Tests Show Police Didn’t Plant Blood Evidence

The state attorney general’s office Friday said that new DNA tests proved that police did not plant blood evidence at the scene of a quadruple murder in Chino Hills in 1983.

Attorneys for Kevin Cooper, who was convicted of the murders, earlier this year won a stay of execution in part because of a contention that police investigators may have smeared their client’s blood on a T-shirt found near the murder scene.

They requested a special test to determine if the bloodstain contained the preservative EDTA, which they said would indicate it came from a vial of blood that had been collected from Cooper after the murders.