WTBL - Walking the Blue Line

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Thanks everyone for joining us for another episode on walking the blue

We have a cold case to discuss with you this week. Yeah, we do. And it's cold outside. It is cold outside. I of chose this one because this time of year actually reminds me of this case almost every year because a majority of the big events associated with this kind of happen. You know, we're a couple of weeks out from

Which makes it sad, but it also brought some closure to a family, if you can call it that.

why don't you tell us about the solid gold cold case?

In November of 1992, which actually was when Kayla was born. Yeah. 92 anyway.

during that time of year,

it's getting into winter time. Some years are colder than others, but this year, the year of this case, there was actually snow out in November. Yeah, a little snow and...

The initial events of this case happened around 5 p.m., which is usually dark out by that time. Yeah, the days are short and

so it seems almost a little bit gloomy in one aspect of it.

it happens on November 7th of 1992. Right. Starts off in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

It does. A man in a very distinctive disguise goes into a children's clothing store, but more like a thrift

the proprietors, there was a husband and a wife and they had their kids there and one employee. so this guy walks in, he's got this disguise on, which is a baseball cap, sunglasses, a fake beard and a trench

of course they're scared and he orders them all to the back of the store. Yeah. Well, obviously he's not there shopping for kids clothes.

he makes them go to the back of the store and then he proceeds to have the employee tie up the owner. They, didn't tie up the kids or anything, but the owners.

And then he produces a silver handgun to demand money from

Well, they're they're just a secondhand clothing store and so they do give him the money, but it's a very small amount. It's like a hundred dollars. And so he then proceeds to

he doesn't get much. So I'm thinking that he's got to make an alternate plan to,

get more.

Spokane is his next place that he

It's about 20 miles.

interesting part though is that it is separated by a state line. So you have Coeur d'Alene in Idaho and Spokane Valley in Washington. in this case there's two different agencies

investigating.

the first incident happening in Coeur d'Alene city, they take the major role in investigating that robbery. And now our second incident happens in the Spokane Valley and it is a store called,

Cole's traditions in oak. That's

it's eight o'clock now and they're getting ready to close. It's dark outside.

And it's a husband and wife that own this store. The wife is disabled. She's in a scooter.

this guy goes in the same exact

disguise and walks in the store, does the same thing, ask them for money. Well, they're a furniture store and people don't really pay by cash. They pay by credit cards or checks. So they don't have hardly any money

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Michelle opens her purse and hands over all the money she has, which is

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she hands it to her husband, Brian, and Brian in turn hands it to the suspect. he's really not happy now. He started out, he only got a hundred from Coeur d'Alene, comes here, he gets $18, So he orders them to the back of the store. Maybe he's looking for a safe or something. But as they're going back,

Brian who is the husband he's thinking this guy is gonna take us back there and kill us, and he says something to the guy that's robbing him and he is like Hey, would you actually hurt a disabled woman? and the guy that says well, I might have to So this freaks about definitely a reason for concern here if him producing a gun and robbing them in the first place

thinks that he's being led back to be killed. he decides, Hey, this is my chance. He jumps the guy and,

he manages to rip off his sunglasses and his cap

Some fibers from the beard. Unfortunately, this guy had this little silver gun and he shoots Brian and he shoots him multiple

after the struggle, they had knocked over some furniture The guy takes off and he runs outside and he almost gets hit by a car as he's fleeing. Yeah, he's running away in the dark because like we said, it's dark out and this lady almost runs him over. She has to slam on her brakes, but it actually causes her to see him and get a little bit of description of this guy that's fleeing the

meanwhile, back inside this store, Brian is bleeding and his wife then calls 911.

deputies show up, obviously, to investigate initially, and the medics show

Michelle knew one of the medics that arrived on scene and they were trying to comfort her and reassure her that everything was going to be okay. And Brian was talking and he was

Well, I'll see you at the hospital, and the medics take him. She stays there to talk to the detectives and give them some more information. And then, then she goes to the hospital. But unfortunately, during surgery, uh, Brian passes away, succumbs to his injuries. So now this goes from being a robbery to a murder.

Detectives do all of their diligent work along with the forensics people to collect all of the evidence that's at the scene so the hat the glasses and Those fibers you were talking right and then where he ran outside the store they found a footprint in the snow as well and they were able to photograph that and preserve it so and also on the case

d'Alene, they were able to get a little bit of evidence from their scene, but their scene

It's not a murder. And so they get a fingerprint and some handcuffs. there were some handcuffs that were used to secure the owners. And so they collect those and they were able to produce a latent fingerprint off of it.

as well as they kept the zip ties and a number of other things. And those items went to the Idaho State Patrol Crime Lab in Boise for analysis. And then some of the items from the Washington crime ended up going to Washington State Patrol Crime

they don't have any real great leads on

who has done this. So they start looking at the evidence to see what are some of the similarities. And you have to also remember this is in 92. DNA, the way we know it, it doesn't exist. some of the stuff that you guys have recovered, they're not thinking, ⁓ we got to get the DNA off of this. Exactly. Back in those days, DNA was just coming about and you had to have a blood spot almost the size of a quarter.

obviously Brian's blood would have been there but that didn't know that didn't help them because they needed the guy who shot him

what they do notice about a couple of the things is that the hat has a big emblem on it and says solid gold Now what does that remind you guys of if you're of our age?

does that not bring the solid gold dancers to mind? Exactly. And that's what detectives initially thought. Is this part of the solid gold, someone who's a fan out there? But there was some

on the hat that indicated this wasn't actually from the solid gold dancers. This was from a little seedier club down in Florida.

would have been like a strip club. Yeah, so they actually tracked that down to where it was and figured out that's what it was. And it kind of matched the handcuffs that they got

That's right. Yeah, because the handcuffs were not really police handcuffs These were the kind of handcuffs

would get

an adult novelty

not your typical hand No,

but either way they had

put together a bit of a profile here, right? You your suspect is not frequenting the highest class establishments. that directed detectives kind of start looking at who are some people with a criminal history in our local area that would maybe frequent adult novelty stores and or strip clubs?

They start going down that

actually come up with a couple but one person in particular stands out and so

Develop a montage of him, right? And so they decide to put him and along with some other guys up in front of the witness To see if she can identify him, but she can't

Say, this is him for sure

And so it's a

and everything starts to kind of fizzle out. it starts going

also, the detectives in Coeur d'Alene aren't having a whole lot more luck. No, everything that they've tried at this point, they developed the latent print. They sent it off to the computer program called AFIS They didn't hit on anything. Didn't get any results there and such. So they tried to go to

a program called America's Most Wanted. That's right. They contact them and they say, hey, we got this case, we need some help, would you guys be willing to do a show on it? And they are yeah, we'll do a show on it.

Detective Henderson then goes to New York and he speaks with John Walsh and Trevor St. John

they do a show and when they're doing the show

use the hat in a reenactment. Yeah, so they do this whole reenactment of how the murder went down. Right. The robbery took

They have an actor play Brian Cole's portion and then they have Trevor St. John play the suspect. he's wearing the baseball cap and they go through the whole struggle and it falls

Out of that show, they got thousands of called in tips. Yeah, but some really bizarre like the majority of the tips that they got from the show were crazy.

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end up only getting a handful of viable

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some of those that were out there. But I mean, out of the thousands,

You gotta figure it's a nationwide show. That's true. America's Most Wanted was being... Everybody was watching. I watched it. it was a top hit show and so, you had all of the normal people calling in if they knew anything and you had a few that were on the edge out there that were calling in.

unfortunately the case, even though was on this huge show, it still goes cold. They just, they ran into a brick wall. Yeah. And that show aired in 1993 and after it aired, detectives continued to do investigation and, and interview anybody that they could.

since the one in Coeur d'Alene was just a robbery, there's a statute of limitations and it's seven years.

Coeur d'Alene holds on to the evidence they had for seven years nothing ever happens so then They destroy all the evidence that they have because you can no longer, prosecute for that they lost a fingerprint right to detective Henderson's credit He had actually put in a request with them to preserve that evidence and send it to Spokane County when

They were finished with it, but somehow that message got lost in translation. so Coeur d'Alene ends up destroying this evidence that could have been used in Spokane County's case.

in 2004, Spokane County gets a grant for DNA processing. So they're going to their cold cases and they pick some of the best evidence they found and they send it off to be analyzed

each detective is carrying a number of cases and they select one or two items from each of their cases that might be potential for

out of

Brian Cole's Homicide.

those sunglasses and the hat were then submitted for DNA testing.

was a hat was used in America's Most

it was compromised with other DNA. Right. And the problem is even though in 2004 DNA has come quite a ways, they weren't able to extract out what was a mixture what would belong to who until some years later and DNA makes some additional advances. it just came back as a report that, this

is a mixture of DNA and we can't tell. So no real solid leads from that the case goes back into cold case status as far as being worked just every now and then. And till you then are in major crimes, and this happens to be one of the cases you're handed, and you come across some evidence.

that had never been submitted before. when I came into major crimes, I was handed about five or six cold cases and this being one of them, it was not the first one that I went to and started trying to work

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in December of 2010, I take and upon reviewing all of the evidence, find this clump of fibers that looked like they came from his beard during the fight. And I sent those off to the Washington State Patrol crime lab to have them examined. it comes back like undeniably that it's him. It's like one in three trillion that it wouldn't be him. So basically it's him.

they're able to match it through the database with a registered sex offender by the name of Patrick Gibson. Patrick Gibson at that time is living on the west side of the state. And he'd spent some time in federal prison. has pretty lengthy record. Yeah. You got a long rap sheet. He was not a good guy at all. No, he definitely got around. So I'm...

going to go to work on following up on him to try to place him at the crime. Yeah, make sure that this DNA didn't wind up there by some unusual reason. So I got to show that he was getting around, had not only the opportunity that maybe he was here in Spokane and such. So first thing we start doing is we look at his history. his history is pretty colorful.

So in 1970, he steals a car and he gets into a shootout with the

takes his family vacation during this. Yeah.

What a family vacation. He gets chased by the cops, gets into a shootout, and in the end, he ends up in jail. Right. So he gets thrown in jail. And then guess what? He escapes. Some miracle. He gets out. Right. And he didn't go clean or anything. Oh, no. I mean, he's kind of a hardened criminal really early in life. once he's out and he's trying to make his escape, him

and a second inmate escape together, they end up robbing a place and kidnapping one of the cashiers. And then it's a young girl and they take her out to some federal property and rape her. And since it's on federal property, it is now a federal crime. He gets thrown into federal prison.

fact that he's in federal prison, they house him with another federal inmate. Who is part of the cartel. He's a bad guy. so you know how people are in prison. They like to talk. They don't have a lot to do. So this guy confesses to him that he's killed some people. Right. And he knows where the bodies are buried and such. So.

Patrick being the smart guy that he is, decides maybe this can help him out. Maybe this will get me out of something. And he's right. It does. He turns state's evidence and ends up getting released from prison a little bit early. Yeah. But since he is a bad guy, he just can't stay clean. he's out of prison after just raping and robbing this young lady.

he's on probation living out in Seattle. on probation you've got certain stipulations that you can't leave. You're not supposed to travel. You got to get permissioned to pretty much do anything. He didn't do that. No. He likes to gamble, right? Yeah, he does. one of the first things is some frequent trips down to Vegas. And he gets a girlfriend down there.

apparently is pretty smooth with the ladies or something like that. he meets up with this waitress, who works at Caesar's palace and, starts a relationship with her. Yeah. But he does some more traveling. He goes to Montana and, ⁓ several other states, California. ⁓ of course, everywhere in between. So Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and such. And

to some degree in looking through his history, we can verify that he was running around all these places without telling his probation officer. And through that, you find out that he was in this area along the dates. Just a short time from when the homicide happened here of Brian, he was contacted by the police over in Montana. So we could show that since he lives in Seattle,

he definitely was traveling through this region. But not only that, what we establish is he commits these robberies here And I think that he saw that, you know what, I'm in for a penny, in for a pound kind of thing. So now he moves to bigger game and starts doing bank robberies.

And with the bank robberies, he has a certain M.O. which matches the M.O. that he used here in Spokane and in Idaho, which is the cap, the glasses, the fake beard and a trench coat. And the robberies. was with three other guys? And they wear the same thing. they weren't making much money on those initial robberies. mean, just like robbing Brian and...

I mean $18. Yeah, he's not getting anything. So he decides to up his game brings in these guys and calls them a crew and In their last bank robbery they net 250 grand a quarter of a million dollars But the FBI has been on them one guy has been following him, right?

of the FBI agents

to me extensively during this investigation about the amount of time he put into surveilling Patrick because of those bank robberies. unfortunately they weren't onto him early. Otherwise maybe the incident with Brian wouldn't have happened, but later on they're on him. And so he gets arrested again for bank robbery. back off to federal

For about 12 years. he gets released in 2007.

So he's released and then he kind of stops being a crook for a while and is living close to Seattle and he's got family there and he is no longer robbing banks he kind of lives somewhat regular life. far as we know. Yeah. He's not caught for

in May of 2011, we finally decided that we've got enough information on him to make an arrest.

the Sheriff's Department out there, make this Razzu plan on how we're going to arrest him, do a bit of surveillance.

it doesn't go exactly that way. It actually turns into somewhat of a comical arrest. Yeah. Nothing ever goes as planned. Especially when you go to such extreme

So you're out there and you're getting ready to start your plan, but he ends up coming up to you because some guy on a motorcycle passes him on a yellow line and He goes, did you see that guy? we're sitting alongside the road, just waiting to take him into custody. And he comes up to them complaining about some motorcycle rider. Yeah. A reckless driver. when he comes up and says, Hey,

did you see that guy? Then we're like, well, yeah, but can we talk for a minute? And actually it wasn't us, it was a couple of deputies with the local sheriff's office out there. And they take him into custody and put him in a car. And I walk up and identify myself and say, you're under arrest.

a couple weeks later, he was extradited back to Spokane to stand trial. And of course, that whole process takes a bit of time,

when it comes to your court date, you can choose to have a bench or a jury trial and a bench is when it's just the judge and jury is obviously you have 12 peers. So he thinks it's in his best interest to have just the judge. Right. So that's what he decides on, but it doesn't really go in his favor. Not really. I think that he didn't want a jury to hear about his horrendous past. So he's going to play upon the technique.

issues and hope that a judge will find him not guilty for technical reasons. you're right, it didn't work out very well for him. So we got partway into trial and some new evidence came to light. it has something to do with that hat. we had already requested testing.

it was like on day 12, of the trial. You guys sent the hat off. to have that done, the judge says, we'll give you a 30 day recess. once that happens, then Gibson and his team asked for it to be suppressed, but the judge doesn't see it that way.

What

they're able to do is take the DNA and eliminate the two people that had worn the hat.

after Gibson. So that was the people from America's Most Wanted, the actor and the detective that took the hat. Right. And so they eliminated those. So the only DNA that's left on the hat is his. So he was trying to say it was his buddies who was using his, disguise. But DNA proves that that's not true. that was a really unusual

defense that he was trying to provide saying that It wasn't him that had killed Brian Cole It had to have been one of his co-conspirator of the crew in the in the bank robberies He's like one of those guys had to have taken my disguise

and wore it when they killed Brian. But. DNA proved that not to be true. Right. It was only Patrick Gibson's DNA on those items. the trial has that unusual twist of a 30 day recess, comes back, all the DNA is his.

All of the arguments are kind of avoided. He tried to say he was out fishing or

He got the maximum that he could, 41 years. 41 years. And then he still tried to wiggle out of that a little bit later by saying he had cancer and he was going to be dead within five years, but that wasn't true. It's like been what, 13, 14 years and he's still alive and it change anything. They're like, whatever. Yeah. And again, thinking that he's the smartest guy in the room, he appealed

his verdict all the way to the US Supreme Court. Yeah, but they wouldn't hear it. They wouldn't hear it and every appellate court along the way agreed with the trial court and upheld the sentence. Yep. So thank goodness Patrick Gibson behind bars, guy who should never be out.

Now, obviously, every time he got out of prison, except for the very last time, and who knows, we just don't know what happened, but, yeah, he always went back to crime.

you have it. Yeah. A solid gold cold case. And not the dancers. And not the dancers. Yeah. It's actually, it's not funny. It's a very tragic case. mean, Brian basically gave up his life trying to save him and his wife. I met her and she's a very nice lady.

I can't say enough as to how bad we feel for the family in this case, but at the same time, glad to have been part of the investigation, which, ⁓ put Patrick Gibson behind bars. actually this case is the first cold case that was solved. Right. Yeah. What 19 years or 20? Yeah. Well, at the time that this was prosecuted, I was partnered with one of the most senior

prosecuting attorneys for Spokane County at the time, Jack Driscoll. And he indicated that at no time in the past.

had there been a 20 year old cold case brought

to a guilty verdict. kudos. Yeah. Well, I was happy to have gotten that and it wasn't just a pat on my back. It was to all of the team within the office that helped me out. Great work. Yeah. Jim Dresbeck and Mike Drapeau definitely helped me out a fair amount on this and a couple of others.

Detectives along the way as well as all the forensic team that definitely put a lot of work into that DNA and excluding people from the hat and that's quite the job so Anyway, if you have any questions or comments, please put them in the comment section below like subscribe share comment Anything let us know, we're on the right track if you like it and

Email address is attached to the video. if you would like to contact us, please email us directly at that email address. Yeah. And until next time. Yes. Until next time. Thanks for coming along and bye.