Keeping Kevin Coe

MCNEIL ISLAND – Two weeks after he was scheduled to walk free from prison, Spokane rapist Kevin Coe spends most of his hours behind locked doors, with only a single window consisting of slits of shatterproof glass.

All around, more than 190 cameras scan the hallways, rooms and grounds, which are ringed by a double fence rigged with pressure sensors and miles-long garlands of razor wire.

Welcome to the state’s Special Commitment Center, a $60 million compound on an island nearly three miles out in Puget Sound. At an annual cost of about $160,000 per person, the state houses and tries to treat 245 men – and one woman – deemed to be “sexually violent predators.” Their prison terms are over, but they remain detained by the state through a process similar to involuntarily committing someone to a mental institution.

Although his 25-year prison sentence ended earlier this month, it is here that Coe will stay – indefinitely – if the state can convince a court that the man suspected of being the South Hill Rapist remains “more likely than not” to rape again.

‘Quiet, very subdued’

Even before Coe arrived, residents had heard rumors he was coming.

“We knew there’d be an influx of media, due to his notoriety,” said Dennis Breedlove Jr., a resident convicted of indecent liberties with one girl and molesting another.

Coe, initially held at the Spokane County Jail, was transferred to the island two weeks ago by barge, instead of the island’s prison-run ferry. Deputies drove the van onto the barge, which a tugboat pushed to the island.

So far, officials and residents say, Coe’s kept mostly to himself.

“This is a big shock to him. He never expected to be here,” said Richard Roy Scott, 59, a convicted child rapist who lives in the same 10-man ward and talks to Coe frequently.

Coe, 59, is allowed to go to the cafeteria for meals and gets two hours a day to walk or exercise in the complex’s grassy yard. He spends most of his time in his room and on a communal computer, apparently preparing for the court case. Charged with multiple rapes but only convicted of one, Coe is widely believed to be the serial rapist who attacked dozens of women in the Spokane area in the early 1980s.

Despite the high security surrounding it, Coe’s ward seems a bit like a college dorm lounge. There’s a communal TV and VCR, stuffed chairs, a microwave, an ice machine. On Thursday, Coe’s roommates watched TV or chatted on the pay phone. One wandered around, listening to music on an MP3 player. Coe, who declined a request to be interviewed, did not appear.

“He’s quiet, very subdued,” said program area manager Walter Weinberg, who was surprised at how much older Coe looks than in the 1980s news photos. “The residents know who he is. They seem to be leaving him alone.”

“He’s very quiet and reserved,” said Breedlove, who frequently sees Coe in the chow hall. “Nobody here was going to harm him. He did his time.”

From Meeker to Manson

The complex was opened two years ago, replacing an earlier facility that was carved out of the 1,300-inmate McNeil Island state prison. The new Special Commitment Center is two miles inland, flanked by mothballed farm buildings, silos, overgrown pastures and second-growth timber.

The 2-mile by 3-mile island was once home to pioneer Ezra Meeker, who built a homestead in 1853 where the prison now stands. Meeker, apparently tired of rowing to the mainland for supplies, moved after a year.

By 1875, the island was home to a small territorial prison. It became a federal prison, where inmates built boats, raised cattle and chickens, grew their own crops, and canned vegetables.

By 1937, the federal government kicked off the remaining homesteaders. In 1981, the state took over the complex, leasing the land from the feds. The bulk of the island is a national wildlife reserve, with deer grazing fearlessly amid decaying, deserted homes on waterfront property that, if private, would be worth millions of dollars.

Coe is probably the most high-profile resident on the island today, state officials say, but other famous – or infamous – people have lived there. Among them: the Birdman of Alcatraz and, in the 1960s, Charles Manson.

“We were afraid Mary Kay Letourneau was going to come here,” said Department of Social and Health Services spokesman Steve Williams. (Letourneau, a teacher convicted of having sex with an underage student whom she later married, didn’t fit the criteria for a sexual predator.)

Today, about 45 families live on the island in old homes. All are families of workers considered essential in an emergency: firefighters, maintenance workers or SWAT team members. Their children go to the island’s tiny elementary school until grade five, when they travel by ferry to schools on the mainland.

Not a prison

State officials take pains to differentiate the Special Commitment Center from the nearby prison. The Department of Corrections runs the prison; DSHS runs the center. The people inside are “residents,” not inmates. They have more freedom than inmates to move around, work, make calls and buy things from catalogs.

Nonetheless, security seems tight at the SCC. Workers in a command center spend their days scanning video from throughout the facility. Some cameras include motion sensors, which zoom in on any movement in restricted areas. Pressure sensors in the fence detect anything over 20 pounds – which becomes a problem when a 35-pound raccoon clambers gingerly through the wire. Any resident leaving the island is accompanied by two armed guards.

Mail is scanned for pornography or drugs. Some TV channels are blocked. No resident has Internet access. Cell phones and cameras are banned. So is yeast, so residents can’t home-brew alcohol. At night, the complex’s high-intensity lights cast an orange glow on low-hanging clouds. When they were first powered up, residents on a neighboring island complained.

The island is powered by an underwater electrical cable. If that’s severed – which happened once – backup generators are standing by to provide power for a month, Williams said.

Staffers patrol the inside perimeter of the fence on foot. Another circles constantly outside in a Jeep Cherokee.

The SCC’s 400 staffers are not armed. But many carry radios or “body alarms” to summon a Kevlar-clad security team equipped with shields and pepper spray. If someone escaped, he would be hunted by armed Department of Corrections teams. If there was a riot, the State Patrol would be called in to restore order.

There has been only one escape attempt, SCC associate superintendent Alan McLaughlin said. The man was caught between the twin fences ringing the SCC.

“And then, when you escape from this facility, where are you?” McLaughlin said, indicating the prison island all around.

The Bible and jigsaw puzzles

The SCC residents range in age from their 20s to 78, with an average age in the mid-40s.

For most, their rooms are small, with only a single window that doesn’t open. One resident who allowed a reporter to see his room Thursday had decorated it with posters of cars, the Seattle Mariners and women, family photos and a couple of stuffed teddy bears. His shelves were crammed with pop, iced tea, candy, laundry and cans of rolling tobacco. Country music played on his small stereo. A cowboy hat sat near the computer.

Outside in the yard, residents have weights, an exercise bike, sit-up mat and a heavy bag for punching. But most seem to spend their time smoking or pacing around the yard with the slow amble of men who have no place to go and all day to get there. Most scattered or tugged jacket hoods over their faces Thursday at the sight of a news camera.

Some residents have jobs – helping in the kitchen, cleaning, doing yard work or maintenance – for which they’re paid slightly below minimum wage: $7 an hour.

Donald Stark, 46, lives in one of the low-security wings of the complex. He gets up each day around 4:30 a.m., reads his Bible for 90 minutes, then works the breakfast shift in the chow hall. The rest of the time he exercises, listens to music, watches TV or works on jigsaw puzzles. He can do a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in two days. Stark, convicted of indecent liberties and attempted rape of a child, hasn’t been off the island in four years. He gets no visitors. At 70, he said, his mother’s too old to come.

Breedlove, who’s 43, spends his time writing computer programs and playing video games. He said he’s amassed a large amount of music on his computer, “everything from bluegrass to Korn and Limp Bizkit.”

Punishment vs. treatment

Many of the residents have hobbies. Woodworking is popular – “anything from birdhouses up to grandfather clocks,” McLaughlin said – and one man is making a saddle. Others tie fishing flies, knit or sew.

“Idle hands are a devil’s workshop,” McLaughlin said. “That’s an important principle to us.”

Residents practice a wide variety of religions, including Islam, Judaism, Wicca, Catholicism, Protestantism and Native American ceremonies. A sweat lodge and cow skull sit outside.

The state picks up the tab for basic needs like toothpaste, soap, towels, linen and basic clothing.

“If they want Adidas tennis shoes, they have to buy Adidas tennis shoes,” McLaughlin said.

Attacks are rare, he said. About twice a year, someone attacks a staffer. Fights among residents are more common, although he said they still total just a “handful” of incidents a year. Tantrums and verbal abuse are more common.

Some residents attend counseling, classes and other treatment. Others refuse treatment, as Coe reportedly did during his time in prison. Some refuse on the advice of their attorneys, who say that participating would undermine their legal challenges to being detained.

Some quit treatment because they don’t feel it’s getting them any closer to release. Only 11 men have been released from the SCC into halfway houses, and four of those are in a halfway house just outside the SCC fence line.

“More guys have died in here than have gotten out of here,” said Rudolph Franklin, 57, convicted of two rapes in the late 1980s. “This is more punishment than treatment.

“Taxpayers are paying all this,” he said, pointing at the new buildings. “Your dollars are going for something that’s not going to help us. Half these guys are going to die in here.”