We think of places in life that we are safe, places that we expect no bad can ever touch us, and our home is one of those places. But on that winter night in November, the Cope's sanctuary was invaded, and life was taken from each member of the family. Amanda Renee Cope went to bed a twelve year old little girl, and died a brutal death before her father and sisters awoke in the morning to begin their day.

When the police arrived at the families home, they did not look any further than the father. Billy was taken into the police department and questioned. Denial after denial easily flowed from Billy, but the police refused to hear anything other than what they wanted to hear, to them this was an open and shut case. After Billy took a lie detector test, the police informed him that he failed this test, and thinking that maybe he had really lost his mind, Billy began to wonder, and then believe that he had done the terrible deeds that happened to Amanda that night. It was later proven that Billy passed that lie detector test and the police in Rock Hill South Carolina lied to Billy, a lie that led to a series of confessions.

The DNA found on Amanda, was proven to belong to a serial rapist that was released from prison not long before the Cope's lay down to bed that fateful night. When the prosecution realized this, they charged Billy with conspiring with James Sanders and allowed the horrendous acts to be committed upon his daughter. Even though Sanders wrote a letter complaining about being tried with Billy in court, a man he had never met, the prosecution still refused to drop all charges against Billy. In reality, they could not let a man go free when they botched the investigation before they even began. Not one investigator felt it was important enough to even dust for one fingerprint in the house, much less look further than a father in a home with his children.

Billy Cope sits in prison, convicted of a crime he did not commit, denied his right to grieve as a father that lost a daughter to brutality, his wife to a suspected serial killer, his two living daughters to a corrupt system that we as Americans depend on.

We are demanding that justice prevail in this great nation and the life that was taken from Billy Cope, be given back to him in the form of his release from the prison that was imposed on him.

www.billywaynecope.net