Messages and Threats

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0:14May 5th is the day that's going to stick with the men and women of this police department their entire careers. A monster, I mean monster comes to mind. Somebody with no soul. This was a promising family, a great family. I got the phone call from my neighbor, Christopher Coleman, probably around 10 to 7 in the morning. He told me that he was on his way home from the gym. He was crossing the JB Bridge. He said, I'm calling Sherry. You know, nobody's answering the phone. She should be up. Tell him, hey, okay, I'll go over and check. I'm going to get somebody over there. He was concerned from the threats that they've been receiving that he reported to us.

0:55My name is Justin Barlow. I was a detective sergeant for the Columbia, Illinois Police Department. I also happen to be a neighbor.

1:03I went to the front door just looking in. I couldn't see anything. After that, I went from the front of the house to the basement area. This is the basement of the home where we found an open window. Came in through the hallway here, up the steps. and the steps basically went into the kitchen. The first thing I remembered was the smell of spray paint. We turned to the left here and saw the message that was left. A lot of helter-skelter type of message. Manson-style spray paintings on the wall.

1:44Saying punished, it started with email threads. Move to written threats.

1:56Police were involved. When I read the letter, it was very specific about killing the family. I will kill your wife and children in their sleep. Then we started going up the staircase to the bedroom, the second floor of the house. And then as you're walking up the steps, this message here, you have paid. this is leading to what you're going to find upstairs. It wasn't going to have a good outcome. And at the top of the stairs we found the three bedrooms. To the left of the staircase was the master bedroom where we found Sherry Coleman. To the right was a bedroom of Garrett, where he was found in his bed.

2:39And Gavin, we found him in the third bedroom. all three deceased. It was a homicide scene. We have an active death investigation, who's responsible, why it happened, when it happened. If you don't believe in evil, I hope you do now. A mother and her two sons had been strangled in their sleep. This touched an entire community. They took it very personal, and that's something that you'll never forget as a reporter. We're following leads. We have leads in this case. We thought with the prior threats that was going to be a very good lead for us, who had such hatred for Chris Coleman. That's where our investigation was going to start.

3:31This is Columbia. Innocent women and children will get murdered and they're bad at night.

3:46I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours, the writing on the wall.

4:15On the morning of May 5th, 2009, Christopher Coleman returned home from the gym to a scene of chaos and unimaginable horror. I told them, hey, they didn't make it, being the family. And we walked him outside through the garage. He sat down on the driveway and started sobbing, said he felt like he was going to throw up. and then kind of curled up in the fetal position. Detective Justin Barlow of the Columbia Police Department had been the Coleman's neighbor for five years and was the first to respond when Chris could not reach his wife. This crime scene, it wasn't bloody, but that didn't mean it was less gruesome.

5:00Were you at all prepared for what you were about to walk into? I don't think anybody could be prepared for that.

5:09Upstairs, where they should have been safe in their beds, were 31-year-old Sherry and the couple's two young boys, 11-year-old Garrett and 9-year-old Gavin. What is the lasting image you have in your mind from that day? I would say the one that sticks out the most would probably be Garrett, just because he's the one that, you know, I discovered. Is that a haunting image for you, even as a police officer? Yeah, a little bit. The killer had not only taken Garrett's life, but had desecrated the body by leaving another disturbing message. The spray paint in his room was actually on the sheet that was over his body.

5:54It was, and there were some remnants of the spray paint on him as well. We knew that this case was going to be probably the biggest one of our lives. Columbia, Illinois is a small, quiet suburb outside of St. Louis. A wonderful place to live and raise a family. And Chief Joe Edwards immediately recognized that his two investigators were going to need some help. So we called in a special unit. We're doing all we can to find out what happened in this house. Major Jeff Connor and the Major K-Squad, which brought in an army of 25 seasoned cops. It's typically your smaller departments that need the resource, need the help.

6:45Hours after the murders, the Major K-Squad swung into high gear. The CSI team started processing the house. Warrants were secured to go through the Coleman's phones and computers, while a very distraught Chris was taken to the police station to give his statement.

7:07Let's do everything we can for this man. Coleman told investigators that it had been a normal morning. What time did you leave your house to go to the gym this morning? He got up and left for the gym around 5.40 a.m. and called Sherry numerous times to wake her up. And you called her again at 6.35 a.m., 6.43, 6.52 a.m. The bodies of Sherry Coleman and her son's... As neighbors woke to the news of the murders... ...were discovered shortly before 7 Tuesday morning. They were both devastated and terrified. So as I got down the street, I had seen that it was at the Coleman house. And I texted her right away and said, is everything okay?

7:52and I didn't get a response.

7:58Vanessa Rigorex, who lived down the street, said the Colmans appeared to have a perfect life, raising their two beautiful sons. I always thought of them as the American family, the perfect family. Everybody would want their children like these two boys, polite, always helpful. They had a heart of gold. The couple had been married for 12 years and met when they were both in the military training at the canine unit. Sherry became a stay-at-home mom. 32-year-old Chris, the son of a preacher, used his marine and security experience to land a job for a well-known televangelist Joyce Meyer and the devil fills our minds with junk Joyce Meyer is now known throughout the country and known throughout the world as a leading voice in the evangelical movement Jesus died to set us free and pretty successful organization financially she's extremely successful financially I've seen figures from 50 to 100 million dollars a year reporter Nick Pister followed the case for two years and is a CBS News consultant.

9:18Don't ever let the devil steal from you. Joyce Meyer travels all throughout the world. There's conferences in countries that don't necessarily respond well to women who are preaching a Christian message. And so she wanted some deeper security. But being Joyce Meyer's head of security apparently put a target on Chris Coleman's back. In November 2008, Chris had begun receiving death threats to his work email. Whenever Chris Coleman reported the first death threat, he came to us at the police department. Tell Joyce to stop preaching the bull, it read, If I can't get to Joyce, then I will get to someone close to her.

10:01We give the Coleman family extra patrol, which we just give it special attention to make sure nobody's there. It was in January 2009 that a hand-delivered threat showed up in the mailbox at the Coleman family home. It read, deny your God publicly or else. No more opportunities. Time is running out for you and your family. Did it concern you as a neighbor living so closely when you heard that there were death threats being made to the guy who lived across the street? Absolutely. Each note seemed to escalate the seriousness of the situation. And on April 27th, less than a week before the murders, a final missive arrived with an ultimatum.

10:45Stop today or else. I know your schedule. You can't hide from me forever. I'm always watching. I know when you leave in the morning and I know when you stay at home. You decided to ramp things up yourself to be proactive. And what did you do at your house? We got one camera mounted up in my five-year-old's bedroom and pointed it right at the mailbox. With the camera aimed directly at the Coleman's mailbox, the Coleman residence lived about 214 feet approximately. They hoped to get a clear shot of whoever was leaving the notes. Be prepared for something that was going to happen and be as proactive about it as we could.

11:23Instead, days later, the killer somehow snuck into the Coleman home. and strangled Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin. But if the murders were linked to the threats and Joyce Meyer Ministries, that meant the cops might now be in a global search for suspects. There was a lot of fear that there was somebody out there killing families and who was going to be next.

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13:36This touched an entire community. The neighbors were shocked. They saw the young boys playing fudge football with their father on the front lawn. These were little boys that they knew. You could just see the pain on everyone's face. It devastated the community. The small town of Columbia, Illinois, was reeling with the sudden loss of Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin Coleman. Close friends like Kathy LaPlante were crushed. Sherry was a loving mother, loyal friend, and sister to me. My life's not the same, but a hole in my heart. If I would have known for one millisecond she was in danger, I would have been down there.

14:24For Sherry's brother Mario and their mother Angela, it was impossible to accept the reality of the brutal crime. She grew up to be a beautiful person on the outside as well as on the inside. They were her world, those boys. They were her world. You know, Garrett was more quiet and more of a thinker. You could tell by looking in his eyes, he was only thinking. And Gavin was? very he was very outgoing he was a very he's like a social butterfly his personnel is just like his mom's just like his mother's with Sherry Garrett and Gavin I mean I think that just that that's what the motivation was for everybody hours into the investigation the major case squad continued to pursue their best lead finding whoever wrote those threats we tracked down people across the country who didn't like Joyce Meyers and we interviewed them to find where they were at on May the 4th and May the 5th.

15:27And that morning, they were hoping Chris might be able to point them in the right direction. You suspect, I mean, out of all these emails and things you've been talking about, where there's got to be one person that stands out in your mind. I don't have any clue. I wish I knew if I had just been there this morning. But as police continued to talk to Coleman, they were surprised by how he was acting. How do you think they died? No idea. You guys haven't told me. Okay. Do you have any clues?

16:05Did he ever ask how his wife and children died? He never asked? No. What else sticks out in your mind from those first few hours? Just the lack of reaction. I mean, just the lack of curiosity of what's going on. So police kept probing. Was there a problem in your relationship? Was there anything currently that wasn't going so well in your relationship? Not really. I mean, it was the communication thing. Had you seen anyone else outside of your wife in an romantic way? No. Chris was adamant that he was not having a relationship outside of his marriage. So it seemed odd when he offered a stunning piece of information about another woman.

16:57Tara in Florida that you guys might have talked to. And I've talked to her a ton lately. And what's with that? Just a friend somebody talked to. Tara is Tara Lentz, a cocktail waitress and an old high school friend of Sherry's. You said you had a close friendship. But were you actually doing anything that you felt wouldn't be approved by your wife? Some of the conversations, probably. Coleman insisted they were just friends, that he met Tara through Sherry when their family went to Florida on vacation. Did I have the potential to go for that?

17:46No, I didn't want to do that to my kids.

17:52But during the interview, the Major K-Squad contacted police in Tara's hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, to check out Chris's story. Channel clear. Detective Shannon Halstead got the call. We went from the station to go make contact with her, thinking it was going to be a quick 20-minute interview, and it ended up being very different. That's because the information Halstead gained from Tara about the relationship was very different than what Chris was telling police in Illinois. She provided the Blackberry and the laptop computer, obviously had files of videos and emails. relating to their relationship.

18:33Did you immediately step out and call St. Louis? I did. And what did you say to them? I said, I'm not positive, but I think this is his girlfriend. Armed with that information, Detective Barlow confronted Chris. The one thing that I did want to tell you right now is the St. Petersburg Homicide Unit is talking to Taryn right now. And she showed us the pictures that you sent her on with YouTube. We know you guys have been having an affair. So was that a pretty big break for you guys? It was an important piece. Investigators learned the couple had begun seeing each other in the fall of 2008, six months before the murders.

19:14During the affair, Chris would fly Tara to meet him at locations where he was working for Joyce Meyer. Are you with me so far? I know you guys went to Hawaii together. We pulled the Enterprise leasing cars, which is where you guys went on different trips together, right? This is just something. Well, any other thing to... I didn't think it was an affair. You didn't think it was an affair? Because she's told... An affair is when you're living with them and you're going to get married and everything. She had on her calendar a scheduled wedding to Chris Coleman, scheduled vacations, different accounts, credit card accounts that they held together.

19:49And I think she, honest to God, believed that he was going to leave his wife and two children. Chris's parents, Pastor Ron Coleman and his wife Connie, were stunned to learn their son had had an affair. But they insisted it had nothing to do with the murders. He's always been a real gentle person. Kind of quiet. Is there any way that there's a part of Chris that you don't know that could have been capable of this? Not in my view. You couldn't put something around your kid's throat unless you're a monster. Yeah, you'd have to. It's just not there. While investigators believed Chris' affair with Tara Lentz was a strong motive for murder, there still wasn't enough evidence to charge him.

20:34So after six long hours, Chris Coleman walked out a free man. It wasn't like we were wanting to believe that Chris is the one who did this. It's just that the evidence kept pointing to him.

20:56The memorial in their subdivision is awesome. There's a bench and there's trees. Every day, friends and neighbors are reminded of the beautiful lives that were stolen from them. The community got together and created that, so they wanted to do something positive. Megan Turnbow says it's a fitting tribute, unlike the funeral service at Pastor Coleman's church. No friends, no family, no coaches. Nobody spoke about these three awesome people that were dead. In the days that followed the service, any sympathy for Chris Coleman was stripped away as news spread about his affair with Sherry's high school friend, Tara Lentz.

21:42Well, when the affair came out and I had no idea and I heard about it from someone else, I felt like every day I was just getting stabbed in the heart by these little pieces of information. Did you think he was going to be arrested? Yes, and I couldn't wait. I was nervous, to be honest with you. The major K-Squad felt that pressure. Obviously, in any case, you want to get the person responsible for it, but you want to get the right person. But right away, there were red flags. police were concerned when they found a basement window open and others unlocked. Here's a guy whose family is being threatened.

22:26They're going to destroy his family while he's gone, but yet that window was left unlocked and it was obvious it was left unlocked because there was no forced entry. And remember that camera Detective Barlow installed in his house? You saw no strangers walking up and down the street. You saw no strange vehicles. And Chris had even installed his own surveillance cameras in his house. What about the surveillance equipment that was allegedly in the house? The recorder was missing. That's convenient. Yes. An autopsy on Sherry revealed that she fought violently with her killer, leaving her with two black eyes.

23:06Sherry was involved in an altercation before she was murdered. Those two boys weren't. which made scratches found on Chris Coleman's arms all the more suspicious. When did you first notice the scratches on his arms? It was brought to my attention by people at the scene. How you doing? I mean, is there anything I can get you freezing? Yeah. Okay. Police say Coleman tried to hide them during his interview. You can see on the video where he's asking for a blanket because he says he's cold. The only part of his body he covers up are the suspected marks on his arm. That'll work, won't it? Yes, I can't.

23:45I can't cover my arms up. I'll freeze it. I remember in the interview room it being very warm in that. Did you think he was in shock? No. Chris later claimed he got those scratches the day before, when he was removing a satellite dish from his roof. Was there any DNA found at the scene that would implicate him? I'll just say there wasn't any DNA found that didn't belong there. No Boogeyman, no unidentified DNA, anything like that. There was incriminating evidence found on Chris' phone and computers, starting with X-rated snapshots and videos that Tara and Chris had sent each other. It was a serious affair.

24:28He had written down her measurements, her favorite things, everything about her he had stored so he could you know buy her things or do whatever for her by November 5th of 2008 Chris had written on his computer that that was the day Tara changed his life for police that date would set off alarm bells and how many days after that then did the threats start to show up. About nine days after that. Nine days. The Coleman's insist it is all a coincidence. It's my understanding that he had written down November 5th, the day Tara changed my life, that they had exchanged promise rings, and that he had even written down the name of their first child were to be a little girl.