John Wayne Freeman was 27 when he was killed on December 8, 1988, in rural Mooresville, Missouri. He was one of at least five men who were lured to the Copelands’ farm with promises of work and then murdered. Investigators later recovered Freeman’s remains on the Copeland property and found that each victim had been shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber rifle.

The scheme centered on Ray Copeland’s cattle-fraud operation: transient farmhands were persuaded to open checking accounts used to buy cattle with bad checks, then disposed of so they could not be traced back to him. Evidence found at the Copeland home included a quilt made from the murdered men’s clothing and a handwritten ledger kept by Faye Copeland marking killed hired hands with an X.

Ray and Faye Copeland were arrested after a 1989 tip led police to their farm. Faye was convicted of five counts of murder in 1990 and sentenced to death; Ray was convicted of five counts of murder in 1991 and sentenced to death. Does anyone have information about Freeman’s life before he arrived at the Copeland farm?