Kevin Coe

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Kevin Coe, born Frederick Harlan Coe on Feb. 2, 1947^[1], is a convicted rapist from Spokane, Washington, often referred to in the news media as the "South Hill Rapist". He has been in custody since conviction in 1981. As of May, 2008, he is awaiting a "civil commitment" trial before a judge (scheduled for September 2008) wherein the State of Washington will argue that he should be declared a sexually violent predator and confined indefinitely. Also as of May, 2008, he is still a suspect in dozens of rapes. His notoriety is due to much more than the fact of his statuses as a suspect and convict. The number of victims he has been suspected of having raped is unusually large; his convictions received an unusual amount of attention from appeals courts; his mother was convicted for hiring a hit man against her son's judge and prosecutor after the initial convictions; and the bizarre relationship between Coe and his mother became the subject of a book by a widely read nonfiction writer on crime, Jack Olsen.

In 1981 Coe, a radio announcer by profession, gained regional renown when he was arrested as the suspect in up to 43 rapes^[2] which had been perpetrated in Spokane between 1978 and 1981. Many of the rapes involved an extreme level of physical injury to the victims,^[3][4][5], and the police suspected them to be the work of a single offender, who came to be dubbed the "South Hill rapist".

Coe was originally put on trial in 1981 for six counts of first degree rape and convicted on four of these. After the state Supreme Court overturned all these convictions, he was retried on all four counts for which he had been convicted, and was convicted on three. His appeal of the new convictions also made it all the way to the state Supreme Court, which in 1988 overturned two and upheld one. Both supreme court rulings were based in part on disapproval of the fact that some of the testimony against Coe came from victims who had been hypnotized before identifying him as their attacker.^[6]

Until 1982, he was usually referred to as Fred Coe. On July 31, 1982, he legally changed his first name to Kevin.^[1]

Three months after Kevin was convicted, his mother, 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.

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.^[6] He completed his prison sentence on Sept. 8, 2006.

He was not released at the completion of his sentence because the State of Washington has 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 hopes to have him permanently committed.^[7] On Dec. 22, 2007, a judge postponed the trial until September, 2008.^[8]

To this day, the news media continue to refer to Kevin Coe as the South Hill Rapist even though he was eventually found guily of just one rape. While he awaits his civil commitment trial, Kevin Coe is under investigation for as many as 44 other sexual assaults in the South Hill Rapist series. A judge has ordered DNA samples to be taken from Coe.^[9]

[edit] In popular culture

• A film detailing the crimes, Sins of the Mother, was made for TV in 1991 by director John Patterson.
• Author Jack Olsen wrote a book about Kevin Coe and the relationship with his mother entitled Son: A Psychopath and his Victims, which won a Special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.^[10]
• The Washington State black metal band, Drakul^[11] has written a song about Kevin Coe titled "Fred Coe Pt. I". The band is planning to follow it up with an EP that addresses the later stage of his life.
• Dateline NBC profiled and detailed Kevin Coe in an hour long feature.^[12]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Drakul (one of multiple black metal bands by that name)