Messages and Threats

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Speaker 7 May 5th is a day that's going to stick with the men and women of this police department their entire careers.

Speaker 8 A monster. I mean, monster comes to mind.

Speaker 8 Somebody with no soul.

Speaker 9 This was a promising family, a great family.

Speaker 8 I got the phone call from my neighbor, Christopher Coleman, probably around 10 to 7 in the morning.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 I'll go over and check him. We'll get somebody over there.

Speaker 8 He was concerned from the threats that they've been receiving that he reported to us. My name is Justin Barlow.
I was a detective sergeant for the Columbia, Illinois Police Department.

Speaker 8 I also happened to be a neighbor.

Speaker 8 I 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.

Speaker 8 This is the basement of the home where we found an open window.

Speaker 8 Came in through the hallway here, up the steps.

Speaker 8 And the steps basically led into the kitchen.

Speaker 8 The first thing that I remembered was the smell of spray paint.

Speaker 8 We turned to the left here and saw the message that was left. A lot of helter-skelter type of message.

Speaker 9 Manson style spray paintings on the wall

Speaker 9 saying punished. It started with email threats.

Speaker 9 Move to written threats.

Speaker 9 Police were involved.

Speaker 10 When I read the letter, it was very specific about killing the family.

Speaker 9 I will kill your wife and children in their sleep.

Speaker 8 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

Speaker 8 leading to what you're going to find upstairs. It wasn't going to have a good outcome.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 To the right was a bedroom of Garrett, where he was found in his bed.

Speaker 8 And Gavin, we found him in the third bedroom.

Speaker 8 All three deceased.

Speaker 8 It was a homicide scene.

Speaker 7 We have an active death investigation. Who's responsible, why it happened, when it happened.

Speaker 2 If you don't believe in evil,

Speaker 2 I hope you do now.

Speaker 9 A mother and her two sons had been strangled in their sleep.

Speaker 9 This touched an entire community.

Speaker 9 They took it very personal, and that's something that you'll never forget as a reporter.

Speaker 2 We're following leads.

Speaker 8 We have leads in this case.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 This is Columbia. Innocent women and children will get murdered in their bed at night.

Speaker 2 I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours,

Speaker 2 The Writing on the Wall.

Speaker 2 On the morning of May 5th, 2009, Christopher Coleman returned home from the gym

Speaker 2 to a scene of chaos and unimaginable horror.

Speaker 8 Told him, hey, they didn't make it being the family.

Speaker 8 And we walked him outside to the garage.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 8 This crime scene, it wasn't bloody, but that didn't mean mean it was less gruesome.

Speaker 13 Were you at all prepared for what you were about to walk into?

Speaker 8 I don't think anybody could be prepared for that.

Speaker 2 Upstairs, 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.

Speaker 13 What is the lasting image you have in your mind from that day?

Speaker 8 I would say the one that sticks out the most would probably be Garrett, just because he's the one that

Speaker 8 I discovered.

Speaker 13 Is that a haunting image for you even as a police officer? Yeah.

Speaker 13 A little bit.

Speaker 2 The killer had not only taken Garrett's life but had desecrated the body by leaving another disturbing message.

Speaker 13 The spray paint in his room was actually on the sheet that was over his body?

Speaker 8 It was, and there was some remnants of the spray paint on him as well.

Speaker 14 We knew that

Speaker 7 this case was going to be probably the biggest one of our lives.

Speaker 2 Columbia, Illinois is a small, quiet suburb outside of St. Louis.

Speaker 7 A wonderful place to live and raise a family.

Speaker 2 And Chief Joe Edwards immediately recognized that his two investigators were going to need some help. So we called in a special unit.

Speaker 8 We're doing all we can to find out what happened in this house.

Speaker 2 Major Jeff Connor and the Major K-Squad, which brought in an army of 25 seasoned cops.

Speaker 15 It's typically your smaller departments that need the resource, need the help.

Speaker 2 Hours after the murders, the Major K-Squad swung into high gear. The CSI team started processing the house.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 7 Let's do everything we can for this man.

Speaker 2 Coleman told investigators that it had been a normal morning.

Speaker 16 What time did you leave your house to go to the gym this morning?

Speaker 2 He got up and left for the gym around 5:40 a.m.

Speaker 2 and called Sherry numerous times to wake her up.

Speaker 2 Then you called her again at 6:35 a.m., 6.43, 6.52 a.m.

Speaker 2 The bodies of Cherry Coleman and her son's garrison as neighbors woke to the news of the murders.

Speaker 19 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?

Speaker 14 And I didn't get a response.

Speaker 2 Vanessa Rigerex, who lived down the street, said the Colemans appeared to have a perfect life raising their two beautiful sons.

Speaker 19 I always thought of them as the American family.

Speaker 2 The perfect family.

Speaker 19 Everybody would want their children like these two boys, polite, always helpful.

Speaker 22 They had a heart of gold.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 23 And the devil fills our minds with junk.

Speaker 9 Joyce Meyer is now known throughout the country and known throughout the world as a leading voice in the evangelical movement.

Speaker 2 Jesus died to set us free.

Speaker 13 And pretty successful organization financially.

Speaker 9 She's extremely successful financially. I've seen figures from $50 to $100 million a year.

Speaker 2 Reporter Nick Pister followed the case for two years and is a CBS News consultant.

Speaker 23 Don't ever let the devil steal from you.

Speaker 9 Joyce. Meyer travels all throughout the world, does conferences in countries that don't necessarily respond well to women who are preaching a Christian message.
And so she wanted some deeper security.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 8 Whenever Chris Coleman reported the first death threat, he came to us at the police department.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 8 We give the Coleman family extra patrol, which we just give it special attention to make sure nobody's there.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Time is running out for you and your family.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 8 Stop 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.

Speaker 13 You decided to ramp things up yourself to be proactive. And what did you do at your house?

Speaker 8 We got one camera mounted up in my five-year-old's bedroom and pointed it right at the mailbox.

Speaker 2 With the camera aimed directly at the Coleman's mailbox, the Coleman residents lived about 214 feet approximately.

Speaker 2 They hoped to get a clear shot of whoever was leaving the notes.

Speaker 8 Be prepared for something that was going to happen and be as proactive about it as we could.

Speaker 2 Instead, days later, the killers somehow snuck into the Coleman home

Speaker 2 and strangled Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 15 There was a lot of fear that there was somebody out there killing families, and who was going to be next?

Speaker 24 My prayer over this town is that there'd be healing that would come, there'd be a heart for mercy that would come towards whoever that poor soul is that went to this extreme, and that Columbia could begin to heal again.

Speaker 9 This touched an entire community.

Speaker 9 The neighbors were shocked. They saw the young boys playing touch football with their father on the front lawn.
These were little boys that they knew.

Speaker 25 You could just see the pain on everyone's face. It devastated the community.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 25 Sherry was a loving mother, loyal friend, and sister to me. My life's not the same, but Paul in my heart.

Speaker 10 If I would have known for one millisecond she was in danger, I would have been down there.

Speaker 2 For 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.

Speaker 2 They were her world, those boys.

Speaker 21 They were her world.

Speaker 10 You know, Garrett was more quiet and more of a thinker.

Speaker 10 You could tell by the white look in his eyes, he was always thinking.

Speaker 10 And Gavin was... Gavin was very, he was

Speaker 10 outgoing.

Speaker 10 He was like a social butterfly. His personnel was just like his mom's, just like his mother's.

Speaker 8 With Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin, I mean, I think that just, that's what the motivation was for everybody.

Speaker 2 Hours into the investigation, the major case squad continued to pursue their best lead, finding whoever wrote those threats.

Speaker 7 We tracked down people across the country who didn't like Joyce Myers, and we interviewed them to find out where they were at on May the 4th and May the 5th.

Speaker 2 And that morning, they were hoping Chris might be able to point them in the right direction.

Speaker 16 Do you suspect? I mean, out of all these emails and things you've been talking about at work, there's got to be one person that stands out in your mind.

Speaker 14 I don't have any clue.

Speaker 14 I wish I knew.

Speaker 24 If I had just been there this morning.

Speaker 2 But as police continued to talk to Coleman, they were surprised by how he was acting.

Speaker 10 How do you think they died?

Speaker 16 No idea. You guys haven't told me.

Speaker 16 Okay, do you have any clues?

Speaker 13 Did 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?

Speaker 8 Just the lack of reaction. I mean, just the lack of curiosity of what's going on.

Speaker 2 So police kept probing.

Speaker 14 Was there a problem in your relationship?

Speaker 16 Was there anything currently

Speaker 14 that wasn't going so well in your relationship?

Speaker 14 No, not really.

Speaker 16 I mean, it was the communication thing.

Speaker 16 Had you seen anyone else

Speaker 14 outside of your wife?

Speaker 14 What do you mean? In automatic way.

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 16 Tara in Florida that you guys have already talked to.

Speaker 26 I've talked to her a ton lately.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 16 what's with that? I mean, just a friend somebody to talk to.

Speaker 2 Tara is Tara Lentz, a cocktail waitress and an old high school friend of Sherry's.

Speaker 16 Okay, you said you had a close friendship.

Speaker 16 But were you actually

Speaker 14 doing anything that you felt wouldn't be approved by your wife?

Speaker 16 Some of the conversations, probably.

Speaker 2 Coleman insisted they were just friends, that he met Tara through Sherry when their family went to Florida on vacation.

Speaker 16 Did they have to potentially go for that?

Speaker 16 No, I didn't want to do that to my kids.

Speaker 2 But during the interview, the major case squad contacted police in Tara's hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, to check out Chris's story.

Speaker 20 Channel clear?

Speaker 2 Detective Shannon Halstead got the call.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 2 That's because the information Halstead gained from Tara about the relationship was very different than what Chris was telling police in Illinois.

Speaker 20 She provided the BlackBerry and the laptop computer. Obviously, had files of videos and emails relating to the relationship.

Speaker 2 Did you immediately step out and call St.

Speaker 5 Louis? I did.

Speaker 13 And what did you say to them?

Speaker 20 I said, I'm not positive, but I think this is his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 Armed with that information, Detective Barlow confronted Chris.

Speaker 16 The one thing that I did want to tell you right now is

Speaker 16 the St. Petersburg Homicide Unit is talking to Taryn right now.
And she's shown us the pictures that you sent her with you two. We know you guys couldn't have it in an affair.

Speaker 13 So, was that a pretty big break for you guys?

Speaker 15 It was an important piece.

Speaker 2 Investigators learned the couple had begun seeing each other in the fall of 2008, six months before the murders.

Speaker 2 During the affair, Chris would fly Tara to meet him at locations where he was working for Joyce Meyer.

Speaker 23 Are you with me so far?

Speaker 16 I know you guys went to Hawaii together. We pulled the enterprise leasing cars where you guys went to different trips together.

Speaker 16 This is just something, well, and the other thing, too.

Speaker 27 I didn't think it was an affair.

Speaker 16 You didn't think it's a fair? Because she starts.

Speaker 27 She's always when you're like living with them and you're going to get married and everything.

Speaker 20 She had on her calendar a scheduled wedding to Chris Coleman, scheduled vacations, different accounts, credit card accounts that they held together.

Speaker 20 And I think she, honest to God, believed that he was going to leave his wife and two children.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 13 He's always been a real gentle person.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 11 Not in my view. You couldn't put something around your kid's throat unless you're a monster.

Speaker 11 It's just not there. It's just not there.

Speaker 2 While investigators believed Chris's affair with Tara Lentz was a strong motive for murder, there still wasn't enough evidence to charge him.

Speaker 2 So after six long hours, Chris Coleman walked out a free man.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 29 The memorial in their subdivision is awesome. There's a bench and there's trees.

Speaker 2 Every day, friends and neighbors are reminded of the beautiful lives that were stolen from them.

Speaker 29 The community got together and created that, so they wanted to do something positive.

Speaker 2 Megan Turnbow says it's a fitting tribute, unlike the funeral service at Pastor Coleman's church.

Speaker 29 No friends, no family, no coaches. Nobody spoke.
about these three awesome people that were dead.

Speaker 2 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 Linz.

Speaker 25 Well, when the affair came out and I had no idea and I heard about it from someone else, I felt like every day

Speaker 25 I was just getting stabbed in the heart by these little pieces of information.

Speaker 13 Did you think he was going to be arrested?

Speaker 29 Yes. And I couldn't wait.
I was nervous, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 I didn't even think about that. The major case squad felt that pressure.

Speaker 8 Obviously, in any case,

Speaker 8 you want to get the person responsible for it, but you want to get the right person.

Speaker 2 But right away, there were red flags. Police were concerned when they found a basement window open and others unlocked.

Speaker 15 Here's a guy whose family is being threatened. They're going to destroy his family while he's gone.

Speaker 15 But yet that window was left unlocked and it was obvious it was left unlocked because there was no forced entry.

Speaker 2 And remember that camera Detective Barlow installed in his house?

Speaker 7 You saw no strangers walking up and down the street. You saw no strange vehicles.

Speaker 2 And Chris had even installed his own surveillance cameras in his house.

Speaker 13 What about the surveillance equipment that was allegedly in the house?

Speaker 9 The recorder was missing.

Speaker 13 That's convenient.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 2 An autopsy on Sherry revealed that she fought violently with her killer, leaving her with two black eyes.

Speaker 7 Sherry was involved in an altercation before she was murdered.

Speaker 7 Those two boys weren't.

Speaker 2 Which made scratches found on Chris Coleman's arms all the more suspicious.

Speaker 13 When did you first notice the scratches on his arms?

Speaker 8 It was brought to my attention by people at the scene. How you doing?

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 8 is there anything that can get you freezing?

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay. Police say Coleman tried to hide them during his interview.

Speaker 8 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

Speaker 8 suspected marks on his arm. That'll work on it.
Yeah, it's confident cover my arms up and go freezing.

Speaker 8 I remember in the interview room it being very warm in that.

Speaker 13 Did you think he was in shock?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 2 Chris later claimed he got those scratches the day before when he was removing a satellite dish from his roof.

Speaker 13 Was there any DNA found at the scene that would implicate him?

Speaker 8 I'll just say there wasn't any DNA found that didn't belong there. No boogeyman, no unidentified DNA, anything like that.

Speaker 2 There was incriminating evidence found on Chris's phone and computers, starting with X-rated snapshots and videos that Tara and Chris had sent each other.

Speaker 9 It was a serious affair. He 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.

Speaker 9 By November 5th of 2008, Chris had written on his computer that that was the day Tara changed his life.

Speaker 2 For police, that date would set off alarm bells.

Speaker 13 And how many days after that, then, did the threats start to show up?

Speaker 9 About nine days after that.

Speaker 2 Nine days.

Speaker 2 The Colemans insist it is all a coincidence.

Speaker 13 It's my understanding that he had written down November 5th, the day Terra 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.

Speaker 13 Is that true? That's not true. Honestly.
I cannot imagine him doing that

Speaker 2 with anybody.

Speaker 13 He just didn't really operate in that arena of emotions. He just didn't.
He was just very common, logical sense.

Speaker 2 Chris's parents believe their son is innocent and that it was an intruder who killed his family and left hateful messages.

Speaker 2 In fact, Chris even voluntarily provided samples of his own handwriting to police.

Speaker 13 What was the most important piece of evidence at the crime scene?

Speaker 15 At the crime scene, probably the handwriting on the walls.

Speaker 2 But those samples would later come back to haunt him.

Speaker 8 The crime scene lad coming back and saying that

Speaker 8 the handwriting found on the wall matches up to the handwriting exemplar that Christopher Coleman gave at the Columbia Police Department.

Speaker 2 Finally, two weeks after the murders, police felt they had enough to make their case.

Speaker 2 And Christopher Coleman was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife and two sons.

Speaker 9 If it was another time, they would have had pitchforks and lanterns in their hand. They were out for vengeance.

Speaker 9 They wanted this case solved and they wanted it solved immediately and they wanted him to be found guilty immediately.

Speaker 13 Were you there when he was arrested?

Speaker 11 Yes.

Speaker 8 It was at night, the worst scenario. We've lost three.
We've lost Garrett and Gavin and Sherry and now Chris is gone. Some of the happiest people at Sherry.

Speaker 2 Sherry's friends and neighbors were relieved, but angry at the toll it had taken on them and their children.

Speaker 25 I've talked to some of the moms and the children in the community wonder if their dad could do the same thing.

Speaker 2 And investigators insist all this pain was caused by Chris Coleman's obsession.

Speaker 13 And all because of a woman.

Speaker 15 I believe that had a major part of it.

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Speaker 18 I don't think I've ever seen anything that looked like this.

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Speaker 30 This crime was about greed, sex,

Speaker 30 selfishness, and narcissism.

Speaker 30 Chris Coleman decided he wanted a new life and his family was in the way.

Speaker 30 He was obviously a monster who carried out a very sadistic plan.

Speaker 2 By the time Chris Coleman went on trial in April 2011, prosecutor Ed Parkinson and his team had spent two years building their case.

Speaker 7 This was a huge case. This was like a 10,000-piece puzzle.

Speaker 2 The murders of Sherry Coleman and her two young boys

Speaker 2 were a big case

Speaker 2 of first-degree murder in the future for local media as well.

Speaker 22 The latest documents filed by the Coleman murder trial as well.

Speaker 2 All the pretrial publicity prompted the judge to bus in a jury from a county an hour and a half away.

Speaker 13 What was the biggest challenge for you as a prosecutor in this case?

Speaker 30 People who turn out to be jurors have to accept the fact that parents kill their kids. It's just hard to accept that he just looked like a good guy.

Speaker 7 How do you get that much hatred for a child?

Speaker 2 As unthinkable as it was, at every corner, investigators had turned up more evidence against Coleman. Some of it came from Sherry's own friends who were determined to have their day in court.

Speaker 13 What was it like waiting for the two years for the trial?

Speaker 29 It was life-changing and not for the better.

Speaker 13 How did you feel about testifying?

Speaker 29 I was scared to death. I was like, I'm going to do this for Sherry.

Speaker 2 Coleman, sporting a new hairdo and a bulletproof vest at his trial, would hear those friends bolster the prosecution's claim that he had lied about his marriage in his interrogation.

Speaker 2 Talked about it a while back about possibly maybe splitting up or something if we started meeting with actually one of the pastors from

Speaker 2 Choice Choice is sure. Yeah, things will be going awesome.
Coleman insisted that he and his wife had merely hit a few bumps in the road and were helped by counseling.

Speaker 2 Sherry told her friends a different story.

Speaker 25 And she was in my room and she was crying and Chris wanted to leave her. And then he would start to say hurtful things like, I never loved you.

Speaker 2 But Sherry wasn't willing to let him go.

Speaker 25 And he would put on a face in front of the marriage counselor. And Sherry said when he got back home, he'd yell at her, and, you know, it would just be hell to pay.

Speaker 2 Prosecutor Parkinson says there's a reason Coleman wanted Sherry to be the one to divorce him.

Speaker 30 I believe he became so enraptured by Tara Lentz, but he couldn't get divorced in his own mind because then he'd lose his $100,000 job a year with Joyce Meyer Ministries.

Speaker 30 They frown on divorce if it's your fault.

Speaker 2 Parkinson believes Coleman was hoping to make a clean break before anyone caught on about the affair. In a videotaped deposition, Joyce Meyer confirmed her ministry's zero tolerance of adultery.

Speaker 23 If he would have been having an adulterous affair

Speaker 23 while he was still married, then it could have definitely affected his job.

Speaker 2 But eventually, Sherry did find out her husband was having an affair with her best friend from high school.

Speaker 9 Sherry opened up her computer one night with a friend and said, do you want to see the woman who's having an affair with my husband? And showed images of Tara Lentz.

Speaker 2 But Sherry still refused to get divorced. And something she said to her friend, Kathy LaPlant, will haunt her forever.

Speaker 25 When he came home demanding a divorce, she told me that if anything happened to her, Chris did it.

Speaker 2 Several months later, Sherry and the boys were dead.

Speaker 13 What do you think the trigger was that made it May 5th?

Speaker 30 I think Tara was pressing him. I think he just got pushed into his own corner.

Speaker 8 They had wedding dates planned.

Speaker 10 Chris had told Tara that he was serving Sherry with divorce papers on May the 5th, the day of the homicides.

Speaker 13 And had he ever filed divorce papers?

Speaker 13 No, no. Did he ever speak to an attorney? No.

Speaker 2 After hearing all about this other woman, the jury would finally get to meet her. It was the most anticipated moment of of the trial.

Speaker 2 Tara Linz making her entrance under police escort.

Speaker 9 She arrived at the courthouse almost like a Hollywood star arriving somewhere. It was a packed courtroom gallery.

Speaker 2 Tara testified that she and Coleman talked or texted, quote, all the time, constantly, and that they often professed their love for each other.

Speaker 2 When asked whether she and Coleman had plans to marry, her short answer spoke volumes, quote, the divorce had to happen first.

Speaker 13 Do you think that Tara had anything to do with the murders?

Speaker 9 No, I don't.

Speaker 13 And you don't think she had any idea that something was about to happen?

Speaker 30 Nope, not from any of the evidence. I don't believe that.

Speaker 2 But the prosecutor does believe Coleman's lust for Tara had everything to do with it.

Speaker 2 And to drive his point home, he showed the court the sexually explicit videos and photos the two sent to each other.

Speaker 13 We said, Lord, please help us. We don't have to look at this, but please help us sit here for his sake, that he doesn't feel that we're ashamed of him.

Speaker 2 Now, instead of embarking on an exciting new life and keeping his six-figure income, Chris Coleman was facing the death penalty.

Speaker 5 Did you kill your wife and your children?

Speaker 26 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 Chris Coleman had a prominent local defense team at his side when he went on trial for his life.

Speaker 2 Another double-edged sword in trying to use the fingerprint on the but John O'Guerra and Bill Margulis had to admit they faced an uphill battle.

Speaker 21 The evidence was, although all circumstantial, it was very overwhelming.

Speaker 2 And at trial, one of the most critical pieces of evidence evidence would be time of death.

Speaker 2 The prosecution maintains the three victims were killed hours before Coleman left the house to go to the gym.

Speaker 9 The bodies were stiff. They had rigor mortis that everything pointed that they were dead by at least 3 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 30 It could have been the whole case, quite frankly.

Speaker 2 The defense insists that Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin could have been killed that morning during the hour and 10 minutes that Coleman was gone.

Speaker 21 You know, you can use various formulas. You know, the time of death is not an exact science.

Speaker 2 As investigators kept building their case, something was troubling them about that trail of threatening letters and emails.

Speaker 8 It read, if I can't get to Joyce, then I will get to someone close to her.

Speaker 7 We didn't find anybody else who had received messages that were threatening to their family.

Speaker 2 The prosecution's computer experts discovered there was a good reason for that.

Speaker 30 Those threats were typed on his laptop.

Speaker 13 The email threats that came to him originated from his own laptop.

Speaker 14 His own laptop.

Speaker 2 Those threats were sent from an account called destroychris at gmail.com. Defense attorney Bill Margulis insists someone else could have sent them.

Speaker 21 Anybody that had access to his computer, whether it was a co-worker or anybody else, could have created that account.

Speaker 2 Investigators still had no so-called smoking gun, no DNA, no murder weapon, and no eyewitness.

Speaker 2 But after analyzing the blood-red paint and those frightening messages on the walls, they believed they just might have something close to it.

Speaker 7 One can of that exact spray paint was purchased

Speaker 21 at a local hardware store.

Speaker 7 and the computerized signature said Christopher Coleman.

Speaker 11 You cannot paint that much without paint being somewhere on you. They literally cut him to the quick.
He pulled his own hair out for them. There was not a trace of paint.

Speaker 2 But if Coleman was the killer, he had made this scene on the surveillance video recorded the afternoon before the bodies were discovered all the more chilling.

Speaker 9 It's a perfect suburban scene. He played catch with his son at the house.
And then the next morning, they're dead.

Speaker 9 It's unexplainable.

Speaker 2 Chris Coleman did not take the stand.

Speaker 2 I didn't want to believe that he could do that.

Speaker 13 I cried myself to sleep.

Speaker 2 In a case that was gut-wrenching for everyone involved, it turns out the jury was no exception.

Speaker 13 Absolutely unimaginable. I mean, there's just so much hate.
It's just hatred spread everywhere.

Speaker 2 The first vote inside that jury room was seven to five. Not guilty.
But not because they believed Coleman was innocent.

Speaker 22 We all thought he did it.

Speaker 22 Who else would have done it?

Speaker 2 But many of the jurors were troubled by the circumstantial nature of the case.

Speaker 13 You wanted factual, tangible evidence that said he did it.

Speaker 2 Make him prove it.

Speaker 2 As the deliberations entered a second day, crowds began to gather outside the courthouse, the tension mounting. But Sherry's mother remained optimistic.

Speaker 31 We will get justice for my daughter and for my grandsons. I have what they call the mother instinct.
I'm very confident for you.

Speaker 2 Incredibly, it was the jurors' own detective work that they say pushed them over the top.

Speaker 2 When they looked at the back of this picture of Chris Coleman and Tara Lentz kissing, they noticed it was taken on October 21st, 2008.

Speaker 22 I think actually what I said was, oh my God.

Speaker 22 And I said, what was the date

Speaker 22 that he said the affair started?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the dates didn't start.

Speaker 5 It wasn't until November. November.
November.

Speaker 22 November, and the picture was created in October.

Speaker 2 Way before they said they had been seeing each other.

Speaker 13 And what did that say to you?

Speaker 22 That was something black and white in front of my face that said, if he could lie about this,

Speaker 22 he's lying about everything.

Speaker 2 After 15 hours of deliberations,

Speaker 18 there is a verdict in the Chris Coleman triple murder trial.

Speaker 2 The verdict was guilty.

Speaker 28 Chris Coleman in this case, guilty on all three of these counts.

Speaker 2 And the crowd outside the courthouse erupted in applause and cheers.

Speaker 9 I had never seen anything like what happened on the lawn of the courthouse that night.

Speaker 2 The verdict was handed down on May 5th, 2011.

Speaker 2 Two years to the day that Sherry, Garrett, and Gavin were found murdered.

Speaker 22 I walked out of the courtroom, and first words out of my mouth, yes, we did it. We justice.

Speaker 2 The judge sentenced Coleman to life in prison, in part because the state of Illinois' repeal of the death penalty was just months away from taking effect.

Speaker 5 Did you kill your wife and your children?

Speaker 26 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 We spoke to Chris Coleman by phone because our cameras were not allowed inside the prison.

Speaker 26 I absolutely love my wife and my kids and this, you know, it's not

Speaker 26 me.

Speaker 5 How do you love your wife and be having an affair with one of her best friends?

Speaker 26 Maybe I wasn't, you know, selfishly getting what I thought I might should be getting at home as far as with my wife, you know, from the

Speaker 26 physical side of things, but I still absolutely loved her.

Speaker 2 Coleman denies he was planning to divorce Sherry to marry his mistress, Tara.

Speaker 5 So why does Tara say that?

Speaker 26 It was discussed on several different things.

Speaker 26 You know, it was a conversation, but there was no specific plans or no dates and nobody asked each other to be married or anything like that.

Speaker 13 She also says that you had told her that you were serving divorce papers to Sherry.

Speaker 26 You know, unfortunately, and I feel horrible about it, you know, if I ever talked to Terry again, that would be something that I would apologize to her about.

Speaker 26 That was a lie. I lied to Tara about that.

Speaker 2 So if he didn't murder his family, who did?

Speaker 26 I have absolutely no clue. Believe me, I've racked my brain for

Speaker 26 two and a half years trying to figure that part out.

Speaker 26 I just had to stop and give it to God, just release that and do my best to

Speaker 26 forgive that person and move on.

Speaker 2 Forgiving and moving on has been difficult for Sherry's friends.

Speaker 2 Still struggling to understand this incomprehensible crime.

Speaker 25 As a Christian, I feel like it's imperative that I forgive because Jesus forgave me and I want to forgive with my whole

Speaker 13 What makes it so hard to do that?

Speaker 25 Because they were so innocent.

Speaker 2 Sherry's friends and family want to ensure that she, Garrett, and Gavin are never forgotten. So they've been raising money to help victims of domestic violence.

Speaker 2 And they hope to build a new Little League field and name it after those two young boys who loved to play ball.

Speaker 22 The boys had their whole life ahead of them.

Speaker 19 They didn't deserve it. This should have never happened.

Speaker 19 Should have never happened.

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