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"I've considered multiple murder but rejected it. I finally decided to murder just one person. Just one is sufficient to teach a lesson."
These were the words of Donald Cowan. Last week he murdered a Seattle man and then took his own life. He left behind a sixteen page suicide note explaining why he "had to do" what he did.
Donald Cowan met Kathleen Farner in 1966 in Hawaii. Though he only knew her for a brief period of time he spent the next 35 years obsessing over her. He even wrote an 80 page treatise declaring his love for her.
Farner's family say Kathleen had no recollection of who Cowan was. But regardless of how non-existant Cowan was in Farner's life, she consumed his. In a final attempt to get her to notice him he murdered one of her colleagues last week on the Pacific Lutheran University Campus.
Thursday he walked onto the PLU campus, where Farner was a music professor, randomly chose, and then shot to death James D. Holloway. Cowan lay a 16 page handwritten note beside the body before shooting himself in the head.
Six years ago Cowan got in touch with Farner, who was then living in Seattle, because he said he was reminded of her by a photo he saw. Despite Farner's request that she be left along and not contacted in the future Cowan left his home in Hawaii and moved within a mile of Farner and bequeathed her with an 80 page letter called "Romance in the Summer 1966".
Despite Farner's attempts to get Cowan to stop contacting her or members of her family his behavior persisted. She eventually hired a private investigator who found out that Cowan had been arrested before in Hawaii for breaking a restraining order against a woman and assaulting her.
When Cowan moved just down the street from Farner neighbors would tell her that they saw him standing in the street outside her home and looking up the flight of steps to her front porch.
Farner had become frightened of Cowan and his persistent attempts to get in touch with her in 1996 and had filed a restraining order with Tacoma police. Cowan was later arrested for violation of that order. He then sued the city for its role in reinforcing the order with detailed documents presented to explain the "truth" behind his relationship with Farner.
As part of the lawsuit against his criminal prosecution Cowan produced letter after letter relating how Farner had left Hawaii (where they had known each other as youths) without saying goodbye and giving him the opportunity for a "good bye hug".
According to the attorney who defended the city against the lawsuit, Cowan did not look particularly threatening and he was very well spoken. The owner of the apartment building where Cowan lived said he was a good tenant and kept to himself, but noted with interest that Cowan's apartment, for six years, had remained practically empty.
Cowan offered once to settle the lawsuite if Farner would meet him for lunch and would have a photo taken with him. Cowan lost his suit and was refused appeal on the basis that he could not afford to pay the fees.
In the handwritten letter he left beside Holloway's body Cowan explains his rage over the lawsuit and his fears over going to prison because of a chronic toothache. He mixes frightening ideas of murder with the banalities of daily life including statements like:
"I will not think about what I'm doing. I will do it fast, without hesitation."
"Do not walk out of the building to think or delay. Don't chicken out. Be robotic. Do it fast. Get it over with in seconds."
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