Something Creepy

stonemadeent,

I hope you don't mind a lengthy response to a fairly old post of yours I found informative. After seeing this movie I was reminded of another criminal case concerning a mother-son duo. When I read your post of Oct, 2006 and realized you may have been involved in the making of "A Little Thing Called Murder", I wondered if those involved in filmmaking might want to know of a case that once scandalized Washington State.

In the early part of the 1980s Spokane was a city where women were wary. Serial rapist Kevin Coe was stalking and beating women, and was becoming more sadistic with every attack. He was the son of Ruth Coe, a miserable mother who manipulated her son, whom she called "Son", into becoming her version of a better man, one might say. She fancied herself a southern belle, and believed she was a veddy superiah person. At some point before or during the trial Ruth Coe actually made a deal with someone to harm one of the prosecutors. Her plan was discovered in time, and nobody was hurt. Kevin's father, Gordon Coe, was a prominent citizen in town, where he ran the daily newspaper before going back home every night to Ruth.

A book by Jack Olson was published in 1983-1984 (date is approximate) about Coe's crime spree, and was popular. The title is "Son". If you have not read it, and if you are interested in true crime stories, you may wish to add this to your library.

My husband was with Seattle PD at the time, and I loaned my copy of "Son" to one of the officers, agreeing he could return it after some of his cop friends had also read it. Not only did the book come back to me in record time, but it had been mauled, nearly to a pulp, with pages that had come loose, and a broken back. It had obviously been read, and read hard. I didn't mind getting back a bent book, 'cause I knew and liked those guys, and was glad they wanted to read it.

Coe did not commit murder, but one of his victims was a weather reporter on one of Seattle's main television news stations. When she lived in Spokane she had had her own radio program, and was known at that time as Sunshine Shelley. He laid in wait for her in a field near the station, and brutalized her mercilessly. She stayed here for a while, then moved on. Whenever I watched her report the weather I thought of how brave she had been, particularly when I re-read the pages detailing her ordeal. I'm sure many people held out hope that she was able to put her life together in a new and better place.

These Kimes creeps remind me of those Coe creeps and the cool viciousness it must take to become a raving sociopath. It is sometimes difficult to turn away from a dreadful yet compelling tale, but I do believe that stories such as these, particularly if well-written, can go a long distance in memoralizing a person, such as Irene Silverman, who lost her life at the hands of a heartless fiend.




Maureen Adele Compton