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About 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: 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, managing editor of the Spokane Daily Chronicle, the very newspaper running the tip line to catch the South Hill Rapist. The family closed ranks. Fred's mother Ruth provided detailed alibis, claiming she and Fred had been running their own vigilante operation to catch the real rapist. 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 hired a hitman to kill the judge and prosecutor. The man she hired was an undercover cop. Several victims had been hypnotized 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 served time for a single conviction. He maintained his innocence through multiple trials, twenty-five years in prison, and 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 this case. 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."