Sunday, November 22, 2009

ONGOING COVERAGE: KEVIN COE TRIAL

Friend of Coe remembers that 'he had some kinks'

Rick Bonino
Staff writer
October 14, 2008

After two criminal trials and a best-selling book, it might seem everybody with a story to tell about Kevin Coe has been heard from.

But there's one man who's been following Coe's civil commitment trial online from his home in Monroe, Wash., who is speaking out publicly for the first time.

Ken Hayes lived two blocks from the Coe home on West 29th Avenue while growing up. In her trial testimony last week, Coe's sister, Kathleen, said he was among her brother's closest friends.

ADVERTISEMENT

Of Kevin Coe, whom he knew as Fred, Hayes says: "He was a good guy, but he had some kinks."

In phone interviews, Hayes takes issue with parts of Jack Olsen's book, "Son: A Psychopath and His Victims" – including a passage that says Coe "peeped at a doctor's daughter until he was frightened off by a shotgun fired into the air."

What really happened, he says, was a group of girls at slumber party planned to sneak out with a group of boys, including Coe and Hayes.

When the host's father discovered the boys, he says, "It wasn't Coe that he took a shot at, it was me" – and "he definitely wasn't shooting over our heads."

But Hayes says he was with Coe one night when he started peeping at a different girl. Coe invited him along another time, he says, but he declined. "It just didn't seem right," Hayes says.

He also remembers Coe was involved in a scheme to sell raffle tickets for a chance to have sex with another girl.

Hayes also has memories of Coe's family – sister Kathleen, or Kathy ("everybody called her 'Kitten' "), father Gordon ("a hell of a neat guy … if he said something, you could pretty much take it to the bank") and particularly his mother, Ruth, who was arrested for trying to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor and judge in her son's first criminal trial.

"She was a total lunatic," Hayes says. "She was overbearing, very protective of Fred."

When he heard about Ruth Coe's arrest, he says, he thought: "Those two guys are damn lucky she wasn't 10 years younger, or they'd be dead."

He had a similar opinion of Coe's first wife, Jennifer.

"She was a fruitcake," Hayes recalls. "I said, 'What did you do, marry your mom?' She had the same black hair, talked with a phony Southern accent."

Hayes says he moved to the Tri-Cities in the mid-1970s but frequently returned to Spokane to visit family.

He last saw Coe in a convenience store parking lot in the late '70s, he says. He spotted his old pal in a nearby car and called his name – only to see him suddenly burn rubber in reverse, almost to the street.

"He was very disheveled – not like him at all," Hayes says. "I said, 'Are you on the lam?' "

He says Coe explained some people were after him after he peeped at a woman in a restaurant bathroom and made a crude comment. "I asked him, 'When are you going to grow up?' " Hayes says,

In his civil commitment trial, Coe last week denied being involved in the March 1977 incident. He was charged at the time with being a disorderly person; there's no record of what happened to the case.

After that final meeting, Hayes says, he made one more attempt to contact Coe. He knew someone building a night club who was trying to decide whether to go with live music or disco. He thought Coe, who had been a disco DJ in Las Vegas, might be interested. "Fred was supposedly the disco king," Hayes says.

He called Coe's parents' house, and Ruth said she'd pass along the message, he says, but he never heard back: "I just wrote him off, finally."

When he heard that Coe had been arrested as the "South Hill rapist" in March 1981, Hayes says, "I couldn't picture him doing it. I could picture him thinking about it … trying to get somebody else to do it.

"He was a manipulator – he still might be."

To this day, Hayes says, he's not convinced of Coe's guilt. He has questions about some of the victims' descriptions of their attacker, about evidence that was destroyed along the way.

"Two juries said he was (guilty), a lot of people say he is – he probably is," Hayes says.

Still, he adds: "I'm not 100 percent sure he's guilty. … I'm probably one of the few people on Earth who's ever had doubts."