On July 14, 1987, the life of Leo Nordean Cashatt Jr., a 45-year-old male, was tragically cut short in Spokane, Washington. His wife made the grim discovery, finding him deceased inside their business, Cashatt Coins. An investigation revealed that he had been fatally shot in the head, a violent end to the day for the local coin-shop owner.
The initial investigation into the homicide eventually uncovered a sinister pattern of similar crimes that stretched across the western United States.
Law enforcement began to connect the dots between several murders of coin dealers, all executed in a similar fashion. This trail of violence led them to a primary suspect: Charles Thurman Sinclair. A former coin-shop owner himself, Sinclair was believed to have used his knowledge of the business to gain the trust of his victims before robbing and killing them. His method typically involved the use of a small-caliber weapon.
Investigators pieced together a timeline of crimes attributed to Sinclair, linking him to at least 11 murders, one attempted murder, and two rapes over a decade. A significant breakthrough came after the murders of a coin dealer and his assistant in Billings, Montana. A composite drawing based on a witness description from that crime bore a strong resemblance to Sinclair, solidifying his status as the main suspect in the string of homicides, including Leo Cashatt's.
Although the evidence against Sinclair was substantial, he was never formally tried for the murder of Leo Cashatt. In October 1990, while incarcerated in an Anchorage, Alaska, jail awaiting extradition, Charles Thurman Sinclair died of a heart attack. His death brought an end to the investigation but left many of the cases, including the murder of Leo Cashatt, officially unresolved, denying a final sense of justice to the victims and their families.
