In August 1991, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld a ruling during Brown's trial that her confession while in the custody of federal authorities was legally obtained. As a result, her death sentence in the state of Indiana remains active.
* * *
As Alton Coleman awaited his date with death, he went through the appeals process, as do all death row inmates, with the case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court a number of times between the years of 1985 and 2002. His lawyers contended that Coleman's conviction and sentence of death were unconstitutional. The justices thought otherwise and refused to block the serial killer's execution.
The appeals ran their course on April 25, 2002, when Coleman's last chance to escape death by lethal injection was shot down by the Ohio Supreme Court, rejecting the argument that "the state's plan to accommodate the large number of victims and survivors who wanted to view the execution would turn it into a 'spectator sport.'"17 As it was, the sheer number of victims, family members, and other interested parties who wanted to view the execution of the convicted serial killer made it necessary for prison officials to have closed-circuit screening to accommodate them.
Coleman's final meal consisted of filet mignon, salad, collard greens, cornbread, sweet potato pie, and cherry Coke.
On April 26, 2002, while reciting Psalm 23, Alton Coleman, at forty-six years of age, was put to death by lethal injection in the state prison in Lucasville's death chamber. He was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m.
According to the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Reginald Wilkinson, Coleman showed no remorse for the many senseless, violent crimes he committed in partnership with Debra Brown.
* * *
Over the years, experts have debated whether the serial murders and other crimes perpetrated by Coleman and Brown were racially motivated, given that the victims were predominantly African American. Some contend that the killers targeted those in communities where they themselves would not stand out, thereby prolonging their crimes of violence. Others, however, have spoken of Coleman's "intense hatred of blacks," as a reason behind the attacks. In the book, The Anatomy of Motive, former FBI profiler John Douglas refers to Coleman during a brutal attack in which he allegedly claimed "blacks were forcing him to murder other blacks."18 The true motivation behind the crimes may never be known.
The shocking and murderous crime spree of Alton Coleman and Debra Denise Brown was dramatized on the Investigation Discovery channel's Wicked Attraction series in November 2008 in the episode, "Driven by Desire" and the May 2009 Investigation Discovery webisode, "Driven by Drive."19 In the latter, Coleman was described as "a pure con man [and] sexual predator [who] had no conscience;" while Brown was characterized as being "under his spell" and someone who "would do anything he asked her to do."20 Together the serial killer couple is believed to have embarked on their killing spree largely for pleasure, making them that much more dangerous and deadly during their homicidal rage.
* * *
NOTES
1. R. Barri Flowers and H. Loraine Flowers, Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the Twentieth Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 163.
2. Mark Gribben, "Alton Coleman & Debra Brown: Odyssey of Mayhem," TruTv Crime Library, http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/partners/coleman/2.html.
3. Ibid.
4. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, "Alton Coleman," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alton_Coleman.
5. Mark Gribben, "Alton Coleman & Debra Brown."
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. "Alton Coleman."
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Mark Gribben, "Alton Coleman & Debra Brown."
14. "Alton Coleman;" Flowers and Flowers, Murders in the United States: Crimes.
15. About.com, Crime/Punishment, "Serial Killer—Debra Brown," http://crime.about.com/od/serial/a/debra_brown.htm.
16. Ibid.; "Alton Coleman;" True Crime Scenes, "Alton Coleman," http://frenz19sixtyfour.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/alton-coleman/.
17. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, "Alton Coleman."
18. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals (New York: Pocket Books, 2000), p. 184.
19. Investigation Discovery, Wicked Attraction, "Driven by Desire," (November 6, 2008), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1321131/; Investigation Discovery, Wicked Attraction Webisodes "Driven by Drive, "(May 4, 2209), http://investigation.discovery.com/videos/wicked-attraction-webisodes-driven-by-drive.html.
20. "Driven by Drive."
# # #
The following are bonus excerpts from the international bestselling true crime book
THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS
The True Story of Serial Killers Gerald & Charlene Gallego
By R. Barri Flowers
It began as a fairly quiet early Sunday morning on November 2, 1980 in California's capitol city. By the end of the day, two lives would be lost forever and many others changed indelibly.
A gateway between the bustle of the San Francisco Bay area, the idyllic beauty of the Sierra Nevada and the gambling meccas of Lake Tahoe and Reno, Sacramento offered perhaps the best of all worlds. It retained much of its cultural and rural past while steadily becoming an urban and suburban center with an eye on the future.
Arden Fair was an indication of Sacramento catering to its middle class and modernization with nice homes, popular stores, and new businesses popping up. On this tepid Saturday night, the Arden Fair shopping center was the place to be, particularly if you happened to be a fraternity or sorority member at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). The Carousel restaurant, located on the east end of the shopping center, had been transformed for the night/morning into a Founder's Day dinner-dance celebration, courtesy of Sigma Phi Epsilon.
Among those attending were CSUS seniors Craig Miller, twenty-two, and Mary Elizabeth Sowers, twenty-one. The attractive, All-American couple was engaged to be married on New Year's Eve 1981. For Sowers and Miller, hope seemed eternal.
Mary Beth Sowers fit all the adjectives of admiration or envy: beautiful, bright, outgoing, ambitious, warm, sensitive, in love with the world around her and the man she planned to marry. "She was somebody that had a lot of bubble and a lot of sparkle in the way she talked," said a close friend and fellow member of Alpha Chi Omega, the sorority Sowers joined in 1979. "You got more than just words when she talked. You got her feelings and her thoughts."
Mary Beth graduated from Sequoia High School in Redwood City in 1978. Her father was a nuclear physicist at ITEL Corporation in Palo Alto. Following graduation, she moved to Redding, California to attend junior college. There she won the title of runner-up in the Miss Shasta County contest.
Sowers began her junior year at CSUS, majoring in finance. Despite a full course load, she worked during the week at Arco Financial Services and on weekends at J.C. Penney to support herself. Later, she worked as a ski instructor on weekends at Boreal Ridge, a ski area east of Sacramento. Her talents also included being an expert seamstress, one weekend tailoring three suits.
Mary Beth began dating Craig Miller in late fall of 1979. Theirs was described by friends as a relationship of equals. Noted one friend: "It's so hard to find two people in the same relationship who are that much alike. So dynamic, outgoing, and personable."
Craig Miller graduated from La Sierra High School in 1976. Two years later, he graduated from American River College before attending CSUS, where he was on the dean's list. Like Sowers, he seemed tireless with the sky the limit. Aside from being an accounting executive at Miller Advertising, Miller was vice president of the campus chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon and the 1979 Man of the Year.
When Mary Beth turned twenty-one on October 21, 1980, she and Craig Miller had been dating for nearly a year. With a spring graduation coming up, marriage plans di
d not seem premature. New Year's Eve 1981 seemed the perfect wedding day for the couple because New Year's Eve was Mary Beth's favorite day.
* * *
On the night of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity function, Craig and Mary Beth arrived late, favoring some quiet time together over the dinner that started three hours prior to their arrival.
That didn't mean they weren't looking to make the most of their outing in the spirit of true fraternity and sorority members. From every indication, Miller and Sowers were happy and content on this night. According to dance attendee Sheryl Arkin, neither shied away from attention. "She had barely gotten in the door," said Arkin of Sowers, "and five of the Alpha Chi pledges were around her in a circle. She was just talking away."
Nevertheless, Craig and Mary Beth's stay was relatively short. They left the Carousel restaurant just after midnight. Shortly thereafter, a fraternity brother happened by chance to notice them in the back of an Oldsmobile Cutlass rather than Mary Beth's red Honda.
After an exchange of words between the fraternity brother and the front seat occupants of the car—a woman was in the driver's seat with a man beside her—the Oldsmobile sped off with Craig and Mary Beth still in the back seat.
That was the last time they were ever seen alive.
* * *
That afternoon, Craig Miller's body was discovered alongside a gravel road twenty miles from Placerville, near Bass Lake in El Dorado County, California. He had been shot three times at point blank range. An autopsy performed the following day revealed that Miller had been shot once above the right ear, once in the back of the neck, and once at the right cheekbone—apparently at the site.
Mary Beth Sowers was still missing.
* * *
As with many non-domestic crimes of violence, solving such crimes often takes a combination of painstaking police investigative work and a bit of luck. In this instance, the luck came with a license plate number taken down by a concerned friend who thought it unusual that Craig Miller and his fiancée, Mary Beth Sowers, would take off with strangers in the wee hours of the morning of November 2, 1980 from the Arden Fair shopping center parking lot, leaving her Honda behind.
When the couple failed to return to the Honda by that afternoon, the friend and fellow member of Miller's fraternity reported them missing. Tracing the license number of the car Miller and Sowers disappeared in, the police discovered that the car—a silver 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass—was registered to Charlene A. Williams or Charles Williams, her father. This was the second big break.
In the meantime, Miller's mother worried that her usually dependable son and future daughter-in-law were missing. A friend of Sowers had phoned Miller's mother early Sunday morning looking for Miller. "I don't want you to worry," the friend had said, "but something really strange is going on. Nobody has seen Mary Beth or Craig since last night."
When Miller failed to show up for his 10:00 A.M. shift at a paint store in Carmichael, his mother telephoned police.
* * *
After learning from the Department of Motor Vehicles that the Oldsmobile Cutlass belonged to Charlene A. Williams or Charles Williams, Detective Lee Taylor and Detective Larry Burchett drove to the home of Charles and Mercedes Williams on Berrendo Drive in Arden Park.
The parents told the detectives that the Cutlass was their daughter Charlene's, and that she had left home about 6:30 P.M. Saturday to go to a movie theater with her boyfriend, Stephen Robert Feil. During the conversation, Charlene drove up in her silver Cutlass. This was the third big break, although it did not seem like it at the time.
Charlene, twenty-four, was blonde, pretty, petite, and seven months pregnant. She coolly denied any knowledge of the disappearance of Sowers or Miller. She allowed the detectives to search the Cutlass. They found no indication of foul play or otherwise incriminating evidence that a crime had been committed.
Charlene complained of being sick because of her pregnancy and suffering from a hangover. She gave few details about her boyfriend, Stephen Feil.
The detectives, unaware that Miller's body was soon to be discovered and having no other reason to detain the ill Charlene further, promised to return later that day to photograph her. She, in turn, hoped to have recovered somewhat and be more cooperative.
* * *
It was not until the following day that Charles and Mercedes Williams admitted to the detectives that their daughter was married to Stephen Feil and that this was actually an alias used by Gerald Gallego, thirty-four, who was wanted on incest and other sex charges.
Suddenly some frightening pieces of a bizarre puzzle began to fall into place. Not only had the Gallegos become the chief suspects in the murder of Craig Miller and disappearance of Mary Beth Sowers, but neighboring Yolo County authorities were also investigating the connection of a Stephen Feil to the kidnapping-murder of Virginia Mochel, a local bartender.
Unfortunately, by now the Gallegos, sensing trouble, had fled to parts unknown. On November 5, 1980, El Dorado County filed charges of kidnapping and murder against Gerald and Charlene Gallego. The following day, a federal fugitive warrant of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution was issued against the Gallegos to allow the FBI to join in a nationwide search for the fugitive couple on the run.
That search came to an uncomplicated end twelve days later. On Monday, November 17, 1980, Gerald and Charlene Gallego were captured by FBI agents in Omaha, Nebraska while they were attempting to pick up money that had been wired to them by Charlene's parents at a Western Union office in downtown Omaha.
The arrest came without incident and brought to an end what was later discovered to be a twenty-six month reign of sex-motivated brutality and cold-blooded murder.
Yet this was only the beginning of a bizarre tale of sexual fantasies, domination, and sheer terror that was to unravel and take three and a half more years to bring to a conclusion.
* * *
Read the entire gripping book, The Sex Slave Murders, available in eBook, print, and audio.
# # #
The following are bonus excerpts from the bestselling true crime short
THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS 3
The Horrific Tale of Serial Killers Leonard Lake & Charles Ng
By R. Barri Flowers
Leonard Lake and Charles Ng left their dark mark on society as two of America's worst and most sadistic serial killers. Between 1984 and 1985, the unlikely homicidal pair perpetrated most of their crimes at a secluded cabin and adjacent custom-made dungeon of horrors in an unincorporated area in Calaveras County, California, where they brought their abducted victims, sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered them, often videotaping their heinous crimes.1 On one videotape confiscated by police, killer Ng is shown eerily warning one female victim, "You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won't do any good. We are pretty cold-hearted, so to speak."2 In all, the two slayers are thought to have killed between twelve and twenty-five people.
The killers would undoubtedly have claimed the lives of more victims, had they not been stopped in their tracks by Ng's penchant for shoplifting and Lake's misguided attempt to cover for him. In the process, authorities would discover the true horrors brought about by the two men, one of whom would commit suicide to avoid owning up to his brutalities, while the other would flee to Canada in order to escape the ultimate American justice. It would take years before the case went to trial and a verdict rendered for the surviving serial killer.
But the anguish felt by victims' loved ones and the greater community to the senseless, barbaric crimes is still being felt to this day.
* * *
Leonard Lake was born in San Francisco, California on October 29, 1945. He was only six years of age when his parents separated. Lake's maternal grandparents took him and his siblings in. Early in life, Lake developed a predilection for pornography after photographing his sisters and other pubescent girls in the nude. He was also involved in an incestuous relationship with a sister, and made sex slaves out of other teenage girls
locally. Lake's aberrant behavior included a fondness for killing mice, using chemicals to dissolve them.
In 1965, nineteen-year-old Lake signed up with the U.S. Marines, where he served in Vietnam for two tours of duty as a radar operator. Medical records indicate that during the first tour, he exhibited "incipient psychotic reactions," and was hospitalized and treated before returning to duty.3
After continuing to serve in Da Nang, Lake's second tour ended early after a mental breakdown, and he was sent back to the El Toro Marine Base in Orange County, California. Diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, he received psychiatric treatment at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, before being medically discharged in 1971, having earned several medals, including a Vietnam Campaign Medal and a Vietnam Service Medal.
Lake went through psychotherapy at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Oakland. He relocated to San Jose, California, where he enrolled at San Jose State University, lasting just one semester before dropping out and joining a hippie commune.
In 1975, Lake got married. The marriage did not last, however, once his wife learned that he made and participated in amateur porn movies, typically including sadomasochism and bondage.
In 1977, at a Marin County, California renaissance fair, Lake met and fell for twenty-five-year-old Claralyn Balazs, a teacher's assistant. At the time, he had a stall at the fair where visitors were charged to pose for photographs beside a goat Lake had masqueraded as a unicorn. Balazs, nicknamed Cricket, became the object of Lake's sexual fantasies and the featured actress in his homemade pornography.
In 1980, Lake received probation for one year after being charged with theft. He and Balazs got married in 1981 and took up residence in a Northern California hippie commune in Philo, located in Mendocino County not far from Ukiah.
Terror in East Lansing: The Tale of MSU Serial Killer Donald Miller Page 4