(Photo by Dan Noyes)
On Saturday, an eclectic group of people gathered in Berkeley to tell stories about the late writer Kate Coleman. She died last month at the age of 81 and this event marked a celebration of her life and work.
Before the ceremony started, I spotted Tom Orloff, the former D.A. of Alameda County in the crowd, and asked him about one of Kate’s main obsessions during her years as a freelance journalist — the Betty Van Patter murder case.
It will be 50 years this December since Betty, a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party, went missing from a bar in Berkeley — weeks later her body was found in the Bay.
“I’m afraid there won’t be justice in her case unless there’s a deathbed confession,” Orloff told me. “We had enough evidence to feel certain that it was the Panthers who had killed her, but never enough evidence to try any specific individuals.”
That the Van Patter case was never brought to trial was a great frustration to Kate up until the end of her life. The last time I visited her, although she was suffering from dementia and didn’t remember who I was, she recalled the details of the case with a great deal of clarity.
Betty’s daughter, Tamara Baltar, lives on the east coast. Earlier last week, when I told her that I would be attending the celebration of Kate’s life, Tamara wrote me: “I owe a debt of gratitude to Kate because of her pursuit of the truth about what happened to my mother, No matter what, she always pursued her investigations and published the discoveries she made along the way…Katie never gave up.”
If old journalists and prosecutors are still talking about Betty’s case, that is largely due to Kate’s persistence. Maybe that’s why my conversation with Orloff felt in its own way like a fitting tribute to her and her relentless drive in all matters.
And come to think of it, perhaps that should be her epitaph: “Katie never gave up.”
(You can read a ten-part series on the Betty Van Patter case here.)
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