music. She had a beautiful singing voice and played the violin. One of the music teachers at Amanda’s middle school remembered the 12-year-old well:
“I remember her walking into class, the smile so inquisitive, a girl who wanted to know more with each passing day…Amanda wanted to know more about the world. She wanted to make a unique impact on the world. She would have, too.”
Amanda’s mother, Mary Sue, worked an overnight shift at a nearby factory and her father, Billy, worked part-time delivering chicken. Unfortunately, the money Mary Sue and Billy earned wasn’t always enough to buy even the bare minimum. Amanda’s aunt and Billy’s sister, Sue Archie, said that if the family didn’t have anything to eat, everyone in the family knew. She said that her mother would often buy the family dinner. Despite the hardships that Amanda and her sisters faced, teachers and classmates said she was a positive, happy girl.
Enter DSS
In 1999, when Amanda was about 10 years old, an anonymous call was made to the Department of Social Services about the living conditions in which the Cope girls were living. The family was living in a mobile home that was in horrible condition. It had no toilet and there were buckets full of urine and feces throughout the small home. There was rotten food everywhere, along with rats and insects. Police charged Billy and Mary Sue with unlawful neglect, to which they both pleaded guilty. The three girls were placed in foster care, until their parents had a suitable environment for them and had attended several counseling sessions.
This wasn’t the last time that DSS was alerted about the Copes. Years after Amanda’s death, her sisters told a news outlet that in the two years following them being returned to their parents, things only got worse. They slept with a ceiling fan no matter what the temperature was outside, because the air movement kept the cockroaches away. The girls had to make small pathways through the house to move around the trash, rotten food, and mess covering the floors. Amanda’s sisters said that their father REMAINED abusive towards them (which indicated that Billy had tormented his daughters for years before). They said he had a paddle, which he’d nicknamed “Lucy,” that he used to punish them. One time, Amanda was covered in bruises from a particularly aggressive “punishment”. In early 2001, someone at the girls’ school called DSS, reporting that there were cockroaches crawling from the Cope girls’ clothing and backpacks.
The Murder
On the evening of Wednesday, November 28, 2001, 12-year-old Amanda was at home with her family. Her 11-year-old sister, Jessica, was struggling with her math homework and Amanda volunteered to help her. Billy said that he and wife agreed to let the girls stay up until Jessica understood her homework. The youngest Cope sister, 7-year-old Kyla, reportedly went to bed around 9PM. Amanda and Jessica stayed up until 1AM, when Jessica finally felt confident about her homework. Billy said that just after 1AM, everyone in the house was asleep. Kyla and Jessica shared a room, while Amanda had her own room.
Billy remembered waking up around 3AM. Some reports said that he got up to use the restroom, then went back to bed. He said that he dreamt about the rapture happening, thinking that he, a born-again Christian, along with his family, would be saved. In his dream though, Billy said he was left behind. When his alarm clock went off at 6AM, Billy took off his CPAP mask and went to wake his children. He called Amanda’s name, but she didn’t answer. He wondered if his dream had come true, if the rapture had truly taken place and he’d been left behind. He walked by the other bedroom and saw Kyla and Jessica asleep, so he knew the rapture dream was truly a dream.
He said that he called for his oldest daughter again, but she didn’t answer and her bedroom door didn’t open. When he went to push her door open, it jammed against her closet door and wouldn’t open. Billy said that he kicked the door as hard as he could, and was finally able to walk into his daughter’s room. He saw Amanda laying face up on her bed, partially dressed, swollen and covered in bruises. Billy said that he walked over to her, covered her up, and felt how cold she was. Now, just after 6AM, Billy called 911 and told them that his daughter was dead.
- Billy: Yeah, my daughter’s dead, she’s cold as a cucumber.
- Rock Hill Police Department: Okay, you don’t wanna try CPR or anything on her?
- Billy: No ma’m. She’s dead. She’s ice cold.
- Billy: So she’s gone on to be with the Lord. She was a Christian. Please…I really gotta go.”
First responders arrived on scene shortly after the 911 call and saw that Amanda was beyond help. When one of the EMTs asked Billy how long she’d been dead, he responded, “for hours.” He told them that Amanda had a history of rolling in her sleep and probably choked on a piece of the blanket. He said that when he found her, there was a piece of her green blanket wrapped around her neck. Detectives arrived on scene and began looking around the house for anything out of the ordinary. Billy said that no one else had been in the house since they went to bed. Police noted no signs of forced entry, and Jessica said that she and Amanda had locked the doors before they went to bed the night before.
The house was in shambles. There was clothing, trash, and boxes cluttering the floors throughout the home. There were roaches everywhere. It was difficult to tell if anything was out of place because of how disheveled everything was. Several of the first responders commented that Billy was not acting how they would have expected him to be acting with what was going on. They said he was on his computer when they arrived, while Jessica and Kyla were sitting together on the couch. Billy denied hearing any noise during the night, but said that it was probably because of how loud his CPAP mask was.
The Obvious Suspect
When police initially questioned Billy at 8AM, he told them about the three of them staying up late the night before, as well as how he found Amanda that morning. He said that when he found her, she had a strip of her green blanket wrapped around her neck. Billy willingly went with police to the hospital so they could perform a rape kit and obtain his DNA. He mentioned to them that his skin may be under Amanda’s fingernails because she’d scratched his back the night before. FUCKING WEIRD.
Police interviewed Billy again around noon. He told them a similar story as he had earlier, but adding that when Amanda didn’t answer him that morning, he initially thought the rapture had occurred. He said that her death must’ve been an accident since he didn’t hear any noises during the night.
Amanda’s body was brought to Dr. James Maynard, South Carolina’s forensic pathologist, for an autopsy. He placed her time of death between 2 and 4AM that morning. He said that her clothing appeared to have been put back on her by someone else. Her pants were not pulled up all the way and her bra was unhooked. He found injuries to her head that were consistent with having been hit repeatedly, as well as having been manually strangled. What he did not find were ligature marks, which disproved the theory that Billy had provided, that Amanda had accidentally strangled herself on her blanket. Dr. Maynard determined that it appeared that Amanda’s body had been turned over multiple times after her death. He said that she had injuries that were consistent with a person weighing over 300 pounds kneeling on top of her. At the time, Billy weighed 385 pounds.
There was clear evidence that Amanda had been sexually assaulted in multiple ways. Dr. Maynard said that the injuries to her genitals appeared to have been inflicted by a hard object. He found that her hymen was not there, and there were not any remnants to suggest that it had been torn on the night of the murder, suggesting that that evening was not the first time she’d been sexually abused. Additionally, she had vaginal irritation that supported prior abuse. A bite mark was found on her left breast, which was swabbed for DNA. With these findings, police brought Billy back in for another interview, informing him of some of Dr. Maynards findings.
They’d brought Billy into the police station at 10:50PM, less than 24 hours after his daughter was found murdered. This interview lasted four hours, and Cope continued to deny any involvement in Amanda’s murder. He said that he had gotten up at 3AM to use the bathroom, but only checked on Kyla and Jessica, since Amanda’s door was closed. The detectives told him that they’d collected saliva and semen from Amanda’s body and that they believed it would match him. It seemed as though the detectives interviewing Billy had already made their minds up that he was guilty. Throughout the four hours, Billy denied hurting his daughter almost 650 times. Following the interview, Billy was arrested and charged with the murder of his 12-year-old daughter, along with three counts of unlawful neglect for the condition of his home that his children were forced to live in. Billy continued to deny any involvement and requested a polygraph test. The arrest warrant was granted by a judge based on the fact that Billy was the only adult home at the time of the murder and there were no signs of forced entry. He was officially charged with Amanda’s murder at 4:31AM on November 30th.
At 10AM, Billy was transported to the Moss Justice Center for his requested polygraph test. He waived his constitutional rights and the examiner proceeded with the test. He asked Billy yes or no questions, such as “did you choke Amanda”, “did you choke Amanda causing her to die”, “were you in the room when Amanda died”. He answered no to all of the questions. The examiner scored the test and told Billy that he had not passed. He also said that Billy didn’t seem very shocked that he’d failed the test. Billy then asked the examiner if he could’ve killed Amanda in his sleep. The examiner said that he didn’t think that was possible. Billy then said that he must have done it.
Following the failed polygraph, detectives continued questioning Billy. It was then that Billy made his FIRST confession to murdering Amanda. He told police that he woke up around 3AM and went into his daughter’s room to masturbate. When she awoke, upset, he jumped on top of her and began hitting her in the head with his fists and a video game that was nearby. He said that he started choking Amanda with both of his hands and her green blanket. Billy then described how he sexually assaulted her with a broom handle. After doing all of this, Billy said he left her there and went back to bed. He then signed his statement and shook hands with the detectives, who reported that they thought Billy looked relieved. He was taken back to the York County Jail.
More Confessions?
Two days after Billy Wayne Cope made his confession to police, he requested to speak to the same detectives. The following morning, Billy was brought to the sheriff’s office, where he made another handwritten statement. His statement read: “I was asleep in my bed. I had a bad dream about an old girlfriend who had an abortion. The thought of her makes me cringe. In my dream she was telling me that I had an abortion with your child and I told her no. I became so enraged that I got out of bed. All I could hear was that laughing sound. I do not know what came over me, but I snapped and I jumped on the bed and straddled Amanda. I hit her in the head and started choking her. I did not know it was my own daughter until after I had [sexually assaulted her]. I fell back, jarring me to my senses and I realized it was my daughter. I became so confused that I tried to rid the house of all the stuff that would make me look guilty…I did not know it was my own daughter until I fell backwards. The next morning at 6:03 when my alarm and phone rang out I was hoping it was a very bad dream.”
Billy agreed to go with detectives to his home so he could walk them through what happened. At the house, Billy gave the same story he gave in his most recent confession, adding that he’d wrapped the green blanket around her neck to make it look like an accident.
Later that day, Billy was questioned by detectives again. They told him that semen was found on Amanda during her autopsy. Billy admitted to masturbating into a rag that night, then told police where he could find the rag. They continued to interrogate Billy, which ended in, YOU GUESSED IT, ANOTHER SIGNED CONFESSION: “I woke up about 3AM. I went to the bathroom and I went into Amanda’s room. [He describes how he masturbated and then began to sexually assault Amanda while she was sleeping.] When she woke up, I jumped on top of her to keep her from turning and looking at me, then I heard her say, ‘Daddy, help me.’ I started strangling her with my hands. Amanda was pulling at my hands and I let go and started hitting her in the head and I went back to strangling her and she went limp. I got up, I saw the green string on the blanket and I was thinking to myself this would look like she strangled herself. I took the green strip and I wrapped it around her neck. I went straight with the wrap from off the floor and I wrapped it around her throat. I pulled both ends tight. I pulled both ends so it would be good and tight. Her hands were already at her neck so I left them…Then I fixed the doors of Amanda’s bedroom so that they would lock. I pulled the closet and the door together, that’s how I locked it. I did this so the kids would not wake up and see her before morning. I got back into my bed, I put my mask on, and went to sleep. And I woke up at 6:02 according to the clock in my bedroom. I sat up and called Amanda twice since now I knew that she was not going to answer. It was like a dream. I thought it was a dream. I did not hear from Amanda those two times I called her…thought the rapture had just taken place because I had just finished reading the Left Behind series about one month ago. I had hoped the rapture had taken place. I was praying it had. I got up and looked in on Kyla and Jessica and they were still asleep. I went to Amanda’s door and I forgot I had set the doors so I pushed on the doors and they would not open. I kicked the door open and saw Amanda laying there purple. I walked over to her and I tried to wake her and she was cold. I screamed and unwrapped the cord that I put on her neck. Kyla and Jessica walked into the room and Kyla started screaming. Jessica said Daddy is she dead and I said yes go get on the couch and pray as hard as you can and remember one thing she is with Jesus. I ran to the telephone which is exactly in front of the computer and I called 911. I said my daughter is dead and she is cold as a cucumber. Reality had not set in. …. Not until today 12/03/01 have I realized what I have done. Up until talking with you and the other [officer] I blocked stuff out. I am telling the truth this time. Everything I said before now is not true…” He continues on, explaining that around the first of October that year, he’d begun going into Amanda’s room at night and sexually abusing her.
The DNA
By the time of Billy’s third confession, police already had the results of the DNA swab from the bite mark on Amanda’s breast. The saliva was not a match to Billy, however, they didn’t inform him of that. When Billy’s public defender was finally allowed to see him, he asked Billy why he signed the confession. Billy told him that the detectives told him that he’d get the death penalty if he didn’t sign it.
11 months after Amanda’s murder, a man named James Edward Sanders was arrested on charges of robbery and assault in four different homes near the Cope’s house. He was a career criminal at 42-years-old, with a long rap sheet, mostly filled with robbery and assault. He’d been in prison almost as long as he hadn’t been. When police tested Sanders’ DNA, they found that it matched the DNA found on Amanda’s body. Billy’s lawyer said that, for one of the first times, he felt relieved. Maybe now, the detectives would discount the multiple confessions that his client gave. That didn’t happen. Not only did police still believe that Billy was involved in Amanda’s murder, they believed that Sanders was his accomplice. They theorized that Billy let Sanders into his home that night, allowing him to do whatever he wanted to Amanda. They added the charge of murder to Sanders’ list, then charged both of the men with conspiracy. Billy meanwhile, denied ever having met Sanders, let alone conspiring with him to commit murder. When prosecutors were asked how they connected the two men, they said that, obviously, Sanders’ DNA was on Amanda, and being that there were no signs of forced entry in the home, Billy clearly let him inside.
Digging further into Sanders’ background, detectives found that he’d been paroled six weeks prior to Amanda’s murder and moved into his girlfriend’s house, which was just a five minute walk from the Copes’. Sanders’ DNA was also found at another home, about a mile from the Cope house, where a 60-year-old woman was assaulted and raped. A week after that, a woman about four miles away, had a man break into her house and assault her. She identified Sanders, along with another female who’d been assaulted less than a mile from Amanda’s house. This is just a small portion of the women that Sanders was connected to. In all of these cases, Sanders attacked at night, without an accomplice, and no signs of forced entry were found. Cope said that the reason he never mentioned Sanders in any of his confessions, was because he’d never met him. He reportedly didn’t even recognize him when they met after being housed in the same jail. Billy said that at that meeting, Sanders told him that he lived in his neighborhood. Billy asked him if he knew who killed his daughter and said that Sanders responded by saying, “let’s just say I know you didn’t do it.”
Just one month after Amanda’s murder, detectives brought his wife, Mary Sue, into the station in hopes of her getting more information for them. At this time, they knew that the DNA did not match Billy, yet they told Mary Sue that it matched him and another man who helped him kill Amanda. The conversation was recorded, but strangely enough, the recording given to the defense did not contain the police’s questioning, just Mary Sue’s answers. Mary Sue’s sister and a friend of hers, Amy Simmons, had both become part of his defense team. They said that Mary Sue did not want to go undercover for the police, but that they showed her the autopsy pictures of Amanda, along with Billy’s confession, then threatened her. She finally agreed, saying that the police told her if she didn’t wear a wire and get Billy to confess, they’d take her children and put her in jail. Mary Sue, after attempting to get a confession from her husband, told police that she looked her husband in the eye and KNEW that he didn’t do it. Six weeks after her wired jailhouse visit to her husband, Mary Sue died. She was recovering at Amy’s house after a hysterectomy and died unexpectedly.
The Letter
Soon after Mary Sue’s death, the woman who’d been tending to her, the woman who’d been a part of Billy’s legal defense team, the woman who’d been corresponding through lengthy letters with Billy throughout his incarceration, Amy Simmons dropped a bomb. She came to both the prosecution and defense and told them that she’d received a letter from Billy, confessing yet again. Part of the letter read: “Dear Amy, God told me to tell you that I killed Amanda. Please forgive me. God is going to remove his servant. I just felt you should know. Please don’t stop writing. I have to get on with my life.”
Billy denied having written this letter. The letter was sent to a handwriting analyst who couldn’t tell whether it was a forgery or real. The envelope was clearly addressed by Billy, but his defense team believed the letter was a forgery. They then found out that while she was attending Billy’s defense team meetings, Amy had also been attending the prosecutions’ meetings, giving them information. Stunned, the defense team began to investigate Amy. They found that she was once suspended from her job as a nurse for forgeries that she’d committed. She’d pled guilty to obstruction of justice and obtaining drugs by false pretenses in another country. She’d also been under investigation because a nursing home patient under her care died of a supposed insulin overdose. The defense team began reading through all of Billy’s old letters and found the exact same phrases used in his confession letter to Amy. They were ultimately able to find that his entire confession letter appeared to have been built from phrases from his other letters. The discovery was brought back to the handwriting analyst who finally felt confident calling the letter a forgery.
The Trial
The state of South Carolina decided on a joint trial, sending both Billy and Sanders to court together, reasoning that because they believed Billy had set Sanders up to murder Amanda, they should be tried together. After finding out he was going to be tried with Billy, Sanders wrote a letter to the prosecutors, asking “why are you trying me with this man Cope? I don’t even know a Cope.” The defense team felt that surely the trial couldn’t continue with the same assumption of Billy assisting Sanders. Sanders claimed to have never met the man. However, in late 2004, Billy Cope and James Sanders went to trial for the murder of Amanda Cope.
Billy’s defense team brought in many victims of Sanders, hoping to prove that he had a pattern for how he committed crimes, which did not include a partner, and that he was a serial rapist. The prosecution argued that Sanders’ other crimes did not ever involve children or murder. Regardless of these arguments, the judge ruled that Sanders’ other crimes were not admissible in this trial because the facts were different. He also said that a false confession expert that was brought in by the defense, could not reference any other false confessions he knew about that had produced wrongful convictions in other cases.
Billy took the stand for his own defense, saying that his confessions were only given because of the polygraph results and the police coercion. He said that he lied initially in hopes of establishing an insanity plea. The prosecution said that even with this argument, Billy was not interrogated non-stop. In fact, he’d spent a weekend in jail after his first confession, then requested to meet with police again to confess AGAIN.
Both Jessica and Kyla were brought in to testify by the state. Kyla said that she heard someone scream and gasp for air in the middle of the night, but assumed it was a dream and went back to sleep. Jessica said that she and Amanda had worked on her math homework until about 1AM. They then went to bed, but made sure that they turned off all the lights and locked the front door, including the chain latch.
Billy testified that once he was in jail, he realized that he had falsely confessed, so he tried to invent another story with the intent of the police thinking he was crazy. He said that police continued to threaten him with the death penalty unless he told them the truth. By then, he said that he didn’t care what happened anymore and signed anything he was given.
(1) false evidence-the officers telling Cope he failed the polygraph
(2) positive confrontation-the officers claiming they knew Cope did it
(3) the officers’ refusals to accept Cope’s denials of guilt even though he agreed to a polygraph and waived an attorney
(4) minimization-the officers suggesting the crime was accidental
(5) interrogation while Cope was traumatized and tired.
On the night of September 22, 2004, the jury came back with a unanimous verdict against Billy and Sanders. Murder, two counts of 1st degree crimincal sexual conduct, criminal conspiracty to commit criminal sexual conduct, and unlawful conduct towards a child. Both were sentenced to life in prison, with additional sentences of 30 years each.
What Happened Next?
Billy’s defense team filed multiple appeals, stating that his confessions should’ve been thrown out and that he did not receive a fair trial, especially having been tried with the man whose DNA was found on Amanda.
In April of 2022, for the first time since the trial, Kyla and Jessica Cope spoke with the media, writing a letter to The Herald. They wrote about the paddle that their father used to use to beat them with and the constant abuse they endured, particularly Amanda. They said that they lived in filthy homes, but that Billy made sure that his computer and desk were clean and in good shape, despite that his daughters were living without a toilet at some times. Both girls were upfront, saying that Billy physically and sexually abused all three of his daughters. In their statement, the two sisters wrote:
“During the past 13 years, Billy has told a string of lies that has shaped him into the victim. The world is forgetting that a 12-year-old child lost her life. She is the victim, not him. What the world didn’t get to know was that Amanda was an intelligent and loving girl whose passion for God was remarkable. All Amanda Cope wanted in life was to be happy. She wanted a farm and horses and to be a large animal veterinarian. She touched the hearts of many with her beautiful abilities to sing and play the violin, and eventually wanted to marry, have children, and to travel the world. She had a contagious laugh which she used to make everyone who knew her smile. She is the one that missed out on life, not Billy Cope.”
On Thursday, February 9th, 2017, Billy Wayne Cope died of natural causes in prison. He maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration. Sanders will also die in prison.
