ROCK HILL, S.C. -- On the outskirts of Rock Hill, Susan Archie grieves for her niece.
This should have never happened to a child. This should never happen, said Archie.
Amanda Cope's gravesite is decorated with an angel and violin.
She was a beautiful child and her innocence was taken away from her, her life, said Archie.
The Cope family struggled to make ends meet, but those who knew them best say there was never a shortage of love.
Archie describes her brother, Billy Wayne Cope, as a God-fearing Christian, a devoted husband, and the proud father of three girls.
He loved them very much. He was very good. He got them ready for school every day and picked them up, she said.
But on a November night in 2001, the happy family moments would come to an end. Billy Cope made a strangely matter-of-fact call to 911, saying his daughter was dead.
Cope told the dispatcher, She's dead. She's cold as a cucumber.
Twelve-year-old Amanda Cope had been raped and murdered in the overnight hours and that 911 call quickly made Cope a suspect.
There was no forced entry into the house and Billy's reaction, they thought, was unnatural for someone who had just found their daughter raped and murdered, said attorney Jim Morton.
For 8 1/2 half years, Billy Cope has lived behind bars. He steadfastly maintains he's a grieving father, not a vicious killer, just as he did to police the day of his daughter's murder.
And during that 3 1/2 hours, we counted on the audio tape, 666 times that Billy indicated to police that he did not have anything to do with the rape and murder of Amanda Cope. The public defender, they wouldn't let him in to see Billy, said Morton.
After days of denial, Billy Cope took investigators back to the crime scene and into Amanda's bedroom. According to his defense attorney, Cope made up a story of how he choked his daughter to death.
So in this distraught man's mind, he thought, 'Well, I'll just make something up. I'll tell them what they'll want to hear, but it won't pan out, because the evidence won't show this.' It's a classic case of false confession, said Morton.
Months later, investigators discovered it wasn't Billy Wayne Cope's DNA on Amanda's body. It was the saliva and semen of recently released burglar, James Sanders. Sanders had a long rap sheet of breaking and entering.
Morton said, And then all the sudden they found out, 'Uh oh, the evidence doesn't match Billy Cope.' So either we have extracted a false confession from this man or there was some kind of conspiracy, because James Sanders was definitely there.
While Sanders lived just a block away from Cope, both maintain they'd never met each other. But prosecutors accused Cope and Sanders of conspiring to rape and kill Amanda.
The judge would not allow Cope's defense team to tell jurors that Sanders had been arrested for breaking into four homes during the six weeks after Amanda's murder. Sanders had been arrested for either raping or attempting to rape the women inside.
They never heard about James Sanders violating the other women even though we tried to introduce that in front of the jury. The judge precluded us and would not allow that testimony to come in front of the jury, said Morton.
Billy Cope and James Sanders were sent to prison for life.
In April 2009, a three-judge panel from the South Carolina Court of Appeals reversed the conspiracy conviction, ruling that the evidence didn't show that Cope and Sanders knew each other.
Without a conspiracy, there 's no case, Morton said.
When the South Carolina Attorney General appealed, the judges reversed their earlier decision, reaffirming the conspiracy conviction.
Morton, who has been a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, said, There's no question in my mind that Billy Cope is an innocent man.
In Rock Hill, memories of Amanda Cope's murder are beginning to fade, but not for Susan Archie. She continues to mourn for her niece and seek justice for her brother.
Archie said, He is hopeful. But he knows the Lord's going to let him out when the Lord gets ready and he's just waiting. He says the truth is going to be told.
