Kevin Coe
Kevin Coe (born Frederick Harlan Coe; February 2, 1947
On July 31, 1982, Coe legally changed his first name to Kevin, a preference which he had been known by.[1]
Arrest and trial
This section of a poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. )Find sources: "Kevin Coe" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2023) |
During the wave of sexual assaults perpetrated in Spokane between 1978 and 1981, many involved an extreme level of physical injury to the victims.[2] Due to a distinctive "signature", a gloved fist or fingers rammed in the mouth and throat of his victims, police suspected the rapes to be the work of a single offender, whom the media soon dubbed the South Hill Rapist.[3][4]
In 1981, after a school custodian observed a car illegally parked in a bus drop-off zone during the time a daylight rape occurred, police traced the vehicle registration to Gordon Coe, the managing editor of the
Coe was originally put on trial in 1981 and convicted on four of the six charges of rape. The case was a strong circumstantial one: in addition to positive identification given by the six victims, Coe had received
At sentencing, a
In June 1984, three years after Coe's trial,
Ruth Coe's arrest
Three months after her son was convicted, Ruth Coe was arrested for trying to solicit the murder or maiming of her son's prosecutor and judge. She was convicted the next year and served several months in jail.[8]
Her husband, Gordon, whose newspaper career was ended by the circumstances surrounding his son's conviction, called his wife's arrest a "clear case of entrapment".[9]
Ruth Coe died in 1996 in Henderson, Nevada, aged 75; she was survived by her husband, son, and daughter.[10]
Confinement history
Coe served the entire 25 years of his sentence at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. Maintaining his innocence, he did not attend any prison counseling programs. Coe became eligible for parole in 1992 but never applied.[11]
In 1990, Washington passed the Community Protection Act, a "
While preparing for the hearing, a new search of the Spokane Police's
As of March 24, 2011, as reported in the Spokane
... 23 victims identified Coe as their attacker in crimes that occurred during the decade leading up to Coe's 1981 arrest. She [Psychologist Amy Phenix] enumerated another 30 sex crimes in which the victims could not identify their attacker, but said she believed Coe was the perpetrator because of similarities to the other attacks.[16]
Coe has been diagnosed with mixed personality disorder with narcissistic, histrionic and antisocial features. Coe also received a score of 25.3 on the Psychopathy Checklist, with nearly all of the core personality traits of psychopathy indicated.[16][17]
References
- ^ a b Background on Kevin 'Frederick' Harlan Coe, kndo.com. Accessed August 9, 2023.Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine
- Seattle Times.
- ^ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24922815/"[Unit Chief Gene] McGougan: I read every report that went through that department. And that's when I started noting that we had some one particular individual involved."
- ^ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24922815/"[Assistant Prosecutor Pat] Thompson: I remember one of the doctors telling me that the injuries that he was seeing in the mouth and the throat were the same on so many of the victims that he was seeing, that he knew that it had to be the same person."
- Spokesman-Review. Archived from the originalon June 5, 2008.
- ^ "Victim describes rape in Kevin Coe case". The Everett Herald. Associated Press. September 30, 2008.
- ^ "Spokesman-Review, Kevin Coe timeline, August 31, 2006". Archived from the original on June 5, 2008. Retrieved May 5, 2008.
- ^ "South Hill Rapist's Mother Dies At Age 75 Ruth Coe Tried To Hire Hit Man To Kill Son's Judge, Prosecutor". Spokesman.com (in Polish). July 16, 2011. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
- ^ clear%20case%20of%20entrapment Gordon Coe's comments on his wife's arrest, nytimes.com. February 18, 1981.
- ^ Notice of death of Ruth Coe, spokesman.com. Accessed August 9, 2023.
- ^ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24922815/"Parole hearings? Oh, no, no, no, no. They won't let you go unless you admit guilt. I'm not going to admit guilt. I did nothing wrong. I have been appealing this case for 25 straight years. There was no point at which I was going to go the parole board and say, oh yeah, and let me out."
- ^ "Kevin Coe trial :: Ongoing coverage from The Spokesman-Review". Archived from the original on 2008-06-05. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
- ^ "KXLY-TV". Archived from the original on 2008-06-07. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
- ^ "State seeks Coe DNA to confirm 1980 rape". 6 January 2007.
- ^ Seattle P-I, 29 Sept. 2008
- ^ a b "Spokane County Superior Court" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-08-29. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
- ^ "FindLaw's Court of Appeals of Washington case and opinions".
External links
- Spokane's South Hill Rapist: the Kevin Coe Case essay by Jim Kershner at HistoryLink