Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Lester Garnier Pt. One

Transcript

Lester Garnier Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:23
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
0:28
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. July eleventh, nineteen eighty
0:34
eight, Walnut Creek, California, Lester Garnier, a thirty year old vice
0:40
officer with the San Francisco Police Department, is found shot to death inside his
0:45
car in a shopping center parking lot. Eyewitnesses recalled seeing at least two unidentified
0:51
blonde women in the parking lot the previous night, and there's speculation that Lester's
0:56
murder might be connected to his involvement in a recent high profile out bust of
1:00
a teenage sex trafficking ring. Twenty years later, it's announced that a fingerprint
1:04
from the crime scene has been matched to a Scottish woman with an extensive criminal
1:10
history. However, there's not enough evidence to make an arrest, and the
1:14
motive for Lester's murder remains unknown. After that, the path went Chiley.
1:21
So today we'll be exploring an unsolved cold case involving a police officer, the
1:26
nineteen eighty eight murder of Lester Garnier. This story was profiled during the first
1:30
season of Unsolved Mysteries, and I consider it to be one of the more
1:34
underrated cases featured on the show. Since her segment was only about ten minutes
1:38
long, they really didn't have the luxury of delving as deeply into this story
1:42
as they could have. But when I originally covered it on The Trail Went
1:45
Cold five years ago, it turned out to be quite a rabbit hole.
1:49
Lester was an undercover vice officer who was by all accounts, really good at
1:53
his job and well liked by everyone who knew him, so it was difficult
1:57
to figure out a motive for this murder. There was a lot of speculation
2:00
that the crime is connected to a recent bust of a teenage sex trafficking ring,
2:05
which implicated some high profile figures and turned out to be a major scandal
2:09
for the city of San Francisco. However, many years later, a partial
2:14
fingerprint eventually led investigators to a Scottish national named Catherine Koontz, and this revelation
2:20
only raised more questions than answers. Kons had quite a checkered history, including
2:24
alleged involvement in another murder for hire plot, but to this day, no
2:29
one has ever been able to find a tangible connection between her and Lester Garnier.
2:34
That's just one reason the crime is still unsolved. But we're going to
2:38
attempt to piece together this convoluted story on today's episode. This case is really
2:43
scary because you have a victim who's a vice officer, so it's someone who's
2:46
assigned to cover things like gambling, sex trafficking, sex work, high end
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drug cartel things, and so he's obviously going to be in a very risky
2:57
position because a lot of those crimes include high profile individuals. You have politicians,
3:04
you have attorneys, you have other police officers that can sometimes be involved
3:07
in those crimes behind the scenes, even just providing access to different resources and
3:14
all for the criminals. And then you add a woman who is a foreign
3:17
nationalist and she is known to have a background that's quite shady and might even
3:24
include a murder for hire. I know you said there's no evidence to link
3:28
her, but there is a fingerprint there, and there's really also no way
3:32
to explain away the fingerprint. Is that correct? Not really no, But
3:38
as we're going to talk about, there are going to be like multiple people
3:40
seen around the murder scene on the night of Lester's death. So there's talk
3:46
about how well, it doesn't really prove that she killed him, only that
3:50
she was near Lester's car. So if you tried to put her on trial,
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she could just say, oh, I just met him and I touched
3:54
the windshield, but I left before he was killed. So that's probably the
3:58
main reason they haven't charged. And of course the other complication is that no
4:01
one can figure out what connection she has with Lester and what motive she would
4:05
have had to kill him. Our story begins in nineteen eighty eight in Walnut
4:12
Creek, California, a city located in the San Francisco Bay Area just outside
4:16
of Oakland. At around nine am on the morning of July eleventh, a
4:21
groundskeeper came across a blue nineteen eighty four Corvette in the parking lot of a
4:27
Wood Creek shopping center. Sitting in the driver's seat was the body of a
4:30
young man who'd been shot twice at close range, once in the head and
4:34
once in the abdomen. He was soon identified as Lester Garnier, a thirty
4:40
year old off duty police officer with the San Francisco Police Department. Lester lived
4:45
in the nearby city of Concord and had been on the force for eight years.
4:49
Born to a pair of Asian immigrant parents, Anthony and Jean Garnier,
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Lester and his younger sister, Margo, were raised in San Francisco's Mission District.
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At the age of I was seventeen, Lester was a member of the
5:01
Columbia Park Boys and Girls Club and won their Boy of the Year award,
5:05
which earned him a trip to the White House to meet then President Gerald Ford.
5:11
He eventually joined the San Francisco Police Department and garnered two commendations during his
5:15
first four years of service before transferring to Vice in nineteen eighty four. Having
5:21
grown up in the Mission District, Lester was an ideal candidate to do undercover
5:26
work, as he often posed as a customer in order to arrest sex workers.
5:30
Lester apparently had such a charming personality that many of the women he arrested
5:34
had glowing things to say about him, even though he was taking them to
5:39
jail. In fact, Lester seemed to be so well liked that he wound
5:44
up being praised by the Office of Citizens Complaints because of the lack of complaints
5:47
stemming from his arrests. Overall, he was known as an honest by the
5:51
book cop who always followed proper procedure and was planning to start training in narcotics.
5:58
However, Lester was not planning to do police work forever, as he
6:01
was hoping to retire in a decade or so and had been preparing for the
6:05
future. After purchasing a new round style house with a pool and concord,
6:11
Lester brought his parents there to live with him, as it was a major
6:14
upgrade from their own home. He was able to afford his corvette by taking
6:17
on some part time security jobs and receiving a loan from the Police Credit Union.
6:24
Lester also bought a push cart and was planning to open his own hot
6:27
dog stand with his best friend Wispay Aish, and if successful, they would
6:31
open more of them and turn it into a business. The two men had
6:35
been approved for a small business license, which was ready to be picked up
6:39
at the Hall of Justice, and in a cruel twist, wis Fay was
6:43
standing outside the building waiting for Lester on the very same morning his body was
6:47
discovered. So this case really does it highlights his career and it says,
6:54
listen, he is an upstanding officer. He's someone that the people that he's
6:59
arresting actually have respect for and he's trying to do the right thing. He's
7:03
trying to do the moral right thing, and family responsibility is a big priority
7:09
for him. And he's even finding ways that he's going to pivot out of
7:12
law enforcement to open this hot dog cart and maybe turn it into a little
7:16
business with his friend and something that provides for his family. And then he's
7:21
murdered. Do we know if there had been any concerns on his part by
7:27
people who maybe were trying to bribe him manipulate him in some of these cases,
7:31
and because he was a good officer, he had actually turned that down
7:34
or escalated charges against individuals. No, we haven't heard anything like that about
7:40
anyone attempting to bribe him. And he never said anything to anybody that someone
7:45
is threatening my life, that they're trying to get me to shut up and
7:46
look the other way if I take a bribe. So this is why I
7:50
took everyone by complete surprise, is that, as far as they are aware,
7:54
or he was not working on anything really dangerous that should have put his
7:58
life at risk, and he was off duty when he was killed, So
8:01
they were wondering why did decide to cancel his meet up with his friend in
8:05
order to go to this shopping center. Like I just said, no one
8:09
could figure out why Lester was at the Wood Creek shopping Center to begin with.
8:13
On the evening of July to tenth, Lester had been having dinner with
8:16
his parents at his home and received two phone calls. They had no idea
8:20
who the calls were from, though Lester's father had answered one of them and
8:24
claimed the caller was a woman. Lester was planning to meet wisp Fay to
8:28
see a movie and left his house at eight forty five pm. However,
8:31
about fifteen minutes later, Lester called up Whisfay on his car phone to say
8:35
he wouldn't be able to make it to the movie because he was running late,
8:39
though he didn't provide any further explanation. Later that evening, whis Fay
8:43
tried to call Lester back on his car phone, but received no answer.
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A witness would tell police that they remembered seeing Lester's corvette in the shopping center
8:52
parking lot at around ten forty five pm. Shortly thereafter, a carpet layer
8:58
working inside one of the nearby stores went out to his truck and claimed he
9:01
heard a pair of loud noises. Since this was the week after the Fourth
9:05
of July, he thought the sounds were nothing more than firecrackers, though it
9:09
later became a parent that he probably heard the gunshots which killed Lester. A
9:13
few minutes later, the carpet layer said he saw two blond women, one
9:18
in the late twenties and the other in the mid thirties, walking through the
9:20
parking lot before they each got into separate vehicles and drove away. One of
9:26
the vehicles was described as a faded blue Toyota pickup, while the other was
9:30
either a Toyota or Datsun car with white or gray paint. The phone call
9:35
that lures him away from his parents' house seemed to be or could have been,
9:41
a call that said, hey, we need to meet with you.
9:43
We have information, we need to talk. And he not only leaves his
9:46
parents' house, but then he also has to call his friend and say,
9:50
I can't make it to a movie, so he's changing plans that he already
9:54
had in place that evening. I would love to know who called him,
9:58
and I'd also I love to know is this foreign woman whose fingerprints were left
10:03
at the scene. Is she blonde, and does she have access to one
10:07
of the cars that's been described here. I don't know if she was driving
10:11
a specific car like that at that time, but yes, she was blonde.
10:13
She was in her twenty so it seems very likely that she was one
10:18
of the two blonde women seen in the parking lot. But to this day,
10:20
no one has figured out who the other blonde woman could be, which
10:24
brings up the problem of reasonable doubt is how do you approve which of them
10:28
might have killed Lester? And what do you think about those phone calls that
10:31
he got that then had him change his plans that evening. I'm not sure
10:37
because it doesn't I know that Lester liked to sometimes work during his off duty
10:41
hours to try to build up other cases, but I just don't know what
10:45
would be so important that he would leave on that particular night and blow off
10:48
like a plan with his friends and go to that particular shopping center. If
10:52
it was a woman, perhaps, I mean, if it was work related,
10:56
say something came up, would you lie to Wis Fay and just say
10:58
I'm running late so I can't come, or maybe not lie, but maybe
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just kind of lie by omission that you're not going to be putting the truth
11:07
out there saying, oh, I'm going to meet up with a contact or
11:09
something. Do you think he would just say, Hey, something work related
11:13
came up. I can't make it. I'm sorry. I'll see you tomorrow
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where we pick up our license for our hot dog business, which I love.
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By the way, this was like the beginning of food trucks, just
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this hot dog stand and that they had this idea for this empire of hot
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dogs. Yeah, they're going to have a franchise. How fun. It's
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so cool. I just think it's so ambitious. And Ashley and I were
11:33
talking about side hustles before we started, and clearly he had his eye on
11:37
this side hustle and was ready to retire in ten years. And for someone
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who's thirty, that's pretty impressive. I just I think maybe if you were
11:45
going to ditch your friend, and you were going to ditch plans, and
11:48
you were you were going to meet up with a man, a woman,
11:50
whomever, somebody that you were romantically interested in, you might feel like kind
11:56
of an ass for being like, oh, sorry, I don't want to
12:00
hang out with you, or I'm going to ditch this, or I'm going
12:03
to like not show up because I'd rather do this. That doesn't sound so
12:07
good. But you might just go sorry running late, and then just kind
12:11
of lie by omission because it sounds better than being like sorry, This sounds
12:16
like more fun than the movie date with you and Ashley. Since you were
12:18
asking about side hustles, you now got a new one. Hot dogs.
12:22
Yes, hot dogs. I'm all about it, guys, all about it.
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Shortly before the carpet layer saw the two blonde women, another witness had
12:30
been driving through the parking lot and said that he saw a blonde climbing out
12:33
of Lester's corvette. She exited the front seat through the passenger side, walked
12:39
around the vehicle, and took a quick look through the driver's side window before
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walking away. Under hypnosis, the witness was able to help create a composite
12:48
sketch of the woman. When shown to the carpet layer. He thought the
12:52
sketch resembled the shorter of the two blonde women he'd seen, though it could
12:56
not be conclusively confirmed if they were the same person, since the corvette was
13:01
parked across three spaces and the parking lights were on. Many of Lester's fellow
13:05
officers suspected that he was planning to meet someone, as it was common practice
13:09
for cops to park in such a fashion for meetups so that no one would
13:13
sneak up on them. Lester's police badge and his wallet were found in his
13:18
glove compartment, though his car keys were missing. Even though Lester owned two
13:22
guns and usually carried at least one of them while he was off duty,
13:26
he left both of his guns at home that night. That is a little
13:30
bit odd to me and indicates either this is an informant or someone he's meeting
13:35
up with that he believes there's zero risk with right that someone maybe he's been
13:37
working with for years, or it is something like you were saying, Jules,
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Maybe he's waiting to meet up with someone who he's getting to know that
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he wants to take on a date, that he wants to follow up a
13:48
phone conversation with something that's platonic, that's romantic. But if it's something related
13:54
to his job, I feel like even an informant that you had a good
13:58
rapport with, wouldn't you bring a gun just for backup, knowing they're tied
14:01
to an underworld you're trying to learn more about maybe he's just he's thinking it's
14:07
a woman if it was a contact. Sometimes people will underestimate women. A
14:13
woman won't shoot me, when in this case it could very well be that
14:18
a woman did murder him. So at the outset, there was speculation that
14:24
Lester's murder might have been connected with a high profile investigation he had recently been
14:28
involved with. Three months earlier, Lester was one of multiple officers assigned to
14:33
perform surveillance on a building in the Mission District which was suspected of being a
14:37
brothel, as there were rumors that it was the site of a sex trafficking
14:41
ring involving underage girls, and some of its patrons were police officers and city
14:45
officials. The alleged owner of this brothel was Patrick Roberts, and on at
14:48
least two occasions, Lester and his partner, Chuck Lofgren, watched Roberts as
14:54
he switched his operation to a different building. Lofgren would later say that he
14:58
believed he and Lester had their covers blown before their assignment ended. On April
15:03
the thirtieth, the brothel was finally raided and a total of fourteen people were
15:07
indicted, six of whom were involved in running the operation, and eight of
15:11
whom were patrons. This bus turned into a major story because of two of
15:16
the patrons who were arrested, Patrick Miyagishima, as San Francisco police officer and
15:20
Roger Boas. A prominent political figure. Boas had been the chairman of the
15:26
California Democratic Party and was San Francisco's Chief administrative officer for nine years. After
15:31
serving that position under two different mayors, Boas launched a campaign to run for
15:37
mayor himself in nineteen eighty seven, though he ultimately lost. However, one
15:41
of the teenage sex workers from the brothel recognized Boas from his campaign poster and
15:46
said he had been frequenting the brothel for three years under the name George.
15:50
Boas was charged with nineteen counts of statutory rape, and in October of nineteen
15:56
eighty eight, he agreed to plead guilty to seven of these charges in exchange
16:00
for the other twelve being dismissed. He was sensed to six months of community
16:03
service and received a one hundred thousand dollars fine. Who privilege, Yeah,
16:11
that's really really maddening, you know, Back in the eighties and nineties and
16:17
even Honestly, even today, when you're talking about sex work and you look
16:21
at the women and men who are being trafficked and doing sex work, a
16:26
lot of them are not doing that voluntarily, or they feel desperate, or
16:30
they've been convinced that they're you know, they have to do that line of
16:33
work. Some voluntarily do it, and that's that's great, but not all
16:37
of them are. And so here you're talking about children, which means children
16:41
cannot consent to sex with another individual. It's just not in our legal code.
16:48
That's just not how it works. So he sexually abuses these underage girls
16:53
and he gets charged with seven counts. He says, I'm guilty, and
16:57
he does communities. Yep. Not surprised at all that someone who's such a
17:03
high profile politician would get off with a slap on the wrist. Oh that
17:07
makes me furious. It also makes me think though, that you know,
17:10
he gets this call and he's going to meet up with somebody. Is it
17:12
possible that officers who were not involved in this sting, but maybe were really
17:18
close to Patrick or someone who might have been really close to Roger BoA's,
17:23
that they are getting retaliation for this bust. Because remember another officer is going
17:29
to say, hey, I think our cover was blown. I think they
17:30
knew who we were doing this operation. Well, the weird part about that
17:36
is that even though Lester participated in the surveillance, it's not like he was
17:40
the person orchestrating this whole bust. Like he didn't really play much of a
17:44
role. He just kind of watched over these people, but he didn't actually
17:48
personally make the rests. So it just seems kind of weird that they would
17:51
decide to murder him in retaliation but not go after anyone else who organized this
17:56
whole thing to begin with. Even though Boas got a slap on the wrist,
17:59
I will say that he must have been pretty pissed that he had one
18:03
hundred thousand dollars fine. That's a pretty hefty fine, especially for the time.
18:07
He probably was pretty angry because we really don't know what the motive is
18:12
here, So it seems like he would be somebody who you could point a
18:17
finger at and go, he's got a reason to be really angry at everybody
18:21
involved, And maybe for some reason, somebody just fingered Lester as being somebody
18:26
who was responsible in some capacity, and it was just sort of like I
18:30
need somebody to stand in to take out my rage upon That is true,
18:37
that maybe someone gave him bad information and made it sound like it was Lester's
18:41
idea to organize this whole bus to begin with, even though it wasn't true,
18:44
and he just wound up feeling Boas's wrath even though he didn't really do
18:48
all that much well. There were rumors that several San Francisco police officers had
18:53
been patrons of the brothel. Patrick Miyagishima was the only one who wound up
18:57
being indicted. He pled guilty to having unlawful sex with a miner and received
19:03
a one year suspended sentence, eighteen months probation, one thousand dollars fine,
19:08
and was subsequently fired from the police force. Investigators looked into the possible connection
19:15
between Miyagashima and Lester Garnier, but the only links they could find were very
19:19
tenuous. Lester had been a reserve officer at Broadmoor Village in nineteen eighty,
19:25
while Yagashima was working for a security service in Broadmoor at the same time.
19:30
There were also rumors that both men had once attended a stag party being held
19:34
by a Broadmoor Police officer Yagashima was supposedly accompanied by two sex workers from the
19:41
brothel when he attended the party, but nothing could be substantiated. Of course,
19:45
police explored the possibility that Leuser's murder may have been retaliation for his involvement
19:52
in the sting operation which brought down the sex trafficking ring. The ring leader,
19:56
Patrick Roberts, had fled the area before the raid of the took place,
20:00
and some people suspected that he'd been tipped off. Roberts wound up being
20:06
captured in Oklahoma on July ninth, the very day before Lester was killed,
20:11
but in the end, investigators were unable to find any substantial connection between this
20:15
case and Lester's murder. All right, guys, not to beat a dead
20:19
horse, But if we now pay attention to what the police officer was punished
20:25
with for unlawful sex with a minor, he received a one year suspended sentence,
20:32
eighteen months probation, and one thousand dollars fine. I still ask this
20:36
question in twenty twenty three. Shouldn't people who have the resources and in upbringing
20:41
that allows them to be in these positions, they have the access to resources
20:47
and obviously financial stability and things like that. Don't we hold them even more
20:52
accountable when they're in these positions of power and authority and respect that should be
20:57
protecting people, politicians, police officers like I just feel like there should be
21:03
even harsher punishments for putting yourself in a position where the community is supposed to
21:07
trust you and you abuse children. It makes me very frustrated. Secondly,
21:15
when we're talking about this idea, that is it linked directly to especially like
21:18
Robert's being arrested the day before, I'm gonna have to say that's too quick
21:22
for a murder, for higher plot to be planned in retaliation for an arrest.
21:27
Clearly he was on the run and he knew his business had been thwarted
21:32
and had been under uncovered. But I just don't think that Roberts would directly
21:37
have the ability on the run to say, Hey, just happens that I've
21:41
organized this killing for the day after I end up getting arrested. Yeah,
21:45
it does seem like a tenuous connection. And even though Lester's cover was supposedly
21:49
blown, I'm not sure if Patrick Roberts knew him personally, But Jeffery right
21:53
about Miyagi Shima because he was the only one in dieted and you'd like to
21:57
think that police would want to make an exam apple out of them and say
22:00
this conduct is not acceptable and give him a harsher sentence. But no,
22:04
didn't serve any prison time. But at least he was fired from the police
22:07
force. Sadly, there are some cases where police officers do these hainous things
22:12
and don't even lose their jobs. So at least he did get fired.
22:15
Oh for sure. It just imaddens me that people who you know, you
22:18
look at offenders who get punished the harshest, and they're often from situations and
22:22
backgrounds, not that their actions are acceptable or any better or less accountability should
22:27
be there, but you see these incredibly harsh punishments when you have people who
22:33
are in these situations where they're raised in crime and that's part of the lifestyle
22:37
that they're raised in from child from their childhood. And then you have someone
22:41
who's a police officer and a politician, they're like, hey, you're okay,
22:45
you're good. We're going to fill the prisons with these people that don't
22:48
have resources to ever get better, and we're just gonna make it worse.
22:52
However, there were a number of odd things which trouble the Guargnier family following
22:56
Lester's death. One of the items taken from his house was a s Aalen's
23:00
videotape hidden in his home office. The exact details of what was on that
23:03
tape have never been made public, though some sources claim it was recorded during
23:07
an undercover stakeout operation from a hotel in Fisherman's Wharf. On previous occasions,
23:14
the FBI had used this hotel to perform surveillance on a restaurant which had been
23:18
managed by a member of the Gambino crime family. Shortly before his death,
23:22
Lester bumped into a friend of his on the street and allegedly told him that
23:26
he was quote unquote working on an undercover case that was big and involved well
23:30
known people. There was nothing overly suspicious in Lester's background which could shed any
23:36
light on why someone would want to murder him, though a check of his
23:40
phone records would reveal that he had been in contact with some massage parlors,
23:44
which he apparently frequented during his off duty hours. However, Lester's family did
23:48
not take this as a sign that he was involved in anything illegal, as
23:52
he often pursued leeds during his off duty hours and may have been scouting these
23:56
locations for a future undercover of ICE operation unless someone confirmed that he was doing
24:02
these visits in a nefarious way. He really was a vice officer who was
24:08
specializing in sex work and these sex rings and sex trafficking, and so I
24:15
can see him making stops at these massage parlors and trying to see if there's
24:19
any kind of indication of danger or illegal business practices happening there. Or maybe
24:26
even he had contacts and people who would give him information about bigger fish to
24:32
fry in that network, right that maybe there's trade offs when you're doing these
24:36
vice operations where you don't take out the low level people, you get information
24:41
from low level people, offer them different rights and access to immunity and things
24:45
like that, and you use them to help you build cases against bigger people.
24:49
So if he was that passionate about his career, I could see him
24:53
making stops. It is a little suspicious, but I would need someone to
24:56
say, oh, man, yeah, he was invol and some legal behavior.
25:00
You should check into this. It could have led to his death before
25:03
I assumed he too was involved in and engaged in sexual misconduct while on the
25:10
job or as a police officer. That's what I was thinking too, because
25:14
we know how charming he was and how he ingratiated himself with the sex workers
25:18
that he arrested that they would be going to jail, but they would still
25:22
have really great things to say about him. Perhaps he built up a rapport
25:26
with certain people at these massage parlors, and like you said, Ash would
25:30
go in and he would use them for contacts and get information on the types
25:34
of people that were frequenting the massage parlor, because I'm sure that those girls
25:38
had a lot of information to share. And I'm with you and that,
25:41
Yeah, it does sound suspicious, but I just don't think that we can
25:45
make any assumptions because everything we've heard about his character thus far, he sounds
25:49
like a really stand up guy. Oh yeah, Like they did a thorough
25:52
check into his background following his murder and if he had anything dirty, if
25:56
he had any misconduct in his background, police never found it, So I
26:03
really don't think that he was going to all of these massage parlors for nefarious
26:07
purposes. Investigators explored the angle the corrupt cops may have been responsible for Lester's
26:12
death. A bullet casing was found at the scene belonging to a rare,
26:17
distinctive AMT three eighty caliber semi automatic pistol, which was sometimes used as a
26:22
backup gun by police officers. At least ten officers who owned the same type
26:27
of gun were asked to submit their weapons for ballistic tests. They all cooperated
26:33
and none of their guns matched the murder weapon. Female police officers who resembled
26:37
the blonde woman seen in the parking lot were also investigated, but none of
26:41
them stood out as potential suspects. This case would be featured on Unsolved Mysteries
26:47
in February of nineteen eighty nine, but failed to generate any substantial leads.
26:52
Over the years, the San Francisco PD would express their displeasure with the investigation
26:56
by the Walnut Creek Police Department, who jurisdiction on the case and declined numerous
27:02
offers for assistance from the sfpds most seasoned homicide detectives. Due to this scandalous
27:08
nature of the recent sting operation, the Walnut Creek PD was apparently fearful a
27:14
potential corruption within the SFPD and wanted to handle the investigation into Lesser's murder on
27:19
their own. That makes sense. I can respect the idea that you say.
27:23
Listen, I'm a little anxious. This man is a police officer.
27:27
He had just uncovered crimes that police officers were involved in. Were a little
27:32
worried there could be some covering up going on if it happens to involve other
27:37
officers in the shooting. However, I'm assuming Wanna Creek Police Department is a
27:41
pretty small police department. Is that right? It's not really that small,
27:48
like it's the city I trying to remember. I think it's between sixty and
27:51
seventy thousand at that time. But it also does not have a lot of
27:53
experience dealing with violent crime. So what have been logical for them to bring
27:59
in more furious homicide detectives to help them with this case. But it just
28:03
sounds like they were just very distrustful and did not want the San Francisco PD
28:07
interfering with their investigation. So if that's the case, So that's what I'm
28:11
thinking too, Robin. But I'm thinking, if that's the case, and
28:14
you're able to express, we don't trust you to help us but we may
28:18
not be equipped to investigate a crime of this level, or we're kind of
28:22
out of our depths here to have the wherewithal to say you, I can't
28:26
trust you. But there's plenty of other resources that they likely could have tapped
28:30
into when they have a law enforcement officer who was killed and they need assistance.
28:36
I feel like they could have reached elsewhere if it was San Francisco Police
28:38
Department that they didn't trust. In nineteen ninety eight, shortly before the ten
28:44
year anniversary of the crime, the San Francisco Police chief publicly announced that they
28:48
were reopening the case. In November of that year, there was an odd
28:52
development when a police inspector named Vincent Rippetto filed a civil suit against one of
28:56
his fellow officers, Robert Gueenan. Queenon had assisted in an internal affairs probe
29:02
against Repetto and found witnesses who testified that Repetto had illegally bet on sporting events.
29:08
Ripetto eventually pled no contest to these charges and received a suspension and a
29:12
transfer, but claimed that in order to convince witnesses to Testifyqueenon had told them
29:18
that Repetto was responsible for the murder of Lester Garnier. Ripetto had been working
29:22
in the same vice unit as Lester at the time of his death, but
29:26
Repetto denied any involvement in the crime, and his lawsuit alleged that he was
29:30
a victim of defamation and slander. Queenan maintained that Repetto's claims were false and
29:36
that he never actually made this accusation against him. The lawsuit was eventually dropped,
29:41
but the official position from the police department was that Repetto was never considered
29:45
a suspect in Lester's murder. So let me clarify what you were saying,
29:48
Robin. You're saying that when he's being charged with these other possibly illegal sports
29:53
betting and things like that. He then turns a lawsuit against one of the
29:57
internal affairs officers, saying you're defaming me by saying I had something to do
30:03
with Lester's murder. Or did the officer actually come forward and say he had
30:07
something to do with Lester's murder. It's not really clear to me and stuff,
30:12
because I don't know if Gweenan had any information or evidence that Repetta was
30:18
actually involved in Lester's murder. It could have been just kind of a petty
30:22
thing or something like that, or maybe it's like, well, he's doing
30:25
these other crimes now, maybe I'll just try to pin this unsolved murder on
30:29
them. But like I said, the police never found any evidence that Repetto
30:33
was involved, so I don't know where this information came from. The investigation
30:38
continued to remain at a standstill until a surprising announcement was made in June of
30:44
two thousand and eight. An unidentified partial fingerprint which did not belong to Lester
30:49
had been found on top of the Corvette's passenger side window, but it initially
30:53
could not be matched to anyone. However, after two decades, it was
30:59
officially an announced that the print belonged to Catherine Kons, a forty four year
31:03
old Scottish and national who'd been living in the United States since nineteen eighty five.
31:08
The match had originally been made in two thousand and two, when the
31:11
print was sent to the FBI for analysis, and investiators would spend the next
31:17
six years exploring Kons's background and attempting to build a case against her. By
31:22
the time this announcement was made, Kons was serving a one year sentence at
31:26
a prison in Ocala, Florida, for violating her probation on a previous cocaine
31:30
conviction. She had been living in Concord, California at the time of Lester's
31:36
murder, and originally moved to the US after becoming involved with Gregory Koons,
31:41
a U. S. Navy officer who was stationed in Scotland. When Greg
31:45
was reassigned to the Concord Naval Weapons Station, he took Catherine along with him
31:49
and they subsequently got married, allowing Catherine to obtain a green card. However,
31:55
because Greg was often shipped out to sea for extended periods of time after
32:00
and would spend a lot of time alone, and she eventually became embroiled in
32:04
drugs and turned to sex work to support a crack cocaine habit Where there was
32:07
no record of Catherine ever having been arrested in California, her marriage did go
32:13
through several rocky patches, including a bankruptcy, until Greg was reassigned to Norfolk,
32:19
Virginia and the couple moved there in nineteen ninety. Do we have any
32:22
idea which direction Lester was shot from? Was it through his passenger side or
32:28
was it from the driver's side or front of the car. Good question.
32:32
I don't think that they've ever released that information. Let me just go back
32:36
and double check. No, I just said he was shot at close range,
32:40
just once in the head and once in the abdomen, but they didn't
32:43
say where the shots came from. Well, what's interesting is, I mean,
32:46
as convincing as it is that there's this miscellaneous fingerprint and then it's linked
32:51
to this criminal life career criminal that's a foreign national. It's super sexy and
32:57
spyworthy. But if you think about him being a vice officer and her being
33:01
involved in illegal activity, doesn't it make sense that there's a potential he pulled
33:06
up, rolled down a window, and at one point or another she leaned
33:08
against his car and gave him information. I mean, there's other ways that
33:13
her fingerprint could have been placed on top of that car without her being there
33:16
that evening. Well, yeah, I could I could believe that that maybe
33:21
it was left there on a previous occasion. But we also have the witness
33:23
who saw someone matching Koontz's description, a blonde woman in her twenties, so
33:29
which does seem like a coincidence. So I do think there is a good
33:31
chance that Koontz was seen and was in the parking lot that night. But
33:36
of course, because we had the witness who saw two blonde women, it
33:39
adds a lot of complications to the case because who was this other woman that
33:44
Konts would have been with, Like, we don't know anything about her known
33:46
associates while she was living in California in nineteen eighty eight. Didn't the one
33:52
man who is the carpet layer, didn't he create a composite under hypnosis and
33:55
see the two women? Did he recognize koons or was he ever shown her
34:00
picture in two thousand and two. I know it's crazy, many many years
34:06
past the crime, and his recollection may not be able to register that,
34:09
but it would be worth showing him a picture of her. Yeah, I
34:14
haven't heard anything about him being shown a picture. I mean, it could
34:16
be because maybe he's dead, or maybe they just were unable to track him
34:20
down twenty years after the fact. You look at the picture and you can
34:23
kind of see the resemblance. But he has never been asked. As far
34:28
as I know, none of these witnesses have ever been asked to positively identify
34:31
any of the woman. And if any of them were kons. Now this
34:37
is where the story gets even crazier. The reason Catherine's fingerprints were in the
34:40
FBI database was because she wound up being arrested for her role in a murder
34:45
for higher plot. In nineteen ninety one, she was charged with conspiracy to
34:49
commit murder after allegedly hiring two people, John Murchison and Melinda Cooper, to
34:54
kill her husband. After moving to Norfolk, Catherine had taken a job that
34:59
it can be ui in store, and John Murchison was one of her co
35:01
workers. According to Murchison, Catherine wanted to divorce Greg, but feared she
35:07
would lose her green card status. However, since Greg had a fifteen thousand
35:10
dollars life insurance policy, Catherine decided to murder him instead, and enlisted Murchison's
35:16
help with finding someone to do it. They wound up recruiting Melinda Cooper,
35:22
a seventeen year old runaway whom Catherine had befriended, but their attempts at murdering
35:25
Greg proved unsuccessful. While Cooper and Murchison were both found guilty and sent to
35:30
prison, Catherine wound up being acquitted when she went on trial. Believe it
35:36
or not. One of the main reasons the jury voted not guilty was because
35:39
Greg had testified on Catherine's behalf. Greg expressed his belief that Catherine's two alleged
35:45
accomplices were lying about her involvement, and he felt there was no way she
35:50
attempted to murder him. After the trial, Catherine and Greg remained together and
35:53
moved to Florida, but the marriage didn't last much longer and they divorced in
35:58
nineteen eighty two. Catherine went through an additional marriage and divorced with another man,
36:02
and continued to run into trouble with the law, including two arrests for
36:07
sex work and an arrest for cocaine possession in two thousand and six, for
36:10
which she received a sense of probation and community service, but after failing a
36:15
drug test and failing to complete her community service, Kootz was given a one
36:20
year prison sentence for violating her probation. When Kootz was released from prison,
36:24
she was immediately picked up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and to poured
36:30
it back to Scotland. Because of her conviction, poor Greg Greg truly believed
36:36
that Catherine wasn't involved. That's sweet and then they hadn't got divorced anyway.
36:42
I'm sure those were some fun arguments behind closed doors. She didn't kill them,
36:45
yeah right, I mean, at least it didn't work for sure,
36:49
and she definitely had nothing to do with it. Poor guy. It is
36:52
interesting, though, I mean, she has a troubled past and she's integrated
36:58
here. It seems like she's able to easily be friend people, easily get
37:00
people to do what she wants, to manipulate them, to convince them to
37:07
be her partner in either crime or life, and so it doesn't seem like
37:12
she really struggles to have any kind of relationship connections. Do we know when
37:16
she was possibly seen in that parking lot and there's another blonde present, did
37:22
she have known associates at the time that can be linked back to that or
37:25
was it almost impossible to link Koon's and her whereabouts directly to California at the
37:30
time. We really don't know all that much because it sounds like Greg because
37:36
he was in the Navy, he was out to see a lot, so
37:37
Catherine had a lot of time alone, so she would that's I think when
37:40
she developed her cocaine habit, her crack cocaine habit, but I don't believe
37:45
she was ever arrested in California, so we really don't have any information about
37:50
the kind of people she was associating with at that time. But talking about
37:53
how she allegedly recruited this seventeen year old Belinda Cooper to kill her husband,
37:59
for all we know, have been a similar situation with this other blonde woman
38:02
in the parking lot, where perhaps she got this person to help her kill
38:06
Lester. I find it really interesting that. Okay, so he doesn't believe
38:10
that she was involved in the murder for higher plot, but he does know
38:15
that while they were married. I'm assuming he knows. Maybe he doesn't correct
38:19
me if I'm wrong that she had an active crack cocaine habit and was engaged
38:25
in sex work. But yet somehow thinks it's impossible that she could have done
38:30
that. I mean, if she has a substance use disorder, what she
38:35
would have done at the time during her active addiction isn't necessarily representative of who
38:39
she is, But since we have a little more information on her, it
38:44
just might be who she is. It sounds like she could potentially be a
38:47
pretty manipulative person. Whether she's under the influence of drugs, alcohol or not.
38:54
But yeah, It's like, even if I really love my spouse,
38:57
if she was being put on trial for hiring people to kill me, I
39:00
would just kind of err on the side of caution. I would just be
39:01
way too paranoid to testify in her behalf and get back together with her.
39:07
You'd have to really trust the person to think that, Okay, they're going
39:09
to invest this time and energy and all of this money into prosecuting your spouse
39:16
and you're still going to believe that they're being falsely accused. I think you
39:21
Yeah, like you said, err on the side of caution and go m
39:24
maybe they might have done it well. Even though Kontz's fingerprint had been found
39:30
at Lester Garnier's murder scene and she bore a resemblance to one of the blonde
39:35
women seen in the parking lot that night, the authorities believed there was insufficient
39:39
evidence to charge Kon's with the crime. On three separate occasions, contracst to,
39:45
county prosecutors declined investigator's requests to file charges against Koons because even though the
39:52
print placed her at the scene, there was no evidence to prove she actually
39:54
pulled the trigger and shot Lester, and, like Ashley said, does it
39:59
a actually placed you at the scene because it could have been there from days
40:02
earlier. In addition, the eyewitness sightings of multiple blonde women in the mall
40:07
parking lot led to speculation that one or two other people were involved in the
40:13
crime. This is what prompted investigators to publicly announce the fingerprint match to Catherine
40:17
Koon's in two thousand and eight and offer a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
40:22
reward, as they hoped this might compel someone to come forward with new information.
40:28
Following Kuntz's deportation, Lester's sister, Margot Garnier, said that she planned
40:32
to travel to Scotland to confront Koontz about her brother's murder, but I'm not
40:37
sure if this ever came to fruition and sadly, both of Lester's parents have
40:42
since passed away. While no tangible connection has been found between Lester and Coons,
40:49
Margot has stated that her family were regular customers at a restaurant in Concord
40:53
where Coons briefly worked as a waitress, so it's possible that their past might
40:58
have crossed there. In two thousand and nine, Coons was found to be
41:01
living at a hostel in Manchester, England, under her maiden name Overend.
41:07
She denied having any involvement in Lester's murder, and her current whereboats are unknown.
41:12
Thus far, police have been unable to obtain additional evidence to implicate Coons,
41:17
but they still consider her to be the prime suspect. However, there
41:21
are still a number of puzzling questions. Who was the second blonde woman seen
41:27
seen in the shopping center parking lot on the night of the murder. Why
41:30
did Lester counsel a meet up with his best friend in order to travel there.
41:35
If Catherine Coons was the killer, what was her motive? Unfortunately,
41:39
after more than thirty five years, these questions continue to remain unanswered, and
41:45
the murder of Lester Garnier is still unsolved. So I guess she could say
41:50
the path went chili. Okay, so I should know this. But is
41:54
there a database of ballistics or shellcase scenes or bullet striations that they collect from
42:01
evidence? And they compile those because if there is, that gun likely traveled
42:07
between other criminals, not that you would be able to link it back to
42:10
the criminal who fired it that evening, but you might be able to connect
42:15
it back to a network of criminals who would be willing to say it wasn't
42:17
me, I got it from this person. Wasn't me, I got it
42:21
from this person. I took it from this house, right, And it
42:22
could be the gun could be traced back even years later. I honestly don't
42:28
know. I haven't heard of such a thing, but I'm guessing there isn't
42:31
because I think a lot more murders would be solved that they were just able
42:35
to enter ballistics information or shell casing's information into a database and match them up.
42:39
Okay, well, then one of our very tech savvy teens or young
42:44
adults listening right now needs to get on that as a crime changing new technology,
42:52
please. And it depends on the type of criminal too, how sophisticated
42:57
they are with forendsic countermeasures, if they know anything about ballistics, and if
43:00
they have the funds available to be able to invest in multiple weapons. If
43:06
you were planning on doing a murder, I would think you would use a
43:08
clean gun, a gun that's never been used in the commission of any other
43:12
crime, and once you completed that or you've committed that murder that you would
43:16
then dispose of that gun, so you may not be able to link that
43:21
gun to anything else because they may have bought it for the express purpose of
43:24
murdering Lester Garnier. Okay, guess what, guys, there's already something there.
43:30
It just doesn't get used all the time. Like all the national databases,
43:32
right, it relies on reporting, and and you're going to see an
43:37
over reporting by certain types of law enforcement agencies based on size and resources and
43:40
not others. But there is a national let's see, it's called the NIST
43:47
Ballistics tool Mark Research Database that is managed by the United States Department of Justice,
43:53
but it says that not all departments report to it, so it doesn't
43:58
create a holistic law look at records. I can see how it could be
44:01
unreliable because you remember our minisode we did last month about the murder of Morris
44:06
Davis and how an innocent man was falsely accused that his gun was used in
44:09
the murder because they botched the ballistic tests. So, yes, that's what
44:14
I think could happen. Oh my goodness, it's crazy. Yeah, it's
44:16
all based on you know, you have to have human analysis and things in
44:21
addition to the technology. But man, if there was a requirement to report
44:24
all that and we did have all the networked law enforcement agencies sharing all information,
44:30
you really would see criminals having a pretty difficult time getting away with what
44:32
they do. So I think this would be a good time to bring an
44:37
end to part one. But join us next week as we present part two
44:39
of our series with the murder of Lester Garnier. Robin, do you want
44:44
to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Uh?
44:46
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and
44:50
we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also
44:55
send out stickers and signed thank you cards to anyone who signed up with us
45:00
on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier Tier two, we also
45:05
offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on
45:09
the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if
45:14
you join our highest tier tier three, the ten dollars tier. One of
45:16
the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of unsolved mysteries,
45:22
where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved
45:28
Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing
45:32
in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured
45:37
in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a
45:40
commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
45:45
download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor,
45:50
then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you
45:52
know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashty Patreon, so there's early ad
45:57
free episodes of The Path Went Chilly. We've got our Pathwent Chili minis,
46:00
which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're
46:04
just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
46:07
so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in the
46:10
show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and any
46:14
chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or to rate
46:17
and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at The Pathwentchili at
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gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the pathwin So until
46:25
next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call
46:30
for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy