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Lester Garnier Pt. Two · The Path Went Chilly

0:27
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
0:31
murder of Lester Garnier. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on
0:34
what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this case involves the
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murder of a police officer. It's thirty year old Lester Garnier, who worked
0:43
as a vice top for the San Francisco PD and he was found shot to
0:47
death inside his car at a shopping center parking lot in the town of Walnut
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Creek, which is just outside San Francisco. But the weird thing is is
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that no one knows what Lester was doing there, because he was planning to
0:59
go out for a movie with his best friend but then called him up and
1:02
said that he couldn't come because he was running late. And he had also
1:04
received two phone calls at his house that his parents witnessed, and they said
1:08
that one of the callers was a woman. So it seems apparent that for
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some reason, Lester was asked to come meet someone at that shopping center parking
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lot and wound up being shot to death. We had two witnesses who reported
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seeing two blonde women at the scene, one of whom was climbing out of
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Lester's car, but they could not be identified, and there was speculation that
1:30
his murder might have been involved with a recent bust of a sex trafficking ring,
1:34
where a bunch of people, including a city mayoral candidate and a San
1:38
Francisco police officer, were busted for statutory rape for their actions against some underage
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sex workers, though neither of them ever saw prison time. They looked at
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the possibility that Lester's murder could have been connected to this bust, but they
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couldn't find any tangible connection, and the case remained cold for another two decades
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until it was announced in two thousand and eight that a fingerprint found on the
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windshield of Lestra's car had been matched to a Scottish national named Catherine Koons.
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She did have a criminal history. She had been accused of trying to hire
2:08
two people to murder her husband, though she wound up being acquitted at her
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trial. She also had issues with crack cocaine and had been arrested a few
2:16
times for sex work, but they just could not find any real connection between
2:21
her and Lester Garnie, even though she had been living in California during the
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nineteen eighties. After she finished serving a sense for violating her probation, she
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was deported back to her native Scotland, but investigators declined to file charges against
2:35
her because even though her fingerprint was found on the windshield, they just cannot
2:38
figure out a motive. They couldn't actually prove that she was the one who
2:43
pulled the trigger which killed Lester, So as of right now, she's believed
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to still be in Europe somewhere, and this case has remained unsolved for over
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thirty five years now. During the intro to our last episode, I mentioned
2:54
that when I first covered this case on the Trail Went Cold five years ago,
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the whole thing turned out to be a much bigger rabbit hole than expected,
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and I believe it's one of the more underrated cases featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
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I hate to say this, but I think the main reason the Unsolved
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Mystery segment never really stuck with me for a long time is because, well,
3:14
it's a tad cheesy. Instead of their usual creepy music score over the
3:17
reenactments, the segment plays saxophone music, which often makes this feel like one
3:23
of those erotic late night movies you'd watch on cinemax during the eighties and nineties
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rather than an unsolved mysteries episode, But that's a minor nitpick. Lester's murder
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got quite a bit of media coverage in the Bay Area, and for two
3:36
decades there was a lot of speculation that his death was the result of a
3:39
cover up and he was killed because he had stumbled onto something big involving corrupt
3:44
cops and city officials. But after it was announced that the sole piece of
3:47
physical evidence from the murder scene was linked to this Scottish national, Catherine Koons,
3:53
it just through the whole case for a loop. We know that Coons
3:57
lived in Concord at the time the murder took place, was involved in drugs
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and sex work, but other than that, there's just nothing to connect her
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to Lester Garnier. She later became embroiled in an unrelated murder for higher plot
4:10
involving her husband, but that crime sounded more personal in nature and a far
4:15
cry from killing a police officer. The only thing we know for certain is
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that Koot somehow had to be involved in Lester's murder, because I can't think
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of an innocent explanation for why her fingerprint would be on the window of his
4:27
corvette, but it's still unclear if she was the one who personally pulled the
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trigger and shot Lester, as there's a lot to suggest that she wasn't alone
4:34
on this. Since Lester was an undercover vice officer and Kootz was a sex
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worker during this time period, the most logical explanation would seem to be that
4:44
he was shot to death while attempting a bus which went horribly wrong. However,
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the whole thing seems a lot more complicated than that. I would think
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that if Koontz was involved in a sex working group, if she was a
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part of a brothel that he had busted, or if he had been part
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of a group of women that had been busted by him, that one of
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those women. Remember, he was known by the women he arrested as being
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kind and charming and very respectful, and had actually been praised for the fact
5:15
that citizens and those he arrested did not complain about him, they actually praised
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him. I feel like someone if they were aware of her actions or whoever
5:25
did kill Lester, I feel like that community you still might have had somebody
5:30
come forward and share information had it been something that they were aware of right
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if it was someone within their group that had murdered him in revenge, because
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there was a love of him, in respect for him, in his position,
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even amongst those he was getting in trouble just to play devil's advocate.
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It is possible that maybe she was giving information to him at an earlier time
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and she leaned over and touched that window, because like DNA, unless that
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fingerprint is literally in blood, you don't know when it was put there.
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We don't know how frequently he washed his vehicle, And just because there was
6:06
a blonde woman who resembled her doesn't mean that it was necessarily Coons. It
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could have been another blonde woman who had a similar description. We know how
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problematic eyewitness identification is. That's not to say that it was innocent, but
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it's to say that there's a potential that it could be. Oh, there
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absolutely is a potential that could be. It makes sense when you talk about
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it's on the top of his car. It's almost as if you pulled up
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you said, hey, Coons, get over here, and she goes,
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yeah, what do you want, Lester, And she like leans over and
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she's talking to him, and then he gets any information he wants from her
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and he drives off. That's an easy explanation for why her fingerprint could be
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there. Also, she could have been standing there and killed him or been
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with someone else who killed him. So it's either or. Yes, she
6:49
could have been there, but there's no way with just that fingerprint, like
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you said you was, it wasn't a fingerprint in blood, So we don't
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know when that was placed there. We just know she was in contact with
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him at some point. And that's the thing is, she was never considered
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to be a suspect until the fingerprint match. I've seen nothing to indicate that
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they got her name at all during the original investigation. And like you said,
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Lester was a very well liked person among all the local sex workers.
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And you think that if anyone had any information about how this other woman named
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Catherine Koontz had a grudge or a vendetta against him, that one of these
7:27
people would have told the police. But it doesn't sound like her name was
7:30
brought up at all until they got the fingerprint match. But before we delve
7:34
into this case any further, we have to discuss Lester himself. During our
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research, we've read nothing but glowing things about Lester as both a police officer
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and as a person, and it seems like no one had a bad word
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to say about him. He was a very devoted son who moved his parents
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in with him once he got the money to purchase a nice house. He
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was apparently so likable that many of the sex workers year rested couldn't even bring
8:01
themselves to hate him. Lester's record during his eight year police career seems spotless,
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and it doesn't sound like the investigation into his death was able to uncover
8:11
anything suspicious in his background. Given that he was a police officer who had
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his own house, swimming pool, and corvette, and was also using a
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car phone during an era where that type of thing was in common, it
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would be tempting to believe that Lester had to be involved in something dirty,
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but he was apparently able to afford all that stuff on his own by working
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multiple jobs. I know they found evidence that Lester may have been frequenting massage
8:37
parlors in his off hours, but that's hardly damning, and again, he
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may have simply been checking out these places as research for a future undercover job.
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So it is compelling to brainstorm a scenario where Lester is the ultimate straight
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arrow crop who's attempting to fight back against corruption in his department, but gets
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in way over his head and winds up being killed for it. At the
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outset, the Walnut Creek Police Department apparently had these same thoughts, which is
9:05
why they did not want the San Francisco PD assisting them with their investigation into
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the murder, given that one of their own was killed. Some members of
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the SFPD believe the higher apps could have pushed much harder to resolve these jurisdictional
9:18
issues and get them involved in the investigation, which is why they couldn't help,
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but speculate that someone in power didn't want the crime to be solved.
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This isn't meant to tear apart the job the Walnut Creek PD did on the
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case, as they didn't have a lot of evidence to work with and probably
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did the best they could given the circumstances. But Walnut Creek was an affluent
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city which usually only had to deal with an average of one murder per year
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at that time, and the SFPD had some seasoned homicide investigators who might have
9:50
been able to contribute something. I definitely think it's valid the concerns that Walnut
9:54
Creek PD had. You have a vice officer who is part of of an
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organization that just brought down some pretty nefarious acts that included other fellow police officers.
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Every police department has the bad eggs, just like any other career does.
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And so when you're talking about an officer who's involved in the high profile
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cases that he's doing undercover work that he's possibly contributed to busts that involve fellow
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officers, I can see the weariness of the Walnut Police Department, Walnut Creek
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Police Department, But if they thought at all they were over their head,
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you have to reach out for other resources. I don't know what else they
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could have helped with. I think it is powerful to say, what did
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we know at the time. You had an eyewitness who was a carpet layer
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who several days after the Fourth of July says, I didn't pay attention to
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these loud noises because I figured it was just fireworks. Well, he didn't
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get a very good look. He saw two blonde women, and unfortunately that
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is a very large percentage of the population being blonde women in their twenties and
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thirties. He wasn't able to provide much detail the cars, very very basic
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descriptions that he was able to give. And so because of that, like
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you said, what else was there to know at the time? Are we
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missing surveillance cameras? Were those available back in the late eighties in that area?
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Are we missing information from other eyewitnesses that were simply never asked and might
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not have known what they saw? So, yes, there could have been
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things that were missed, But this is one of those cases where there's a
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massive question mark of we just don't have much of anything to go on.
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As you know, Lestern's murder came on the heels of major bust of a
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brothel housing a teenage sex trafficking ring, which led to the indictment of several
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people, including SFPD officer Patrick Miyagishima and political figure Roger Boas. However,
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they found nothing to tie these two events together, and I'm inclined to think
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they're not related. If Lester played a significant role in the sting operation and
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personally arrested some of the people involved, that would be one thing, But
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it doesn't sound like his role was anything more than performing a stakeout on the
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brothel on a couple of occasions. At best, Lester was a pretty minor
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figure in this investigation, and I don't see why anyone would specifically target him
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for retribution. I know that Lester's partner, Chuck Lofgren, thought their cover
12:24
was blown during their surveillance in the brothel, but if that's the case,
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why would they kill Lester and not Chuck. What would be the point of
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killing a vice cop who really didn't do anything more than watch some buildings for
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a few days. It is interesting that the head of this sex trafficking ring,
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Patrick Roberts, was apprehended in Oklahoma, only one day before Lester was
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killed, but I think that's probably nothing more than the coincidence. And as
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for Patrick Miyakishima, there really is no evidence that he and Lester even knew
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each other, and if the closest connection between them is some unsubstantiated rumors that
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the two men once attended the same stag party together years beforehand, then that's
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pretty thin. I mean, I don't completely discount the possibility that Lester may
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have stumbled upon something on his job which put his life at risk, but
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I don't think it had anything to do with this particular case. And when
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you think about the fact that Patrick was a fellow police officer and at one
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point was a security guard in a same area where Lester worked, you have
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to remember that people who are in security and law enforcement, they tend to
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have the same schedules. They tend to really stick close to, like circles,
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and so yeah, of course they attended a similar party, they ran
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in similar social groups, and so I don't find that to be ironic.
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The one thing that really throws me for a loop is that he gets these
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calls, one of them is a female, and he cancels the plans with
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his friend, drives out and parks in a manner that's similar to the way
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that police officers are trained to park, so that you know they're not backed
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into an area where people can't see them. And he does not have either
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of his weapons with him. To me, that indicates this idea that he
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felt ultimately safe, And for someone who is a vice officer, even when
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he's off duty, I feel like there would be the heightened sense of I
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never know, I never know about people I don't know who could approach us.
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But he did not have any weapon on him. To me, that
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screamed volumes and is one of the biggest reasons that I'm saying, was he
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trying to meet up with someone involved in one of his cases, because if
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he was, I just don't think someone trained in that series about their job
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would go without a service weapon. And they said that even when he was
14:37
off duty, he would carry one of his guns, like even if he
14:41
was just going out to the movies or something, he would just carry it
14:43
on them instinctually. So it makes you wonder did he just simply forget his
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gun or did he have reasons for not bringing you with them. The one
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thing which seemed to make Lester's family suspicious is that the police found a surveillance
14:56
videotape in his home office following his death, and they've never disclosed its contents.
15:01
Well, it is a bit odd that Lester would be keeping a tape
15:05
like that in his house. It's possible the police kept quiet about what was
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on it because it contained sensitive information about an ongoing investigation which they did not
15:13
want to jeopardize. This doesn't necessarily mean Lester was killed because he had secretly
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filmed something which was going to blow the lid off corruption. Of course,
15:22
we also have the business from nineteen ninety eight, where former vice cop Vincent
15:26
Repetto filed a lawsuit against a fellow officer who allegedly told people that Repetto had
15:33
murdered Lester. It doesn't sound like this lead went anywhere, and it's probably
15:37
nothing more than a bunch of smoke, since investigators never found any reason to
15:41
consider Repetto as to be a suspect, both before and after the lawsuit.
15:46
But even if you completely discount the idea that corrupt cops or people in power
15:50
were responsible for Lester's murder, there's still a number of unanswered questions about how
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we wound up in the parking lot of the Wood Creek shopping Center. To
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begin with, is it possible that he had developed a friendship that someone maybe
16:03
getting out of sex work, or maybe someone he had actually helped and had
16:07
an affinity for. Is it possible that he was friends with someone that he
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thought, you know, we're beyond the criminal component, he was loyal to
16:17
her in helping her recover from a lifestyle like that and was meeting up with
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her. Or are we aware that one of the phone calls from a quote
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woman. Were his parents aware that he was starting to date or talk to
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somebody, Well, we're going to talk in a few moments. How Lester
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had recently gotten over a breakup, So I'm not sure if he was involved
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in a series relationship at this point, but that is a good idea here
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that maybe it's someone where he arrested this person but he thought, well,
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I don't want to enter them into the system. I'll give them a second
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chance and maybe I'll help them get them out of this sex work before they
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have to spend time in jail. So it could be one of those things
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where he developed a close relationship with one of the people he arrested and was
16:57
going to meet them, but for whatever reason, they just decided to kill
17:02
him instead. I mean, it sort of makes sense because if you think
17:06
back before there was dating apps, the way that people would often meet people
17:10
would be at work, and if you're a vice officer, you might end
17:14
up meeting somebody that you think, oh my gosh, they're in this lifestyle
17:18
and what can I do to help them? And you could start off being
17:21
friends and it could develop into something more, and it might not be something
17:25
that he'd shared with other people in his life. So that seems completely plausible.
17:30
Ash Leicester was off duty on the night of his death, and I
17:33
think the fact, like we just said, that he left both of his
17:37
guns at home discounts the possibility that he was going to Walnut Creek to perform
17:41
a bust. This is one reason that I believe the rumors about Lester working
17:45
on something big before he was murdered or overblown. If he was involved in
17:49
anything which could potentially jeopardize his life, I think he'd be carrying a gun
17:53
on him at all times for protection, regardless of whether he was on duty
17:57
or not. Some of Lester's his fellow officers made note of the way his
18:02
vehicle was parked across three parking spots, which is what cops sometimes do when
18:06
they're being extra cautious and don't want to be approached from behind. But if
18:11
he was secretly working undercover, it's still very odd that Lester would keep his
18:15
badge in his Corvette's glove compartment but not bothered to take either of his weapons
18:18
along. What we do know is that Lester was planning to go to the
18:22
movies with his best friend that night, but canceled at the last minute without
18:26
much of an explanation. Before he left his house, he received two phone
18:30
calls, so it's reasonable to assume that one or both of these calls paved
18:34
the way for Lester showing up in the shopping center parking lot. Now,
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Lester's father, Anthony Garnier, answered one of the calls and claimed the person
18:42
on the phone was a woman, But I'm not so sure she would have
18:47
been. Catherine Koontz Cootes apparently had a very noticeable Scottish accent, but I
18:52
don't believe mister Garnier ever mentioned hearing anything like that in the caller's voice.
18:56
However, since multiple blonde women were seen in the parking lot later that night,
19:00
it's still possible that the female caller was involved in the murder, oh
19:04
for sure. And you know that if the father had heard any kind of
19:08
discernible accent, or there had been any kind of verbal lisp or anything that
19:14
he would have reported that it would have been ingrained in his mind that this
19:18
is that call that my son was on before he left my home and then
19:22
he was murdered. So we know it. You know, ninety nine percent
19:26
was not Coon's on the other end of the phone. But like you said,
19:30
there was another blonde woman supposedly seen near his car when he was shot
19:37
or possibly shot, and so could have easily been her, could have been
19:41
someone else setting him up knowing that these two women would go meet him at
19:44
the car. So and it also, I mean, who knows, Maybe
19:48
it's unrelated, but that's very unlikely. But what could the female caller have
19:53
said to Lester to compel him to drive to the shopping center. While Lester
19:57
was known for being a lady and even though he hoped to possibly get married
20:03
and have a family someday, he wasn't quite ready to settle down yet.
20:07
Lester had actually been involved in a three year relationship with a woman which was
20:11
described as being tumultuous. She was supposedly very possessive of Lester, so they
20:17
broke up less than two months before he was killed. Now, this ex
20:21
girlfriend had a pretty solid alibi, so it's very unlikely she was involved in
20:26
the murder. But given that Lester was currently single, it does open up
20:30
the possibility that he may have been looking for female companionship on the night that
20:34
he was killed. Perhaps this late night rendezvous at the shopping center had nothing
20:38
to do with Lester's police work. He was just there to meet up with
20:41
a woman who may or may not have been a sex worker, but she
20:45
wound up killing him instead. Of course, the issue with this theory is
20:49
that there's no apparent motive for this crime. Lester's wallet was in the glove
20:53
box, so robbery didn't seem to be the motive, though I suppose the
20:57
alternative explanation is that the killer planned to rob Lester, discovered he wasn't carrying
21:03
anything, and never bothered to check the glove compartment. Since Lester was driving
21:07
a Corvette and parked alone in a dark lot late at night, he could
21:11
have been an ideal target for a random perpetrator who wanted to rob him.
21:17
But I find it odd that the only item which appeared to be missing were
21:19
Lester's car keys. Why would the killer take the keys and leave the car
21:23
behind, unless perhaps there was another key on that ring which the perpetrator wanted
21:29
for some reason. Well, let me ask you this. What if they
21:33
shoot him he was shot what twice? Yeah? Okay, so let's say
21:37
they shoot him twice. He's maybe moaning or making noises, or they're just
21:41
saying listen. If there's any chance this guy's gonna survive this or is going
21:45
to be coherent. We're going to take his key so he can't drive himself
21:49
somewhere and can't leave this location, and so basically he's going to sit in
21:53
a simpty parking lot and die in the next few minutes. So we're out
21:57
of here. You know. Obviously it wasn't so remote that people weren't there,
22:03
because it's a shopping center. There's a carpet layer working, you know.
22:06
Some of those stores had lights on, so it could have been that
22:08
there's these two shots, they panic, they grab the keys, and they
22:11
run, knowing that he won't be able to get help from anyone. Yeah,
22:17
that makes sense that maybe they didn't have any interest in the car,
22:18
but they just wanted to ensure that he wouldn't be able to drive anywhere to
22:22
get help if he wasn't dead yet by that point. The biggest issue investigators
22:26
have faced since matching the fingerprint to Catherine Konz is trying to figure out any
22:32
sort of tangible connection between her and Lester. The closest like anyone could find
22:37
was that Lester and his family often ate at a restaurant where coons briefly worked
22:41
as a waitress, but that's pretty tenuous, you know. Coons went on
22:45
trial in nineteen ninety one for her alleged role in a murder for higher plot
22:48
to kill her husband, but that took place after she moved to Virginia,
22:52
and the extent of her criminal activities while living in California are a lot more
22:57
murky. It seems like one of the reasons Koontz developed a drug addiction was
23:02
because she was left home alone while her naval officer husband was away at sea
23:06
a lot of the time, and she probably turned to sex work in order
23:10
to support her habit. Since Lester's undercover work involved posing as a customer in
23:15
order to arrest sex workers, it's certainly possible that Kotz could have crossed paths
23:18
with them. One prevalent theory is that Lester's murderer's retaliation for a prior bust
23:25
he might have made, but since Kutz had no arrest record during her time
23:29
in California, I don't think this motive would apply to her. An alternate
23:33
explanation might be that Lester was using Kootz as an informant and she convinced him
23:37
to meet her at the shopping center under the guise of supplying them with information,
23:41
but for whatever reason, she wound up killing him instead. It depends
23:45
on if this is If this is true, if this is really what happened,
23:48
who she would have been given information about, who would have been behind
23:52
the sting that he might have made progress on if she did give accurate information.
23:57
Remember, if she's addicted to drugs at the time, or if she
24:00
relies on this sex work to fund a drug habit, you can get pretty
24:04
desperate. So if you've agreed in reward for not in reward for going to
24:11
share information, you're not going to go to prison. You might feel very
24:17
pressured that I have to show up and I have to give information, But
24:19
if it comes at a cost of not having your drug addiction met or is
24:23
going to take down the person who supplies you with drugs, does your addiction
24:27
override that and cause you to kill the person asking you for information. It
24:33
does make me wonder though, if she would have even had any information to
24:37
supply, And that's why I wish we knew a lot more about her activities
24:41
in California and if she connected with anyone while she was working on the streets
24:45
who was dangerous. I mean, I haven't heard anything about her having a
24:48
pimp or any handler who operated, or money and stuff like that, so
24:53
it makes me wonder what she could have had to offer to Lester. But
24:56
that's why I am intrigued by your theory that perhaps Lester took a shine to
25:00
were and wanted to help her and get her out of sex work or something
25:03
like that instead of arresting her and that, but she double crossed him by
25:07
deciding to kill him. Of course, another issue is that in addition to
25:14
Koons, there may have also been one, even two other women involved in
25:18
this crime, and no one knows who they are. We have two key
25:22
eyewitness sightings from the parking lot that night, the carpet layer who heard what
25:26
was most likely gunshots before he saw two blond women walking towards separate vehicles and
25:30
driving away, and the witness who drove through the lot and saw a blonde
25:34
woman exiting Lester's corvette. But the biggest complication is figuring out the timing of
25:41
these two sightings and how close they took place to one another. During the
25:45
Unsolved Mystery segment, one of the investigators acknowledged that these two sightings may not
25:49
actually be connected to each other, and it's possible that the two blonde women
25:55
seen by the carpet layer might be two completely innocent bystanders who had no involvement
26:00
in the crime. It's also possible that three entirely different women were involved in
26:04
the murder, though when the carpet layer looked at the composite sketch of the
26:07
blonde scene exiting the corvette, he thought she might be one of the same
26:11
women he saw. However, it was dark and both witnesses saw these women
26:17
from a distance, so I'm not sure if either of them could positively identify
26:22
any of the women as Catherine. Coon's descriptions were also provided the two vehicles
26:27
the blonde drove out of the parking lot, which were a blue Toyota pickup
26:30
and a grayish white Toyota or dats in car, but it's unclear of Coons
26:34
would have had access to vehicles of that type in nineteen eighty eight. I
26:38
personally think it's too much of a coincidence that all these similar looking blonde women
26:44
were seen in the parking lot of a closed shopping center late at night around
26:48
the same time, given that her fingerprint was on the window, the blonde
26:52
steam climbing out of the corvette was probably Coons, and the carpet layer subsequently
26:56
saw her and an unidentified female accomplice. Well, this goes along with our
27:03
age old theory that eyewitnesses are problematic, not because they don't have amazing intent
27:07
and they don't you know, they're having any kind of ill intent when they're
27:12
describing what they saw. But we see here that you have two eyewitnesses.
27:18
They might actually have stories that don't line up and that you say, yes,
27:22
that looks similar to who I saw. But it's very difficult to find
27:26
distinct factors that you saw on an individual in a brief moment and then looking
27:32
at a picture and saying, yes, this is absolutely one hundred percent the
27:36
same person looking similar, maybe that's the right person. That does not really
27:41
aid investigators with any kind of momentum to move forward and try to find a
27:45
person who matches these descriptions. Even the cars weren't quite as clear as we
27:49
needed them to be when we're asking someone to nail down exactly what kind of
27:53
make and model they saw, And you also have to account for the fact
27:57
that when they originally made these sightings, there would have been nothing remarkable about
28:02
them because they didn't know that a murder had taken place. They didn't find
28:04
Lester's body till the following morning. And just think of your average night where
28:10
it's like you might see a blonde woman in a parking lot. There's just
28:11
going to be nothing out of the ordinary about it. And then the following
28:15
day here, oh, someone was killed in that same parking lot. Yes,
28:18
I remember seeing a blonde woman there, and you may place more significance
28:22
on it, even though it might not even be connected to the crime.
28:26
And that's why eyewitness identification can be very unreliable. This is a little bit
28:30
off the topic of the parking lot, but I'm just curious what both of
28:33
you think. So with regards to Koons, we know that she had an
28:38
active crack cocaine habit at the time, and she was engaged in sex work,
28:42
and we know that Boas was busted. What do we think the chances
28:47
are that those two could have been acquainted and if there was some connection between
28:51
Coon's and Boas, and maybe Boas was like, Okay, well, if
28:56
you do this job for me, I will pay you X amount of dollars
29:00
or give you this amount of drugs some kind of incentive, because even if
29:06
it was Koons, I'm just having such a hard time, like I'm struggling
29:08
with what would be the motive exactly, Like I know they didn't find any
29:14
connection between the drug bust, and I've gone over the points. How it's
29:17
kind of weird that they would target Lestra because he was just kind of a
29:19
small cog. He just did some surveillance. He didn't really orchestrate the bus
29:23
or personally arrest anybody, so I'm not sure why he would be targeted,
29:27
But yeah, I could definitely see someone if this was murder for higher like
29:32
getting someone like Kootz who had addiction issues and also a sex work. So
29:37
I personally think that like maybe Koots didn't even know who Lesterra was. He
29:41
was just kind of a hired gun. But it's just trying to figure out
29:45
who would want to kill Lester that has just led the investigation to a dead
29:48
end because, like you said, Kots doesn't seem to have a motive,
29:52
and I'm sure through the course of his term as a police officer that Lester
29:57
may have pissed some people off who could have wanted been dead, but it
30:02
just seemed surprising that they wouldn't have found someone like that during the course of
30:04
the investigation. However, the potential involvement of more than one person would make
30:11
it very difficult for the authorities to build a prosecutable case against Kuts. Even
30:17
though an unidentified fingerprint was found on the corvette window, investigators did not actually
30:22
submit it to the FBI for analysis until two thousand and two. They figured
30:26
that since the print was just a partial it was of no use. While
30:30
you could criticize this decision, keep in mind that Kots did not have a
30:33
police record until she was arrested in Virginia in nineteen ninety one, so if
30:38
they ran the print back in nineteen eighty eight, it wouldn't have made any
30:41
difference. Once the fingerprint was linked to Kut's, investigators would spend six years
30:47
thoroughly checking her background, so there was no lack of effort with trying to
30:51
build a case against Kots and uncover additional evidence implicating her in the murder.
30:56
There really isn't too much information out there about the murder for higher plot on
31:00
greg Orycoots, so I really can't come to a definitive conclusion about whether or
31:03
not Catherine was actually guilty of that crime. But man Greg must have been
31:08
the most trusting husband in the world if he was willing to testify on behalf
31:14
of the woman who was accused of hiring people to murder him. While it
31:18
helped get Catherine acquitted, it didn't exactly save their marriage. Investigators were eventually
31:23
able to track Greg down and interview him, and they came to the conclusion
31:26
that he had no knowledge or involvement in Lester's murder. For all we know,
31:32
Greg was probably away at sea at the time Lester was killed, and
31:34
since he was gone from home so much, it doesn't sound like Greg had
31:38
any insights on what sort of criminal activity his wife may have been mixed up
31:42
in during their time in California. Poor Greg just seems completely oblivious to what's
31:49
going on. You know. He marries this foreign national who the two accomplices
31:56
say told them she cannot afford to lose her green cards. She cannot lose
32:00
her ability to be here in the US. So if she could just kill
32:02
her husband, she might have the resources and be able to manipulate a way
32:07
to stay here in the United States and Greg's like, it's okay, she
32:12
would never do something like this. But while the man's off serving in our
32:15
country, she's back here. Yes, it's very difficult to be the spouse
32:20
to a military personnel service man or woman. I'm a proud daughter of a
32:25
marine, so I know the families also serve with their loved one. But
32:31
here it's like he went off to see and she went, yeah, I'm
32:35
not doing this kind of like by myself. And she went and was addicted
32:39
to drugs, was doing sex work to fund that addiction. And I don't
32:44
know that Greg really was aware of any of that. So he comes back
32:46
and of course he thinks, oh, my wife would have nothing to do
32:50
with a scheme to hurt me. She's just my sweet little wife that I
32:54
left behind. And clearly it comes to turn out that they didn't have the
32:59
relationship thought because they got divorced anyway. But kind of blows my mind that
33:04
she was almost able to live these two double lives while Greg was off at
33:07
sea. Pretty hard to hide a crack coquete addiction. You'd think that you
33:10
would come back. And not only is she going to be physically ravaged by
33:15
this, but I think her mental health is not going to be in the
33:19
same place that it was when he left. It would be pretty hard to
33:22
hide that. And although he might not have an idea of exactly what she
33:28
was into and what criminal activity she was up to, I'm sure that he
33:31
had to have a pretty good idea. Either that or he's in denial.
33:36
I mean, a lot of people who are spouses of people with substance use
33:40
disorders, you see a lot of denial. I mean I saw it when
33:44
I was at rehab, and you'd see people who really don't want to admit
33:47
that their loved one has an addiction, because then what does that say about
33:52
them? And I think then they've got to redefine the relationship and define how
33:55
they see it and themselves, and that can be an incredibly complex thing.
34:00
So there's a lot of reasons why people can go, oh, they would
34:01
never do that, because it is just too hard of a truth to admit
34:06
that to oneself, that yes, she had an addiction and she tried to
34:09
kill me. It's maybe easier for his mind at the time to just go,
34:14
no, she would never do that because that reality is much more comfortable
34:17
than the alternative. Since investigators made three unsuccessful attempts to convince prosecutors to file
34:25
murder charges against Kuns. I think they just became desperate for information when they
34:30
decided to publicly name her as a suspect in two thousand and eight and offer
34:35
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward. They probably did so out of
34:38
fear that Coons would be deported back to Scotland following her release from prison,
34:43
and sure enough, that's exactly what happened, as Ice is a totally different
34:47
government jurisdiction and will not let an ongoing murder investigation halt their deportation procedures.
34:54
You might recall an episode we released a few years ago about the nineteen eighty
34:59
two disappearing of the Solomon family, where the prime suspect, Harvey Rader,
35:04
was serving time in prison for an unrelated crime and facing deportation back to his
35:07
native England once his sentence came to an end. That compelled the authorities to
35:13
work diligently at building a case against Rader. They were able to charge him
35:16
with the family's murders before he left the country, but the problem was that
35:22
the case was very circumstantial, and Rader ultimately wound up being acquitted at his
35:25
third trial. If they had done the same thing with Catherine Kon's, there's
35:30
a good chance or trial would have had the same result and ended with her
35:34
walking free. It might seem damning that Kons's fingerprint was found at the murder
35:38
scene, but think about how a good defense attorney might have spound this a
35:43
trial. While a witness did see a woman matching Koons's description emerged from Lester's
35:47
car and looked through the driver's side window, he did not say that he
35:52
saw her carrying a murder weapon, nor could he confirm if Lester was already
35:55
dead by this point. Hypothetically, the defense could acknowledge the ko met or
36:00
stumbled across Lester in the parking lot that night in order to explain away the
36:04
fingerprint, and then claim that someone else came along and committed the murder after
36:07
Coon's already left. I don't blame you. You don't ask a DA to
36:14
take a case like this, or to really press for a case like this,
36:16
when all you have is this fingerprint, and like we've talked about,
36:22
you cannot prove when that fingerprint was left. It could have been earlier that
36:27
afternoon. It could have been that morning, it could have been a couple
36:30
days before. And Jules, like you said, who's to say she wasn't
36:34
the blonde lady who was seen by an eyewitness, but the timing was a
36:37
little bit off. And she walks away, and then someone comes up to
36:43
this abandoned corvette in the middle of this vacant parking lot and ended up shooting
36:49
the driver. Lester, I mean, think about it like this. Let's
36:52
say Coon's was there, and she's trying to give information or something, and
36:57
when she gets out of the car and walks away, perhaps she's confronted by
37:00
her pimp or the person who's in charge of collecting money from her for sex
37:07
work, and he says, what were you doing in that car? Do
37:09
you get money? Give me money? And she's say no, he wouldn't
37:12
pay me, he didn't pay me, he tricked me. And then he
37:15
goes and kills him. I mean, there's a million things that could have
37:19
happened where the two blonde ladies weren't Coon's or could have been Coons. Coons
37:23
could be the killer or an accomplice, or maybe wasn't part of that crime.
37:29
It's as a district attorney. There's no way in heck I could take
37:32
a case like this and feel confident going to trial for two reasons, I
37:37
don't think there's enough evidence to prove she did it, and I don't want
37:38
to take an innocent person and put them on trial either. Yeah, definitely
37:44
a lot of reasonable doubt. And we just talked about what happened with Harvey
37:46
Raider and the Solomon family case, where they really wanted to put him on
37:50
trial even without the victim's bodies being found. And now that he's been acquitted,
37:53
you can't charge him again. That was your only shot and the case
37:58
might remain unsolved forever. So at least they didn't do it. The same
38:00
thing with Lester Garnier's case because there is still a chance to charge Koons again
38:06
if new evidence should surface. And technically, even if Konz was involved,
38:12
we really don't even know if she was the one who actually pulled the trigger.
38:15
Remember, she later went on trial for hiring someone to murder her husband
38:20
rather than doing it herself. So while Konz could have played a role in
38:22
learning Lester to the parking lot, her unidentified blonde accomplice may have been the
38:28
person who shot him. Whatever happened, the evidence just isn't strong enough at
38:31
this point to convict Kots beyond a reasonable doubt, so I can understand why
38:36
prosecutors are reluctant to take her to trial. Unfortunately, since Kons is now
38:40
back in the United Kingdom, it might be more difficult to track her down
38:44
should new evidence against her surface. But even with the fingerprint evidence, the
38:49
one thing nobody seems to have figured out after all this time is motive.
38:53
Like I mentioned earlier, investigators spent six years delving into Kunz's background and never
38:59
found any tangible link between her and Lester. I know I've already expressed my
39:04
skepticism about the murder being some massive conspiracy orchestrated by corrupt cops. But even
39:08
if it was, how would Koonts have become involved. It sounds like the
39:13
extent of her criminal activity in California was turning tricks to support her drug habit,
39:17
But how would that escalate it to the murder of a police officer.
39:22
If someone wanted Lester dead, why would they hire Kots to do it.
39:25
What's strange to me is that, even though Kotz doesn't strike me as a
39:29
master criminal, This was a professionally done murder with almost no evidence left behind.
39:35
If it wasn't for the partial fingerprint, no one would have ever suspected
39:38
Konz and this would essentially be the perfect crime. I just have a feeling
39:44
that if there was a massive cover up involving powerful people, Catherine Koontz is
39:47
not the type of person who would have been selected to pull off this task.
39:52
No, not at all. And you have multiple people who are there.
39:55
It's very difficult to have everyone involved in a crime to to keep their
40:00
mouth shut. There were large, large, large rewards offered for information in
40:05
this case. So to think that this kind of low level criminal is going
40:10
to orchestrate the murder of a police officer with other people and not have someone
40:16
snitch on her. She's not going to have someone turn on her. She's
40:20
not going to make a mistake and leave incriminating evidence. It seems far fetched
40:24
to me. It's not impossible, but it seems more difficult than thinking that
40:30
there could have been something else nefarious going on with someone that maybe he had
40:34
busted for a crime, or if you think about too, like you said,
40:37
he is in this parking lot, sitting there, waiting on somebody who
40:43
I believe called his home and lured him away from the movies. Was his
40:47
ex girlfriend cleared? She clearly had an alibi for where she was correct she
40:52
did, yes, And I don't think they found any evidence that this was
40:55
a murder for hire. So she's never been considered a suspect in the crime
41:00
because I would know she was really frustrated about their breakup and there was some
41:02
resentment and anger there. But yeah, there's just too many options and such
41:07
little information here to say, Okay, let's take this one fingerprint and run
41:13
with it. As this is our suspect, it's time to make a case
41:15
against her. All that being said, I don't rule out the idea that
41:21
someone did hire Coons to commit this murder, but the crime was a lot
41:24
more personal in nature. One thing we know for certain is that Lester received
41:29
a call from a woman shortly before leaving his house, and multiple women were
41:32
seen in the parking lot at the time he was killed. I know that
41:36
investigators couldn't find any tangible link between Lester and Koons, but what if another
41:40
woman in either Lester's personal or professional life hired Koons to kill him? Well,
41:45
there's no record of Lester, ever, having arrested Coons, who's to
41:50
say that another sex worker he busted didn't want revenge. Sure, some of
41:53
the women Lester arrested spoke highly of him, but it's safe to say that
41:58
not all of them would have been overly thrilled about the idea of going to
42:01
jail. But it is also possible the crime had no connection to Lester's work
42:06
as a vice officer, and someone wanted him dead for other reasons. Lester
42:10
was known as a ladies man, he had recently broken up with his longtime
42:14
girlfriend, and he was apparently frequenting massage parlors in his spare time. He
42:19
very well could have gotten involved with another woman who, for unknown reasons,
42:22
decided to kill him. No one knows what was said to Lester during his
42:27
final phone conversation at home, but it seemed to compel him to break off
42:30
plans to see a movie with his friend, and the fact that Lester left
42:35
his house without his guns leads me to believe that he drove to the Wood
42:38
Creek shopping center for something which had nothing to do with his police work.
42:43
Even if Lester did not personally know Catherine Kons, the individual who wanted him
42:47
dead, could have set things up for coons to kill him in the parking
42:51
lot. I have a deep suspicion that whoever he was going to meet was
42:55
someone that he really did have a close connection with. I don't think it
43:00
was an informant. I don't think that it's somebody that he knows had a
43:04
kind of criminal background, because he was a smart, efficient, responsible law
43:09
enforcement officer. He always carried his service weapon and he intentionally didn't. Yes,
43:15
he didn't tell people where he was going. But is it something like
43:17
what Jules said, like this is a new kind of exploratory hangout date with
43:22
a girl that he might be trying to date. Is this something else he
43:27
wants to meet about for a business opportunity? Like what is it that he
43:30
was so safe in that trip that he didn't feel a need to tell anybody
43:35
where he was going and he didn't bring his service weapons. Safe enough that
43:39
you don't bring your surface weapon, but not familiar enough or long standing enough
43:45
that you feel like you can disclose to your best friend who you're meeting or
43:51
why you're canceling your movie plans. I just think that it has to be
43:54
somebody that he felt comfortable with Either that, or it was an oversight that
43:59
he forgot his weapon, But it just doesn't sound like he would make a
44:01
mistake like that since he always seemed to carry at least one of his guns.
44:06
It seems more likely that he was disarmed by the individual. Either they
44:09
did have some sort of relationship, or somehow he was manipulated into believing that
44:15
they weren't a threat. If you're wondering why Koontz would have gotten involved in
44:21
this, it seems like the main reason she turned to sex work to begin
44:23
with was to support a drug habit. We also know that Koontz and her
44:28
husband filed for bankruptcy the following year, so things were not good for her
44:30
financially. If she really was desperate enough for money, Koontz might have agreed
44:36
to perform this murder for someone, even if she had no personal issues with
44:38
Lester. If this is what happened, I can't help but wonder if it
44:43
may have inspired Koontz when she orchestrated a plot to murder her own husband three
44:46
years later, as she supposedly hired Melinda Cooper, a seventeen year old runaway
44:52
she had taken under her wing, to perform the job. Who's to say
44:54
the situation wasn't reversed, and Kountz was in Melinda Cooper's role once someone else
45:00
hired her to kill Lester, but this time the plan worked pretty well since
45:05
Coons didn't even pop up on the radar as a suspect for several years,
45:07
and whoever orchestrated the whole thing has never been identified, so in the end,
45:13
I definitely think this was a murder for higher plot, but one in
45:15
which investigators originally looked in the wrong direction. The plot had nothing to do
45:21
with a major scandal involving the teenage sex trafficking ring, and Lester was murdered
45:25
for personal reasons. I have no idea where Catherine Coons is today, as
45:30
the investigation once again hit a standstill after she was deported, But the authorities
45:35
are still trying to solve the case and seem to think that there's just one
45:38
or two crucial pieces of the puzzle missing which can tie everything together. It's
45:44
tragic enough when a police officer is killed in the line of duty, but
45:47
here we have a very well respected cop being murdered in cold blooded fashion while
45:52
he was off duty, and no one can understand why. Remember there is
45:55
still a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars reward being offered for information which leads
46:00
to the arrest and prosecution of the responsible party. So if you happen to
46:04
have any information on the murder of Lester Gaargnier, please contact the appropriate authorities.
46:09
Jules Ashley any final thoughts on the case. I have to go back
46:14
to the type of person Lester was. Just to start with, there's not
46:20
a single person that can do a single act other than putting your love when
46:23
at risk or something that warrants murdering somebody. So but then you look at
46:29
Lester and you're like, Okay, this is a man who not only avoided
46:34
his own criminal lifestyle and unethical behavior, but he was actually a law enforcement
46:39
agent on a vice squad, who was trying to clean up the community,
46:45
to help people get out of a life of sex work, in human trafficking
46:49
and drugs and all of these things right to make sure his community is safer.
46:52
And not only that, but through that job, he was getting opportunities
46:58
to help his parents by allowing them to live with him in this nice new
47:01
home he had gotten. He was making plans for a retirement about ten years
47:07
later, where he was going to have other businesses, such as a hot
47:10
dog stand in franchise that he was starting with his best friend. He was
47:15
a dreamer, He was somebody dedicated to a beautiful, successful life with his
47:22
family, and it was completely cut short, just with no warning. Like
47:27
we talked about throughout this whole case, it really wasn't like Lester was deeply
47:30
involved in the apprehension of big time criminals and political figures and things like that.
47:37
The case we keep referring to, he was doing surveillance, so he
47:40
wasn't even the big takedown officer. It seems to me that Lester had formed
47:47
a trust with somebody who didn't actually earn it, and that had manipulated him
47:53
and used his kindness in his charm against him, making him feel safe enough
47:59
to leave his house to meet without his service weapon in a place where there
48:04
weren't going to be that many people around, and they stole his life away
48:07
from him, and in turn, they stole a lot of people's dreams.
48:10
His best friend was waiting for him to get paperwork for their new hot dog
48:15
vending business the morning that he was killed. He was standing there waiting for
48:20
him to meet him so they could go sign paperwork together. His parents lost
48:23
their son. You know, who knows what his life would have turned into.
48:28
And so it's such a sad case. And what's frustrating is if you're
48:32
going to say a single fingerprint kind of locks down who our main suspect is,
48:37
I just don't think we can go that route. I think it gives
48:40
us a lead and a suspect, but I think there is almost a end
48:46
listless of suspects while having no names on that list. At the same time,
48:52
Lester had everything going for him. You know, he was thirty years
48:55
old, he's recently single, he has this really good job at the end
49:00
SETPD like Ash just said, he wanted to open this hot dog stand with
49:04
his best friend and maybe franchise it out or expand and have a hot dog
49:07
empire, and that sounds really exciting. Like we know how popular food trucks
49:12
are now. That would have been kind of the food truck infancy that it
49:15
started with hot dogs, and he had this plan, like his future seemed
49:19
like it was going to be really solid. His parents had moved in,
49:22
and it really breaks my heart for his parents because it sounds like they were
49:27
of like a lower socioeconomic status and he brought them up to this nicer home,
49:31
and then you have to wonder what became of this home and what became
49:35
of the support of the parents after Lester's death. It just it makes me
49:38
really sad because they likely were just so proud of their son, everything that
49:43
he'd accomplished, and then to have him stolen from them, and not to
49:46
understand who took him and why, and even if it was Catherine Koon's,
49:52
there is a possibility or potential that it was Katherine Kuon's, but since there
49:55
was multiple women there, it could have been one of the other women who
49:59
was Ashley said he could have developed some kind of relationship with and she had
50:04
disarmed him, because for him to cancel movie plans with the best friend.
50:07
I'm just more inclined to believe that because he didn't bring his service weapon,
50:12
that it might have been romantic in nature. Of course, that is a
50:15
bit of an assumption, but I think we know that he always carried one
50:19
gun with him and he didn't have that, so I think we can deduce
50:22
from that that he didn't feel threatened at this point. It just feels like
50:27
we need a little bit more information for authorities to be able to charge Koons
50:31
and whomever she was with, you know, potentially three women involved. It's
50:37
just so frustrating because all the information is kind of tenuous, as are the
50:40
connections, and we cannot pinpoint, as we've said throughout, when that fingerprint
50:45
was there. It could have been three blonde women. It may not have
50:49
even been Kons. Koons could have been there at an earlier time, and
50:52
then her fingerprint was dusted and they assumed that it was one of the women
50:55
who were there, but she could have resembled the composite skein that one of
51:00
the witnesses had drawn up. So it's just so hard to say. I
51:04
can understand why they didn't go ahead with charging Coons because there just isn't sufficient
51:08
evidence at this time. But I hope moving forward that somebody comes forward and
51:14
shares this information with law enforcement. Yeah. I remember watching this on Unsolved
51:19
Mysteries when it originally aired. It was pretty perplexed by it. But my
51:22
initial thoughts that this had to be some sort of cover up or conspiracy,
51:27
and that maybe it had something to do with Lester's police work and that someone
51:30
in power wanted to have him killed. And then twenty years later I learned
51:34
about this lead involving this woman named Catherine Kootz, and I'm like, how
51:37
does she fit into this? How does this Scottish woman with no real connection
51:40
to Lester? Why is her fingerprint at the scene, What motive would she
51:45
have to kill Lester? And it just left me more confused. I mean,
51:49
it is just such a sad story because I remember when I first heard
51:52
that Lester was doing stuff like driving a Corvette and buying a new house and
51:55
getting a new swimming pool. I was thinking, Okay, he has to
51:59
be on the tape if a police officer is able to spend this much money.
52:02
But they looked into Lester's background, it sounds like he was completely clean
52:07
and just planning for his future and trying to give his parents a better life
52:10
before it was stolen from him for reasons that we still don't understand. I
52:15
mean, given Catherine Kreutz's other criminal history, the fact that she allegedly tried
52:20
to kill her husband, I am inclined to believe that she is somehow involved
52:23
in this murder and that she may have been the one who pulled the trigger
52:27
and may have left her print on the car window while she was killing Lester,
52:31
but we just don't know for sure. There's some evidence, but just
52:36
not enough pieces of the puzzle in place to put everything together. Because we
52:40
have another blonde woman scene at the scene, we have no motive, and
52:45
it's just so confusing, and they just never found anything on Lester's background to
52:49
give any insight on why anyone would want to have him killed. So that's
52:52
just why I hope because they are still offering a two hundred and fifty thousand
52:57
dollars reward for information, that someone will come forward who knows something, who
53:00
knows why Lester was killed, and offer maybe just that final piece of the
53:06
puzzle that will allow them to solve this case and make an arrest. But
53:09
until then, it will still continue to perplex me because we know some of
53:14
the pieces, some of the ideas of what might happen, but we just
53:16
don't know the full picture, and that's what's just so frustrating. Robin,
53:22
do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
53:25
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now,
53:29
and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I
53:34
also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with
53:37
us on Patreon if you join our five dollars tier Tier two. We also
53:43
offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on
53:47
the Trail went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if
53:52
you join our highest tier tier free, the ten dollar tier. One of
53:55
the features we offer is a audio commentary track over class episodes of Unsaved Mysteries,
54:01
where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved
54:06
Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing
54:10
in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured
54:15
in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a
54:19
commentary track over was the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
54:23
download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor,
54:28
then be sure to join Tier three. So I want to let you
54:30
know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
54:35
free episodes of the Path Went Chili. We've got our Path Went Chili mini's,
54:38
which are always over an hour, so they're not very many, but
54:42
they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing
54:45
those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link them in
54:49
the show notes. So I want to thank you all for listening, and
54:52
any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or d
54:55
rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at the path
54:59
Went ChIL at gmail dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the
55:02
Pathwin. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails
55:07
and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music by Paul Rich from the podcast
55:10
Cold Callers Comedy