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A Broken System?

By Shawn Matlock

In the 1980's, the Tech Rapist terrorized women on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock. I was maybe eleven years old. I still vaguely remember the news accounts from KCBD in Lubbock. In January, 1985, Lubbock police went to the apartment of Timothy Brian Cole, a former Army veteran and current student at Tech. When asked to accompany police to the local station to discuss the series of rapes, he agreed because he had done nothing wrong. In 1986, Cole was convicted in Lubbock County District Court of one of the rapes committed during the spree. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The conviction was based almost entirely on the eyewitness testimony of one of the victims who picked Cole's picture out of a photo array. That photo was a Polaroid picture, which was drastically different than the others in the lineup, making it stand out...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Matlock Blog on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).