EDMONDS — A North Bend man had been caught sexually harassing or touching young girls in public four times in the past 2 ½ years, according to charges accusing him of molesting a girl at an Edmonds market.
In the more distant past, Jeffrey Allen Cook was sentenced to five years on probation, when he was convicted in 1998 of two counts of child molestation in Fulton County, Georgia, court records show.
Years later, in 2016, an employee of a Barnes & Noble in Georgia reported seeing Cook walk up to a young girl, touch her buttocks and quickly exit the store. When he was questioned by police, he reportedly admitted to the touching and told officers he needed psychological help.
He was caught again in May 2017, at a store in the International District in Seattle, when he followed a 12-year-old girl into an area for employees only and made lewd comments about touching her, before quickly exiting the store. He was convicted of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, a misdemeanor. A judge sentenced him to 364 days in jail and two years on probation in September 2017.
Almost exactly a year later, security cameras caught a man with wavy gray hair — with a light blue shirt, dark cargo shorts and sunglasses hanging from his collar — blocking the path of two girls in a crowded seafood department at 99 Ranch Market in Edmonds.
One of the girls, age 9, ran to her mother, saying the man touched her between the legs. Cameras showed the man fleeing the market.
Later, police got a tip that the same man had harassed his daughter at H-Mart, an hour later and 4 ½ miles away in Lynnwood. Security footage showed the man staring down aisles, apparently touching himself. Again, he quickly exited the store.
Detectives released footage to the news media.
Two tips led them to Cook, 50, in North Bend.
Police confronted him and found he had the same wavy hair as the man in the videos. Cook claimed he’d never been to Edmonds or Lynnwood, and that he didn’t know where those cities were.
There was a receipt to an Albertsons in Lynnwood in his home, charging papers say. In the bedroom, police found dark blue cargo shorts and leather slip-on shoes that seemed to match those in the videos. A neighbor told police he let Cook use his washing machine, and pulled out two of Cook’s light blue T-shirts.He was arrested in early October and charged with one count of first-degree child molestation, for the incident at 99 Ranch. Four of Cook’s alleged targets are identified as young Asian girls. A fifth report was at H-Mart, an Asian grocery store.
Cook told police he’d been having headaches and seizures that caused memory loss, so it was possible that he’d gone to Edmonds but couldn’t remember it. Last year he made similar complaints about gaps in his memory, when he was locked up in King County.
“Mr. Cook alleges that he has dementia, with resulting memory loss for periods of one to two days,” wrote Dr. Benjamin Sanders, of King County Jail Health Services in late 2017. “Contrary to Mr. Cook’s allegations, there is no evidence of gradual and progressive memory loss, i.e., no medical evidence of dementia.”
The doctor found no evidence of brain damage or seizures, either, and suggested Cook’s claims of days where he felt “checked out” were more consistent with his self-reported drug use.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
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