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05/06/2005: "Spokane's dark secrets"

It looks llike Jim West can't be proscecuted.

Even if West gets off, this probably ends his political career. Look on the bright side, Mayor West, you get to join the ranks of some of Spokane's finest. Creeps such as the infamous "South Hill Rapist," who stalked Spokane's prosperous neighborhoods from 1979 to early 1981, turned out to be Kevin Coe, son of the managing editor of the now-defunct Spokane Chronicle.

In a bizarre twist, the rapist's imperious and influential mother went to prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor who convicted her son.

Oklahoma-born jazz musician Billy Tipton played at clubs around the country, married and adopted children, and finally settled in the Spokane Valley. A frantic call from Tipton's adopted son in 1989 summoned paramedics to his home.

As the dying musician was laid out, and stripped of his clothes, one paramedic turned and asked, "Son, did your father have a sex change operation?" Both learned, at that moment, the ultra-secret of Tipton's life. "He" was really a she.


Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says hey babe, take a walk on the wild side


Working on a master's degree in the late 1980s -- a history of sheriffs who preceded him -- Pend Oreille County Sheriff Anthony Bamonte came upon an unsolved half-century-old murder. It was the fatal 1935 shooting of a marshal in the town of Metaline Falls. As detailed by Egan, Bamonte uncovered an extensive cover-up involving the Spokane police. It centered on a detective who took bribes, was linked to a theft ring and may have shot more than one man.

Bamonte would lose his job, but he pressed forward with an investigation that involved a "wall of blue" in which nobody wanted to blow the whistle on a fellow officer. Ultimately, in 1989, he reached into the Spokane River and pulled out the rusty murder weapon.

Mayor West is the latest of several prominent Spokane residents to face allegations of sexual impropriety. A friend and fellow Boy Scout troop leader, Spokane County sheriff's Deputy David Hahn, was accused of sexually molesting young men in the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Hahn committed suicide in 1981 after being confronted with accusations of pedophilia.

Another Scout leader, George Robey -- identified by The Spokesman-Review as a friend of Hahn's and West's -- also killed himself after allegations of sexually abusing boys.

Longtime Spokane Bishop Lawrence Welsh (1978-89) was the object of a Chicago police investigation in 1986. A male prostitute complained that Welsh had choked him while he was performing oral sex on the bishop.

The bishop confirmed to police that he had been in the Windy City for a Knights of Columbus convention, met the young man in a bar and invited him to his hotel room for "counseling." He later admitted putting hands on the man's throat. The incident was hushed up, only to be uncovered in 2002 by the redoubtable Spokesman-Review. Three years after the investigation, Welsh resigned after a drunken-driving arrest.

Never mind the rash of sexual abuse committed by Spokane's priests.

Such sordid stuff pushes aside more pedestrian offenses of years past -- payments to state legislators by the Washington Water Power Co. (now Avista Corp.), the mistress of a very proper utility bigwig, and the continuing parking scandal.