In 1997, I attended York Technical College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, to gain undergraduate credits toward a Bachelor’s degree. I am not a math whiz, and honestly, it’s the one class where my ADHD kicks in the most. During that fall, several students around the student center began to notice a larger man, who often walked without a belt, and let’s say, a lot was revealed. One guy from Lancaster asked me if I knew who “old Ass Crack” was. After that, I would see him around campus, even pass by him on the sidewalks during that semester, but I never had a conversation with him.
During the spring, I finally took the dreaded math course I had put off during the fall. The class was after lunch, as I remember, and on the first day, the same guy walked in, pushing his glasses up, the same briefcase in hand. The man sat down in front of me, squeezing his larger frame into the desk. Throughout the semester, a group of four of us who sat close together would often be paired up by the professor for projects.
During the first breakout session, he introduced himself as Billy Wayne Cope, and as the semester progressed, I learned that he was married with young children and that he worked at the Hess gas station on Cherry Road at the time. Cope wouldn’t share many details about himself or his personal life, and I only have a few memories of the class or Billy Wayne Cope, for that matter. The memories are more than likely stored in my memory bank because of how odd a character he was, and the few stories he did share seem to linger there.
One particular story involved the professor asking whether any students had vision issues or something along those lines, and Cope closed his eyes, waved his arms in the air as if he were blind, giggling. All of the students looked at Mr. Cope, but never really thought much else about it.
The other was a more serious story. He walked into class late one day, and he told classmates who sat near him that he had been robbed at the gas station in the early morning hours, as he was outside cleaning the premises. The altercation didn’t seem to shake Billy, or if it did, he certainly brushed it off quickly.
(It should be noted that Billy Wayne Cope was in his early 30s, considerably older than the vast majority of the school’s student population when he attended York Tech.)
After that semester, I would go on to study at other institutions, and the man who always wore off-brand tight polo shirts, glasses that slid off his face, and his briefcase faded into a distant memory until four years later.
In 2001, I grabbed a newspaper lying on a desk at an office near York and saw the man we all knew as “Ass Crack” plastered on the front page with charges of rape and murder against him. Cope always seemed off, and at that time, there were many unknowns related to mental health. The internet was really in its infancy, so not much information was available about the case, except what we found in print media.
But Cope wasn’t a person of lesser intelligence, even though he was barely getting by in life. He may not have been a member of the Rock Hill Country Club or lived at Meadow Lakes II because of wealth, but Billy Wayne Cope functioned, even attended college, had a job, and had a growing family.
Little did I know, on those days as I entered that classroom, that I would be writing about Billy Wayne Cope, almost thirty years later.
In November 2001, the Cope family was living at 407 Rich Street in Rock Hill. Some, especially back in the early 2000s, would describe this section of the city as a bad neighborhood. Whenever he attended York Technical College, the family lived off Red River Road. He mentioned that one day, since I worked a part-time job on Eden Terrace Extension, I would see his old automobile venture up and down the streets. Often, I had to go down this road to visit customers in nearby Lancaster. If you know anything about Rock Hill, then you know this area back in 1997 wasn’t a great neighborhood either.
When I first read the story regarding the death of Amanda Cope, I was like many and thought Billy was guilty. I can’t say why I felt that way since he never did anything violent at school and mostly kept to himself. It may have been his four confessions to investigators or the journalism of the day.
The Background: (November 28, 2001)
On the evening of November 28, 2001, the Cope family planned to attend a church service, but Jessica, the middle daughter, had issues with her schoolwork. They agreed to stay home, while the mother left early for her overnight cleaning job. According to NBC News, the baby sister was in bed around 9 p.m., as Billy, Jessica, and Amanda stayed up. Sometime around 1 a.m., everyone retired to their rooms for the night. Cope slept with the assistance of a sleep machine, so it was odd that less than two hours later, he woke to find air blowing by his face. Perhaps, he knocked it off, but a more strange sequence of events was about to happen.
Cope woke to find all the lights in the house on. He walked down the hallway to see Amanda’s door closed, as he made his way down to check on the other girls sleeping. He went to his computer in the living room to find unanswered emails from a pornographic site. Cope had stated in an earlier interview that he did view the images but immediately felt shame thinking about his wife. After checking other emails, he climbed back in bed. Over the next few hours, Cope said he had a dream that Jesus would soon come to rapture his church, saving his entire family into eternal paradise, except for him.
Around 6 a.m. Cope woke again and walked down the hallway, calling for Amanda to wake. The home they lived in was reportedly a mess, with clothing piled on the floor, dirty dishes, and even roaches. Cope believed the rapture had occurred, only to find the other two girls peacefully sleeping. He called out to Amanda again, but she didn’t respond. Cope tried to open Amanda’s door, but it got caught on the closet door, so he had to kick it open. On the bed was Amanda, deceased, and badly bruised.
Billy went to phone the Rock Hill Police Department:
BILLY WAYNE COPE: Yeah, my daughter’s dead, she’s cold as a cucumber.
ROCK HILL POLICE DEPARTMENT: Okay, you don’t wanna try to do CPR or anything on her?
BILLY WAYNE COPE: No, ma’am. She’s dead. She’s ice cold.
Billy waited for help at his front door.
BILLY WAYNE COPE: So she’s gone on to be with the Lord. She was a Christian. Please—I really gotta go.
ROCK HILL PD: Okay, all right, sir.
BILLY WAYNE COPE: Thank you, Ma’am.
ROCK HILL PD: Thank you.
Authorities soon arrived, following Cope through his cluttered home. Investigators soon determined that Amanda Cope was beaten and strangled to death, but by whom? Billy Cope was escorted to the police station and grilled for 17 hours over 4 days. Amanda had not died from choking on a blanket, as Cope had previously suggested. At the crime scene, it was challenging to find clues in the residence due to the conditions inside.
Then the shocking news came that Billy Wayne Cope had killed his daughter.
According to the same NBC News article, “The whole story – the strange night, the twisted blanket, the accidental strangulation – must have been nothing but a lie. He must have assaulted and killed his own daughter – must have. The police reported he miserably failed a polygraph, then volunteered four graphically detailed confessions, one of them on videotape, admitting he had killed his own child. So it was shocking, yes, but a relief, too, here in Rock Hill, South Carolina, just knowing who did it.”
But was Cope coerced into the confessions? Some believe he was. After all, Billy Wayne Cope was described as poor and lacking the financial means to fight the charges. Even his defense attorney thought he was guilty the first time he met Cope.
According to The Mystery in Rock Hill:
PHIL BAITY: Then he began to say, “I didn’t do this. This—this is not me. I—I don’t care—what those confessions are. They broke me down. You’ve gotta help me.
DNA collected from Amanda did not match or belong to Billy Wayne Cope. That DNA belonged to a nearby resident, James Sanders, who lived two blocks away.
Why would Billy Wayne Cope confess four times to the murder? Some believe that he was overwhelmed and wasn’t thinking clearly. It was also revealed that the authorities didn’t buy his story, even using God against him to get a confession because of his faith…
Part 2 Coming Soon