Son: A Psychopath and his Victims

Winner of the Edgar Award. A New York Times Bestseller.

Between 1978 and 1981, a rapist prowled the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. He targeted women jogging alone, waiting for buses, walking home after dark. His signature was unmistakable and terrifying: a gloved fist rammed into his victim’s mouth to silence her screams. By the time police made an arrest, more than forty women had been attacked.

The suspect was clean-cut, conservative, and charming. He was also the son of Gordon Coe, the distinguished managing editor of the Spokane Daily Chronicle, the very newspaper running the public tip line to catch the South Hill Rapist.

The family closed ranks immediately. Fred Coe’s mother, Ruth, a Spokane socialite known for her jet-black wigs, elaborate jewelry, and fierce social ambitions, provided her son with detailed alibis. She told the court that she and Fred had been running their own mother-and-son vigilante operation to catch the real rapist. Unfortunately for Ruth and Fred, the evidence was overwhelming. Fred Coe was convicted of rape.

As he was led away, Ruth was heard to say: “Down, but not out.”

She meant it. Ruth Coe then hired a hitman to kill the judge and the prosecutor who had put her son away. Unfortunately for Ruth, the man she hired was an undercover cop.

But the legal saga was far from over. Several victims had been hypnotized by police during the investigation, tainting their testimony. Convictions were overturned. Retrials were held. Of the forty or more women he was suspected of attacking, Fred Coe ultimately served time for a single rape conviction.

He never admitted to his crimes. He maintained his innocence for more than four decades, through multiple trials, twenty-five years in prison, and years of civil commitment as a sexually violent predator. He died in December 2025, two months after his release, still insisting he was innocent.

Jack Olsen spent eighteen months and more than 150 interviews reconstructing every dimension of this case: the crimes, the victims, the twisted family dynamics, and the central question that haunts every page. What is it like to love a man for years, as a mother, as a wife, as a girlfriend, and then discover he is a psychopathic rapist?

As Ann Rule, author of The Stranger Beside Me, wrote: “Every woman in America should read Son.”

The Richmond Times-Dispatch observed: “It has become fashionable to compare books about vicious crimes to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Finally, there is a book that deserves the comparison.”