Word: olsen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jack Olsen...
...Jack Olsen will have none of this. In "Son " he is relentlessly out to study the evildoer and finger those who made him go wrong. His subject is a well-dressed, intelligent real estate agent who was eventually convicted of committing four brutal rapes in Spokane, Wash., in the late '70s and was suspected of having committed dozens more. The victims were housewives, career women and schoolgirls ranging in age from 14 to 51. Public officials suppressed news of the savage attacks; they wanted no hints of a crime wave in the Lilac City. But word got around...
Drawing on extensive interviews with Coe's companion, Virginia Perham, Olsen details the rage behind the go-getter smile. The vaunted independence was in fact financed by parental handouts. Often impotent, Coe bragged of his sexual prow ess to Perham as if she had not witnessed his failures. He alternately fasted and gorged on junk food, used the name Kevin with girlfriends and clients and spoke in a variety of voice inflections. "Knowing Fred Coe," said a schoolmate, "was like having a platoon of friends...
When he came to the attention of the authorities, Coe was shadowed for several weeks before he was finally arrested. At the trial the Coe family refused an insanity plea and opted for total denial. They played the part of wronged aristocracy, writes Olsen: "Well-chiseled faces, straight noses, full lips, darkly gleaming eyes, careful coiffures. Camelots old and new had never produced a more al luringly matched set." But that was only for show. Offstage, Coe tried to persuade friends to destroy evidence, Olsen says, and the oldest victim made Ruth exclaim, "She's much too ugly...
...Olsen continually indicates, suffering is the operative word in the lives of almost everyone in "Son." Without prurience, he adds up the aftermath of Coe's vicious spree: years later, some of his victims cannot stand to be touched, a few are frigid, and all are afflicted by violent dreams. Monahan's marriage ended in divorce. Said her husband: "We'd had a good marriage, and after that we just started to go apart." Alone, she slept in a closet. To her, "night smells different from day. Night smells like rape...