thefirstman
Member
- Joined
- May 20, 2008
- Messages
- 88
- Reaction score
- 25
Thank you Richard for responding.
I had written you a private note a couple months ago and did not hear from you. Maybe you did not get it.
I also wrote to the MCPD lead investigator on the case and until yesterday got next to nothing from him. Prior to getting this recent note I wondered why I was getting such a cool or non-response from him.
He said a few things to me which I want to comment on this site, but I want to respond to you first.
I do not mean to underestimate Coffey. That is, I get it that he was a shrewd cold blooded killer of children. A kidnapper, a sexual predator and a murderer.
I also appreciate and respect that the USA was infested with serial killers in the 1970's. It was the perfect storm. Excellent transportation systems, with cars and super highways. A woman's revolution that had girls and women expressing freedom in ways that prior to that moment were often unthinkable. The involvement and then the end of the Vietnam war, which represented the conflict about how America was going to treat our youth, especially young men - so many were exposed to such violence and then were in essence treated as if they were disposable and unwanted. The ever increasing availability of narcotics. Social fragmentation. Sexual revolution which led to an innocence that was violated by these above mentioned dark forces.
Add to this wholly inadequate police forces that were highly territorial. Police forces often refused to communicate vital communication to other law enforcement entities. Take the Secret Service in 1976 when they arrested DeBardeleben for the first time for counterfeiting. They found homemade *advertiser censored* in that house along with his printing press, but did NOTHING. And Those agents lived here in the DC area so they HAD to have known about the Lyon girls. Whether he did it or not had they done the basic human thing of examining the evidence in that time frame, then we would not be having this conversation. But hey!
Police forces of that day were completely lacking the sophisticated data banks and DNA testing that makes arrests and convictions much more possible. Plus it was much more rare to have women on the police force, or as prosecuting lawyers - archaic laws and attitudes about sexual crimes against women and so on.
These factors and more led to the reality that our nation was being preyed upon by many, many, many of the Fred Coffey variety. So some of my position is less about underestimating Coffey, and much of it speaks to this perfect storm that reveals that so many police forces failed to be able to contend with these killers preying upon our communities - especially young girls and women.
Could Coffey of done this crime? Of course he could have.
So far I have yet to hear a compelling crime theory that integrate Coffey in terms of his criminal profile and this crime. I was born around the same time as Kate Lyon and grew up in a suburban neighborhood 3 or 4 miles on the other side of Wheaton plaza. I rode up to the Plaza with my brothers on our bikes with great regularity. We would go to "Planters Peanuts" ( about a quarter mile from Wheaton plaza on Georgia Ave, south of Wheaton Library, I think they call it the Nut House now) and buy candy and sell in a candy stand in the neighborhood.
I say NO WAY those girls got into a car with a guy without some compelling reason(s). So until I hear a way Coffey could have done this first most important act of kidnapping - getting them into the car with him - I am just not inclined to believe he did this crime.
Other things too, like the multiple kidnapping, a few blocks from their home (police today state they were on the streets of Kensington very close to their house). Kids like to walk, especially in their own neighborhoods. The walking becomes a symbol of freedom and belonging. While walking a mile or mile and half home from school I often refused rides from next door neighbor's parents because the walk was very much part of the adventure. And as a boy in the same time frame, and in a very similar location my friends and brothers and I NEVER took a ride with people we did not know.
Other things too work against Coffey. His behavior in August of 75 of quitting and running in such a reactive way would be incongruent with his actual behavior if he had done these crimes. His behavior was to stick around for months with a sketch that can be likened to his face associated with the hottest case in history (up to that point in time) in Maryland. That would mean his sketch would be all over the papers, the news for a crime that had the DC area traumatized, and its citizens in white hot rage!
That means a relatively squeamish character was preying on Montgomery county's girls in public, at our malls and then was plastered all over the newspapers, television as a TRM, and stuck around to work some job and live in a rinky dink motel on Rockville Pike.
Any way we cut it, what I know about Coffey indicates that he was not a highly organized, highly premeditated criminal. He was a highly lethal, psychosexual predator. But history proves that the kidnapper and most likely killer of these girls would have most likely needed a safe house, an impeccable disposal system all of which require high levels of organization, skill and planning. Was Coffey capable of this kind of premeditation? Maybe. Did his known crimes display this kind of behavior. As far as I know, no.
Lastly MCPD never could bring him to trial. Its hard to know if they ever even came close. That does not mean he did not do it, but it does mean that he was a guy in circulation circa 1975, working a job with a boss and co-workers and the police had the advantage of live witnesses in 1987 and nothing could be established.
I say all of this and I am open. So far no-one has ever matched his crime profile and this crime in any credible way for me.
I had written you a private note a couple months ago and did not hear from you. Maybe you did not get it.
I also wrote to the MCPD lead investigator on the case and until yesterday got next to nothing from him. Prior to getting this recent note I wondered why I was getting such a cool or non-response from him.
He said a few things to me which I want to comment on this site, but I want to respond to you first.
I do not mean to underestimate Coffey. That is, I get it that he was a shrewd cold blooded killer of children. A kidnapper, a sexual predator and a murderer.
I also appreciate and respect that the USA was infested with serial killers in the 1970's. It was the perfect storm. Excellent transportation systems, with cars and super highways. A woman's revolution that had girls and women expressing freedom in ways that prior to that moment were often unthinkable. The involvement and then the end of the Vietnam war, which represented the conflict about how America was going to treat our youth, especially young men - so many were exposed to such violence and then were in essence treated as if they were disposable and unwanted. The ever increasing availability of narcotics. Social fragmentation. Sexual revolution which led to an innocence that was violated by these above mentioned dark forces.
Add to this wholly inadequate police forces that were highly territorial. Police forces often refused to communicate vital communication to other law enforcement entities. Take the Secret Service in 1976 when they arrested DeBardeleben for the first time for counterfeiting. They found homemade *advertiser censored* in that house along with his printing press, but did NOTHING. And Those agents lived here in the DC area so they HAD to have known about the Lyon girls. Whether he did it or not had they done the basic human thing of examining the evidence in that time frame, then we would not be having this conversation. But hey!
Police forces of that day were completely lacking the sophisticated data banks and DNA testing that makes arrests and convictions much more possible. Plus it was much more rare to have women on the police force, or as prosecuting lawyers - archaic laws and attitudes about sexual crimes against women and so on.
These factors and more led to the reality that our nation was being preyed upon by many, many, many of the Fred Coffey variety. So some of my position is less about underestimating Coffey, and much of it speaks to this perfect storm that reveals that so many police forces failed to be able to contend with these killers preying upon our communities - especially young girls and women.
Could Coffey of done this crime? Of course he could have.
So far I have yet to hear a compelling crime theory that integrate Coffey in terms of his criminal profile and this crime. I was born around the same time as Kate Lyon and grew up in a suburban neighborhood 3 or 4 miles on the other side of Wheaton plaza. I rode up to the Plaza with my brothers on our bikes with great regularity. We would go to "Planters Peanuts" ( about a quarter mile from Wheaton plaza on Georgia Ave, south of Wheaton Library, I think they call it the Nut House now) and buy candy and sell in a candy stand in the neighborhood.
I say NO WAY those girls got into a car with a guy without some compelling reason(s). So until I hear a way Coffey could have done this first most important act of kidnapping - getting them into the car with him - I am just not inclined to believe he did this crime.
Other things too, like the multiple kidnapping, a few blocks from their home (police today state they were on the streets of Kensington very close to their house). Kids like to walk, especially in their own neighborhoods. The walking becomes a symbol of freedom and belonging. While walking a mile or mile and half home from school I often refused rides from next door neighbor's parents because the walk was very much part of the adventure. And as a boy in the same time frame, and in a very similar location my friends and brothers and I NEVER took a ride with people we did not know.
Other things too work against Coffey. His behavior in August of 75 of quitting and running in such a reactive way would be incongruent with his actual behavior if he had done these crimes. His behavior was to stick around for months with a sketch that can be likened to his face associated with the hottest case in history (up to that point in time) in Maryland. That would mean his sketch would be all over the papers, the news for a crime that had the DC area traumatized, and its citizens in white hot rage!
That means a relatively squeamish character was preying on Montgomery county's girls in public, at our malls and then was plastered all over the newspapers, television as a TRM, and stuck around to work some job and live in a rinky dink motel on Rockville Pike.
Any way we cut it, what I know about Coffey indicates that he was not a highly organized, highly premeditated criminal. He was a highly lethal, psychosexual predator. But history proves that the kidnapper and most likely killer of these girls would have most likely needed a safe house, an impeccable disposal system all of which require high levels of organization, skill and planning. Was Coffey capable of this kind of premeditation? Maybe. Did his known crimes display this kind of behavior. As far as I know, no.
Lastly MCPD never could bring him to trial. Its hard to know if they ever even came close. That does not mean he did not do it, but it does mean that he was a guy in circulation circa 1975, working a job with a boss and co-workers and the police had the advantage of live witnesses in 1987 and nothing could be established.
I say all of this and I am open. So far no-one has ever matched his crime profile and this crime in any credible way for me.