The state forced five survivors to beg a judge not to release their attacker. Then released him anyway.

Kevin Coe died yesterday of natural causes at 78. He had been free for exactly two months. Two months after spending 44 years locked up for crimes that terrorized Spokane in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The “South Hill Rapist,” as he became known, served 25 years in prison and 19 more on McNeil Island under civil commitment as a sexually violent predator. He was convicted of one rape in 1982 but linked by investigators to more than 40 sexual assaults. He destroyed lives and caused unimaginable pain that his victims carry to this day.

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