Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. July eleventh, nineteen eighty
eight, Walnut Creek, California, Lester Garnier, a thirty year old vice
officer with the San Francisco Police Department, is found shot to death inside his
car in a shopping center parking lot. Eyewitnesses recalled seeing at least two unidentified
blonde women in the parking lot the previous night, and there's speculation that Lester's
murder might be connected to his involvement in a recent high profile out bust of
a teenage sex trafficking ring. Twenty years later, it's announced that a fingerprint
from the crime scene has been matched to a Scottish woman with an extensive criminal
history. However, there's not enough evidence to make an arrest, and the
motive for Lester's murder remains unknown. After that, the path went Chiley.
So today we'll be exploring an unsolved cold case involving a police officer, the
nineteen eighty eight murder of Lester Garnier. This story was profiled during the first
season of Unsolved Mysteries, and I consider it to be one of the more
underrated cases featured on the show. Since her segment was only about ten minutes
long, they really didn't have the luxury of delving as deeply into this story
as they could have. But when I originally covered it on The Trail Went
Cold five years ago, it turned out to be quite a rabbit hole.
Lester was an undercover vice officer who was by all accounts, really good at
his job and well liked by everyone who knew him, so it was difficult
to figure out a motive for this murder. There was a lot of speculation
that the crime is connected to a recent bust of a teenage sex trafficking ring,
which implicated some high profile figures and turned out to be a major scandal
for the city of San Francisco. However, many years later, a partial
fingerprint eventually led investigators to a Scottish national named Catherine Koontz, and this revelation
only raised more questions than answers. Kons had quite a checkered history, including
alleged involvement in another murder for hire plot, but to this day, no
one has ever been able to find a tangible connection between her and Lester Garnier.
That's just one reason the crime is still unsolved. But we're going to
attempt to piece together this convoluted story on today's episode. This case is really
scary because you have a victim who's a vice officer, so it's someone who's
assigned to cover things like gambling, sex trafficking, sex work, high end
drug cartel things, and so he's obviously going to be in a very risky
position because a lot of those crimes include high profile individuals. You have politicians,
you have attorneys, you have other police officers that can sometimes be involved
in those crimes behind the scenes, even just providing access to different resources and
all for the criminals. And then you add a woman who is a foreign
nationalist and she is known to have a background that's quite shady and might even
include a murder for hire. I know you said there's no evidence to link
her, but there is a fingerprint there, and there's really also no way
to explain away the fingerprint. Is that correct? Not really no, But
as we're going to talk about, there are going to be like multiple people
seen around the murder scene on the night of Lester's death. So there's talk
about how well, it doesn't really prove that she killed him, only that
she was near Lester's car. So if you tried to put her on trial,
she could just say, oh, I just met him and I touched
the windshield, but I left before he was killed. So that's probably the
main reason they haven't charged. And of course the other complication is that no
one can figure out what connection she has with Lester and what motive she would
have had to kill him. Our story begins in nineteen eighty eight in Walnut
Creek, California, a city located in the San Francisco Bay Area just outside
of Oakland. At around nine am on the morning of July eleventh, a
groundskeeper came across a blue nineteen eighty four Corvette in the parking lot of a
Wood Creek shopping center. Sitting in the driver's seat was the body of a
young man who'd been shot twice at close range, once in the head and
once in the abdomen. He was soon identified as Lester Garnier, a thirty
year old off duty police officer with the San Francisco Police Department. Lester lived
in the nearby city of Concord and had been on the force for eight years.
Born to a pair of Asian immigrant parents, Anthony and Jean Garnier,
Lester and his younger sister, Margo, were raised in San Francisco's Mission District.
At the age of I was seventeen, Lester was a member of the
Columbia Park Boys and Girls Club and won their Boy of the Year award,
which earned him a trip to the White House to meet then President Gerald Ford.
He eventually joined the San Francisco Police Department and garnered two commendations during his
first four years of service before transferring to Vice in nineteen eighty four. Having
grown up in the Mission District, Lester was an ideal candidate to do undercover
work, as he often posed as a customer in order to arrest sex workers.
Lester apparently had such a charming personality that many of the women he arrested
had glowing things to say about him, even though he was taking them to
jail. In fact, Lester seemed to be so well liked that he wound
up being praised by the Office of Citizens Complaints because of the lack of complaints
stemming from his arrests. Overall, he was known as an honest by the
book cop who always followed proper procedure and was planning to start training in narcotics.
However, Lester was not planning to do police work forever, as he
was hoping to retire in a decade or so and had been preparing for the
future. After purchasing a new round style house with a pool and concord,
Lester brought his parents there to live with him, as it was a major
upgrade from their own home. He was able to afford his corvette by taking
on some part time security jobs and receiving a loan from the Police Credit Union.
Lester also bought a push cart and was planning to open his own hot
dog stand with his best friend Wispay Aish, and if successful, they would
open more of them and turn it into a business. The two men had
been approved for a small business license, which was ready to be picked up
at the Hall of Justice, and in a cruel twist, wis Fay was
standing outside the building waiting for Lester on the very same morning his body was
discovered. So this case really does it highlights his career and it says,
listen, he is an upstanding officer. He's someone that the people that he's
arresting actually have respect for and he's trying to do the right thing. He's
trying to do the moral right thing, and family responsibility is a big priority
for him. And he's even finding ways that he's going to pivot out of
law enforcement to open this hot dog cart and maybe turn it into a little
business with his friend and something that provides for his family. And then he's
murdered. Do we know if there had been any concerns on his part by
people who maybe were trying to bribe him manipulate him in some of these cases,
and because he was a good officer, he had actually turned that down
or escalated charges against individuals. No, we haven't heard anything like that about
anyone attempting to bribe him. And he never said anything to anybody that someone
is threatening my life, that they're trying to get me to shut up and
look the other way if I take a bribe. So this is why I
took everyone by complete surprise, is that, as far as they are aware,
or he was not working on anything really dangerous that should have put his
life at risk, and he was off duty when he was killed, So
they were wondering why did decide to cancel his meet up with his friend in
order to go to this shopping center. Like I just said, no one
could figure out why Lester was at the Wood Creek shopping Center to begin with.
On the evening of July to tenth, Lester had been having dinner with
his parents at his home and received two phone calls. They had no idea
who the calls were from, though Lester's father had answered one of them and
claimed the caller was a woman. Lester was planning to meet wisp Fay to
see a movie and left his house at eight forty five pm. However,
about fifteen minutes later, Lester called up Whisfay on his car phone to say
he wouldn't be able to make it to the movie because he was running late,
though he didn't provide any further explanation. Later that evening, whis Fay
tried to call Lester back on his car phone, but received no answer.
A witness would tell police that they remembered seeing Lester's corvette in the shopping center
parking lot at around ten forty five pm. Shortly thereafter, a carpet layer
working inside one of the nearby stores went out to his truck and claimed he
heard a pair of loud noises. Since this was the week after the Fourth
of July, he thought the sounds were nothing more than firecrackers, though it
later became a parent that he probably heard the gunshots which killed Lester. A
few minutes later, the carpet layer said he saw two blond women, one
in the late twenties and the other in the mid thirties, walking through the
parking lot before they each got into separate vehicles and drove away. One of
the vehicles was described as a faded blue Toyota pickup, while the other was
either a Toyota or Datsun car with white or gray paint. The phone call
that lures him away from his parents' house seemed to be or could have been,
a call that said, hey, we need to meet with you.
We have information, we need to talk. And he not only leaves his
parents' house, but then he also has to call his friend and say,
I can't make it to a movie, so he's changing plans that he already
had in place that evening. I would love to know who called him,
and I'd also I love to know is this foreign woman whose fingerprints were left
at the scene. Is she blonde, and does she have access to one
of the cars that's been described here. I don't know if she was driving
a specific car like that at that time, but yes, she was blonde.
She was in her twenty so it seems very likely that she was one
of the two blonde women seen in the parking lot. But to this day,
no one has figured out who the other blonde woman could be, which
brings up the problem of reasonable doubt is how do you approve which of them
might have killed Lester? And what do you think about those phone calls that
he got that then had him change his plans that evening. I'm not sure
because it doesn't I know that Lester liked to sometimes work during his off duty
hours to try to build up other cases, but I just don't know what
would be so important that he would leave on that particular night and blow off
like a plan with his friends and go to that particular shopping center. If
it was a woman, perhaps, I mean, if it was work related,
say something came up, would you lie to Wis Fay and just say
I'm running late so I can't come, or maybe not lie, but maybe
just kind of lie by omission that you're not going to be putting the truth
out there saying, oh, I'm going to meet up with a contact or
something. Do you think he would just say, Hey, something work related
came up. I can't make it. I'm sorry. I'll see you tomorrow
where we pick up our license for our hot dog business, which I love.
By the way, this was like the beginning of food trucks, just
this hot dog stand and that they had this idea for this empire of hot
dogs. Yeah, they're going to have a franchise. How fun. It's
so cool. I just think it's so ambitious. And Ashley and I were
talking about side hustles before we started, and clearly he had his eye on
this side hustle and was ready to retire in ten years. And for someone
who's thirty, that's pretty impressive. I just I think maybe if you were
going to ditch your friend, and you were going to ditch plans, and
you were you were going to meet up with a man, a woman,
whomever, somebody that you were romantically interested in, you might feel like kind
of an ass for being like, oh, sorry, I don't want to
hang out with you, or I'm going to ditch this, or I'm going
to like not show up because I'd rather do this. That doesn't sound so
good. But you might just go sorry running late, and then just kind
of lie by omission because it sounds better than being like sorry, This sounds
like more fun than the movie date with you and Ashley. Since you were
asking about side hustles, you now got a new one. Hot dogs.
Yes, hot dogs. I'm all about it, guys, all about it.
Shortly before the carpet layer saw the two blonde women, another witness had
been driving through the parking lot and said that he saw a blonde climbing out
of Lester's corvette. She exited the front seat through the passenger side, walked
around the vehicle, and took a quick look through the driver's side window before
walking away. Under hypnosis, the witness was able to help create a composite
sketch of the woman. When shown to the carpet layer. He thought the
sketch resembled the shorter of the two blonde women he'd seen, though it could
not be conclusively confirmed if they were the same person, since the corvette was
parked across three spaces and the parking lights were on. Many of Lester's fellow
officers suspected that he was planning to meet someone, as it was common practice
for cops to park in such a fashion for meetups so that no one would
sneak up on them. Lester's police badge and his wallet were found in his
glove compartment, though his car keys were missing. Even though Lester owned two
guns and usually carried at least one of them while he was off duty,
he left both of his guns at home that night. That is a little
bit odd to me and indicates either this is an informant or someone he's meeting
up with that he believes there's zero risk with right that someone maybe he's been
working with for years, or it is something like you were saying, Jules,
Maybe he's waiting to meet up with someone who he's getting to know that
he wants to take on a date, that he wants to follow up a
phone conversation with something that's platonic, that's romantic. But if it's something related
to his job, I feel like even an informant that you had a good
rapport with, wouldn't you bring a gun just for backup, knowing they're tied
to an underworld you're trying to learn more about maybe he's just he's thinking it's
a woman if it was a contact. Sometimes people will underestimate women. A
woman won't shoot me, when in this case it could very well be that
a woman did murder him. So at the outset, there was speculation that
Lester's murder might have been connected with a high profile investigation he had recently been
involved with. Three months earlier, Lester was one of multiple officers assigned to
perform surveillance on a building in the Mission District which was suspected of being a
brothel, as there were rumors that it was the site of a sex trafficking
ring involving underage girls, and some of its patrons were police officers and city
officials. The alleged owner of this brothel was Patrick Roberts, and on at
least two occasions, Lester and his partner, Chuck Lofgren, watched Roberts as
he switched his operation to a different building. Lofgren would later say that he
believed he and Lester had their covers blown before their assignment ended. On April
the thirtieth, the brothel was finally raided and a total of fourteen people were
indicted, six of whom were involved in running the operation, and eight of
whom were patrons. This bus turned into a major story because of two of
the patrons who were arrested, Patrick Miyagishima, as San Francisco police officer and
Roger Boas. A prominent political figure. Boas had been the chairman of the
California Democratic Party and was San Francisco's Chief administrative officer for nine years. After
serving that position under two different mayors, Boas launched a campaign to run for
mayor himself in nineteen eighty seven, though he ultimately lost. However, one
of the teenage sex workers from the brothel recognized Boas from his campaign poster and
said he had been frequenting the brothel for three years under the name George.
Boas was charged with nineteen counts of statutory rape, and in October of nineteen
eighty eight, he agreed to plead guilty to seven of these charges in exchange
for the other twelve being dismissed. He was sensed to six months of community
service and received a one hundred thousand dollars fine. Who privilege, Yeah,
that's really really maddening, you know, Back in the eighties and nineties and
even Honestly, even today, when you're talking about sex work and you look
at the women and men who are being trafficked and doing sex work, a
lot of them are not doing that voluntarily, or they feel desperate, or
they've been convinced that they're you know, they have to do that line of
work. Some voluntarily do it, and that's that's great, but not all
of them are. And so here you're talking about children, which means children
cannot consent to sex with another individual. It's just not in our legal code.
That's just not how it works. So he sexually abuses these underage girls
and he gets charged with seven counts. He says, I'm guilty, and
he does communities. Yep. Not surprised at all that someone who's such a
high profile politician would get off with a slap on the wrist. Oh that
makes me furious. It also makes me think though, that you know,
he gets this call and he's going to meet up with somebody. Is it
possible that officers who were not involved in this sting, but maybe were really
close to Patrick or someone who might have been really close to Roger BoA's,
that they are getting retaliation for this bust. Because remember another officer is going
to say, hey, I think our cover was blown. I think they
knew who we were doing this operation. Well, the weird part about that
is that even though Lester participated in the surveillance, it's not like he was
the person orchestrating this whole bust. Like he didn't really play much of a
role. He just kind of watched over these people, but he didn't actually
personally make the rests. So it just seems kind of weird that they would
decide to murder him in retaliation but not go after anyone else who organized this
whole thing to begin with. Even though Boas got a slap on the wrist,
I will say that he must have been pretty pissed that he had one
hundred thousand dollars fine. That's a pretty hefty fine, especially for the time.
He probably was pretty angry because we really don't know what the motive is
here, So it seems like he would be somebody who you could point a
finger at and go, he's got a reason to be really angry at everybody
involved, And maybe for some reason, somebody just fingered Lester as being somebody
who was responsible in some capacity, and it was just sort of like I
need somebody to stand in to take out my rage upon That is true,
that maybe someone gave him bad information and made it sound like it was Lester's
idea to organize this whole bus to begin with, even though it wasn't true,
and he just wound up feeling Boas's wrath even though he didn't really do
all that much well. There were rumors that several San Francisco police officers had
been patrons of the brothel. Patrick Miyagishima was the only one who wound up
being indicted. He pled guilty to having unlawful sex with a miner and received
a one year suspended sentence, eighteen months probation, one thousand dollars fine,
and was subsequently fired from the police force. Investigators looked into the possible connection
between Miyagashima and Lester Garnier, but the only links they could find were very
tenuous. Lester had been a reserve officer at Broadmoor Village in nineteen eighty,
while Yagashima was working for a security service in Broadmoor at the same time.
There were also rumors that both men had once attended a stag party being held
by a Broadmoor Police officer Yagashima was supposedly accompanied by two sex workers from the
brothel when he attended the party, but nothing could be substantiated. Of course,
police explored the possibility that Leuser's murder may have been retaliation for his involvement
in the sting operation which brought down the sex trafficking ring. The ring leader,
Patrick Roberts, had fled the area before the raid of the took place,
and some people suspected that he'd been tipped off. Roberts wound up being
captured in Oklahoma on July ninth, the very day before Lester was killed,
but in the end, investigators were unable to find any substantial connection between this
case and Lester's murder. All right, guys, not to beat a dead
horse, But if we now pay attention to what the police officer was punished
with for unlawful sex with a minor, he received a one year suspended sentence,
eighteen months probation, and one thousand dollars fine. I still ask this
question in twenty twenty three. Shouldn't people who have the resources and in upbringing
that allows them to be in these positions, they have the access to resources
and obviously financial stability and things like that. Don't we hold them even more
accountable when they're in these positions of power and authority and respect that should be
protecting people, politicians, police officers like I just feel like there should be
even harsher punishments for putting yourself in a position where the community is supposed to
trust you and you abuse children. It makes me very frustrated. Secondly,
when we're talking about this idea, that is it linked directly to especially like
Robert's being arrested the day before, I'm gonna have to say that's too quick
for a murder, for higher plot to be planned in retaliation for an arrest.
Clearly he was on the run and he knew his business had been thwarted
and had been under uncovered. But I just don't think that Roberts would directly
have the ability on the run to say, Hey, just happens that I've
organized this killing for the day after I end up getting arrested. Yeah,
it does seem like a tenuous connection. And even though Lester's cover was supposedly
blown, I'm not sure if Patrick Roberts knew him personally, But Jeffery right
about Miyagi Shima because he was the only one in dieted and you'd like to
think that police would want to make an exam apple out of them and say
this conduct is not acceptable and give him a harsher sentence. But no,
didn't serve any prison time. But at least he was fired from the police
force. Sadly, there are some cases where police officers do these hainous things
and don't even lose their jobs. So at least he did get fired.
Oh for sure. It just imaddens me that people who you know, you
look at offenders who get punished the harshest, and they're often from situations and
backgrounds, not that their actions are acceptable or any better or less accountability should
be there, but you see these incredibly harsh punishments when you have people who
are in these situations where they're raised in crime and that's part of the lifestyle
that they're raised in from child from their childhood. And then you have someone
who's a police officer and a politician, they're like, hey, you're okay,
you're good. We're going to fill the prisons with these people that don't
have resources to ever get better, and we're just gonna make it worse.
However, there were a number of odd things which trouble the Guargnier family following
Lester's death. One of the items taken from his house was a s Aalen's
videotape hidden in his home office. The exact details of what was on that
tape have never been made public, though some sources claim it was recorded during
an undercover stakeout operation from a hotel in Fisherman's Wharf. On previous occasions,
the FBI had used this hotel to perform surveillance on a restaurant which had been
managed by a member of the Gambino crime family. Shortly before his death,
Lester bumped into a friend of his on the street and allegedly told him that
he was quote unquote working on an undercover case that was big and involved well
known people. There was nothing overly suspicious in Lester's background which could shed any
light on why someone would want to murder him, though a check of his
phone records would reveal that he had been in contact with some massage parlors,
which he apparently frequented during his off duty hours. However, Lester's family did
not take this as a sign that he was involved in anything illegal, as
he often pursued leeds during his off duty hours and may have been scouting these
locations for a future undercover of ICE operation unless someone confirmed that he was doing
these visits in a nefarious way. He really was a vice officer who was
specializing in sex work and these sex rings and sex trafficking, and so I
can see him making stops at these massage parlors and trying to see if there's
any kind of indication of danger or illegal business practices happening there. Or maybe
even he had contacts and people who would give him information about bigger fish to
fry in that network, right that maybe there's trade offs when you're doing these
vice operations where you don't take out the low level people, you get information
from low level people, offer them different rights and access to immunity and things
like that, and you use them to help you build cases against bigger people.
So if he was that passionate about his career, I could see him
making stops. It is a little suspicious, but I would need someone to
say, oh, man, yeah, he was invol and some legal behavior.
You should check into this. It could have led to his death before
I assumed he too was involved in and engaged in sexual misconduct while on the
job or as a police officer. That's what I was thinking too, because
we know how charming he was and how he ingratiated himself with the sex workers
that he arrested that they would be going to jail, but they would still
have really great things to say about him. Perhaps he built up a rapport
with certain people at these massage parlors, and like you said, Ash would
go in and he would use them for contacts and get information on the types
of people that were frequenting the massage parlor, because I'm sure that those girls
had a lot of information to share. And I'm with you and that,
Yeah, it does sound suspicious, but I just don't think that we can
make any assumptions because everything we've heard about his character thus far, he sounds
like a really stand up guy. Oh yeah, Like they did a thorough
check into his background following his murder and if he had anything dirty, if
he had any misconduct in his background, police never found it, So I
really don't think that he was going to all of these massage parlors for nefarious
purposes. Investigators explored the angle the corrupt cops may have been responsible for Lester's
death. A bullet casing was found at the scene belonging to a rare,
distinctive AMT three eighty caliber semi automatic pistol, which was sometimes used as a
backup gun by police officers. At least ten officers who owned the same type
of gun were asked to submit their weapons for ballistic tests. They all cooperated
and none of their guns matched the murder weapon. Female police officers who resembled
the blonde woman seen in the parking lot were also investigated, but none of
them stood out as potential suspects. This case would be featured on Unsolved Mysteries
in February of nineteen eighty nine, but failed to generate any substantial leads.
Over the years, the San Francisco PD would express their displeasure with the investigation
by the Walnut Creek Police Department, who jurisdiction on the case and declined numerous
offers for assistance from the sfpds most seasoned homicide detectives. Due to this scandalous
nature of the recent sting operation, the Walnut Creek PD was apparently fearful a
potential corruption within the SFPD and wanted to handle the investigation into Lesser's murder on
their own. That makes sense. I can respect the idea that you say.
Listen, I'm a little anxious. This man is a police officer.
He had just uncovered crimes that police officers were involved in. Were a little
worried there could be some covering up going on if it happens to involve other
officers in the shooting. However, I'm assuming Wanna Creek Police Department is a
pretty small police department. Is that right? It's not really that small,
like it's the city I trying to remember. I think it's between sixty and
seventy thousand at that time. But it also does not have a lot of
experience dealing with violent crime. So what have been logical for them to bring
in more furious homicide detectives to help them with this case. But it just
sounds like they were just very distrustful and did not want the San Francisco PD
interfering with their investigation. So if that's the case, So that's what I'm
thinking too, Robin. But I'm thinking, if that's the case, and
you're able to express, we don't trust you to help us but we may
not be equipped to investigate a crime of this level, or we're kind of
out of our depths here to have the wherewithal to say you, I can't
trust you. But there's plenty of other resources that they likely could have tapped
into when they have a law enforcement officer who was killed and they need assistance.
I feel like they could have reached elsewhere if it was San Francisco Police
Department that they didn't trust. In nineteen ninety eight, shortly before the ten
year anniversary of the crime, the San Francisco Police chief publicly announced that they
were reopening the case. In November of that year, there was an odd
development when a police inspector named Vincent Rippetto filed a civil suit against one of
his fellow officers, Robert Gueenan. Queenon had assisted in an internal affairs probe
against Repetto and found witnesses who testified that Repetto had illegally bet on sporting events.
Ripetto eventually pled no contest to these charges and received a suspension and a
transfer, but claimed that in order to convince witnesses to Testifyqueenon had told them
that Repetto was responsible for the murder of Lester Garnier. Ripetto had been working
in the same vice unit as Lester at the time of his death, but
Repetto denied any involvement in the crime, and his lawsuit alleged that he was
a victim of defamation and slander. Queenan maintained that Repetto's claims were false and
that he never actually made this accusation against him. The lawsuit was eventually dropped,
but the official position from the police department was that Repetto was never considered
a suspect in Lester's murder. So let me clarify what you were saying,
Robin. You're saying that when he's being charged with these other possibly illegal sports
betting and things like that. He then turns a lawsuit against one of the
internal affairs officers, saying you're defaming me by saying I had something to do
with Lester's murder. Or did the officer actually come forward and say he had
something to do with Lester's murder. It's not really clear to me and stuff,
because I don't know if Gweenan had any information or evidence that Repetta was
actually involved in Lester's murder. It could have been just kind of a petty
thing or something like that, or maybe it's like, well, he's doing
these other crimes now, maybe I'll just try to pin this unsolved murder on
them. But like I said, the police never found any evidence that Repetto
was involved, so I don't know where this information came from. The investigation
continued to remain at a standstill until a surprising announcement was made in June of
two thousand and eight. An unidentified partial fingerprint which did not belong to Lester
had been found on top of the Corvette's passenger side window, but it initially
could not be matched to anyone. However, after two decades, it was
officially an announced that the print belonged to Catherine Kons, a forty four year
old Scottish and national who'd been living in the United States since nineteen eighty five.
The match had originally been made in two thousand and two, when the
print was sent to the FBI for analysis, and investiators would spend the next
six years exploring Kons's background and attempting to build a case against her. By
the time this announcement was made, Kons was serving a one year sentence at
a prison in Ocala, Florida, for violating her probation on a previous cocaine
conviction. She had been living in Concord, California at the time of Lester's
murder, and originally moved to the US after becoming involved with Gregory Koons,
a U. S. Navy officer who was stationed in Scotland. When Greg
was reassigned to the Concord Naval Weapons Station, he took Catherine along with him
and they subsequently got married, allowing Catherine to obtain a green card. However,
because Greg was often shipped out to sea for extended periods of time after
and would spend a lot of time alone, and she eventually became embroiled in
drugs and turned to sex work to support a crack cocaine habit Where there was
no record of Catherine ever having been arrested in California, her marriage did go
through several rocky patches, including a bankruptcy, until Greg was reassigned to Norfolk,
Virginia and the couple moved there in nineteen ninety. Do we have any
idea which direction Lester was shot from? Was it through his passenger side or
was it from the driver's side or front of the car. Good question.
I don't think that they've ever released that information. Let me just go back
and double check. No, I just said he was shot at close range,
just once in the head and once in the abdomen, but they didn't
say where the shots came from. Well, what's interesting is, I mean,
as convincing as it is that there's this miscellaneous fingerprint and then it's linked
to this criminal life career criminal that's a foreign national. It's super sexy and
spyworthy. But if you think about him being a vice officer and her being
involved in illegal activity, doesn't it make sense that there's a potential he pulled
up, rolled down a window, and at one point or another she leaned
against his car and gave him information. I mean, there's other ways that
her fingerprint could have been placed on top of that car without her being there
that evening. Well, yeah, I could I could believe that that maybe
it was left there on a previous occasion. But we also have the witness
who saw someone matching Koontz's description, a blonde woman in her twenties, so
which does seem like a coincidence. So I do think there is a good
chance that Koontz was seen and was in the parking lot that night. But
of course, because we had the witness who saw two blonde women, it
adds a lot of complications to the case because who was this other woman that
Konts would have been with, Like, we don't know anything about her known
associates while she was living in California in nineteen eighty eight. Didn't the one
man who is the carpet layer, didn't he create a composite under hypnosis and
see the two women? Did he recognize koons or was he ever shown her
picture in two thousand and two. I know it's crazy, many many years
past the crime, and his recollection may not be able to register that,
but it would be worth showing him a picture of her. Yeah, I
haven't heard anything about him being shown a picture. I mean, it could
be because maybe he's dead, or maybe they just were unable to track him
down twenty years after the fact. You look at the picture and you can
kind of see the resemblance. But he has never been asked. As far
as I know, none of these witnesses have ever been asked to positively identify
any of the woman. And if any of them were kons. Now this
is where the story gets even crazier. The reason Catherine's fingerprints were in the
FBI database was because she wound up being arrested for her role in a murder
for higher plot. In nineteen ninety one, she was charged with conspiracy to
commit murder after allegedly hiring two people, John Murchison and Melinda Cooper, to
kill her husband. After moving to Norfolk, Catherine had taken a job that
it can be ui in store, and John Murchison was one of her co
workers. According to Murchison, Catherine wanted to divorce Greg, but feared she
would lose her green card status. However, since Greg had a fifteen thousand
dollars life insurance policy, Catherine decided to murder him instead, and enlisted Murchison's
help with finding someone to do it. They wound up recruiting Melinda Cooper,
a seventeen year old runaway whom Catherine had befriended, but their attempts at murdering
Greg proved unsuccessful. While Cooper and Murchison were both found guilty and sent to
prison, Catherine wound up being acquitted when she went on trial. Believe it
or not. One of the main reasons the jury voted not guilty was because
Greg had testified on Catherine's behalf. Greg expressed his belief that Catherine's two alleged
accomplices were lying about her involvement, and he felt there was no way she
attempted to murder him. After the trial, Catherine and Greg remained together and
moved to Florida, but the marriage didn't last much longer and they divorced in
nineteen eighty two. Catherine went through an additional marriage and divorced with another man,
and continued to run into trouble with the law, including two arrests for
sex work and an arrest for cocaine possession in two thousand and six, for
which she received a sense of probation and community service, but after failing a
drug test and failing to complete her community service, Kootz was given a one
year prison sentence for violating her probation. When Kootz was released from prison,
she was immediately picked up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and to poured
it back to Scotland. Because of her conviction, poor Greg Greg truly believed
that Catherine wasn't involved. That's sweet and then they hadn't got divorced anyway.
I'm sure those were some fun arguments behind closed doors. She didn't kill them,
yeah right, I mean, at least it didn't work for sure,
and she definitely had nothing to do with it. Poor guy. It is
interesting, though, I mean, she has a troubled past and she's integrated
here. It seems like she's able to easily be friend people, easily get
people to do what she wants, to manipulate them, to convince them to
be her partner in either crime or life, and so it doesn't seem like
she really struggles to have any kind of relationship connections. Do we know when
she was possibly seen in that parking lot and there's another blonde present, did
she have known associates at the time that can be linked back to that or
was it almost impossible to link Koon's and her whereabouts directly to California at the
time. We really don't know all that much because it sounds like Greg because
he was in the Navy, he was out to see a lot, so
Catherine had a lot of time alone, so she would that's I think when
she developed her cocaine habit, her crack cocaine habit, but I don't believe
she was ever arrested in California, so we really don't have any information about
the kind of people she was associating with at that time. But talking about
how she allegedly recruited this seventeen year old Belinda Cooper to kill her husband,
for all we know, have been a similar situation with this other blonde woman
in the parking lot, where perhaps she got this person to help her kill
Lester. I find it really interesting that. Okay, so he doesn't believe
that she was involved in the murder for higher plot, but he does know
that while they were married. I'm assuming he knows. Maybe he doesn't correct
me if I'm wrong that she had an active crack cocaine habit and was engaged
in sex work. But yet somehow thinks it's impossible that she could have done
that. I mean, if she has a substance use disorder, what she
would have done at the time during her active addiction isn't necessarily representative of who
she is, But since we have a little more information on her, it
just might be who she is. It sounds like she could potentially be a
pretty manipulative person. Whether she's under the influence of drugs, alcohol or not.
But yeah, It's like, even if I really love my spouse,
if she was being put on trial for hiring people to kill me, I
would just kind of err on the side of caution. I would just be
way too paranoid to testify in her behalf and get back together with her.
You'd have to really trust the person to think that, Okay, they're going
to invest this time and energy and all of this money into prosecuting your spouse
and you're still going to believe that they're being falsely accused. I think you
Yeah, like you said, err on the side of caution and go m
maybe they might have done it well. Even though Kontz's fingerprint had been found
at Lester Garnier's murder scene and she bore a resemblance to one of the blonde
women seen in the parking lot that night, the authorities believed there was insufficient
evidence to charge Kon's with the crime. On three separate occasions, contracst to,
county prosecutors declined investigator's requests to file charges against Koons because even though the
print placed her at the scene, there was no evidence to prove she actually
pulled the trigger and shot Lester, and, like Ashley said, does it
a actually placed you at the scene because it could have been there from days
earlier. In addition, the eyewitness sightings of multiple blonde women in the mall
parking lot led to speculation that one or two other people were involved in the
crime. This is what prompted investigators to publicly announce the fingerprint match to Catherine
Koon's in two thousand and eight and offer a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
reward, as they hoped this might compel someone to come forward with new information.
Following Kuntz's deportation, Lester's sister, Margot Garnier, said that she planned
to travel to Scotland to confront Koontz about her brother's murder, but I'm not
sure if this ever came to fruition and sadly, both of Lester's parents have
since passed away. While no tangible connection has been found between Lester and Coons,
Margot has stated that her family were regular customers at a restaurant in Concord
where Coons briefly worked as a waitress, so it's possible that their past might
have crossed there. In two thousand and nine, Coons was found to be
living at a hostel in Manchester, England, under her maiden name Overend.
She denied having any involvement in Lester's murder, and her current whereboats are unknown.
Thus far, police have been unable to obtain additional evidence to implicate Coons,
but they still consider her to be the prime suspect. However, there
are still a number of puzzling questions. Who was the second blonde woman seen
seen in the shopping center parking lot on the night of the murder. Why
did Lester counsel a meet up with his best friend in order to travel there.
If Catherine Coons was the killer, what was her motive? Unfortunately,
after more than thirty five years, these questions continue to remain unanswered, and
the murder of Lester Garnier is still unsolved. So I guess she could say
the path went chili. Okay, so I should know this. But is
there a database of ballistics or shellcase scenes or bullet striations that they collect from
evidence? And they compile those because if there is, that gun likely traveled
between other criminals, not that you would be able to link it back to
the criminal who fired it that evening, but you might be able to connect
it back to a network of criminals who would be willing to say it wasn't
me, I got it from this person. Wasn't me, I got it
from this person. I took it from this house, right, And it
could be the gun could be traced back even years later. I honestly don't
know. I haven't heard of such a thing, but I'm guessing there isn't
because I think a lot more murders would be solved that they were just able
to enter ballistics information or shell casing's information into a database and match them up.
Okay, well, then one of our very tech savvy teens or young
adults listening right now needs to get on that as a crime changing new technology,
please. And it depends on the type of criminal too, how sophisticated
they are with forendsic countermeasures, if they know anything about ballistics, and if
they have the funds available to be able to invest in multiple weapons. If
you were planning on doing a murder, I would think you would use a
clean gun, a gun that's never been used in the commission of any other
crime, and once you completed that or you've committed that murder that you would
then dispose of that gun, so you may not be able to link that
gun to anything else because they may have bought it for the express purpose of
murdering Lester Garnier. Okay, guess what, guys, there's already something there.
It just doesn't get used all the time. Like all the national databases,
right, it relies on reporting, and and you're going to see an
over reporting by certain types of law enforcement agencies based on size and resources and
not others. But there is a national let's see, it's called the NIST
Ballistics tool Mark Research Database that is managed by the United States Department of Justice,
but it says that not all departments report to it, so it doesn't
create a holistic law look at records. I can see how it could be
unreliable because you remember our minisode we did last month about the murder of Morris
Davis and how an innocent man was falsely accused that his gun was used in
the murder because they botched the ballistic tests. So, yes, that's what
I think could happen. Oh my goodness, it's crazy. Yeah, it's
all based on you know, you have to have human analysis and things in
addition to the technology. But man, if there was a requirement to report
all that and we did have all the networked law enforcement agencies sharing all information,
you really would see criminals having a pretty difficult time getting away with what
they do. So I think this would be a good time to bring an
end to part one. But join us next week as we present part two
of our series with the murder of Lester Garnier. Robin, do you want
to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Uh?
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and
we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also
send out stickers and signed thank you cards to anyone who signed up with us
on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also
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where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved
Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing
in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured
in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a
commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor,
then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you
know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashty Patreon, so there's early ad
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so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the
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next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call
for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy