Alton Coleman

Alton Coleman was born on November 6, 1955, in Waukegan, Illinois. His mother worked three jobs, and he lived with his 73-year-old grandmother. Coleman was well known to local law enforcement, having been charged with sex crimes six times between 1973 and 1983. Two of those cases were dismissed. Coleman served three years in prison after pleading guilty to armed robbery in a 1973 case where he and an accomplice kidnapped and raped a woman, then stole $100 from her car. Coleman was scheduled to go on trial in Illinois on charges stemming from the rape of a 14-year-old girl when he fled and began his killing spree.^[1] In 1976, Coleman was charged with three counts of deviate sexual assault for raping three fellow inmates in jail. However, he was only convicted of battery and received a six-month sentence.

Coleman was diagnosed with mixed personality disorder with "probable" antisocial, narcissistic and obsessive features, with additional diagnoses including epileptic spasms, psychosis and borderline personality disorder.^[2]

Debra Brown was born on November 11, 1962.^[3] She is one of eleven children, is borderline intellectually disabled, suffered head trauma as a child and was diagnosed with dependent personality disorder by a psychiatrist.^[4] She was engaged to another man when she met Coleman in 1983, but left her family and moved in with him shortly afterwards. Although a willing participant in Coleman's assaults and murders, Brown had no history of violence or any criminal history prior to their relationship.

Coleman and Brown committed their first murder when they killed nine-year-old Vernita Wheat from Kenosha, Wisconsin. After Coleman had befriended her mother, Juanita Wheat, he abducted Vernita and took her to Waukegan on May 29, 1984. Vernita's badly decomposed body was discovered on June 19 in an abandoned building four blocks from the apartment of Coleman's grandmother.^[5] It was determined she had been raped, and the cause of death was ligature strangulation.

On May 31, Coleman befriended Robert Carpenter in Waukegan and spent the night at his home. The next day he "borrowed" Carpenter's car to go to the store and never returned.

In June 1984, Coleman and Brown encountered two young girls in Gary, Indiana: 9-year-old Annie Turks and her niece, 7-year-old Tamika Turks.^[6] The couple sexually assaulted the two children. Annie survived the violent attack, but Tamika did not; her partially decomposed body was discovered on June 19. The same day, Donna Williams, a 25-year-old woman from Gary, disappeared. On July 11 her decomposed body was discovered in Detroit, Michigan, about half a mile from where her car was found. She had been raped and killed by ligature strangulation.^[7]

On June 28, Coleman and Brown entered the home of Palmer Jones and his wife, Marjorie^[8] of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, whom they beat severely. Coleman ripped the telephone from their wall before stealing money and their car.

On July 5, Coleman and Brown arrived in Toledo, Ohio, where Coleman befriended Virginia Temple, the mother of several children. After Temple stopped communicating with her relatives, police entered her home and found her young children alone and frightened. Temple and her eldest child, 9-year-old Rachelle, had been strangled to death and left in a crawl space.^[9]

On the same morning as the Temple murders, Coleman and Brown entered the home of Frank and Dorothy Duvendack, in Toledo, who were bound with electrical cords. The couple stole the Duvendacks' money and car,^[10] and Mrs. Duvendack's stolen watch was later found under another victim. Later that day, Coleman and Brown visited the Dayton home of the Reverend Millard Gay and his wife, Kathryn. The two stayed with the Gays and accompanied them to a religious service on July 9; the next day, the Gays dropped off the couple in downtown Cincinnati.

On July 12, Tonnie Storey, a 15-year-old girl who lived in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, disappeared; her body was discovered eight days later.^[5][11] A bracelet that had been stolen from the Temples was found under Storey's body. On the day of Storey's disappearance, the FBI appended Coleman to its Ten Most Wanted list as a "special addition", the 11th most wanted; Coleman was the tenth person since the initiation of the list in 1950 to merit such inclusion.

Coleman and Brown bicycled into Norwood on July 13 about 9:30 a.m. Less than three hours later, they drove away in a car belonging to Harry Walters, whom they left unconscious, and his wife, Marlene, who was beaten to death. Harry Walters survived and later testified that he and his wife had met Coleman and Brown to discuss their potential purchase of a camper, and that Coleman attacked him with a wooden candlestick. The coroner found that Marlene had been bludgeoned about 20 to 25 times. Shards of a broken soda bottle which bore Coleman's fingerprints, were found in the Walters' living room, and bloody prints made by two pairs of shoes were found in the basement. The Walters' red Plymouth Reliant, money, jewelry, and shoes were stolen. Two bicycles, clothes, and shoes not belonging to the Walters had been left behind.

Two days later, the Plymouth was found abandoned in Kentucky, where Coleman and Brown had kidnapped Oline Carmical Jr., a college professor from Williamsburg, and drove back to Ohio with Carmical locked in the trunk of his car.^[5] On July 17, they abandoned this stolen vehicle in Dayton, and Carmical, who was still locked in the trunk, was rescued by authorities. Coleman and Brown returned to the home of the Gays, accosting them with guns. Reverend Gay, who at this time recognized Coleman as a wanted fugitive, asked, "Why you want to do us like that, like this?" Coleman responded: "I'm not going to kill you, but we generally kill them where we go." Coleman and Brown took their car and headed back toward Evanston, Illinois. Along the way, they stole another car in Indianapolis and kidnapped its owner, 75-year-old Eugene Scott whose body was later discovered in a ditch and had been shot repeatedly.^[7]

• Coleman v. Mitchell, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 268 F.3d 417; 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 21639; 2001 FED App. 0367P (6th Cir.), October 10, 2001
• In re Coleman, Supreme Court of Ohio, 95 Ohio St. 3d 284; 2002 Ohio 1804; 767 N.E.2d 677; 2002 Ohio LEXIS 916, April 19, 2002
• State v. Brown, Supreme Court of Ohio, 38 Ohio St. 3d 305; 528 N.E.2d 523; 1988 Ohio LEXIS 289, August 31, 1988
• State v. Coleman, Supreme Court of Ohio, 37 Ohio St. 3d 286; 525 N.E.2d 792; 1988 Ohio LEXIS 212, July 6, 1988
• State v. Coleman, Court of Appeals of Ohio, First Appellate District, Hamilton County, 1987 Ohio App. LEXIS 9048, October 7, 1987

• "Midwest Fugitive Caught in Illinois", The New York Times, July 21, 1984
• "FBI Adds to '10 Most Wanted' List", The Washington Post, July 12, 1984
• "Coleman's Execution Dulls Pain Only A Little", Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), April 27, 2002