Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
murder of Lester Garnier. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on
what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this case involves the
murder of a police officer. It's thirty year old Lester Garnier, who worked
as a vice top for the San Francisco PD and he was found shot to
death inside his car at a shopping center parking lot in the town of Walnut
Creek, which is just outside San Francisco. But the weird thing is is
that no one knows what Lester was doing there, because he was planning to
go out for a movie with his best friend but then called him up and
said that he couldn't come because he was running late. And he had also
received two phone calls at his house that his parents witnessed, and they said
that one of the callers was a woman. So it seems apparent that for
some reason, Lester was asked to come meet someone at that shopping center parking
lot and wound up being shot to death. We had two witnesses who reported
seeing two blonde women at the scene, one of whom was climbing out of
Lester's car, but they could not be identified, and there was speculation that
his murder might have been involved with a recent bust of a sex trafficking ring,
where a bunch of people, including a city mayoral candidate and a San
Francisco police officer, were busted for statutory rape for their actions against some underage
sex workers, though neither of them ever saw prison time. They looked at
the possibility that Lester's murder could have been connected to this bust, but they
couldn't find any tangible connection, and the case remained cold for another two decades
until it was announced in two thousand and eight that a fingerprint found on the
windshield of Lestra's car had been matched to a Scottish national named Catherine Koons.
She did have a criminal history. She had been accused of trying to hire
two people to murder her husband, though she wound up being acquitted at her
trial. She also had issues with crack cocaine and had been arrested a few
times for sex work, but they just could not find any real connection between
her and Lester Garnie, even though she had been living in California during the
nineteen eighties. After she finished serving a sense for violating her probation, she
was deported back to her native Scotland, but investigators declined to file charges against
her because even though her fingerprint was found on the windshield, they just cannot
figure out a motive. They couldn't actually prove that she was the one who
pulled the trigger which killed Lester, So as of right now, she's believed
to still be in Europe somewhere, and this case has remained unsolved for over
thirty five years now. During the intro to our last episode, I mentioned
that when I first covered this case on the Trail Went Cold five years ago,
the whole thing turned out to be a much bigger rabbit hole than expected,
and I believe it's one of the more underrated cases featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
I hate to say this, but I think the main reason the Unsolved
Mystery segment never really stuck with me for a long time is because, well,
it's a tad cheesy. Instead of their usual creepy music score over the
reenactments, the segment plays saxophone music, which often makes this feel like one
of those erotic late night movies you'd watch on cinemax during the eighties and nineties
rather than an unsolved mysteries episode, But that's a minor nitpick. Lester's murder
got quite a bit of media coverage in the Bay Area, and for two
decades there was a lot of speculation that his death was the result of a
cover up and he was killed because he had stumbled onto something big involving corrupt
cops and city officials. But after it was announced that the sole piece of
physical evidence from the murder scene was linked to this Scottish national, Catherine Koons,
it just through the whole case for a loop. We know that Coons
lived in Concord at the time the murder took place, was involved in drugs
and sex work, but other than that, there's just nothing to connect her
to Lester Garnier. She later became embroiled in an unrelated murder for higher plot
involving her husband, but that crime sounded more personal in nature and a far
cry from killing a police officer. The only thing we know for certain is
that Koot somehow had to be involved in Lester's murder, because I can't think
of an innocent explanation for why her fingerprint would be on the window of his
corvette, but it's still unclear if she was the one who personally pulled the
trigger and shot Lester, as there's a lot to suggest that she wasn't alone
on this. Since Lester was an undercover vice officer and Kootz was a sex
worker during this time period, the most logical explanation would seem to be that
he was shot to death while attempting a bus which went horribly wrong. However,
the whole thing seems a lot more complicated than that. I would think
that if Koontz was involved in a sex working group, if she was a
part of a brothel that he had busted, or if he had been part
of a group of women that had been busted by him, that one of
those women. Remember, he was known by the women he arrested as being
kind and charming and very respectful, and had actually been praised for the fact
that citizens and those he arrested did not complain about him, they actually praised
him. I feel like someone if they were aware of her actions or whoever
did kill Lester, I feel like that community you still might have had somebody
come forward and share information had it been something that they were aware of right
if it was someone within their group that had murdered him in revenge, because
there was a love of him, in respect for him, in his position,
even amongst those he was getting in trouble just to play devil's advocate.
It is possible that maybe she was giving information to him at an earlier time
and she leaned over and touched that window, because like DNA, unless that
fingerprint is literally in blood, you don't know when it was put there.
We don't know how frequently he washed his vehicle, And just because there was
a blonde woman who resembled her doesn't mean that it was necessarily Coons. It
could have been another blonde woman who had a similar description. We know how
problematic eyewitness identification is. That's not to say that it was innocent, but
it's to say that there's a potential that it could be. Oh, there
absolutely is a potential that could be. It makes sense when you talk about
it's on the top of his car. It's almost as if you pulled up
you said, hey, Coons, get over here, and she goes,
yeah, what do you want, Lester, And she like leans over and
she's talking to him, and then he gets any information he wants from her
and he drives off. That's an easy explanation for why her fingerprint could be
there. Also, she could have been standing there and killed him or been
with someone else who killed him. So it's either or. Yes, she
could have been there, but there's no way with just that fingerprint, like
you said you was, it wasn't a fingerprint in blood, So we don't
know when that was placed there. We just know she was in contact with
him at some point. And that's the thing is, she was never considered
to be a suspect until the fingerprint match. I've seen nothing to indicate that
they got her name at all during the original investigation. And like you said,
Lester was a very well liked person among all the local sex workers.
And you think that if anyone had any information about how this other woman named
Catherine Koontz had a grudge or a vendetta against him, that one of these
people would have told the police. But it doesn't sound like her name was
brought up at all until they got the fingerprint match. But before we delve
into this case any further, we have to discuss Lester himself. During our
research, we've read nothing but glowing things about Lester as both a police officer
and as a person, and it seems like no one had a bad word
to say about him. He was a very devoted son who moved his parents
in with him once he got the money to purchase a nice house. He
was apparently so likable that many of the sex workers year rested couldn't even bring
themselves to hate him. Lester's record during his eight year police career seems spotless,
and it doesn't sound like the investigation into his death was able to uncover
anything suspicious in his background. Given that he was a police officer who had
his own house, swimming pool, and corvette, and was also using a
car phone during an era where that type of thing was in common, it
would be tempting to believe that Lester had to be involved in something dirty,
but he was apparently able to afford all that stuff on his own by working
multiple jobs. I know they found evidence that Lester may have been frequenting massage
parlors in his off hours, but that's hardly damning, and again, he
may have simply been checking out these places as research for a future undercover job.
So it is compelling to brainstorm a scenario where Lester is the ultimate straight
arrow crop who's attempting to fight back against corruption in his department, but gets
in way over his head and winds up being killed for it. At the
outset, the Walnut Creek Police Department apparently had these same thoughts, which is
why they did not want the San Francisco PD assisting them with their investigation into
the murder, given that one of their own was killed. Some members of
the SFPD believe the higher apps could have pushed much harder to resolve these jurisdictional
issues and get them involved in the investigation, which is why they couldn't help,
but speculate that someone in power didn't want the crime to be solved.
This isn't meant to tear apart the job the Walnut Creek PD did on the
case, as they didn't have a lot of evidence to work with and probably
did the best they could given the circumstances. But Walnut Creek was an affluent
city which usually only had to deal with an average of one murder per year
at that time, and the SFPD had some seasoned homicide investigators who might have
been able to contribute something. I definitely think it's valid the concerns that Walnut
Creek PD had. You have a vice officer who is part of of an
organization that just brought down some pretty nefarious acts that included other fellow police officers.
Every police department has the bad eggs, just like any other career does.
And so when you're talking about an officer who's involved in the high profile
cases that he's doing undercover work that he's possibly contributed to busts that involve fellow
officers, I can see the weariness of the Walnut Police Department, Walnut Creek
Police Department, But if they thought at all they were over their head,
you have to reach out for other resources. I don't know what else they
could have helped with. I think it is powerful to say, what did
we know at the time. You had an eyewitness who was a carpet layer
who several days after the Fourth of July says, I didn't pay attention to
these loud noises because I figured it was just fireworks. Well, he didn't
get a very good look. He saw two blonde women, and unfortunately that
is a very large percentage of the population being blonde women in their twenties and
thirties. He wasn't able to provide much detail the cars, very very basic
descriptions that he was able to give. And so because of that, like
you said, what else was there to know at the time? Are we
missing surveillance cameras? Were those available back in the late eighties in that area?
Are we missing information from other eyewitnesses that were simply never asked and might
not have known what they saw? So, yes, there could have been
things that were missed, But this is one of those cases where there's a
massive question mark of we just don't have much of anything to go on.
As you know, Lestern's murder came on the heels of major bust of a
brothel housing a teenage sex trafficking ring, which led to the indictment of several
people, including SFPD officer Patrick Miyagishima and political figure Roger Boas. However,
they found nothing to tie these two events together, and I'm inclined to think
they're not related. If Lester played a significant role in the sting operation and
personally arrested some of the people involved, that would be one thing, But
it doesn't sound like his role was anything more than performing a stakeout on the
brothel on a couple of occasions. At best, Lester was a pretty minor
figure in this investigation, and I don't see why anyone would specifically target him
for retribution. I know that Lester's partner, Chuck Lofgren, thought their cover
was blown during their surveillance in the brothel, but if that's the case,
why would they kill Lester and not Chuck. What would be the point of
killing a vice cop who really didn't do anything more than watch some buildings for
a few days. It is interesting that the head of this sex trafficking ring,
Patrick Roberts, was apprehended in Oklahoma, only one day before Lester was
killed, but I think that's probably nothing more than the coincidence. And as
for Patrick Miyakishima, there really is no evidence that he and Lester even knew
each other, and if the closest connection between them is some unsubstantiated rumors that
the two men once attended the same stag party together years beforehand, then that's
pretty thin. I mean, I don't completely discount the possibility that Lester may
have stumbled upon something on his job which put his life at risk, but
I don't think it had anything to do with this particular case. And when
you think about the fact that Patrick was a fellow police officer and at one
point was a security guard in a same area where Lester worked, you have
to remember that people who are in security and law enforcement, they tend to
have the same schedules. They tend to really stick close to, like circles,
and so yeah, of course they attended a similar party, they ran
in similar social groups, and so I don't find that to be ironic.
The one thing that really throws me for a loop is that he gets these
calls, one of them is a female, and he cancels the plans with
his friend, drives out and parks in a manner that's similar to the way
that police officers are trained to park, so that you know they're not backed
into an area where people can't see them. And he does not have either
of his weapons with him. To me, that indicates this idea that he
felt ultimately safe, And for someone who is a vice officer, even when
he's off duty, I feel like there would be the heightened sense of I
never know, I never know about people I don't know who could approach us.
But he did not have any weapon on him. To me, that
screamed volumes and is one of the biggest reasons that I'm saying, was he
trying to meet up with someone involved in one of his cases, because if
he was, I just don't think someone trained in that series about their job
would go without a service weapon. And they said that even when he was
off duty, he would carry one of his guns, like even if he
was just going out to the movies or something, he would just carry it
on them instinctually. So it makes you wonder did he just simply forget his
gun or did he have reasons for not bringing you with them. The one
thing which seemed to make Lester's family suspicious is that the police found a surveillance
videotape in his home office following his death, and they've never disclosed its contents.
Well, it is a bit odd that Lester would be keeping a tape
like that in his house. It's possible the police kept quiet about what was
on it because it contained sensitive information about an ongoing investigation which they did not
want to jeopardize. This doesn't necessarily mean Lester was killed because he had secretly
filmed something which was going to blow the lid off corruption. Of course,
we also have the business from nineteen ninety eight, where former vice cop Vincent
Repetto filed a lawsuit against a fellow officer who allegedly told people that Repetto had
murdered Lester. It doesn't sound like this lead went anywhere, and it's probably
nothing more than a bunch of smoke, since investigators never found any reason to
consider Repetto as to be a suspect, both before and after the lawsuit.
But even if you completely discount the idea that corrupt cops or people in power
were responsible for Lester's murder, there's still a number of unanswered questions about how
we wound up in the parking lot of the Wood Creek shopping Center. To
begin with, is it possible that he had developed a friendship that someone maybe
getting out of sex work, or maybe someone he had actually helped and had
an affinity for. Is it possible that he was friends with someone that he
thought, you know, we're beyond the criminal component, he was loyal to
her in helping her recover from a lifestyle like that and was meeting up with
her. Or are we aware that one of the phone calls from a quote
woman. Were his parents aware that he was starting to date or talk to
somebody, Well, we're going to talk in a few moments. How Lester
had recently gotten over a breakup, So I'm not sure if he was involved
in a series relationship at this point, but that is a good idea here
that maybe it's someone where he arrested this person but he thought, well,
I don't want to enter them into the system. I'll give them a second
chance and maybe I'll help them get them out of this sex work before they
have to spend time in jail. So it could be one of those things
where he developed a close relationship with one of the people he arrested and was
going to meet them, but for whatever reason, they just decided to kill
him instead. I mean, it sort of makes sense because if you think
back before there was dating apps, the way that people would often meet people
would be at work, and if you're a vice officer, you might end
up meeting somebody that you think, oh my gosh, they're in this lifestyle
and what can I do to help them? And you could start off being
friends and it could develop into something more, and it might not be something
that he'd shared with other people in his life. So that seems completely plausible.
Ash Leicester was off duty on the night of his death, and I
think the fact, like we just said, that he left both of his
guns at home discounts the possibility that he was going to Walnut Creek to perform
a bust. This is one reason that I believe the rumors about Lester working
on something big before he was murdered or overblown. If he was involved in
anything which could potentially jeopardize his life, I think he'd be carrying a gun
on him at all times for protection, regardless of whether he was on duty
or not. Some of Lester's his fellow officers made note of the way his
vehicle was parked across three parking spots, which is what cops sometimes do when
they're being extra cautious and don't want to be approached from behind. But if
he was secretly working undercover, it's still very odd that Lester would keep his
badge in his Corvette's glove compartment but not bothered to take either of his weapons
along. What we do know is that Lester was planning to go to the
movies with his best friend that night, but canceled at the last minute without
much of an explanation. Before he left his house, he received two phone
calls, so it's reasonable to assume that one or both of these calls paved
the way for Lester showing up in the shopping center parking lot. Now,
Lester's father, Anthony Garnier, answered one of the calls and claimed the person
on the phone was a woman, But I'm not so sure she would have
been. Catherine Koontz Cootes apparently had a very noticeable Scottish accent, but I
don't believe mister Garnier ever mentioned hearing anything like that in the caller's voice.
However, since multiple blonde women were seen in the parking lot later that night,
it's still possible that the female caller was involved in the murder, oh
for sure. And you know that if the father had heard any kind of
discernible accent, or there had been any kind of verbal lisp or anything that
he would have reported that it would have been ingrained in his mind that this
is that call that my son was on before he left my home and then
he was murdered. So we know it. You know, ninety nine percent
was not Coon's on the other end of the phone. But like you said,
there was another blonde woman supposedly seen near his car when he was shot
or possibly shot, and so could have easily been her, could have been
someone else setting him up knowing that these two women would go meet him at
the car. So and it also, I mean, who knows, Maybe
it's unrelated, but that's very unlikely. But what could the female caller have
said to Lester to compel him to drive to the shopping center. While Lester
was known for being a lady and even though he hoped to possibly get married
and have a family someday, he wasn't quite ready to settle down yet.
Lester had actually been involved in a three year relationship with a woman which was
described as being tumultuous. She was supposedly very possessive of Lester, so they
broke up less than two months before he was killed. Now, this ex
girlfriend had a pretty solid alibi, so it's very unlikely she was involved in
the murder. But given that Lester was currently single, it does open up
the possibility that he may have been looking for female companionship on the night that
he was killed. Perhaps this late night rendezvous at the shopping center had nothing
to do with Lester's police work. He was just there to meet up with
a woman who may or may not have been a sex worker, but she
wound up killing him instead. Of course, the issue with this theory is
that there's no apparent motive for this crime. Lester's wallet was in the glove
box, so robbery didn't seem to be the motive, though I suppose the
alternative explanation is that the killer planned to rob Lester, discovered he wasn't carrying
anything, and never bothered to check the glove compartment. Since Lester was driving
a Corvette and parked alone in a dark lot late at night, he could
have been an ideal target for a random perpetrator who wanted to rob him.
But I find it odd that the only item which appeared to be missing were
Lester's car keys. Why would the killer take the keys and leave the car
behind, unless perhaps there was another key on that ring which the perpetrator wanted
for some reason. Well, let me ask you this. What if they
shoot him he was shot what twice? Yeah? Okay, so let's say
they shoot him twice. He's maybe moaning or making noises, or they're just
saying listen. If there's any chance this guy's gonna survive this or is going
to be coherent. We're going to take his key so he can't drive himself
somewhere and can't leave this location, and so basically he's going to sit in
a simpty parking lot and die in the next few minutes. So we're out
of here. You know. Obviously it wasn't so remote that people weren't there,
because it's a shopping center. There's a carpet layer working, you know.
Some of those stores had lights on, so it could have been that
there's these two shots, they panic, they grab the keys, and they
run, knowing that he won't be able to get help from anyone. Yeah,
that makes sense that maybe they didn't have any interest in the car,
but they just wanted to ensure that he wouldn't be able to drive anywhere to
get help if he wasn't dead yet by that point. The biggest issue investigators
have faced since matching the fingerprint to Catherine Konz is trying to figure out any
sort of tangible connection between her and Lester. The closest like anyone could find
was that Lester and his family often ate at a restaurant where coons briefly worked
as a waitress, but that's pretty tenuous, you know. Coons went on
trial in nineteen ninety one for her alleged role in a murder for higher plot
to kill her husband, but that took place after she moved to Virginia,
and the extent of her criminal activities while living in California are a lot more
murky. It seems like one of the reasons Koontz developed a drug addiction was
because she was left home alone while her naval officer husband was away at sea
a lot of the time, and she probably turned to sex work in order
to support her habit. Since Lester's undercover work involved posing as a customer in
order to arrest sex workers, it's certainly possible that Kotz could have crossed paths
with them. One prevalent theory is that Lester's murderer's retaliation for a prior bust
he might have made, but since Kutz had no arrest record during her time
in California, I don't think this motive would apply to her. An alternate
explanation might be that Lester was using Kootz as an informant and she convinced him
to meet her at the shopping center under the guise of supplying them with information,
but for whatever reason, she wound up killing him instead. It depends
on if this is If this is true, if this is really what happened,
who she would have been given information about, who would have been behind
the sting that he might have made progress on if she did give accurate information.
Remember, if she's addicted to drugs at the time, or if she
relies on this sex work to fund a drug habit, you can get pretty
desperate. So if you've agreed in reward for not in reward for going to
share information, you're not going to go to prison. You might feel very
pressured that I have to show up and I have to give information, But
if it comes at a cost of not having your drug addiction met or is
going to take down the person who supplies you with drugs, does your addiction
override that and cause you to kill the person asking you for information. It
does make me wonder though, if she would have even had any information to
supply, And that's why I wish we knew a lot more about her activities
in California and if she connected with anyone while she was working on the streets
who was dangerous. I mean, I haven't heard anything about her having a
pimp or any handler who operated, or money and stuff like that, so
it makes me wonder what she could have had to offer to Lester. But
that's why I am intrigued by your theory that perhaps Lester took a shine to
were and wanted to help her and get her out of sex work or something
like that instead of arresting her and that, but she double crossed him by
deciding to kill him. Of course, another issue is that in addition to
Koons, there may have also been one, even two other women involved in
this crime, and no one knows who they are. We have two key
eyewitness sightings from the parking lot that night, the carpet layer who heard what
was most likely gunshots before he saw two blond women walking towards separate vehicles and
driving away, and the witness who drove through the lot and saw a blonde
woman exiting Lester's corvette. But the biggest complication is figuring out the timing of
these two sightings and how close they took place to one another. During the
Unsolved Mystery segment, one of the investigators acknowledged that these two sightings may not
actually be connected to each other, and it's possible that the two blonde women
seen by the carpet layer might be two completely innocent bystanders who had no involvement
in the crime. It's also possible that three entirely different women were involved in
the murder, though when the carpet layer looked at the composite sketch of the
blonde scene exiting the corvette, he thought she might be one of the same
women he saw. However, it was dark and both witnesses saw these women
from a distance, so I'm not sure if either of them could positively identify
any of the women as Catherine. Coon's descriptions were also provided the two vehicles
the blonde drove out of the parking lot, which were a blue Toyota pickup
and a grayish white Toyota or dats in car, but it's unclear of Coons
would have had access to vehicles of that type in nineteen eighty eight. I
personally think it's too much of a coincidence that all these similar looking blonde women
were seen in the parking lot of a closed shopping center late at night around
the same time, given that her fingerprint was on the window, the blonde
steam climbing out of the corvette was probably Coons, and the carpet layer subsequently
saw her and an unidentified female accomplice. Well, this goes along with our
age old theory that eyewitnesses are problematic, not because they don't have amazing intent
and they don't you know, they're having any kind of ill intent when they're
describing what they saw. But we see here that you have two eyewitnesses.
They might actually have stories that don't line up and that you say, yes,
that looks similar to who I saw. But it's very difficult to find
distinct factors that you saw on an individual in a brief moment and then looking
at a picture and saying, yes, this is absolutely one hundred percent the
same person looking similar, maybe that's the right person. That does not really
aid investigators with any kind of momentum to move forward and try to find a
person who matches these descriptions. Even the cars weren't quite as clear as we
needed them to be when we're asking someone to nail down exactly what kind of
make and model they saw, And you also have to account for the fact
that when they originally made these sightings, there would have been nothing remarkable about
them because they didn't know that a murder had taken place. They didn't find
Lester's body till the following morning. And just think of your average night where
it's like you might see a blonde woman in a parking lot. There's just
going to be nothing out of the ordinary about it. And then the following
day here, oh, someone was killed in that same parking lot. Yes,
I remember seeing a blonde woman there, and you may place more significance
on it, even though it might not even be connected to the crime.
And that's why eyewitness identification can be very unreliable. This is a little bit
off the topic of the parking lot, but I'm just curious what both of
you think. So with regards to Koons, we know that she had an
active crack cocaine habit at the time, and she was engaged in sex work,
and we know that Boas was busted. What do we think the chances
are that those two could have been acquainted and if there was some connection between
Coon's and Boas, and maybe Boas was like, Okay, well, if
you do this job for me, I will pay you X amount of dollars
or give you this amount of drugs some kind of incentive, because even if
it was Koons, I'm just having such a hard time, like I'm struggling
with what would be the motive exactly, Like I know they didn't find any
connection between the drug bust, and I've gone over the points. How it's
kind of weird that they would target Lestra because he was just kind of a
small cog. He just did some surveillance. He didn't really orchestrate the bus
or personally arrest anybody, so I'm not sure why he would be targeted,
But yeah, I could definitely see someone if this was murder for higher like
getting someone like Kootz who had addiction issues and also a sex work. So
I personally think that like maybe Koots didn't even know who Lesterra was. He
was just kind of a hired gun. But it's just trying to figure out
who would want to kill Lester that has just led the investigation to a dead
end because, like you said, Kots doesn't seem to have a motive,
and I'm sure through the course of his term as a police officer that Lester
may have pissed some people off who could have wanted been dead, but it
just seemed surprising that they wouldn't have found someone like that during the course of
the investigation. However, the potential involvement of more than one person would make
it very difficult for the authorities to build a prosecutable case against Kuts. Even
though an unidentified fingerprint was found on the corvette window, investigators did not actually
submit it to the FBI for analysis until two thousand and two. They figured
that since the print was just a partial it was of no use. While
you could criticize this decision, keep in mind that Kots did not have a
police record until she was arrested in Virginia in nineteen ninety one, so if
they ran the print back in nineteen eighty eight, it wouldn't have made any
difference. Once the fingerprint was linked to Kut's, investigators would spend six years
thoroughly checking her background, so there was no lack of effort with trying to
build a case against Kots and uncover additional evidence implicating her in the murder.
There really isn't too much information out there about the murder for higher plot on
greg Orycoots, so I really can't come to a definitive conclusion about whether or
not Catherine was actually guilty of that crime. But man Greg must have been
the most trusting husband in the world if he was willing to testify on behalf
of the woman who was accused of hiring people to murder him. While it
helped get Catherine acquitted, it didn't exactly save their marriage. Investigators were eventually
able to track Greg down and interview him, and they came to the conclusion
that he had no knowledge or involvement in Lester's murder. For all we know,
Greg was probably away at sea at the time Lester was killed, and
since he was gone from home so much, it doesn't sound like Greg had
any insights on what sort of criminal activity his wife may have been mixed up
in during their time in California. Poor Greg just seems completely oblivious to what's
going on. You know. He marries this foreign national who the two accomplices
say told them she cannot afford to lose her green cards. She cannot lose
her ability to be here in the US. So if she could just kill
her husband, she might have the resources and be able to manipulate a way
to stay here in the United States and Greg's like, it's okay, she
would never do something like this. But while the man's off serving in our
country, she's back here. Yes, it's very difficult to be the spouse
to a military personnel service man or woman. I'm a proud daughter of a
marine, so I know the families also serve with their loved one. But
here it's like he went off to see and she went, yeah, I'm
not doing this kind of like by myself. And she went and was addicted
to drugs, was doing sex work to fund that addiction. And I don't
know that Greg really was aware of any of that. So he comes back
and of course he thinks, oh, my wife would have nothing to do
with a scheme to hurt me. She's just my sweet little wife that I
left behind. And clearly it comes to turn out that they didn't have the
relationship thought because they got divorced anyway. But kind of blows my mind that
she was almost able to live these two double lives while Greg was off at
sea. Pretty hard to hide a crack coquete addiction. You'd think that you
would come back. And not only is she going to be physically ravaged by
this, but I think her mental health is not going to be in the
same place that it was when he left. It would be pretty hard to
hide that. And although he might not have an idea of exactly what she
was into and what criminal activity she was up to, I'm sure that he
had to have a pretty good idea. Either that or he's in denial.
I mean, a lot of people who are spouses of people with substance use
disorders, you see a lot of denial. I mean I saw it when
I was at rehab, and you'd see people who really don't want to admit
that their loved one has an addiction, because then what does that say about
them? And I think then they've got to redefine the relationship and define how
they see it and themselves, and that can be an incredibly complex thing.
So there's a lot of reasons why people can go, oh, they would
never do that, because it is just too hard of a truth to admit
that to oneself, that yes, she had an addiction and she tried to
kill me. It's maybe easier for his mind at the time to just go,
no, she would never do that because that reality is much more comfortable
than the alternative. Since investigators made three unsuccessful attempts to convince prosecutors to file
murder charges against Kuns. I think they just became desperate for information when they
decided to publicly name her as a suspect in two thousand and eight and offer
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward. They probably did so out of
fear that Coons would be deported back to Scotland following her release from prison,
and sure enough, that's exactly what happened, as Ice is a totally different
government jurisdiction and will not let an ongoing murder investigation halt their deportation procedures.
You might recall an episode we released a few years ago about the nineteen eighty
two disappearing of the Solomon family, where the prime suspect, Harvey Rader,
was serving time in prison for an unrelated crime and facing deportation back to his
native England once his sentence came to an end. That compelled the authorities to
work diligently at building a case against Rader. They were able to charge him
with the family's murders before he left the country, but the problem was that
the case was very circumstantial, and Rader ultimately wound up being acquitted at his
third trial. If they had done the same thing with Catherine Kon's, there's
a good chance or trial would have had the same result and ended with her
walking free. It might seem damning that Kons's fingerprint was found at the murder
scene, but think about how a good defense attorney might have spound this a
trial. While a witness did see a woman matching Koons's description emerged from Lester's
car and looked through the driver's side window, he did not say that he
saw her carrying a murder weapon, nor could he confirm if Lester was already
dead by this point. Hypothetically, the defense could acknowledge the ko met or
stumbled across Lester in the parking lot that night in order to explain away the
fingerprint, and then claim that someone else came along and committed the murder after
Coon's already left. I don't blame you. You don't ask a DA to
take a case like this, or to really press for a case like this,
when all you have is this fingerprint, and like we've talked about,
you cannot prove when that fingerprint was left. It could have been earlier that
afternoon. It could have been that morning, it could have been a couple
days before. And Jules, like you said, who's to say she wasn't
the blonde lady who was seen by an eyewitness, but the timing was a
little bit off. And she walks away, and then someone comes up to
this abandoned corvette in the middle of this vacant parking lot and ended up shooting
the driver. Lester, I mean, think about it like this. Let's
say Coon's was there, and she's trying to give information or something, and
when she gets out of the car and walks away, perhaps she's confronted by
her pimp or the person who's in charge of collecting money from her for sex
work, and he says, what were you doing in that car? Do
you get money? Give me money? And she's say no, he wouldn't
pay me, he didn't pay me, he tricked me. And then he
goes and kills him. I mean, there's a million things that could have
happened where the two blonde ladies weren't Coon's or could have been Coons. Coons
could be the killer or an accomplice, or maybe wasn't part of that crime.
It's as a district attorney. There's no way in heck I could take
a case like this and feel confident going to trial for two reasons, I
don't think there's enough evidence to prove she did it, and I don't want
to take an innocent person and put them on trial either. Yeah, definitely
a lot of reasonable doubt. And we just talked about what happened with Harvey
Raider and the Solomon family case, where they really wanted to put him on
trial even without the victim's bodies being found. And now that he's been acquitted,
you can't charge him again. That was your only shot and the case
might remain unsolved forever. So at least they didn't do it. The same
thing with Lester Garnier's case because there is still a chance to charge Koons again
if new evidence should surface. And technically, even if Konz was involved,
we really don't even know if she was the one who actually pulled the trigger.
Remember, she later went on trial for hiring someone to murder her husband
rather than doing it herself. So while Konz could have played a role in
learning Lester to the parking lot, her unidentified blonde accomplice may have been the
person who shot him. Whatever happened, the evidence just isn't strong enough at
this point to convict Kots beyond a reasonable doubt, so I can understand why
prosecutors are reluctant to take her to trial. Unfortunately, since Kons is now
back in the United Kingdom, it might be more difficult to track her down
should new evidence against her surface. But even with the fingerprint evidence, the
one thing nobody seems to have figured out after all this time is motive.
Like I mentioned earlier, investigators spent six years delving into Kunz's background and never
found any tangible link between her and Lester. I know I've already expressed my
skepticism about the murder being some massive conspiracy orchestrated by corrupt cops. But even
if it was, how would Koonts have become involved. It sounds like the
extent of her criminal activity in California was turning tricks to support her drug habit,
But how would that escalate it to the murder of a police officer.
If someone wanted Lester dead, why would they hire Kots to do it.
What's strange to me is that, even though Kotz doesn't strike me as a
master criminal, This was a professionally done murder with almost no evidence left behind.
If it wasn't for the partial fingerprint, no one would have ever suspected
Konz and this would essentially be the perfect crime. I just have a feeling
that if there was a massive cover up involving powerful people, Catherine Koontz is
not the type of person who would have been selected to pull off this task.
No, not at all. And you have multiple people who are there.
It's very difficult to have everyone involved in a crime to to keep their
mouth shut. There were large, large, large rewards offered for information in
this case. So to think that this kind of low level criminal is going
to orchestrate the murder of a police officer with other people and not have someone
snitch on her. She's not going to have someone turn on her. She's
not going to make a mistake and leave incriminating evidence. It seems far fetched
to me. It's not impossible, but it seems more difficult than thinking that
there could have been something else nefarious going on with someone that maybe he had
busted for a crime, or if you think about too, like you said,
he is in this parking lot, sitting there, waiting on somebody who
I believe called his home and lured him away from the movies. Was his
ex girlfriend cleared? She clearly had an alibi for where she was correct she
did, yes, And I don't think they found any evidence that this was
a murder for hire. So she's never been considered a suspect in the crime
because I would know she was really frustrated about their breakup and there was some
resentment and anger there. But yeah, there's just too many options and such
little information here to say, Okay, let's take this one fingerprint and run
with it. As this is our suspect, it's time to make a case
against her. All that being said, I don't rule out the idea that
someone did hire Coons to commit this murder, but the crime was a lot
more personal in nature. One thing we know for certain is that Lester received
a call from a woman shortly before leaving his house, and multiple women were
seen in the parking lot at the time he was killed. I know that
investigators couldn't find any tangible link between Lester and Koons, but what if another
woman in either Lester's personal or professional life hired Koons to kill him? Well,
there's no record of Lester, ever, having arrested Coons, who's to
say that another sex worker he busted didn't want revenge. Sure, some of
the women Lester arrested spoke highly of him, but it's safe to say that
not all of them would have been overly thrilled about the idea of going to
jail. But it is also possible the crime had no connection to Lester's work
as a vice officer, and someone wanted him dead for other reasons. Lester
was known as a ladies man, he had recently broken up with his longtime
girlfriend, and he was apparently frequenting massage parlors in his spare time. He
very well could have gotten involved with another woman who, for unknown reasons,
decided to kill him. No one knows what was said to Lester during his
final phone conversation at home, but it seemed to compel him to break off
plans to see a movie with his friend, and the fact that Lester left
his house without his guns leads me to believe that he drove to the Wood
Creek shopping center for something which had nothing to do with his police work.
Even if Lester did not personally know Catherine Kons, the individual who wanted him
dead, could have set things up for coons to kill him in the parking
lot. I have a deep suspicion that whoever he was going to meet was
someone that he really did have a close connection with. I don't think it
was an informant. I don't think that it's somebody that he knows had a
kind of criminal background, because he was a smart, efficient, responsible law
enforcement officer. He always carried his service weapon and he intentionally didn't. Yes,
he didn't tell people where he was going. But is it something like
what Jules said, like this is a new kind of exploratory hangout date with
a girl that he might be trying to date. Is this something else he
wants to meet about for a business opportunity? Like what is it that he
was so safe in that trip that he didn't feel a need to tell anybody
where he was going and he didn't bring his service weapons. Safe enough that
you don't bring your surface weapon, but not familiar enough or long standing enough
that you feel like you can disclose to your best friend who you're meeting or
why you're canceling your movie plans. I just think that it has to be
somebody that he felt comfortable with Either that, or it was an oversight that
he forgot his weapon, But it just doesn't sound like he would make a
mistake like that since he always seemed to carry at least one of his guns.
It seems more likely that he was disarmed by the individual. Either they
did have some sort of relationship, or somehow he was manipulated into believing that
they weren't a threat. If you're wondering why Koontz would have gotten involved in
this, it seems like the main reason she turned to sex work to begin
with was to support a drug habit. We also know that Koontz and her
husband filed for bankruptcy the following year, so things were not good for her
financially. If she really was desperate enough for money, Koontz might have agreed
to perform this murder for someone, even if she had no personal issues with
Lester. If this is what happened, I can't help but wonder if it
may have inspired Koontz when she orchestrated a plot to murder her own husband three
years later, as she supposedly hired Melinda Cooper, a seventeen year old runaway
she had taken under her wing, to perform the job. Who's to say
the situation wasn't reversed, and Kountz was in Melinda Cooper's role once someone else
hired her to kill Lester, but this time the plan worked pretty well since
Coons didn't even pop up on the radar as a suspect for several years,
and whoever orchestrated the whole thing has never been identified, so in the end,
I definitely think this was a murder for higher plot, but one in
which investigators originally looked in the wrong direction. The plot had nothing to do
with a major scandal involving the teenage sex trafficking ring, and Lester was murdered
for personal reasons. I have no idea where Catherine Coons is today, as
the investigation once again hit a standstill after she was deported, But the authorities
are still trying to solve the case and seem to think that there's just one
or two crucial pieces of the puzzle missing which can tie everything together. It's
tragic enough when a police officer is killed in the line of duty, but
here we have a very well respected cop being murdered in cold blooded fashion while
he was off duty, and no one can understand why. Remember there is
still a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward being offered for information which leads
to the arrest and prosecution of the responsible party. So if you happen to
have any information on the murder of Lester Gaargnier, please contact the appropriate authorities.
Jules Ashley any final thoughts on the case. I have to go back
to the type of person Lester was. Just to start with, there's not
a single person that can do a single act other than putting your love when
at risk or something that warrants murdering somebody. So but then you look at
Lester and you're like, Okay, this is a man who not only avoided
his own criminal lifestyle and unethical behavior, but he was actually a law enforcement
agent on a vice squad, who was trying to clean up the community,
to help people get out of a life of sex work, in human trafficking
and drugs and all of these things right to make sure his community is safer.
And not only that, but through that job, he was getting opportunities
to help his parents by allowing them to live with him in this nice new
home he had gotten. He was making plans for a retirement about ten years
later, where he was going to have other businesses, such as a hot
dog stand in franchise that he was starting with his best friend. He was
a dreamer, He was somebody dedicated to a beautiful, successful life with his
family, and it was completely cut short, just with no warning. Like
we talked about throughout this whole case, it really wasn't like Lester was deeply
involved in the apprehension of big time criminals and political figures and things like that.
The case we keep referring to, he was doing surveillance, so he
wasn't even the big takedown officer. It seems to me that Lester had formed
a trust with somebody who didn't actually earn it, and that had manipulated him
and used his kindness in his charm against him, making him feel safe enough
to leave his house to meet without his service weapon in a place where there
weren't going to be that many people around, and they stole his life away
from him, and in turn, they stole a lot of people's dreams.
His best friend was waiting for him to get paperwork for their new hot dog
vending business the morning that he was killed. He was standing there waiting for
him to meet him so they could go sign paperwork together. His parents lost
their son. You know, who knows what his life would have turned into.
And so it's such a sad case. And what's frustrating is if you're
going to say a single fingerprint kind of locks down who our main suspect is,
I just don't think we can go that route. I think it gives
us a lead and a suspect, but I think there is almost a end
listless of suspects while having no names on that list. At the same time,
Lester had everything going for him. You know, he was thirty years
old, he's recently single, he has this really good job at the end
SETPD like Ash just said, he wanted to open this hot dog stand with
his best friend and maybe franchise it out or expand and have a hot dog
empire, and that sounds really exciting. Like we know how popular food trucks
are now. That would have been kind of the food truck infancy that it
started with hot dogs, and he had this plan, like his future seemed
like it was going to be really solid. His parents had moved in,
and it really breaks my heart for his parents because it sounds like they were
of like a lower socioeconomic status and he brought them up to this nicer home,
and then you have to wonder what became of this home and what became
of the support of the parents after Lester's death. It just it makes me
really sad because they likely were just so proud of their son, everything that
he'd accomplished, and then to have him stolen from them, and not to
understand who took him and why, and even if it was Catherine Koon's,
there is a possibility or potential that it was Katherine Kuon's, but since there
was multiple women there, it could have been one of the other women who
was Ashley said he could have developed some kind of relationship with and she had
disarmed him, because for him to cancel movie plans with the best friend.
I'm just more inclined to believe that because he didn't bring his service weapon,
that it might have been romantic in nature. Of course, that is a
bit of an assumption, but I think we know that he always carried one
gun with him and he didn't have that, so I think we can deduce
from that that he didn't feel threatened at this point. It just feels like
we need a little bit more information for authorities to be able to charge Koons
and whomever she was with, you know, potentially three women involved. It's
just so frustrating because all the information is kind of tenuous, as are the
connections, and we cannot pinpoint, as we've said throughout, when that fingerprint
was there. It could have been three blonde women. It may not have
even been Kons. Koons could have been there at an earlier time, and
then her fingerprint was dusted and they assumed that it was one of the women
who were there, but she could have resembled the composite skein that one of
the witnesses had drawn up. So it's just so hard to say. I
can understand why they didn't go ahead with charging Coons because there just isn't sufficient
evidence at this time. But I hope moving forward that somebody comes forward and
shares this information with law enforcement. Yeah. I remember watching this on Unsolved
Mysteries when it originally aired. It was pretty perplexed by it. But my
initial thoughts that this had to be some sort of cover up or conspiracy,
and that maybe it had something to do with Lester's police work and that someone
in power wanted to have him killed. And then twenty years later I learned
about this lead involving this woman named Catherine Kootz, and I'm like, how
does she fit into this? How does this Scottish woman with no real connection
to Lester? Why is her fingerprint at the scene, What motive would she
have to kill Lester? And it just left me more confused. I mean,
it is just such a sad story because I remember when I first heard
that Lester was doing stuff like driving a Corvette and buying a new house and
getting a new swimming pool. I was thinking, Okay, he has to
be on the tape if a police officer is able to spend this much money.
But they looked into Lester's background, it sounds like he was completely clean
and just planning for his future and trying to give his parents a better life
before it was stolen from him for reasons that we still don't understand. I
mean, given Catherine Kreutz's other criminal history, the fact that she allegedly tried
to kill her husband, I am inclined to believe that she is somehow involved
in this murder and that she may have been the one who pulled the trigger
and may have left her print on the car window while she was killing Lester,
but we just don't know for sure. There's some evidence, but just
not enough pieces of the puzzle in place to put everything together. Because we
have another blonde woman scene at the scene, we have no motive, and
it's just so confusing, and they just never found anything on Lester's background to
give any insight on why anyone would want to have him killed. So that's
just why I hope because they are still offering a two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars reward for information, that someone will come forward who knows something, who
knows why Lester was killed, and offer maybe just that final piece of the
puzzle that will allow them to solve this case and make an arrest. But
until then, it will still continue to perplex me because we know some of
the pieces, some of the ideas of what might happen, but we just
don't know the full picture, and that's what's just so frustrating. Robin,
do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
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Cold Callers Comedy