| Murder Mess for Mortgage Co. Owner
Elizabeth Coan charged with paying to have witness killed February 7, 2005 By PATRICK CROWLEY |
| When Nicholas Coan was murdered in late January, it wouldn’t have been a stretch for Kirkland, Wash., police to consider his mother a suspect.After all Elizabeth Coan, 45, the owner of Mortgage Lending Alternatives in the Seattle area, was already facing charges that included trying to have someone killed.
And her son was helping police in their investigation of her. But according to court documents filed by the King County Prosecutors office, Coan did not kill her son. Instead, police are holding Nicholas Coan’s girlfriend on suspicion that she shot him at point blank range. She may not have killed her son but, according to prosecutors, Elizabeth Coan is still in plenty of trouble. Already accused by authorities of identity theft, Coan is now facing charges that she tried to hire someone to kill and beat witnesses in the identity theft case. King County Prosecutors have charged her with solicitation to commit first-degree murder, first-degree assault, malicious placement of an explosive and witnesses tampering. Court records show Coan has a long criminal history with convictions dating back to 1980 for theft, forgery, grand larceny and making false statements. Over the years she has used nearly 20 false identities, prosecutors said in the court papers. The most recent rash of legal problems stem from a scheme in which prosecutors say she used the identity of a customer at her mortgage business to lease a $57,775 Mercedes Benz. After she was arrested on those charges, Coan asked her son if he could find someone who would “persuade” as many as five witnesses in the case to change their stories. Instead of helping his mother, Nick Coan helped police, giving them information about her alleged plots and assisting investigators by taping their conversations. Among her alleged targets were James Cunningham, who had worked for Coan and was arrested in the identity theft case, and Tim Kelly, a former employee. Court documents show that Coan wanted her son to intimidate Cunningham by putting a gun to his head. And she wanted Nick Coan to arrange to have Kelly “beaten up and placed in the hospital so he could not talk.” During another conversation Coan wanted her son to have a bomb placed in Kelly’s car so he would be killed, according to the charges filed against her. She also wanted the Mercedes salesman who leased her the car “to be beaten and develop amnesia so he could never talk again,” prosecutors allege. Nick Coan told his mother he found someone to do the jobs for $10,000 to $15,000. After she gave him a $1,000 downpayment she was arrested on Jan. 23 and is being held in the King County Jail in lieu of a $250,000 bond. |
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Patrick Crowley is a political reporter and columnist and former business writer for The Cincinnati Enquirer. Email Patrick at: pcrowley@enquirer.com |
