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Jack Olsen (1925-2002)

SON: A Psychopath and His Victims

Jack Olsen described a field trip that his college criminology class took to a prison, "I'm 19 years old and we get inside, and I see all these guys who look just like me. I thought that criminals looked different."

Jack Olsen was an American journalist and true crime author. Many of his most popular works investigated the life histories of violent career criminals especially serial rapists and serial killers.

Explaining his determination in writing about serial rapists and serial killers, Olsen said, "I start every book with the idea that I want to explain how this 7 or 8 pounds of protoplasm went from his mommy's arms to become a serial rapist or serial killer. I think a crime book that doesn't do this is pure pornography."

SON: A Psychopath and His Victims (1983) is the story of Frederick "Kevin" Coe, Spokane's South Hill rapist whose rich and influential mother was sent to prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor who convicted her son.  Click Here

Frederick "Kevin" Harlan Coe was born on February 2, 1947. His father was Gordon Coe, managing editor of the Spokane Chronicle. His mother, Ruth Coe, worked in freelance fashion and modeling, and taught grooming to girls in high schools and colleges across the Northwest. Fred, whom his parents called Son, was an athlete and student leader in South Hill public schools. He dropped out of Washington State and Gonzaga universities and became a Las Vegas disco deejay, author of a satirical paperback called Sex in the White House, and founder of a one-man booster group which he proudly called Spokane Metro Growth. He had a history of minor offenses and an impassioned explanation for each. Kevin was married two times both ending in divorce.

In the late '70s a series of rapes started, mainly in the South Hill area of Spokane, Washington. The rapist was nicknamed South Hill Rapist.

On March 10, 1981, Frederick H. Coe, age 34, was arrested for attacking a 51-year-old woman. His bail was set at $25,000. Two days later, he was charged with rape and his bail was raised to $100,000. In less than two weeks five more rape charges were filed against him. He pled innocent telling the judge that he had been looking for South Hill Rapist. The first part of April, he was released on $35,000 bail.

The trial on five first degree counts of rape and one count of second degree rape was set for July 24, 1981. The trial started with the 51-year-old woman who identified Coe as the man who raped her three years before. This woman, as well as three other witnesses, had been hypnotized to help police get a description. That fact would later become part of Coe's appeal to the State Supreme Court. Another woman testified that Coe exposed himself to her two days before he was arrested. Coe's attorneys objected to the testimony as being irrelevant and prejudicial. The judge allowed the testimony, and that also would become part of Coe's appeal. On July 27, Coe took the stand testifying that he was in Seattle when the first six rapes took place. He mother backed up his story and the two testified that they were looking for the South Hill rapist when Coe was arrested. Coe was found guilty of four of the rapes and on August 16, he was sentenced to life plus 75 years in prison.

On Nov 20, 1981, Ruth Coe, the 61 year old mother of Fred Coe was charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill trial Judge Shields and the Spokane County Prosecutor Donald Brocket. Mrs. Coe had offered a police undercover agent $4,000 to kill the two men she felt were the most responsible for putting her son behind bars. She was held on a $500,000 bail. Three days later, Mrs. Coe appeared in court and pled not guilty to two counts of premeditated solicitation for first degree murder. She was released on bail two days later. On May 17, 1982, Mrs. Coe's trial started in Spokane with the prosecution introducing tape recordings of Mrs. Coe making arrangements to have the judge and prosecutor killed. The defense contended that Mrs. Coe had been entrapped. On May 29, Mrs. Coe was found guilty and sentenced to jail for one year.

In July of 1982, Fred Coe changes his name to Kevin Coe claiming he'd been using the name for several years.

On June 13, 1983, the State Supreme Court was asked to decide on the issue of using hypnosis on crime victims and then having those victims testify in a trial. The prosecution argued that hypnosis merely brings out a past recollection and removes blocks to the memory.

In the meantime, Kevin Coe threatened to sue Jack Olsen over his book Son: A Psychopath and His Victims. Gordon Coe, Kevin's father went on national television to say the book about his son wasn't true. Gordon Coe predicted that the State Supreme Court would overturn the guilty verdicts again Son.

On June 7, 1984, the State Supreme Court overturned three guilty verdicts against Kevin Coe, saying there were too many errors made during the trial. The court said the trial court erred when it allowed testimony from witnesses who had been hypnotized.  The rape of Julia Harmia was not overturned. He was sentenced to a minimum term of 25 years.

Coe served the entire 25 years of the prison sentence for the remaining conviction. Although he became eligible to apply for parole in 1992, he never appeared at any parole hearings. He completed his prison sentence on September 8, 2006.

However, he was not released at the completion of his sentence because the State of Washington had been seeking to keep him confined indefinitely under a "civil commitment" statute which provides for indefinite confinement of a sex offender beyond the completion of their prison sentence provided they have been judicially declared a "sexually violent predator". Upon the completion of his prison sentence, the State transferred Coe to the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island, the facility to which it was hoped to have him permanently committed. On December 22, 2007, a judge postponed the trial until September 2008.

Even though after all his appeals only a single conviction was affirmed, the news media continued to refer to Kevin Coe as the South Hill Rapist. While he was awaiting his civil commitment trial, Kevin Coe was and still is under investigation for as many as 44 other sexual assaults in the South Hill Rapist series. A judge ordered DNA samples to be taken from Coe.

Kevin Coe's civil commitment trial begin September 30, 2008. Julie Harmia, the only woman whose first-degree rape charge against Kevin Coe stuck, took the stand to describe her terrifying 1980 assault. She testified that it was dusk on October 23, 1980, when she, then 27, finished her first day of work as an assistant manager at the Zales jewelry store in downtown Spokane. She got off her bus and walked toward her home. A man jogged past her, then crouch behind an RV. She thought he was playing a game with someone. That's when he attacked her. He covered her mouth with his gloved hand and dragged her into a vacant lot, where he raped her as he asked vulgar questions about her sex life. He swept her hair over her face so she couldn't look at him. But when a passing car's headlights shone into the lot, she got a good look at his face. When he left, he told her the police couldn't protect her 24 hours a day. She later identified Frederick Harlan Coe aka Kevin Coe as her assailant in police lineup.

Another woman testified that she was confronted by Coe in 1981 as he waved  a foot-long dildo at her.

Mary Gullickson was an 18-year-old college freshman and track athlete who lived in an apartment near the Spokane River. She testified that on March 8, 1981, she went on her usual 10-mile run. Toward the end of her route, she saw a man in jeans running toward her. He had something down from his crotch, and he was moving his hands. It was a large fake penis. The man yelled vulgarities at her as he approached. Gullickson said she'd recently had a theft in her apartment and she had "just had it." After he passed, she turned around and started chasing him. He was shocked. She was gaining on him. He had the penis in his hand. She was shouting "Help, help". A couple in a passing car offered to help. They chased the man as Gullickson ran to a nursing home and called 911. She made a report the next day and identified Coe in a police lineup. She was 100 percent certain he was the man.

Retired dentist, Dr. John Little, testified about an encounter with Coe on February 28, 1981, a week before the Gullickson incident. Little said he was out for his morning run and saw a man running about 300 feet ahead of him. He was naked from the waist down. He pursued the man, who jumped over the edge of the bluff and emerged with red shorts on. Little identified Coe in a photo lineup March 19. He was dead certain he was the man.

A former secretary at the James S. Black real estate office on the South Hill testified for the first time that she saw Coe hiding behind a tree in Hamblen Park as he watched Spokane broadcaster, Shelly Monahan, stage a disco dance for some young people. Cheryl Ferguson said she recognized Coe because they worked in the same office. Monahan was raped outside the KJRB radio studios on the South Hill on September 9, 1979. She was unable to identify her attacker and her case was never tried. Ferguson said she'd been employed for about a year when a dapper young real estate agent named Coe was hired. At first, he came to work in three-piece suits and "Gucci-type" shoes and told her stories about his career as a disc jockey in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Coe's demeanor began to change, and he sometimes showed up at work in a gray sweat suit with a stocking cap, gloves and facial stubble. Occasionally he had deep scratches on his face that he said came from dog attacks while he was jogging. She added that Coe was fired and "escorted out the door" after his dismal year with the firm.

The state also brought in a series of other women who were attacked in the late '70s and early '80s.

A former Deaconess nurse testified that she was heading to work when she was grabbed at 6:45 a.m. December 11, 1979, by a man who shoved his gloved hand down her throat. He told her he had a knife, and he would cut her if she moved.

A woman who is now a social worker in California was 19 when she was raped April 4, 1980. She had been jogging in her South Hill neighborhood. He put her into a choke block. She couldn't breathe.

A full-time law student, now a Colorado elementary school teacher, who was raped March 11, 1980. She said she was "95 percent certain" her assailant was Coe when she saw him in a police lineup but didn't officially identify him because she'd worked for the public defender's office and thought she should be 100 percent certain.

Another woman was 51 when she was grabbed while jogging on February 5, 1981. Her attacker wore rough gloves and pinned her to the ground with his knees on her shoulders before he raped her. He said he needed this very badly.

On October 15, 2008, the prosecution and defense rested their case in Coe's civil commitment trial and handed over the decision to the jurors. The next day on October 16, 2008 after several hours of deliberation, the jury decided that the prosecution had proven beyond reasonable doubt that Coe was a violent sexual predator. He will now be committed to McNeil Island indefinitely.

Other best selling books by Jack Olsen:

• The Man with the Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders (1974) - A brilliant, investigative, journalist's story of the mass murder of almost 30 young boys in Houston by Dean Corll, a homosexual owner of a candy factory, and his two teen-aged accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr., and David Brooks.

• Give a Boy a Gun: The True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West (1985)- "Give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man," Claude Dallas, Sr., said this about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and "mountain man'' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens.  Was this a case of self-defense or outright murder?

• Cold Kill: The True Story of a Murderous Love (1987) - A double murder of Texas lawyer James Campbell and his wife Virginia by their daughter Cindy and her lover, David West.

• Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (1989) is an incredible account of a rural Wyoming doctor who relied on his patients' naiveté and Mormon female submissiveness to rape generations of women on his examining table.

• Predator: Rape, Madness, and Injustice in Seattle (1991) - This book focuses on three men: McDonald ("Mac") Smith, a serial rapist who preyed on women; Steve Titus, a carefree partygoer who was wrongly convicted of the predator's crimes; and Paul Henderson, a reporter for the Seattle Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for tracking down the truth.

• The Misbegotten Son: A Serial Killer and His Victims (1993)- An account of the life and crimes of convicted killer Arthur Shawcross describes how Shawcross, after being found guilty of the murders of two children, was released only to murder eleven prostitutes.

• Charmer: A Ladies' Man and his Victims (1994) - A true crime story of George Russell, Jr., a charismatic young African American from an affluent Seattle suburb who targeted and killed three beautiful women and whose charming outward appearance kept him from suspicion.

• Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder (1996) - Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his twelve-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied.

• Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation (1998) - This true crime features a delightful hero: a female private investigator who calls herself "Rat Dog Dick." Rat Dog relies on an ancient Everex 286 computer (Evil Evie), a Toyota Tercel (The Frog Prince) that is so outrageously green it's useless for surveillance, and a big, funny-looking dog (Beans). Once she gets her teeth into the "Foxglove" case in which several old people have dwindled and died quickly after being "befriended" by a local Gypsy family, Rat Dog is outraged that the police are ignoring clear evidence of elder abuse.

• Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt (2000) - This is a story of true crime American injustice. Pratt, a war hero and leader of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murder based on the perjured testimony of a paid FBI informant. After spending twenty-seven years in prison, he was finally declared innocent and released.

• I: The Creation of a Serial Killer (2002) - In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people...

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