Son (Unabridged‪)‬

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: 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 and charming, also the son of Gordon Coe, 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 and fierce social ambitions, provided detailed alibis, claiming she and Fred had run their own mother-and-son vigilante operation. The evidence was overwhelming. Fred 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 prosecutor. The man she hired was an undercover cop.


The legal saga dragged on. Several victims had been hypnotized during the investigation, tainting testimony. Convictions were overturned. Retrials were held. Of forty or more women he was suspected of attacking, Fred Coe served time for a single conviction, then 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 asking the question that haunts every page: what is it like to love a man for years 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."