on the seemingly ordinary morning of May 5th 2009 a husband and father left the house to go to the gym when he returned his family was dead when you left the house this morning was your wife alive oh yeah this is Chris Coleman a veteran a Christian and a loving father he lived a comfortable life with his two sons and their mom his wife Sher but the domestic ideal began to fracture when this All-American family started to receive Anonymous threats in their mailbox and on May 5th 2009 Chris said goodbye to his wife at home for the last time while he was out she didn't respond to any of his messages and fearing the worst because of the threats the family had been receiving Chris called the police what the police discovered was an unspeakable scene of horror disturbing messages were scrawled on the walls in blood red paint and the three occupants of the house Sher and her two boys aged 11 and N were dead you're at a great point to be able to help us to try to figure this out we already know what happened we need to know why it happened what had happened to this seemingly happy Suburban family and why had Chris been spared let's dive into the horrifying story of the Coleman family murders this case takes us to the quiet suburb of Colombia Illinois just south across the river from the far more dangerous city of St Louis Missouri Colombia is rated safer than 69% of US cities with an average of one violent crime per every thousand residents this kind of statistic can be comforting but not when you're that one in 1,000 and not when the danger lies within your very house 1-year-old Homemaker Sheri Coleman never expected it to be her she and Chris lived a quiet life raising their two sons though Chris was often away on business as he worked security for a prominent televangelist Joyce Meyer they were a short drive away from Chris's parents who could provide child care if the couple wanted to go out in the evening and the family got along well with their neighbors in the quiet suburb but this beautiful family it turned out had made an enemy in mid November 2008 they began to receive haunting Anonymous Communications the first was an email sent to Chris Joyce Meyer and her son from the address destroy Chris at gmail. com it was filled with obscenities and threats with the subject line reading Chris's family they are dead it seemed to threaten Chris in connection with Joyce's preaching implying that it was his job putting the family in danger if Joyce doesn't quit preaching the the email read then they will die during the Houston conference I will kill them all as they sleep if I don't hit there then I will kill them during the book tour or the trip to India I know where he lives and I know they are alone this horrifying message was made even more Sinister by the author's clear familiarity with Joyce's schedule and so by extension Chris's schedule they knew that Chris was off and Away touring with Joyce leaving his family alone and vulnerable and there would be more of these notes to follow indeed Chris received a letter early the following January left in the Coleman's mailbox it was unsigned and contained similar obscenities and threats calling on them to quote deny your God publicly or else no more opportunities time is running out for you and your family unquote it was noted that opportunities was spelled wrong this was turning into a campaign of harassment a campaign that continued into April when Chris received a letter that began with the phrase I am giving you the last warning the author continued to suggest that their Vendetta was connected to Chris's religious profession protecting Joyce Meyer they wrote I have warned you to stop traveling and to stop carrying on with this fake religious life of stealing people's money you think you are so special to do what you do protecting or think you are protecting her this is my last warning your worst nightmare is about to happen Chris contacted the police but they had little success in tracing the threatening messages one of the Coleman's neighbors was a Columbia police detective Sergeant called Justin Barlo and he agreed to keep an eye on the neighborhood using his professional experience to see if anything stood out as suspicious he installed a security camera overlooking the Coleman's mailbox hoping to get a clear shot of the culprit while it seemed the writer was finished leaving letters instead the situation escalated proving their threats weren't empty promises and the Colman's peaceful Suburban Street would never be the same it was Barlo that Chris called for help that fateful morning of May 5th 2009 it was a regular Tuesday and the air outside was mild and Chris was heading out to go to his gym in South St Louis County while he was out he called his wife Sherry twice and left a message he also texted her and she didn't answer as he was driving back home over the Jefferson Barracks Bridge across the Mississippi River he called detective Sergeant Barlo to check on his family Sherry usually picked up the phone he said said and she'd usually be awake by this time it was about A4 to 7 in the morning Barlo knowing about the threats the Coleman had been receiving called it in to his Department he met with another Columbia police officer in front of the house after ringing the doorbell and receiving no response from inside together they found an open window around the back of the house with the window screen leaning against a table and patio chairs they went into the house through this open window and immediately they were confronted by the chemical smell of spray paint sure enough when they rounded the corner and went up the stairs from the basement they found the walls littered with disturbing writing in blood red spray paint the writing included more obscenities and the phrases you have paid punished and I am always watching while the police were examining this chilling scene they heard a door open down in the basement which turned out to be Chris returning home from the gym they told him to stay outside while they investigated the rest of the property and when they went up to the bedrooms they made the worst discovery of all Chris's family murdered in their beds Sherry was found naked and faced down in her bedroom her body already setting into rigor mortise 11-year-old Garrett and 9-year-old Gavin were also dead in their rooms with spray paint on the walls and on their bodies all three had been strangled the evidence suggested that Sherry had been strangled first as a couple of her hairs were found on Gavin's body the police officers went back outside to tell Chris what had happened Chris started to cry and made no attempt to go back inside the house by now it was about 7:05 a. m.
the day had barely started and Chris's family was dead good afternoon ladies and gentlemen uh we're had to announce that there's been a uh we're investigating a triple homicide here in the city of Columbia deceased at the home at 2854 Robert Drve is a female by the name of Sheri Coleman she's 31 years old and her two children Garrett Coleman who's 11 years old and Gavin Coleman who is 9 years old so what had happened did this shocking killing have to do with Chris's work with the T evangelist as the threatening notes had suggested or was there something else at play to understand this crime we'll have to dive into the Coleman family's background Chris Coleman was born on March 20th 1977 making him 32 at the time of the murders he grew up the son of two Evangelical PS in Monroe County Illinois which seemed to have translated into his later career ambitions working for Joyce Meyer but before this when he graduated from high school he enlisted in the Marine Corps it was through this service that he met Sherry then Sherry Weiss in 1997 Sherry was born in July 1977 making her only a few months younger than Chris she was an Illinois native too from Berwin and she was in the US Air Force they met at a K9 training seminar at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas in May 1997 when he was 20 and she was 19 though they were almost fresh out of high school they fell for each other rapidly and committed to each other without wasting a moment getting married only a few months later their son Garrett was born not long after and after another 2 years they had Gavin too seeking a more stable Suburban existence Sherry became a homemaker and Chris entered the field of private security with his Christian Roots it made sense for him to join the security team of Joyce Meyer a televangelist and head of an International Christian Ministry soon enough he rose through the ranks and became Meyer's personal bodyguard earning $100,000 a year this afforded the Coleman's a comfortable lifestyle but it also meant that Chris was constantly traveling with Meer on her tours and that apparently any threats to Meyer were threats to him and his family as well myu was known for her highflying lifestyle traveling in a private jet to attend various speaking engagements she had also known Chris for a long time how long have you known him since he was a little boy and how was that his parents came to some conferences that I did over in Illinois I did a weekly meeting over there and his mother came to it brought him with him it made sense then that he'd gravitated towards her Ministry in his adult life and spent so much time traveling the country with her for work he traveled with us when we did conferences when we did speaking engagements and when we went out of the country and did Crusades and in other countries how often I mean was it monthly that you would take one of these longer trips um well out of the country we would only go two to three times a year and then we did 13 conferences here in the US and um there may have been some years where we did even more than that Chris's job was a huge part of his life not only earning a living but also being a Christian and so inhabiting a certain lifestyle there was pressure to live up to Christian values and be of upstanding character from the outside Chris and his family fit this ideal but as the saying goes no one really knows what goes on inside a marriage except the people in it and now Chris's marriage was over and his family was dead Garrett Gavin and Sher had all died by ligature strangulation there was no DNA on their bodies apart from Chris's DNA there was also a question about the time of death one of the police officers who had discovered the body was accustomed to responding to traffic accidents with people dead at the scene and so he had seen a lot of dead bodies in his experience he'd never noticed them when they just died to look the way the Coleman did no instead the evidence of rigger mortise as the medical examiner later identified suggested that Chris's family had died much earlier than the window after he'd left the house at 5:43 a. m. in fact it was placed at sometime between 3 and 5 a.
m. this meant that they died while he was in the house far from kissing his wife goodby as he left her sleeping with his two young boys also asleep in their rooms the evidence in indicated that they'd been dead already and this suggested a horrible truth that Chris had been the one to kill them there was other evidence to back this up there were scratch marks on Chris's arm that he was trying to cover up going so far as to ask for a blanket during his interview the words sprayed in the lurid red paint on the dead boy's bed sheets matched a sample of Chris's handwriting and the CCTV camera installed by detective Sergeant Barlo designed to catch the person who'd been making such awful threats showed no suspicious activity around the mailbox at the time of the Letter's delivery and also showed no one entering the house after Chris had left for the gym Chris had arrived at the house after the police got there at 6:56 a. m.
