Kevin Coe, who was suspected of dozens of rapes in Spokane
more than 40 years ago, will be released from state custody.
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Julie McKay signed Coe's release order today. Coe was ultimately only convicted of one rape charge and has been living at the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island since 2008 after he concluded his prison sentence.
McKay released Coe because Coe’s lawyers and the state attorney general’s office agree he no longer poses a threat to society. Coe is 78 years old and considered medically frail. Both a state and independent psychologist suggested Coe should be released to a group home in western Washington.
Thursday’s hearing was the latest landmark in Coe’s decades-long legal battle. Though the result was largely predetermined, the proceeding was filled with drama after McKay allowed five women who say Coe raped them to give victim impact statements.
Rape survivors speak
One woman said she has made progress in recovering from her attack 45 years ago. Fewer and fewer things trigger the powerful emotions she feels when she remembers the event, she says. But when she received the letter notifying her of Coe’s possible release, she told the judge it felt like she was raped again.
“This is not therapy for me,” she told the court.
She said the attacker took away the power and control she had over her life.
“Coe has been free this whole time behind bars, but not his victims,” she said.
She said helping other women who were attacked would be her life’s work.
“The desensitization of harming women in our society has to stop,” she said.
The woman who spoke after her said she was attacked around the time she turned 20. It stripped her of her innocence, she said, and harmed her ability to relate to and talk with people, especially men.
She read from a letter she had written to Coe.
“How dare you get out of jail. It’s not fair. Now I have to look over my shoulder again. You gave me a life sentence,” she said. “You violated my body, my mind, my soul.”
She vowed to try to take back some of the control over her life and to become a survivor, not a victim.
Two other women offered different messages.
“I have forgiven him and I feel free,” said Shelly Monahan-Cain, the only woman who consented to being identified publicly. “Coe will never be free. Satan has been a part of his life.”
Monahan-Cain told the court she had just finished a late-evening on-air shift at KJRB Radio in September 1979 when she was attacked, raped and left for dead in a field. She remembered looking up at the stars and promising God she would spend the rest of her life helping rape survivors get the help they need.
Another woman said she was attacked in June 1980. She said she has leaned on her faith since then, asking God to forgive Coe, even as she called his attack “evil.” Granting him forgiveness has “unlocked the chains that had me bound,” she testified. She said she understands the circumstances that allow Coe to be released, but “I wish he was still bound by those same chains.”
After the statements, McKay told the women that though their testimonies didn’t bear legal weight, they had a personal effect on her.
“I have a hole in my stomach and a hurt heart,” McKay said.
History of this case
Coe is suspected of dozens of rapes between 1978 and 1981. During his first trial in 1981, he faced six counts of first-degree rape and was convicted of four. All of those were overturned by the state Supreme Court in 1984.
He was retried and convicted of three rapes the next year, but the state Supreme Court overturned two of them. Coe served 25 years in the state penitentiary on the remaining conviction.
As his release time approached, the state attorney general’s office sought to keep Coe in custody, citing a state law that allows authorities to keep people deemed to be a danger to society behind bars. A Spokane County jury affirmed that and assigned Coe to the Special Commitment Center at McNeil Island in 2008.
In 2024, a state psychologist reviewing Coe’s case determined that Coe, with his declining health, is unlikely to reoffend. According to court documents, Coe’s attorneys cited that opinion when they petitioned the court in January to have their client released.
Also in court files, consulting psychologist Craig Teofilo said that “while Mr. Coe certainly poses some risk to reoffend sexually, after careful consideration and based on the totality of the available information, I cannot conclude to a reasonable degree of psychological certainty he is likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility.”
Coe is expected to be moved to a licensed care facility in the south Puget Sound area. He will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
