Ryan Cooper

Can you help bring Ryan home?
Ryan Cooper, a 22-year-old Native American man known to friends and family as "Chewy," was looking forward to the birth of his second child in the spring of 1999. A father to a three-year-old son, Ryan disappeared from Rochester, New York, around May 16, 1999. For more than a decade, his absence was a source of deep anguish for his family, many of whom lived over two hours away on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation. His mother sadly passed away in 2010 without ever learning what happened to her son. The eventual resolution of his case would uncover a violent family betrayal at the heart of a major drug trafficking operation.

For years, the Rochester Police Department investigated Ryan’s disappearance, but the case went cold. The break came in March 2011, when a federal grand jury returned a sweeping indictment against eleven individuals involved in a violent, long-running narcotics and firearms conspiracy. Among those charged were two of Ryan’s own cousins, James Kendrick and Pablo Plaza. The indictment alleged that Kendrick was the ringleader of the enterprise, which had operated in Rochester since 1993. Most shockingly, the charges against Kendrick and Plaza included the murders of Ryan Cooper and another man, Francisco Santos, who had disappeared in 1998.

The investigation, a joint effort by the Rochester Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other federal and state agencies, revealed a chilling motive for Ryan's murder. Ryan, who was also involved in his cousins' drug gang, had knowledge of the Santos murder, including where the body was buried. Kendrick and Plaza feared he would cooperate with the police. To ensure his silence, they decided to kill him. According to later court proceedings, Ryan was beaten to death in his cousin Pablo Plaza's Rochester apartment.

The case against the drug ring solidified in May 2014 when Pablo Plaza accepted a plea deal. He admitted his involvement in both murders and pleaded guilty to the murder of Francisco Santos. He confirmed to investigators that he was present when two other members of the conspiracy beat his cousin Ryan to death. Plaza’s cooperation helped pave the way for the prosecution of the ringleader, James Kendrick.

In July 2016, a federal jury convicted James Kendrick on a multitude of charges, including conspiracy, narcotics and firearms offenses, and the murders of both Francisco Santos and Ryan Cooper. Prosecutors detailed how Kendrick orchestrated the killings to protect his criminal enterprise. Following his conviction, in December 2016, Chief U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr. sentenced Kendrick to life in prison plus 30 years. Pablo Plaza was also sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years for his role.

Despite the convictions and the resolution of the criminal case, the final measure of peace for Ryan Cooper's family remains elusive. His body has never been recovered. Investigators believe that after his murder, his body was brutally dismembered, possibly with a wood chipper, placed into garbage bags, and discarded near railroad tracks in Rochester. The case is officially solved, but Ryan’s remains are still missing as of late 2016, leaving his loved ones without a place to lay him to rest.