Dateline: 5 harrowing details about Pete Coones' wrongful conviction, explored

Dateline: Season 29, Episode 42, titled The Phone Call followed the chilling case of Pete Coones who was wrongfully accused of a crime he did not commit. The official synopsis of the episode reads,

“When Kathleen Schroll makes a phone call that names her killer right before her death, it leads to the arrest of a father for murder, but after two trials and 12 years, authorities begin to wonder if he was the victim.”

In a surprising turn of events, Pete was indeed declared to be innocent and let go. Let us now explore the details of this case that ruined the life of an innocent person.

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Kathleen Schroll made a chilling call to her mother

On April 7, 2008, Kathleen Schroll called her mother to let her know that she was scared of being murdered by Pete Coones, who was apparently killing her husband Carl Schroll. Kathleen said that Pete had broken inside their house and she must be his next victim.

Pete was the son of an elderly person who was under Kathleen’s care till the time he died. It was not clear at the time of the call what Pete's motives could be but the way Kathleen placed the call to her mother naturally got her family alarmed.

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Kathleen’s brother called 911 immediately after her call

As shown in the Dateline episode, after getting Kathleen’s alarming phone call, her brother placed a call to 911, telling them,

“You need to hurry and get somebody there. She called crying and screaming.”

The intensity of her call was natural to induce such a reaction in her brother. Kathleen was completely convinced that she was going to die and by the time the police arrived, both she and her husband were found dead.

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Kathleen and her husband had died from gunshots

When the police found Kathleen and her husband lying dead in their home at Kansas City, Kansas, it was clear that both of them had died from gunshot wounds. There were two gunshot wounds on Carl’s chest and Kathleen’s wound was at the back of her head.

Despite this incident being an alleged murder, the weapon of killing was found lying a little away from Kathleen’s left foot. This was a rather unusual thing for a murderer to do because the murder weapon is one of the primary clues that is used to catch a criminal and for obvious reasons, murderers hide or dump that weapon. Though that was not the case here, based on Kathleen’s phone call, the police treated this as a double homicide.

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Pete was arrested soon after Kathleen’s murder

After Kathleen and her husband were found dead at their residence, the police arrested Pete within 2 days and he was given a sentence of 50 years without the chance of getting parole.

However, Pete’s family stood in violent opposition to this decision as his wife also confirmed that during the time of the murder, he was actually with them, making it impossible for him to do the killings.

Unfortunately, the legal authorities did not pay any heed to these and since Pete was already in a heated legal battle with Kathleen, the suspicion against him only grew stronger, leading to his swift arrest and sentence.

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Kathleen killed her husband and herself

After spending 11 months in prison, Pete appealed for another trial and after a vicious round of back-and-forth, the case was opened again. This time, the investigators took notice of a key point they had previously missed, which was Kathleen’s hand swabs.

This line of investigation finally led to the truth, which revealed that Kathleen was the killer. She had killed her husband and then shot herself in the head. Pete was wrongly prosecuted and the truth came to light a little too late as it was already 12 years in prison for Pete when everything got clear.

He was finally acquitted but unfortunately only spent 108 days as a free man as lung cancer claimed his life after that.

Dateline can be streamed on Peacock.

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