Coe: Inside the courtroom
Is it really over?
After his second criminal trial in 1985, Pat Thompson figured she had seen the last of Kevin Coe.
"I never would have guessed 20 years ago after I closed up the case, packed everything away, that this would be back and I would be involved," says Thompson, a former Spokane County deputy prosecutor who helped handle both of Coe's criminal trials.
Instead, Thompson - now an an assistant state attorney general in the Spokane office - found herself working with the AG's Seattle sexual predator experts as they prepared their case for Coe's civil commitment trial.
Her help was invaluable in wading through the sea of evidence, said Assistant Attorney General Todd Bowers.
"They'd say, now, Pat, what about this?" Thompson says. "I'd say, I don't remember anything like that.
"Then those little brain cells would go on, and I'd say, OK, I remember now."
Beyond specifics, she also helped the out-of-towners appreciate the impact the South Hill rapes had on the community.
"If you don't live in Spokane, it's hard to understand the whole horror of what was happening," Thompson says.
She wasn't able to come to court this time - or, for that matter, watch the proceedings online or on TV - because she had been subpoenaed by the defense as a potential witness.
So now that Coe has been committed to a mental facility, is Thompson finally free from him?
"Your guess," she says, "is as good as mine."
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Kevin Coe, labeled the "South Hill rapist" in a community frightened by dozens of attacks on women in the Spokane area in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has been in prison since 1981. He was slated for release in September 2006 when the Washington state attorney general's office moved to have Coe spend the rest of his life in prison through the civil commitment program. In this trial, the state seeks to convince jurors that Coe represents too much of a threat to ever be released.
Karen Dorn Steele has been a Spokesman-Review reporter since 1982,
covering the courts, environment, enterprise and investigative beat. She
lived in Spokane in 1980 when a series of unsolved rapes terrorized the
city. 
Rick Bonino has worked at The Spokesman-Review in various positions
since 1977. He covered both of Kevin Coe's previous trials, in 1981 and
1985, and also Ruth Coe's trial in 1982. 
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