Son

Son by Jack Olsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 1980 there were 127 rapes in the city of Spokane. In 1978 there had been 49. Most of these crimes were being committed in the neighborhood where I now live and they bore certain similarities. The rapist was reported by many victims to have jammed his hand, covered with an oven mitt, into their mouth so that they couldn’t scream. Most of them were attacked while out running or after getting off a bus. Spokane was the victim of The South Hill Rapist.

In 1981 Spokane police arrested Kevin Coe, from a prominent family, the son of the Spokane Chronicle editor. He was found guilty of the four rapes for which there was the most evidence against him. His mother, with whom he had a tangled relationship, has been described as making Lizzie Borden look like a combination of Mother Teresa and Mary Poppins. She proceeded to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor and the judge. Unfortunately for Ruth Coe the man she chose was an undercover cop.

Coe’s original convictions were overturned on the grounds that the victims had been hypnotized but he was tried again and found guilty. He was sent to prison in Walla Walla and when he was eligible for release he was declared a dangerous sexual predator on the basis of new evidence including DNA tests and was incarcerated for life.

Jack Olsen tells the story in mesmerizing detail in this true-crime book which was the basis of a TV movie, Sins of the Mother (which starred Elizabeth Montgomery of all people.)

2011 No 93 Coming soon: Kissed a Sad Goodbye, by Deborah Crombie

View all my reviews