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