Illinois Man Charged with Murdering His Family

May 5, 2009 was a school day, so at 7 AM the house on 2854 Robert Drive should have been filled with the weekday morning noises so familiar to the parents of grade school kids. Breakfast sounds, school materials and lunches packed, trips to the bathroom, and voices should have echoed down its halls. Yet this morning the house was silent, like a radio station that went off the air. Eleven-year-old Garrett Coleman and his brother Gavin, nine, were still in their beds, dead. Mother Sheri Coleman was also dead; all three killed by ligature strangulation before their days had even begun.

It was a massacre, and the sepulchral silence mocked the normal exterior of the Columbia, Illinois home. So where was father and husband Chris Coleman when the killings occurred? That depends on who you ask.

Coleman’s Story

Coleman claims he left the house at 5:43 AM to go to work out at a local gym. CNN, 5/20/09. If that time sounds suspect in its precision, one need be aware that Coleman had been a marine and was perhaps very time-conscious. He wasn’t there long before he called home, purportedly to make sure the kids were getting ready for school. When he got no answer he grew concerned, called the Columbia Police for a house check, and drove home. He arrived to learn the dreaded news.

Aside from establishing an alibi, Coleman wanted to send the police in another direction. As reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, 5/20/09, Coleman had complained to the police of threats arising from his job as a security man for Joyce Meyers Ministries, an evangelical organization. Some neighbors in the suburb have said the Colemans had received threatening mail and that their mail box had been tampered with.

The inside of the house had been dressed up to suggest vengeance. A basement window had been lifted up. Fox News, 5/20/09. At least one message was spray painted on a wall. The police won’t reveal how many or exactly what they said. The Post Dispatch claimed one read something to the effect of “I warned you this would happen.” The following day, new details were released by the St. Louis, Mo., Major Case Squad (though Columbia is in Illinois, it is a suburb of St. Louis). They said the words: “I told you so” were spray painted on a wall near the stairs. Chicago Tribune, 5/21/09.