Sex offender says he was to wed slain investigator

DUBLIN, Calif. (AP) — A career criminal and sex offender who was the last person to see a slain federal criminal investigator claims in a jailhouse interview with a reporter that the two planned to wed. The slain woman’s family, however, says 56-year-old Randy Alana is lying.

A reporter for the Oakland Tribune talked to Alana at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he is being held on a parole violation. Alana said that he met Sandra Coke two decades ago while she investigated a murder case.

He denied harming her.

“We recently talked about getting married,” Alana told the paper.

Coke, 50, was last seen with Alana on Aug. 4, whom she briefly dated about 20 years ago, police and Coke’s friends say. Search and rescue crews found Coke’s body five days later in a woodsy area near Lagoon Valley Park in unincorporated Vacaville in Solano County.

“This is a man with convictions for murder and kidnapping. He was the last person seen with my sister, but claims he has nothing to do with her disappearance and killing,” said Tanya Coke, Sandra Coke’s sister, in a written statement. “He is clearly someone who thinks nothing of lying and manipulating to serve his purposes. Why would we or anyone else believe what he has to say?”
Alana appeared in an Alameda County courtroom on Friday to face allegations that he’d violated his parole by contacting Coke, a capital case investigator for the federal public defender’s office in Sacramento. Alana was also accused of resisting arrest, failing to charge a GPS monitor he was required to wear on his ankle and absconding from parole.

Alana was arrested on Aug. 6 for violating his parole, two days after Coke was reported missing after leaving her Oakland home and telling family members she was meeting someone with information about her missing dog.

Judge Morris Jacobson did not say why Alana had been ordered to stay away from Coke.