Ruth Coe

Diagnoses

Passions

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Family

American mother of rapist Kevin Coe, who was arrested on 3/10/1981 and convicted that August. She provided alibis for her son but he was convicted of four rapes in the Spokane, WA area and suspected of as many as 40-50 others. After the trial, devastated, she had a nervous breakdown. Coe worked in freelance fashion and modeling, and taught grooming to girls in high schools and colleges across the Northwest. As the wife of Gordon Coe, the managing editor of the Spokane Chronicle, she was also involved in charity and church events, an active and productive member of the community. However, in 1973 Ruth Coe was diagnosed as manic-depressive. She started taking lithium carbonate and other drugs, which served as her defense when she was arrested nearly a year after her son was sent to prison. On 11/02/1981, police got a call that she was trying to hire a hit man for $4,000 to kill the prosecutor and judge who tried her son. The police set up a meeting for 11/19/1981 and when she paid $500 to the so-called hit man, they arrested her. At her trial in May 1982, she was found guilty and given one year prison and ten years parole. Most of the year-long sentence was served on work-release. She and her husband moved to the Las Vegas suburbs shortly after her conviction, where she lived quietly with illnesses that included emphysema. Ruth Coe died the third week of March 1996, Henderson, NV.