Showing posts with label Darlie Routier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darlie Routier. Show all posts

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Did the Zodiac Killer Murder the Coleman Family and Frame Christopher Coleman for the Crime?






The following is excerpted from John A. Cameron's 2015 update to his book, It's Me: Edward Wayne Edwards, the Serial Killer You Never Heard Of, published in 2014. Click on the link for photos and images.

Edwards became a Satanist at a very young age and created what he called “Crimes of Recognition,” murders that would go down in history.

He would target people in the press who were getting recognized and steal their thunder by killing someone close to them.

Edwards targeted Joyce Meyer Ministries to destroy because Joyce was all over the press in 2007-2008, being publicly humiliated by a congressional committee looking into her finances. Edwards threatened the ministry in the notes left at the Coleman home the six months prior to the murders. The ministry was across the river from Columbia, Illinois, where the Colemans were killed, and near St. Louis, Missouri. By targeting the Colemans in Illinois, and steering the evidence across state lines to Missouri, Edwards brought in the FBI.

Edwards was a genius level psychopath who liked to taunt the police and press with messages, riddles and puzzles.

Edwards also was an FBI informant.
"Edward Wayne Edwards, going by the name Ralph Ulysses Brickenshaw, did do some work in Wilmington, NC. My father was a 32nd degree Mason and a union representative for the Carpenters in Charlotte, and that drew Edwards to us. My father went to a union meeting in San Francisco around 1971 at the height of Edwards’s Zodiac killings. Edwards was treated like a king here in North Carolina. At age nine my picture appeared in a full-page ad in one of the Charlotte newspapers. My birth date happens to be on the day the FBI busted Edwards in 1962. Edwards was hell-bent on dates, so he considered me to be his nemesis. And my name, Margene, was one letter off from the wife who left him, Marlene, when he was incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison after the FBI arrested him. In 1982, I went to the FBI for help, and they told me Edwards was an honorable man. Tell me one bank robber who was caught from the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list and went to prison and got out in five years. Isn't the penalty 25 years?! Name one person on a suspect list that actually extracted thousands of dollars posing as a psychiatrist while serving as an FBI informant." - Margene Marshall Morrison

"I would be happy to testify if Wayne Williams could get a new trial. Last month I was reading on the internet and I saw a 1970's picture of serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards. If you haven't read John Cameron's book 'It's Me' about Edwards, please do. Finally someone is saying what I said for years. Edward Wayne Edwards was killing men, women, and children all over the country. I just didn't have his name right. I kept reporting him as Ralph Ulysses Brickenshaw. But I drew a sketch of him. I remembered to look for a mole on his left cheek. They showed me a picture of him once and told me he was 'an honorable man' and I said 'No, he is a horrible person and I want you to remember I told you that!' The more I tried to get him stopped, the more my life was made hell. Edwards would call me and taunt me about his future murders. No one would even bug my phone. They just locked me up in a mental hospital. A few years ago a doctor told me that I did NOT have schizophrenia. Edwards came to my apt. in 1982, pushed through the door, and I found out that he had been following Wayne Williams. He also burnt me with a curling iron. He gave me a chance to run to the door but if we didn't make it out he was going to break my baby's neck. Can someone find out how he lost the tips of his fingers on the right hand? I was sleeping with a kitchen knife duct-taped around my hand and under the pillow in case when he broke in. No one would ever take me seriously. Then the book came out and said Edwards was a genius who killed 500 people, just like I thought. I've had depression and amnesia on and off since I was 12 years old because of Edwards. He was the Zodiac killer too, hell-bent on dates. I celebrated my first birthday the day he was busted by the FBI in Atlanta so he never gave me any peace." - Margene Morrison, December 22, 2015

"Edgar [J. Edgar Hoover ] was quite impressed with Edwards. That is what EWE told me. When I was a little girl and Nixon was President, the telephone repairman told my father that our phone had been bugged. At the time my father was a business agent for the Carpenter’s Union and it wasn’t the last time my dad and his union friends would be spied on. And we lived in the South. I know full well that the government failed me. They may have even set out to hurt me so I didn’t become a troublemaker like my father and great-grandfather. Without EWE/RUB* making my life hell, I would have organized the Textile Mills. That is probably what I would have done with my life. That is why I have a picture hanging on my wall of Ella May Wiggins. I knew him. I spent years of my life trying to get LE, FBI, CIA, JFK Researchers, ETC. to listen to me! I knew him as Ralph in North Carolina. After so many years I just figured I was crazy, and if he had been a genius with credentials that said he was a government agent, then surely to God he would be dead. Then I saw his pictures from the late 60’s to early 70’s on the internet. There was that Devil. How would you have liked to have spent your life trying to stop a serial killer? You would feel some obligation wouldn’t you? You know what some important person told me: 'We don’t want to open a can of worms.' If they had maybe some people would be alive, others wouldn’t be in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, and 2 of my babies wouldn’t have been taken overseas by their father. Apparently he had a close call in Seattle. Imagine my face when I looked at the picture of missing Jonathan Camacho in Washington State in the Post Office. Don’t tell me he couldn’t have killed all those people. I called the police on him back in the 1970’s and they acted like he was in charge of them!" - Margene Morrison, November 19, 2015
Edwards targeted people who were in the press. Edwards may have targeted the Colemans years before it happened, possibly as early as 2001, when Sheri Coleman’s cousin Enrico J. Maribelli, a prominent lawyer in Chicago, filed suit against HBO, Time Warner and the show The Sopranos.

Sheri’s mother’s family, DeCicco, was a well-known Chicago name; and Enrico Maribelli, Sheri’s cousin, was getting a lot of press.

Enrico Maribelli's (Sheri's cousin, a prominent Chicago attorney) last name is similar to the name Melvin Belli—as the Zodiac Killer, Edwards taunted the famous attorney Melvin Belli (December 20, 1969, Edward Wayne Edwards, Melvin Belli Letter).

Edwards chose his victims years in advance to match names and locations of previous famous murders he had committed.

Sheri Coleman’s cousin Enrico Maribelli had sued HBO in 2001, and he was all over the press.
Apr 5, 2001 - The American Italian Defense Association filed a lawsuit Thursday in the chancery court, asking a judge to rule the HBO program, "The Sopranos," violates clauses in the Illinois ... Attorney Enrico Mirabelli admits the lawsuit would not have any legal merit in other states, where such clauses do not exist. 
Apr 10, 2001 - Italian-American attorneys for and against HBO's "The Sopranos" argued in a Chicago courtroom Wednesday about whether the series is "art" or "stereotyping. ""It's wall-to-wall stereotyping of Italian Americans in dysfunctional families who rob, murder," said Enrico J. Mirabelli, a Chicago divorce attorney ...
Like Enrico Maribelli, Edwards also went after HBO.

Edwards killed three boys on May 5, 1993, and HBO did a documentary on the murder, Paradise Lost, The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Edwards lured three boys, age 8, to Robin Hood Hills Park in West Memphis, Arkansas, and murdered them. He tied them up ritualistically, placing white shoe laces on one side and black on the other. He beat them repeatedly on the left side of the head. He tied their bodies into a ritualistic shape, the Mason Symbol. He then drowned them in the river. He drained them of blood. He stamped the Zodiac cross and circle into the forehead of one of the boys after death.

Edwards’ killing of the three 8-year-old boys in Robin Hood Hills Park in West Memphis on May 5, 1993, was a replication of the murders he did in Robinson Woods Park in Chicago on October 17, 1955, where he murdered three teens (they were laid out naked in the Sign of the Cross, a Big Dipper carved in one of the boy's leg).

On the same day, May 5, in 1993, Edwards murdered Sheri Coleman and her two sons.

Edwards called it "murder mimicry" on a website that he authored in 2002.

Edwards targeted Hollywood movie makers his entire life because they were creating movies on his murders that were false.

Edwards was always in front of everyone under assumed identity, watching.

“I’m Always Watching” is what Edwards wrote at the Coleman crime scene. It meant he was always in front of the investigation.

Edwards chose his victims so that his killings would create mass media, terror and recognition (not for himself as the killer but for the crime itself).

In 2009 Edwards portrayed himself in public as an invalid with a cane and a wheel chair. He was never an invalid, but portrayed himself as one when he was in public, and with his wife. When he was not with his wife he could do anything. He flew in and out of his murder scenes through private charted aircraft. He had private plane connections in Chicago and Florida.

After Sheri and the boys were killed, Enrico J. Maribelli filed a restraining order against the Colemans, trying to get the funeral and the bodies of Sheri, Gavin and Garret moved to Chicago.

Maribelli created mass recognition after the murders by fighting publicly with Christopher Coleman and his family.

Edwards knew exactly what he would create by pitting families against families in his killings.

He created hatred among family members and friends his whole life, steering the evidence to the innocent and “Watching Always” as the system and people destroyed each other.

“You Have Paid” was meant for the surviving family members destroyed by Edwards. They would have to live with what they said and did to others; and then, when the truth about his murders is finally revealed, everyone would look stupid and foolish.

Christopher Coleman is paying: having his family killed, his entire personal life thrown out in public for the media to exploit, and sentenced to 300 years in prison for having an affair.

Sheri’s mother’s name was DeCicco, a famous Italian Mafia name. Frank DeCicco was the underground boss for the Gambino family. George DeCicco was also tied to the Gambino family.

Whether or not Sheri’s family was mob related would not have mattered to Edwards: it was the connection to the name DeCicco and Chicago that mattered.

Edwards hated the mob and set mobsters up in the past. Edwards had informed to the FBI in 1979 on the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance. This is documented in his NCIC criminal records. He attempted to set-up Italian mobster Tony Provenzano.

The Coleman family murder at 2854 Robert Drive in Columbia, Illinois, was a ritual murder planned years in advance.

Edwards is a ritual killer, meaning he commits his murders on specific dates, places, names and locations.

At the time of the murders, Columbia, Illinois’s Police Department was headed by a man named Chief Joseph Edwards.

This was one more reason Edwards chose Columbia and the Colemans. He wanted to taunt Chief Edwards with his IQ.

There were no reported murders in Columbia in the years prior to the murder. The town sits at the state line crossing from Illinois to Missouri. It’s a very white, clean community with no violence.

By choosing Columbia to kill in, Edwards would taunt an inexperienced police department, and bring in the FBI to taunt with writings and puzzles.

Edwards chose his locations and victims meticulously.

Edwards was a ritual killer who killed using rope, knife, gun and fire. He would strangle, shoot, stab, and dismember. It was all based on Satanism, ancient Egyptian history, and Aleister Crowley’s writings, including LIBER 777 murder and mayhem.

Black magic is what Edwards understood.

Edwards created allusions in writings that taunt authorities to “figure it out.”

Edwards would ritualistically kill three people at a time as a representation of Jesus and the two sinners by his side.

Edwards gained trust with many of his victims by grooming his way into their lives, unbeknownst to them.

The bed Sheri Coleman was killed on was round and out of the ordinary. According to Christopher Coleman, he was out of the country on a trip with Joyce Meyer Ministries when Sheri called and told him that someone donated a round bed to the church where she was a receptionist. The bed was said to be a display model and never used. Chris told Sheri that he wanted a regular bed with a head board. Sheri had the bed delivered to the house but it is unknown by whom. The bed was sectioned into quadrants and the frame and mattress were shaped like a circle and cross.

Edwards strangled Sheri while she was under the covers and then repositioned her after death on top of the covers, face down, crosswise on the bed, arms bent at elbows, legs crossed at ankles and head hanging slightly off near the edge of bed. Her hair was purposely draped over her face. Edwards laid her out as Jesus was laid out on the cross, only this represented Satan’s cross to Edwards.

In the year prior to her death, Sheri was convinced by someone to get the round bed and get a tattoo. The tattoo was the word “Jesus” in Hebrew placed on the back of her neck. This tattoo was facing up when Sheri was found.

Gavin Coleman, age 9, was lying on his right side and had strands of long black hair (which police said came from his mother) on his face and neck. Gavin had bruising on his arms and was hit on the front of his head. He had been strangled in his sleep. His larynx was fractured. The killer wrote what appeared to be “Fuck You” on his bed but the Y in “you” appeared to be more like a 6.

Garret Coleman, age 11, was on his left side and had strands of long black hair (which police said came from his mother) on the right side of his face and neck. The killer used the spray paint to spray a circular type pattern on Garret, but may have run out of paint before finishing.

The messages on the walls at the Coleman scene were photographed and police said they appeared to be “Helter Skelter” type messages, referring to the 1968 Manson murders in California.

In many of Edwards’ messages he would leave the E’s and the D’s to stand out. He did so in the Coleman murder. Look at the words closely. The wall on the left was said by police to say, “I Saw You Leave.”



The writing on the right wall was said to say, “Fuck You I Am Alway Watching.”



Edward Wayne Edwards new Charles Manson and grew up with him in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 30’s and 40’s. Both were in Chillicothe Prison together in 1952. Both were released in 1967 from prison (different prisons) and went on to create terror.

Edwards admitted his relationship with Charles Manson in a 1993 letter he wrote to the FBI.

Edwards competed with Manson for crimes of recognition and terror throughout his life. 

The diagram of the Coleman crime scene shows the way the victims were laid out in the home. Sheri was laid out ritualistically, face down, arms out and bent, feet crossed, and hair draped over her face.

Sheri was on a round shaped bed with a cross metal frame. The bed had been donated to Destiny Church in St. Louis where Sheri was the receptionist. Christopher Coleman was out of the country when Sheri got the bed.

Gavin and Garret were both covered in a white blanket. Sheri was not covered and she was staged, meaning the killer took the time to pull off the covers, place her crosswise on the bed, cross her legs, stretch out her arms, and drape her hair over her face.

The spray paint used for the writings was said to be purchased in 2008 by Christopher Coleman to make a target for his children’s Nerf guns. Chris had purchased other cans for his employer, Joyce Meyer Ministries, for work projects.

The paint had been sitting on the computer desk in the basement of the house. The killer was said to have entered through the unlocked basement window near the computer desk, but this was most likely staged.

Edwards most likely obtained a key prior to the murder, possibly through Destiny Church, where Sheri worked as a receptionist, and where the round bed was donated.

Edwards was already in the house as Chris was leaving for the gym at 5:37 am: that’s one reason he wrote, “I Saw You Leave.”

In the JonBenet Ramsey case, Edwards staged the basement window to appear as the point of entry. He was already in the house in the JonBenet Ramsey case; and in the Coleman case he would have already gained access to the home before Chris left. [When John Camerson asked Edward Wayne Edwards' wife where Edwards was on Christmas 1996, his wife replied. "He was hiding out in Brighton, Colorado with my son, waiting the the smoke to clear in the murder of his stepson, Dannie Boy." Brighton is just a short distance from Boulder.]

Edwards used the sound of the garage opening and Chris leaving to surprise Sheri and kill her quickly. Their bed was above the garage. The open basement window was staged to appear as if the screen was pried off. This would implicate Chris. Chris had told police all the windows were locked, yet this one was found open. This was the killer's escape, not entry. There was no grass or signs that anyone climbed into the home through the window, and this is because the killer climbed out through the window, to avoid the cameras in front that were set-up prior to the murder.



There was a large amount of computer and surveillance equipment in the home because of previous threats before the murders, and Chris and Sheri had a security business.

A surveillance system had been set-up, and the killer knew it. He took the DVD player, destroyed it, and planted the faceplate on the highway that Chris was taking to the gym, implying Chris threw it out.

The smell of paint was in the air when police arrived on the scene at 6:47 am. Chris had left at 5:37 am and was only gone an hour. He was searched and his clothing was analyzed. He had no paint on him. The amount of spraying that it took to write the messages would have left a fine mist of paint everywhere within close proximity.

The killer appeared to start writing the messages on the main level of the home and worked his way up the staircase to the boys in their bedrooms.

Some of the writings were actually written from the end of the phrase and sprayed to the beginning.

The writings were very artistic, and the killer knew exactly what he was going to write and how before he went in.

The killer would have walked through the fine mist of paint as he exited.



Chris had only been gone one hour, but police stated the bodies were in an advanced stage of rigor mortis. Experts testified at Chris’ trial that the killings happened around 3:00 am, before Chris left the house. The time frame was partially based on Chris’s phone connecting to the internet at 2:47 am. Police speculated he must have been awake, fought with Sheri, and killed them all.

The advanced stage of rigor to Sheri was another contributing factor to the 3:00 am time of death. Dr. Baden was supplied a letter on May 19, 2009, that he based his decision on.

The victims were all cold to the touch and thick-skinned near the neck when officers checked for a pulse at about 7:00 am, 1 hour and 25 minutes after the murders.

What police and experts didn’t realize is the killer was staging the scene to appear as if it happened earlier.

Experts would not have even considered that the killer could have used “Air Duster” to spray the victims after death and cool their skin to the touch. The first place you check for a pulse is usually in the neck, and officers did that in this case. Air Duster sprayed by the killer on the neck would have made the skin cold and thick to the touch after death because there is no more blood flow. It would also advance rigor and alter the time of death. It would only take seconds to complete. It is the only way Edwards could successfully set-up Chris.

The Air Duster would not change the “ambient” temperature of the room, and it would not be noticed by police.

Air Duster does have chemical properties, and if the pathologist collected skin samples at autopsy there could be testing done.

Air Duster leaves an aerosol smell, and the first responding officer testified in a deposition that he smelled an aerosol.

There may have been a can of “Air Duster” in the house by the computer desk, as Chris stated: “Sheri used it to dust off computers at work, and so did I.”

Air Duster or Gas Duster is compressed air used to keep camera lenses clean and computer equipment dust free. The liquid, when released from the can, boils at a very low temperature, rapidly cooling any surface it touches. This can cause frostbite on contact with skin. As the can gets very cold during extended use, holding the can itself can result in frostbite.

Based on Dr. Baden’s opinion of time of death, Christopher Coleman was arrested May 19, 2009, the day the letter was sent to Baden.

Opinion:

As part of the set-up, Edwards would have used Air Duster to make the time of death appear earlier; otherwise, the set-up would not work.

The killer already knew Chris’ schedule and said so in the threatening messages.

Chris was only gone one hour, and he always texted or called to wake Sheri. The killer knew this. Chris texted Sheri within minutes of leaving the home, and she was already dead.

The killer was in the house before Chris opened the garage door to leave for the gym. The sound of the garage door opening and the truck pulling out allowed the killer to sneak up the stairs unheard. Sheri’s bedroom was over the garage.

Chris had no paint on him. The paint smell would have covered up any hint of a chemical like Air Duster in the room. The paint can was removed from the scene, and Edwards would have removed the Air Duster also.

By 2009 Edwards was a computer genius and knew all about the properties of Air Duster.

Edwards was always about outsmarting the experts, and Dr. Baden was an expert that was wrong on other cases Edwards had committed.

Edwards taunted experts who testified at his murder trial set-ups. He was the one that knew what happened, not the expert.

Edwards did set-ups of cheating husbands since setting up Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose pregnant wife was killed in bed in their home in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 4, 1954.

Dr. Sheppard was acquitted at a new trial in 1967, just before Edwards started the Zodiac killings. He had set-up Dr. Sheppard and wrote about it as a puzzle in his 1972 book, "Metamorphosis of a Criminal."

Christopher Coleman was under suspicion from the beginning because Sheri appeared to be in an advanced stage of rigor mortis and post mortem lividity, which is the stiffening of the body and settling of the blood after death. As the body cools, this becomes more prominent, yet eventually subsides.



Early in the day, while Chris was still at the scene, a blogger on the St. Louis Post Dispatch stated: “Husband has been dating a girl from St. Petersburg Florida named Tara Lintz.” The blogger's name was “Cowgirl1969.”

An unknown blogger, “Cowgirl1969,” led police to the affair Chris was having with Tara Lintz. 

Sheri Coleman had her Facebook page hacked just prior to her death, and she suspected a woman had done it. The blogger's name leaves you thinking that it was a woman who wrote it (the year 1969 is when Edwards announced himself in California as The Zodiac Killer).

Edwards had used his Grandmother’s name “Anabel” in the same type of blog in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on June 14, 2008, a year before the Coleman murders. In this case, he strangled and drowned Megan Touma, a pregnant soldier, wrote the Zodiac sign in red lipstick on the mirror, and set-up the victim's boyfriend, Edgar Patino, with whom she was having an affair (he was married).

Using a female blogger's name, Edwards blogged after the murder that Edgar Patino was having an affair with Megan Touma, which led police to Edgar Patino. (Edwards portrayed himself online as both a woman and a man from 1996 until 2009, using the names Jen1orbit and joe1orbit.)

Edwards taunted the press and police with a Zodiac Killer letter, stating he was at the scene of Touma's 2008 murder. The Fayetteville Observer received a letter carrying the symbol used by the Zodiac Killer (image below), dated June 17, from a person purporting to be Touma's killer. 

The note was typed on a typewriter, just like some of the Coleman letters found in their mailbox (see image below).

Edgar Patino actually pleaded guilty in November 2010 to killing Megan Touma so that he could avoid the death penalty. He has lost all appeals, maintains his innocence, but has no attorney.




Edwards chose his victims, and he picked wife cheaters to setup.

What happened in the Coleman case is Edwards MO.

Christopher Coleman was interviewed by police from 11:09 am until 5:00 pm. The blog that exposed the affair came into the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and it portrayed a women had sent it. It was deleted after the Illinois Terrorism Task Force notified Columbia police about it.



Police contacted Tara Lintz in Florida while Chris was being interviewed, and she confirmed the affair.
Sheri Coleman and Lintz had known each other since high school, she said. But the relationship became strained.

Lintz testified she was unhappy that Christopher Coleman planned a trip to Disney World with his family for July 2009, and told him she didn't want him to go. She said that he told her he canceled it but that his wife rescheduled it for that fall. Lintz said she posed as Sheri Coleman in a call to Disney World to check on the cancellation policy.

Under cross-examination by defense lawyer William Margulis, Lintz was asked about love letters and provocative messages she had received from other men — including relatives of both Christopher and Sheri Coleman — during the tryst.

Earlier in the day, Justin Barlow, a Columbia police detective who lived across the street from the Colemans and was a key figure in the investigation, testified that Christopher Coleman was the only serious suspect from the start.

"We had one," Barlow said.

In cross-examination of Barlow, now a deputy U.S. marshal, defense lawyers tried to plant doubts about that single suspect.

In one instance, they raised questions about one of Christopher Coleman's brothers, Keith Coleman, who they said had at some point sent Sheri Coleman a video of one of the Coleman brothers strangling a deer, and who they said had not been cooperative with police.

Defense attorney Jim Stern noted in his questioning that Keith Coleman had been a past guest at Christopher's and Sheri's home but that for some reason was later no longer allowed to stay there.

Barlow said that Keith Coleman, who lives in Arkansas, has a viable alibi for the time the killings occurred.

Brad Coleman, another Coleman brother, told a reporter afterward, "In my opinion, they are bringing this up just to prove the police didn't do their job and investigate all other suspects." He confirmed that Keith Coleman had been in Bentonville, Ark.

The defense also asked about a report that someone in a brown car had thrown something off the Jefferson Barracks Bridge on the morning of the killings. That is along the route that Christopher Coleman, who drives a different kind of car, would have taken to a gym that morning. Potential evidence was found along the route near the bridge.

Barlow said that had been investigated.

Barlow also said a report that a neighbor heard a quarrel at the Coleman house on the night of the killings did not check out.

Prosecutors allege that Christopher killed his family to be with Lintz without a divorce he feared might cost him a $100,000-a-year post with the Joyce Meyer Ministries.

Coleman insisted to police that his family was alive when he left home about 5:43 a.m. that morning, a time confirmed by a surveillance camera on Barlow's house. Prosecutors have tried to establish through expert testimony from pathologists that the three victims were dead hours before that.

That day, Lintz testified, she and Coleman texted while he was interviewed by police. Days later, she said, she spoke to Coleman after she was interviewed in Florida by police officers.

Lintz couldn't remember who, but she said one of them said: "They're looking for a motive."

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/coleman-s-mistress-testifies-in-murder-case/article_c8a3f7ba-aaf8-539b-897f-630e2c3c6ef0.html
Between Sheri’s state of rigor, the blog and the cheating accusations, the set-up had worked, and police suspected Chris had killed his family.

Chris became the only suspect at this point, and all the time was spent proving Chris wrote the messages rather than looking at what the messages really said.

Chris had no paint on him or his clothes, and he was clocked in at the gym during the time of the killings.


The defense also asked about a report that someone in a brown car had thrown something off the Jefferson Barracks Bridge on the morning of the killings. That is along the route that Christopher Coleman, who drives a different kind of car, would have taken to Gold's Gym (at 151 Concord Plaza in south St. Louis County) that morning. Potential evidence was found along the route near the bridge.



The killer stole the DVD player which Chris had installed because of the death threats he received the six months before the killing.

The DVD faceplate was found planted on the side of the highway leading into St. Louis, near the bridge Chris took to the gym. This implicated Chris again, as police said he threw it out the window on the way to the gym.

By planting the evidence crossing state lines, it brought in the St. Louis FBI office and homicide task force, the very people Edwards taunted his entire life.

The faceplate had a fingerprint on it. It was entered into AFIS, and it was not Chris’s.

The fingerprint on the faceplate would have been planted by Edwards, and it most likely belonged to a previous victim of Edwards (Edwards kidnapped Robert A Wiles on April 1, 2008, and his body was never found).

Edwards planted fingerprints at many of his scenes. He would actually cut off fingers of his victims and use them to plant evidence (Edwards himself was missing three fingertips on his right hand).

Edwards planted fingerprints in blood at the Zodiac cab driver killing in San Francisco in 1969. Edwards had used a previous victim’s finger to leave the print.

Edwards also planted hair on many of his victim’s bodies. This would implicate anyone but him.

Gavin and Garret both had obvious long black hairs placed on their face, neck and chest. There were more than six. Experts concluded the hairs were transferred by the noose used to strangle Sheri first.

The hair, and the way they were placed on the victims, was a clue that Edwards left at many of his scenes.

Edwards had placed hairs on dozens of other victims.

Edwards knew the FBI was falsely testifying the last 30 years about hair evidence because he was planting hair and they were confirming wrong analysis.

The FBI just recently admitted that their hair analysis has been flawed for 40 years.

Edwards knew this (the hairs on the Coleman boys should be tested for DNA).

At the time the Colemans were killed, Edwards had a previous victim’s body hidden. The victim’s name was Robert A Wiles from Melbourne, Florida. Robert Wiles had lived in the same city in which Tara Lintz and Christopher Coleman had their affair in November 2008. Robert was killed on April 1, 2008, in Lakeland, Florida. His body has never been found. Robert had brown hair.

Serial Killer Edward Wayne Edwards, DOB 6-14-1933, DOD 4-7-2011, killed the Coleman family and signed his name in an “Illusion Writing” in red spray paint, painted on the walls at the murder scene.

Edwards used the letters in mirror image from his name when forming the message, “I Saw You Leave.”

On May 5, 2009, sunrise was 5:59 am.

The killer was in the Coleman home by 5:37 am, the time Chris left for the gym. 

By sunrise, Edwards would have killed the victims and sprayed the messages.

Edwards walked out the back way unnoticed.

Everything Edwards did was pre-planned, and he always had an escape route and a ruse. He would have been covered from head to toe like he was in the Zodiac case in 1969, and he would have removed his cover while walking away unnoticed. He would have had a murder bag or duffel bag.

Edwards was always able to place the threatening letters in the Coleman mailbox unnoticed, even after cameras were set-up. That is why many of the messages stated “I Saw You” or “I’m Alway Watching.”


The killer was already in the house as Chris was leaving for the gym at 5:37 am: that’s one reason the killer wrote, “I Saw You Leave.” On May 5, 2009, sunrise was at 5:59 am. By sunrise, Edwards would have killed the victims and sprayed the messages. He walked out the back way unnoticed. 



Edwards was always inside his victims, unbeknownst to them, and he knew where the cameras were.

He would have looked like a harmless old man.

He most likely visited with the Columbia Police Department in the past under an assumed identity.

Both Sheri and Chris worked for religious organizations, both were ex-military police, and they were having marital problems.

Edwards always got into his victims through the ruse of being a doctor of psychiatry or a pastor, counseling people in churches and killing their closest friends and neighbors.

The threatening messages started in November 2008, six months before the Colemans were murdered. 

At that time, Edwards was in Florida taunting another victim of his with a message. Edwards emailed a ranson note from Robert A Wiles' G-gmail account to the family of Robert A Wiles (image below), who Edwards had killed on April 1, 2008.



Throughout his life, Edwards used the ruse of being a doctor of psychiatry, a policeman, and a preacher.

Chris and Sheri were both being counseled through their churches at the time of the murder.

Edwards was also an expert at hypnosis, and he used drugs to lull his victims.

Edwards could hack any computer, and in 2008 he had gained access to Robert Wiles's email accounts and phone just like he did to Christopher Coleman's in 2009.

Edwards was also in the Marines and targeted military people to destroy. Chris was in the Marines and Sheri was in the Air Force. Both were former MP’s, and Edwards would have easily identified with them, unbeknownst to them.

Edwards never used the name Ed Edwards in his personal life. He used the name “Wayne” with dozens of assumed identities and alias names, provided to me by his daughter April Edwards, on a timeline of her life that she supplied to me.

“Myers” was one of Edwards' alias names.

Edwards was a writer and published his autobiography in 1972 at age 39. He claimed in the book that he was a former criminal, a suspect in a double murder, and was once on the FBI’s "10 Most Wanted" list.

He traveled with his current family throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, preaching at churches, schools, police academies and law schools that he was a reformed criminal.

The book was actually a puzzle, and it contained the murders he committed until 1968. He then repeated the same types of murders from 1970-2009 all over the country, tying it all to names in his book.

The names Coleman, Meyer, Edwards, Columbia, Chicago, Illinois, Florida and Missouri are all in his book. 

He killed people at these locations and with these names throughout his life.

Edwards was traveling the country with his book, handing it out to police and stalking churches for his next victim. He used his family as a ruse. They did not know he was killing.

Edwards would have met Sheri Coleman at her church in St. Louis, where she was a receptionist.

Edwards would have had something to do with donating the round bed to Sheri so he could kill her on it and lay her out ritually. He considered the way he laid Sheri out as “Satan’s altar.” He laid her on a bed shaped like the Zodiac sign, his signature throughout life.

In Edwards' book, Metamorphosis of a Criminal, The True Life Story of Ed Edwards, the name Coleman is listed at the beginning on the acknowledgements page, and Meyer can be found at the end, in Edwards’ psychiatric records.

Edwards would pick his victims after 1968 by tying it to names in his book.

Paulette Coleman is the name he acknowledged in his book. Edwards used a typewriter to type some of the threatening notes left in the mailbox of Christopher Coleman. He tied the killing of the Coleman family to his book because a woman named Paulette Coleman helped him type his book in 1972.

This is how deliberate and patient Edwards was in all his murders. They were pre-planned for years.

In his book he described how he would plan each murder after 1953, when he was in Chillicothe Prison with Charles Manson.

The Threatening Messages

In the year prior to the murders, the Colemans were going through a possible divorce. Chris had told Sheri in December of 2008 that he wanted a divorce.



Around this same time, Sheri started acting different. She had gotten a tattoo of the word Jesus in Hebrew on the back of her neck. She had gotten the bed from the church, and her Facebook and Myspace pages were hacked.

Chris’s computer was also hacked on November 14, 2008, when the first threatening message arrived.



The date of every threat made prior to the Coleman murders ties back to other killings Edwards did in Montana, California and Florida.

First Threat - Emails, November 14-16, 2008.

The threatening emails were sent from the laptop that Chris Coleman used for work.













Just before the first threat came into the Colemans, police were preparing to announce that a man named Ottis Toole had killed Adam Walsh.

Edwards had killed Adam and was preparing for a revenge killing if police announced falsely that Ottis Toole killed Adam.

Edwards was in Florida in November and December of 2008 when police and John Walsh wrongly announced that Ottis Toole killed Adam. 

Edwards mailed the next threat to the Colemans after this announcement.

Second Threat - Letter, January 2, 2009.

This letter, without an envelope, was left in the Colemans' mailbox.



This threat was made on the 53-year anniversary of Edwards's killing in Great Falls, Montana (January 2, 1956). It was a double murder on a Lovers Lane on water near the Missouri and Sun Rivers. Edwards was dressed like a cop in this case and executed two victims with two shots to the back of their heads. It was an early Zodiac killing and the answer to who the Zodiac was. This was the case that started my investigation in 2010.

Edwards tied the Coleman murder to the Great Falls murder because it is on the Missouri River's beginning, and St Louis is on the Missouri’s end.

Third Threat - Letter, April 6, 2009.

This letter was not divulged by police. 

Sheri Coleman received a letter in her mailbox on April 6th. Chris had been out of town for a week and wasn’t expected back until April 8th.

Police stated in 2011 that they never got a report of this letter from Sheri, but Detective Douglas, in an interview with Tara Lintz in May 2009, admitted the letter existed and a report was made. He also admitted that it arrived in the mailbox when Chris Coleman was out of town.

Chris could not have placed the letter in his mailbox. He was in Hawaii with Tara Lintz when it arrived.

Christopher Coleman was out of town when the threat was delivered. 

An email from Chris to Tara Lintz shows the dates he would be gone.

Chris could not have delivered the letter.



The date of this letter is the 54-year anniversary of Edwards escape from city jail in Akron, Ohio (Edward Wayne Edwards Escapes, April 6, 1955).

Edwards’ 1955 escape resulted in the FBI making the “FBI’s 10 Most Wanted” list. Edwards made the list before it existed in 1955, and he made it again in 1960.

Everything Edwards did would tie back to a previous murder and set-up.

The April 6th threat that Sheri received was dated the anniversary of Edwards escape and his running the country from April 6, 1955, until his capture in Montana for robbery on March 6, 1956.

April 6th was a ritual date for Ed Edwards because of his serial killer spree he started on that date in 1955, after he broke out of the city jail in Akron, Ohio.

After this escape, he killed eight people in the states of Illinois, Montana, California, Idaho, Iowa and Nebraska. Edwards committed a triple murder in Chicago in October 1955 and set-up a man named Kenneth Hansen. Edwards kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in California in April 1955 and planted the evidence along the highway to lead to Burton Abbott, who was executed for the crime.

Fourth Threat - Letter, April 27, 2009.



The word "LEAVE" in one of the messages written with red spray paint on a wall in the Coleman home had a strange looking “a” (images below).

Edwards had used the same symbol in a letter to me in January 2011, just before Christopher Coleman’s trial (images below).




In this letter Edwards was leading me to the Coleman murder by placing the same symbol in the term “writing games” as he had sprayed on the wall at the Coleman house.

At the time, I was confronting Edwards about his other murders and "writing games."

I had not heard of the Coleman murder at the time, but knew he had placed that symbol in the letter as a clue to another murder.

All of his letters to me led to other murders.

This one was leading me to the writings at the Coleman scene. 

Chris was about to go to trial at the time I got this letter.

In 2011 I confronted Edward Edwards about him being the Zodiac killer. He responded by beginning the letter with “It’s Me!” 

Edwards confirmed we were right on the solutions to his puzzles.

Edwards told us he had lots more to tell, and he did in every letter he sent to us. We just had to figure out the clues he was leaving.

Edwards was arrested for murder on July 30, 2009, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was 76 years old, married to his wife Kay since 1968, and had 5 children and 11 grandchildren. He had been married twice before, in 1955 and 1959. I interviewed his wives.

Although in the end he portrayed himself as a cripple, he was never wheel chair bound unless he was doing a ruse. Edwards forced prison staff to push him around in a wheel chair in 2009, 2010 and 2011. In 2011, as the prison staff pushed him to his cell, he would stand up and walk to his bed.

He was treated like royalty before his death as he informed on murders to cops everywhere.

In 1972, when he was suspected of possibly being the Zodiac killer, he faked a broken back; and police didn’t follow up.

He used the wheel chair ruse in 2009 once he was identified as a serial killer, with the hopes that someone would get lazy and he could escape again as he had in 1949, 1950, 1955 and 1959.

The wheel chair ruse allowed everyone to think that he could not harm anyone.

Edwards was arrested at his home in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 30, 2009.

Sheri Coleman had been in Kentucky on April 16, 2009, two weeks prior to her death. She was armed with a gun and acting paranoid because she had received the April 6th threat in her mailbox, while Chris was out of the country (police have failed to release this message).

When Sheri was in Kentucky two weeks prior to her death, she attended a fashion show in Lexington, and went out on the town. Ed Edwards attended fashion shows and beauty pageants throughout life, stalking his next victims (in the JonBenet Ramsey case he sent a letter from the Miss America Pageant telling the Boulder police someone in the family killed JonBenet).

Edwards always steered the evidence to someone innocent, and many times he framed the parents, like he did to John and Patsy Ramsey and Chris Coleman.

Edwards used his wife and kids as a ruse as he traveled the country from 1955 until 2009, killing people and setting people up in every state. It began in Illinois in 1945 and ended in Illinois in 2009 with the triple killing of Sheri, Gavin and Garret and the set-up of Chris.

Edwards’ book, titled Metamorphosis of a Criminal, really meant the metamorphosis of the worst serial killer ever.

Edwards pleaded guilty in Ohio in 2010 to five murders spanning Ohio and Wisconsin from 1977 until 1996. The murders involved kidnapping couples, torturing them, tying them up, strangling them, stabbing them, shooting them, and hiding their bodies. Edwards collected a quarter of a million dollars life insurance in the 1996 case. Edwards profited off of murder his whole life.

He planted obvious hairs on his victims’ bodies at his scenes that belonged to previous victims. 

Just before his capture, and only two months after killing the Colemans, Edwards went online and admitted to being the Zodiac killer and the killer of Adam Walsh (image below). 

He supplied clues in the rant that led to the Colemans. 

He used the name BABABIJAN, which means “John is Father.”

Edwards stated: The cryptic alphabetic clue of “water” can benumeralized as 67, which can be equalized as: (46+7+7+7), which can be written as: 46 777, which can be cracked as Liber 777.

Edwards gave the numbers 67, 46, and 777 as a clue.

1) There are 6 letters to the first name Edward.
2) There are 7 letters to the second name Edwards (6 and 7 = 67).
3) Edwards posted it on his 76th birthday, June 14, 2009 (67 mirror image).
4) 1967 was the year he was paroled out of Leavenworth Prison and started the Zodiac killings while he was on parole for 10 years.
5) The next number he gave above was 46, the year of “The Lipstick Killings,” with writing on the wall in red.
6) Edwards gave the numbers 777, a clue that it was all based on Aleister Crowley’s “Liber 777.”
7) Edwards had placed 67, 46, 777 and Ed W E in the word “LEAVE” at the writings on the wall at the Coleman home in mirror image.

He gave the clue of “WATER” because the Zodiac Killer always killed near water (the Coleman's house backed up to a lake).

Edwards also mentioned the date “May 27, 2009” in his 2010 confession. This was the date the results of a search warrant were released to the public by court order in the Christopher Coleman case and posted online by the St Louis Post Dispatch.

Edwards taunted the media his whole life and had spoken in Missouri in 1972 with the Under Secretary of the United Nations. He also got himself photographed with a Captain of the Atlanta Police Department after he had killed 24 children in Atlanta in 1979-81.

Edwards also gave the clue of “Korea” in the confession, which is also mentioned four times in his book.

It was the Korean War for which he joined the Marines to fight, and it was in June of 1950 that he went AWOL and started another serial killer spree.

Korea is also the only word he left on the paint brush handle used as part of the garrote he strangled JonBenet Ramsey with in 1996. Edwards strangled her in her own home, just like he strangled the Colemans in their own home. The Foreign Faction in the JonBenet Ramsey case was Edward Edwards.



Edwards spent a total of 13 years of his 77-year life in prison for such things as Bank Robbery, Impersonating an Officer, Burglary, Robbery, Assault, Weapons, Kidnapping, in addition to Murder.

Edwards was a confidential informant and had befriended law enforcement throughout his life.

He was an FBI informant for 55 years, informing on his own murders and setting up people.

In 2010, I befriended Edward Wayne Edwards and ended up in the most intense homicide investigation I have ever been involved in.

I never wanted to write a book, but after unraveling Ed Edwards, and realizing public officials were hoping it would all go away, I had to publish my book.

Officials at all levels have done everything to destroy my credibility the past five years because of what this reveals. It does not matter because Edwards put it all out there to be solved; you just had to challenge him.

After the book was published it revealed that Edward Wayne Edwards had killed the Coleman family.

When I received the discovery materials in the Christopher Coleman case, I found that Edwards had signed his name to the messages on the walls. The messages said:

“I’m Ed W Edwards, “U hav E Dahlia” “Punish Ed”
“46” “47” “777”

By Googling the phrase “EDS 47 Dahlia,” you are taken to the website Edward Wayne Edwards created in 2002: BlackDahliaSolution.org (archived at http://www.my-sos.com/BDS/doomed.htm). The site details how to crack his codes left at these scenes and how to crack the messages at the Coleman murder scene.

Edwards signed the crime, and nobody else would have put his name on the wall. His ego would not allow it.

I hope this helps Christopher Coleman get released.

Respectfully
John A Cameron


The courtroom door opened to the sound of rapid-fire, high-heel clicks. In walked the brown-haired woman who prosecutors claim provides the motive for three murders. Tara Lintz (pictured above), the Florida cocktail waitress turned reluctant star witness, strode into a Monroe County courtroom in Waterloo Thursday afternoon to the glancing eyes of ex-lover Christopher Coleman — who is on trial — and a packed gallery. She wore a black pantsuit, a pink blouse, black patent-leather heels with pink trim, and a cross on a necklace. But it was what she wore on her finger that stirred a little drama. Lintz confirmed to a prosecutor that she was still wearing the "promise ring" Coleman gave her at least two years ago. She had given him one, too. She did not characterize their relationship now, but she has not seen Coleman since before May 5, 2009. That's the day prosecutors allege he strangled his wife and two sons to start a new life with Lintz, once his wife's best friend. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 29, 2011]





Edwards repeated his murders over and over again in different cities, by fire, by gun, by knife, by rope. He called it "murder mimicry" on a website that he authored in 2002:
"I actually was a riddler and a mimicker during my time on earth." [blackdahliasolution.org]
There are similarities between the 2009 Coleman family murders and the 1996 Routier family murders.







On June 6, 1996, in Rowlett, Texas, Darlie Routier and two of her sons (Devon, age 6, and Damon, age 5) were stabbed in their family room while her husband and infant son slept upstairs (she had fallen asleep in front of the television with the two boys). Her two sons died at the scene. Darlie's right arm, left shoulder and throat were slashed; it was a necklace that apparently saved her life as it stopped the knife two millimeters short of hitting her carotid artery.



By Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthy

July 2002

In a written statement given to the police a few days later, Darlie, then 26, told the following story:
She was awakened by Damon’s cries of “Mommy! Mommy!” In the dark, she didn’t even notice she was hurt. She saw a man moving through the kitchen and followed him as he went toward the garage. When she got to the utility room, she saw a knife and picked it up. Only then, she said, did she return to find Devon and Damon and realize that she had been stabbed too. Darlie’s husband, Darin, who was sleeping upstairs with their infant son, Drake, came downstairs after hearing his wife’s screams and began administering CPR to Devon. By then, the assailant had disappeared.
Twelve days after Damon’s and Devon’s deaths, the police arrested Darlie for their murders. They had no eyewitnesses, no confession, and no motive. Darlie was tried and convicted of murder. She was sentenced to death but claims her innocence to this day. She and her husband, who proclaims her innocence as well, eventually divorced in 2011. Her only surviving son visits her in prison and continues to have a relationship with her.

A bloody sock, one of Darin's, was found in an alley about 75 yards from the family’s home. The sock had blood droplets from both sons yet there wasn't a bloody trail leading to it. Because Darlie’s 911 call lasted nearly six minutes and Damon was alive when paramedics arrived, many believe it would have been impossible for Routier to stage the crime scene and take the sock to the alley.



According to a doctor who studied the severity and location of Damon’s stab wounds, the boy could not have lived longer than nine minutes once he was first stabbed and probably lived no more than six minutes. 

Let’s assume Damon lived nine minutes. If you subtract from that nine minutes Darlie's five-minute-and-44-second phone call to 911, then subtract the additional minute and 10 seconds that she was in the presence of a police officer, Darlie had only two minutes and 6 seconds to stab her sons, head for the garage, step through the slit in the window screen, jump a back fence or go through a back gate, run barefoot for 75 yards down an alley, drop a bloody sock, run 75 yards back, stab herself, clean up the blood around the sink, and stage whatever crime scene there was left to be staged.

Furthermore, Lloyd Harrell, a private investigator who worked on Routier’s defense team, still questions how Routier was able to cut her own throat at the angle it was slashed and stab herself in her dominant right arm. And, he said, the way Routier described waking up sounds more like “coming to” after passing out, not sleeping.

A mysterious bloody fingerprint from an adult was found on the coffee table in the family room, which does not match any investigators or emergency workers or anyone in the family.

Neighbors saw a small black sedan slowly cruising the area in the weeks before the crime, and one even said that the car occasionally stopped near the Routiers’ house; other neighbors saw that same car leaving the area on the night of the murders—veteran investigators never were able to find anyone who had a reason to harm them.

Routier’s appellate attorney, Stephen Cooper, said prosecutors focused more on judging Routier’s character and grief than on physical evidence, which he said pointed to an outside assailant. 

The assailant could very well have thought that Darlie was fatally wounded and intended to frame her husband for the murders.

Or Darlie's husband, Darin, could have been involved. In a signed affidavit, he admitted to one insurance scam as well as a plot for a staged home robbery so he could collect a claim. According to the affidavit given by Darlie’s stepfather, Bob Kee, Darin said in the spring of 1996, when his business was in trouble and he was $22,000 in debt, that he had a plan in which he and his family would be gone from the house and that a “burglar,” hired by him, would pull up with a U-Haul truck, remove household items, and keep them hidden until the insurance company paid the claim. Once the furniture and other items were “stolen,” Darin would retrieve them from the “burglar” and pay him out of the proceeds from his insurance claim. All that was needed, Darin said, was someone to do the job.

When asked if he had discussed the plan with anyone else, including a couple of reputed car thieves in Rowlett, Darin hesitantly replied: “There is a possibility I said the same thing in conversation with people that worked around me. I don’t remember what I said. But there’s a strong possibility that was on my mind, and in conversation I could have said that.” Darin insisted that he never carried out the plan, and a private investigator said he has found no evidence to the contrary.

Darin would not deny to a reporter that the person who broke into his house and murdered his sons could have been someone who had heard him discuss his would-be insurance scam. But he said he had no idea who that person might be—and if such a crime did happen, it was without his assistance. “Why would I do that if I had my kids and my wife downstairs?” he said. “That’s the craziest story I have ever heard.” When I told him that the complete truth might help get his wife a new trial, he insisted that he wanted to do what he could for Darlie. “But I don’t want to end up with some kind of bullshit charges brought against me either,” he said. “I don’t want to help her at the expense of my life.”

What if Darin is lying and really did hire someone to kill Darlie? Darin would have collected on his wife's $250,000 life insurance policy had she died of her injuries. But once he realized Damon and Devon were sleeping downstairs a few feet from their mother, wouldn’t he have called the thing off rather than risk the lives of his sons? Darin denied involvement in the murders, and subjected himself to a polygraph test by Brian Pardo, a wealthy businessman who had become interested in the case. He failed. Darin did not deny that he failed the test but said that he was manipulated by the examiner, who he said spent two hours upsetting him with “a million questions” about the murders before hooking him up to the polygraph. Darin also speculated that he was suffering from survivor’s guilt, in which he envisioned himself at the scene trying to help the kids but was unable to reach them. (According to knowledgeable sources, Darlie too was given a lie detector test by one of her original court-appointed attorneys. The attorney refuses to comment on the results, which have never been made public.)

What really made no sense was why Darlie would choose Damon and Devon to kill. If Darlie, as the cops and the prosecutors believed, had become increasingly upset about money, why didn’t she murder Darin and cash in his $800,000 life insurance policy? The policies on Damon and Devon totaled only $10,000, and their funerals alone cost more than $14,000. If she was overwhelmed by the stresses of motherhood—another theory—then why didn’t she also kill Drake, the baby, who required most of her attention?

A psychiatrist who had interviewed Darlie for 14 hours after her arrest said she was telling the truth about the attacks and that her loss of memory about certain details that night was the result of traumatic amnesia, which can occur following emotionally overwhelming events. Vincent DiMaio, the chief medical examiner in San Antonio and the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of Forensic Medicine Pathology, testified that her injuries were not at all consistent with the self-inflicted wounds he had seen in the past; he said that the cut across her throat, in particular, was hardly “superficial,” as the prosecutors alleged. Mulder produced notes taken by the nurses at the hospital that said Darlie was “tearful,” “frightened,” “crying,” “visibly upset,” and “very emotional” on the night she was brought in.

Every detail of Darlie's life has been thoroughly examined by reporters, investigators, lawyers, and cops. Academic treatises on maternal filicide have been reviewed again and again to see if any case compares with hers. Yet even now, no one has been able to come up with a plausible explanation as to why she would have stabbed her boys. 

Unlike Andrea Yates, Darlie had no history of mental illness or psychotic hallucinations. Unlike Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drove her kids into a lake, she had no abuse or incest in her background. She had no criminal record, and she was not known to have committed adultery.

The state offered Darlie life in prison if she dropped her appeal and admitted to her children's murder. She refused.

Could it be that the police and the prosecutors manipulated the evidence to implicate someone they decided must have done it? A growing chorus of observers of the case believes so. At least half a dozen websites have been set up to proclaim Darlie’s innocence. A juror from her original trial now says that he and his fellow jurors made the wrong decision. Barbara Davis, author of one of the true-crime books about the case also changed her mind shortly after her book, "Precious Angels," was published, claiming the jury heard perjured testimony and was never shown photos that would have proved Darlie was a victim of a savage attack. 

Barbara Davis wrote the following:
During the trial I amassed over 40 steno pads filled with trial testimony and notes. After I reduced the evidence and trial testimony gathered to writing and sent "Precious Angels" to my publisher, I did what I always do when I finish a book, I went on as usual with my life. But my life decided not to go on as usual with me. My world wrapped securely in my beliefs of justice and fairness was shaken to the very core one day shortly after my book was released. 
Christopher Brown, author of "Media Tried, Justice Denied" called and asked me if I would keep an open mind and let him show me the true facts gathered by him in Darlie's case. I can honestly tell you that I was more than annoyed with him. After all, he hadn't sat in court day after day, week after week, but I sure had. And who did he think he was dragging this thing on while trying to convince me of something I already knew everything about. I told him he was wasting his time because there was no way I'd ever...I repeat, EVER, believe that Darlie was innocent. He assured me he could afford the time and we met. 
As I examined piece after piece of evidence I found myself convinced beyond any doubt that Darlie Routier was not the one who murdered her children and inflicted her own wounds on June 6, 1996. I found the State's case against her to be immersed in cover-ups, lies, false representations and evidence that was tampered with, tainted and even created to suit particular purposes. The police and prosecutorial tactics and the work they produced is questionable at best and criminal at worst. 
I cried. I trembled. I became sick at my stomach to the point that when I got home I threw up.

"Media Tried, Justice Denied" is more than a disturbing book. It is dark and positively catastrophic for those responsible for Darlie's arrest, indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration. As a person raised to respect law enforcement, the judicial system and the district attorney's office, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that a system I cherish, trust and have worked in and been a part of could go so very wrong. It plucked Darlie from her family, husband, only surviving child and friends and threw her into a deep, dark pit because her two little boys were slaughtered at her feet and she had the misfortune to survive and not be able to explain to the authorities how it happened. 

Darlie Routier's First Prison Interview (Video Above)



"When I look at cases wherein a person is arrested in a very short period after a crime (without some kind of ‘smoking gun irrefutable evidence’ for all to see), I realize that it means they in no way had time to run down other scenarios or suspects. How could they? It means they had tunnel vision and that it’s very possible that they are backing into a conclusion instead of following the evidence to a conclusion. They are shaping the evidence to fit their scenario rather than the other way around." - Peggy November 29, 2015 at 1:31 pm

Though the scenario that says Darlie is guilty sounds convincing, aren’t there other scenarios that could work as well? Can we make evidence support them if we really want to? 

For example, Darlie says she was attacked on the couch. 

We were told there was no blood there, but if you probe into the case this is an outright lie. There was blood there and blood on a pillow, plus a great deal of this blood was obviously absorbed into her nightshirt. 

It is said she told a couple of different stories. 

First that she woke up fighting a man and another that Damon woke her and she saw a man running. Because of this it’s assumed she’s lying, that only one could be true. 

But here’s a scenario I can come up with (and I’m not even a highly paid attorney) to make both true. 

Let’s say someone has broken in to the Routier home after seeing, through the windows, Darlie lying on the couch sleeping from windows. 

There were reports of other break-ins and plenty of rapes in history that happened just this way. He did not see children sleeping on the floor, or perhaps didn’t care. 

He grabs a sock for either his hand or to use as a gag from the basket in the kitchen. In fact, there were reports in the area at the relative time period of a suspect doing this. There is also a rape/murder where a man used victims socks and a knife from the home to kill a young girl in her sleep years before in Ft. Worth. This is a different case and suspect than the person eventually arrested in the sock rapes. 

The point is it is not an unprecendented behavior. 

He approaches quietly and crawls atop her, placing his socked hand or the sock in his hand over her mouth and nose and places the knife he also grabbed against her throat. She fights him when she awakens, causing him to cut her throat in this jagged, interrupted manner. This fight causes the bruises and her knife wounds. He smothers her out. Her cries are muffled as he has the sock covering her mouth and nose until she loses consciousness. It’s said her mouth was sore and she had lacerations in her mouth (from the pressure from her own teeth). 

He removes her panties, maybe he attempts to rape her, maybe he does rape her. The rape kit wasn’t tested, as far as I know. 

The kids (or just Damon) awaken while this is happening. This panics him. He gets off of her and stabs Damon (he has defense wounds). Maybe Devon did not wake up but he stabs him anyway, or he woke up but didn’t move. Result is the same: perp stabs him to death. 

Something nobody has considered is that his attack on the children could be general panic, or it could mean that the children knew him in some capacity, in which case he felt he had to kill them. 

The fact that he failed to kill Darlie doesn’t mean he didn’t intend to do so or think he may have. Or he just felt he lost control and it was best to flee at that point. 

The killing I mentioned above in Ft. Worth turned out to be a 17-year-old next door neighbor, and it shocked a lot of people. 

Eventually, Darlie wakes from unconsciousness when Damon is touching her and calling out to her. She sees him in the process of fleeing after this murder of children. 

Her memory is very foggy because she had been choked or smothered unconscious, plus she has been losing blood. It makes sense her memory would be affected and she may have vague recollections of both incidents. 

She did awaken twice, once when being attacked as she was sleeping, and secondly after losing consciousness. 

After surgery and anesthesia, she has lost more memory of events. 

That the kids were stabbed after her fits evidence, even according to the prosecution. 

Perhaps the killer wielding the knife during the children’s attack sprayed blood on Darlie from them, or perhaps the drops of blood are from his knife as he walks away or moves about the crime scene. He could have even wiped blood on her night shirt at some point. We don’t know if she was on her back, her side or stomach to understand if the knife threw cast off (while the man, or just after the man, stabbed the boys) onto Darlie’s night shirt.

The killer could have knocked over the vacuum. Darlie or first responders could have knocked it over in the chaos and not recall. It could have been knocked over somewhere else and someone moved it–Darlie, Darin, first responders, the killer–we simply don’t know the order in all the chaos. We know evidence was moved by first responders so we can’t completely rely on where it sets later. 

A person who was on the side of Darlie but has now changed his position (largely due to personal conflict with supporters, as it appears to me) did an experiment with the sock. He parked in this turnaround area where they think someone would park. He goes to the car, places the sock on the car, gets in the car to speed away. The sock is forgotten and it falls off right in the place that it was found. He claims to have done this experiment several times and the sock lands in that spot every time. 

The sock messes up the prosecutions’ argument because there was not enough time to place it there and do everything Darlie is said to have done, in their theory. Again, since it doesn’t work, rather than throwing out the theory, they just act like it doesn’t matter. 

It does matter, because the timing of how long Damon had to live after being stabbed is finite and we have definitive timelines to understand this because he was still alive when the first responder arrived, and we absolutely know what time she made the call. 

This is perhaps one of the most important pieces of “bad evidence” regarding the theory of Darlie’s guilt. To ignore this is showing a prejudicial bias towards believing a favored person is guilty rather than finding the truth of who did this…who could have done this. 

The only way this makes sense is if Darin took the sock to the alley or if an intruder did the deed.

Darlie was convicted on a theory, not facts, and that is not considered fair by the ideal standards of justice. Idealism is an abstract concept, and simply isn’t realistic and often the judicial system strays far from it. If only people could actually toss out their tainted belief that Darlie did it, and go back to square one. 

Look at other theories and see how plausible you can make them and where they lead. Try to make yourself believe an intruder did it. Can you? Not do you want to, but can you make it possible? Because that is exactly what has made Darlie appear so guilty…just a plausible scenario that supports a conclusion already decided upon from the beginning and retro-fitted interpretation of crime scene evidence, and that is just wrong.


In August 2011, Christopher Coleman was moved to a Wisconsin prison. Coleman had been serving his time at a prison in Pontiac, Illinois. In June 2011, the Illinois Department of Corrections announced it would move Coleman away from the state for unspecified safety reasons. Coleman was convicted in 2011 for the May 5, 2009 strangulation murders of his wife Sheri and sons Garret and Gavin in Columbia, Illinois, is serving concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole.

A jury consisting of Perry County, Illinois, residents were bused in every morning for Coleman's 2011 trial. Jurors interviewed after that trial said time stamp, or metadata, inconsistencies on photos used at trial turned the tide toward a unanimous guilty verdict. 

Coleman filed a post-conviction relief petition in 2018. That filing alleges this metadata, as well as ineffective counsel, led to the guilty verdict.

With Coleman present at the Monroe County Courthouse, Judge Stephen McGlynn ruled during an April 2019 evidentiary hearing that the metadata was not extraneous, could not be considered prejudicial and did not violate Coleman’s constitutional rights.

McGlynn also decided, however, he wanted another evidentiary hearing on the matter of Coleman having ineffective counsel. That hearing focused on why Coleman’s lawyers did not object to the inclusion of metadata and why they did not develop an argument regarding fingerprint evidence on the outside of a window at the Coleman residence and on a digital video recorder faceplate found along the side of the highway. The fingerprints on both surfaces did not match Coleman.

In September 2020, Judge Stephen McGlynn ruled during a remote hearing that he will enter a judgement against Christopher Coleman that should end Coleman’s post-conviction relief petition process in Monroe County.