Terror in East Lansing: The Tale of MSU Serial Killer Donald Miller (3 page)

With this in mind, and with the clock ticking
until the day Miller walked out of prison a free man, concerned
members of the community, including Ochberg, Houk, Sue Young, and
Donna Irish, the stepmother of Lisa and Randy Gilbert, banded
together to try to find a way to keep Donald Miller locked up. At
the very least, they were determined to keep an eye on him and keep
the city of East Lansing safe should he be released.

* * *

It took months before Eaton County Prosecutor
Jeffrey Sauter uncovered information that would prevent Miller from
being released anytime soon. It turned out that, in 1994, a weapon
was confiscated from Miller's three-person cell by prison
officials. The weapon, found in a footlocker inside a box with
velvet lining, was a "heavy, six-foot shoelace with two large
wooden buttons attached that had been tied with a large knot." This
was considered a tool that could be used to strangle someone.

Sauter, with help from Chippewa County and
Ingham County prosecutors, went to court with this information in
1998. Felony charges of harboring a concealed weapon were filed
against Miller. If the jury found him guilty, Miller would have
four convictions of felonies, which could lead to a life sentence
without the possibility of parole.

Donald Miller, his parents Gene and Elaine
Miller, and his attorney, battled back, claiming that the shoelace
hardly constituted a weapon and that Miller was being "railroaded."
During the trial, his attorney was successfully able to suppress
evidence of Miller's previous crimes, meaning the case had to be
decided without the jury's knowledge of the murders he had
committed.

That didn't help Miller. He was convicted of
intending to use the shoelace as a weapon and received an
additional sentence of twenty to forty years in prison.

Needless to say, the East Lansing community
was relieved that Miller would have to remain behind bars for years
to come. "That means, in my lifetime, he's never going to get out
of prison," Ochberg remarked. "It really was a wonderful
thing."

Lisa Gilbert, who survived an attack by
Miller, concurred. "Life without parole sounds better," she said,
"but I'll take twenty to forty."

* * *

Since Martha Sue Young's death, her mother,
Sue Young, has campaigned for antiviolence and longer sentencing
for violent criminals. "We need to start looking at the things we
tolerate," Young said. "We're naive in thinking that there isn't
real evil in the world."

As proof of this, Young never saw her
daughter's murder coming. Donald Miller was perhaps the last person
she would have suspected as her daughter's killer. As she put it,
"He was normal, everybody thought. He was the guy next door."

Unfortunately, when it comes to serial
killers, it is often the unassuming neighbor who may become a
target's worst nightmare. Many serial killers also go after
intimates and family, putting them at greater risk than
strangers.

In the case of Donald Miller, this proved all
too true for Martha Sue Young.

* * *

In 2010, Michigan State University's School
of Criminal Justice celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary with
much pomp and ceremony and events throughout the year to mark the
historic achievement. An annual Wall of Fame was established in
2000 to honor alumni who had "distinguished themselves within the
field of criminal justice while maintaining the highest standards
of integrity and character."

Since the school's inception, the number of
alumni has risen to more than ten thousand students who have taken
their education and occupational goals around the globe and put
them to good use.

At least one exception was alumnus Donald
Miller, who cast a shadow over the school's worthy reputation, now
serving time as a serial rapist and murderer.

* * *

As a 2006 Wall of Fame inductee, I am also a
graduate of the Michigan State University School of Criminal
Justice, having received my bachelor's degree the very year Miller
murdered his ex-fiancée, Martha Sue Young. I went on to receive a
master's degree from the school before embarking on a successful
career as a literary criminologist and bestselling author. My work
includes this piece about fellow alumnus Donald Miller and the
havoc he brought upon the college and community as a result of his
homicidal rage.

* * *

REFERENCES

"Admitted Killer Leads Police to Third Body."
1979.
Ludington Daily News
89 (July 18): 205.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=M9VOAAAAIBAJ&sjid
=IkoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5612,6918758&dq=michigan+state+university
+student+murdered&hl=en.

Carpenter, Jacob. 2007. "East Lansing's Only
Serial Killer Struck 30 Years Ago, Today He Is Serving His Term in
Lenawee County."
State News
, November 8.
http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2007/
11/east_lansings_only _serial_killer_struck_30_years_ago.

Flowers, R. Barri. 2003.
Male Crime and
Deviance: Exploring Its Cause, Dynamics, and Nature
.
Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

_____. 2009.
College Crime: A Statistical
Study of Offenses on American Campuses
. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.

_____, and H. Loraine Flowers. 2004.
Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers and Victims of the
Twentieth Century
. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

"The Killer Next Door." 2009. 48 Hours
Mystery.
CBS News
, February 11.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/01/06/48hours/main27268.shtml.

Rykert, Wilber L. 1985. "The History of the
School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University 1935-1963."
Master's thesis, Michigan State University.
http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/rykert.html.

"The School of Criminal Justice—50th
Anniversary Jubilee." 1985. Michigan State University, School of
Criminal Justice. http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/ 50hist.html.

State of Michigan Court of Appeals. 2000.
Plaintiff Appellee vs. Donald Gene Miller
, May 30.
http://statecasefiles.justia.com/documents/michigan/court-of-appeals-unpublished/20000530_C215237(0048)_215237.OPN.PDF?1316644524.

Trojanowicz, Robert C. 1985. "Michigan
State's School of Criminal Justice Celebrates 50th Anniversary."
Police Chief
8:70-71.

Young, Sue. 2005.
Lethal Friendship: A
Mother's Battle to Put—and Keep—a Serial Killer Behind Bars
.
Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.

# # #

The following is a complete bonus true crime
short

THE MIDWEST
MURDERS

Alton Coleman & Debra Denise Brown

By R. Barri Flowers

Alton Coleman and Debra Denise Brown were a
cold-hearted and deadly serial killer couple. However, unlike most
individual or pair killers, Coleman and Brown may have been the
first African American serial killing tandem who also targeted
African Americans, by and large. During a two-month stretch in the
hot summer of 1984, the couple went on a shocking rape, robbery,
and murder spree across four Midwestern states, taking the lives of
at least eight people. The killers sexually assaulted, tortured,
bludgeoned, and shot their victims, showing no mercy.

Yet they managed to elude authorities for
weeks even while being pursued before being brought to justice.
Coleman, who made the FBI's Most Wanted List and was the typical
aggressor of the pair, was described as the "classic disorganized
serial killer," in that he targeted victims who happened to be at
the wrong place when the killing mood hit him, using whatever
manner to kill that was at his disposal.
¹
Both Coleman
and Brown came from troubled pasts and managed to find a strong
connection in one another as they went on their violent rampage
that, at one time, seemed as though it would never end...

* * *

Alton Coleman was born on November 6, 1955,
in Waukegan, Illinois, some thirty minutes from Chicago. Taunted
relentlessly by schoolmates for often wetting his pants, Coleman,
who was a bit mentally challenged, was nicknamed "Pissy." Unable to
cope, he dropped out of middle school while living in Waukegan with
his grandmother. Coleman's mother was a prostitute who purportedly
plied her trade in the presence of her son. He seemed to have been
adversely affected by her work in the sex trade. Between 1973 and
1983, Coleman was charged several times with various sex crimes,
taking plea deals in two of them, acquitted in two more, with the
other cases being dismissed.

Described by law enforcement as "smooth as
silk," Coleman's penchant for escaping justice was due to his
charming nature and ability to present an innocent facade.
According to Lieutenant Marc Hansen of the Waukegan Police
Department in a 1984 interview, "[Coleman] was good at conning
jurors. He tells a convincing story in court. People are impressed
with his testimony. He comes off as a decent
person."
²

Coleman apparently had another means to sway
jurors in his favor. He supposedly practiced voodoo, or wanted
others to believe this, indicating to whoever would listen that it
was this ritualistic religion with African and Roman Catholic
origins, sorcery, black magic, and "voodoo charms" that protected
him from the long arms of the law. For a while, he may have even
convinced himself that this was true as he continued to escape
justice.

In one of the dismissed cases against him, it
was Alton Coleman's sister who reported to police that he tried to
rape his eight-year-old niece, the sister's daughter, before she
had a change of heart and asked the court to drop the charges,
suggesting it was merely a "misunderstanding." Though the judge did
not believe her changed story, calling it "completely implausible,"
without a victim or witnesses willing to testify, it let Coleman
off the hook.
³

However, Coleman's penchant for criminality
went beyond sex crimes and led to time behind bars. While
kidnapping, robbing, and raping an elderly woman with an accomplice
in 1973, Coleman dodged the rape charge when the frightened victim
would not testify, but was sent to Joliet Correctional Center for
two years for robbery. He would later spend additional time behind
bars for a less serious crime while being acquitted of raping
another person.

No sooner was he a free man when Coleman once
again faced rape charges, and the victim was just fourteen years
old. As his trial date neared, he went underground and on to his
rape, robbery, and murder spree across a number of states with a
willing partner in Debra Brown.

* * *

Born in 1962, Debra Denise Brown was one of
eleven children in what was described as a "well-respected" family.
Having suffered from a head trauma during childhood, Brown was seen
as "borderline mentally retarded" and categorized as a "dependent
personality."
⁴
In 1983, at the age of twenty-one, Brown
was engaged to a man when she met Alton Coleman. Quickly charmed by
him, she broke off her engagement, left home, and began what would
become a deadly relationship. Brown's mother would later say that
she had been a "good girl" before she met the likes of the career
criminal Coleman. Whether this is true not is subject to
interpretation. What is clear is that, together, Coleman and Brown
achieved a frightening level of violent criminality they might
never have accomplished apart.

It was in May 1984 when their crime spree
started and Alton Coleman and Debra Brown began to make a name for
themselves that spelled trouble to potential victims and law
enforcement.

* * *

In May of 1984, perhaps as a set up for
things to come, Alton Coleman struck up a friendship with Juanita
Wheat of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Wheat had a nine-year-old daughter
named Vernita. On May 29th, the girl was abducted by Coleman at
knifepoint in Waukegan, where she had apparently gone to get a
stereo. The young girl was raped and murdered.

By May 31st, police had honed in on Alton
Coleman as the person responsible for the girl's disappearance.

That same night, Coleman borrowed the vehicle
of a friend in Waukegan to supposedly go and pick up some things at
the store. Only he never brought back the car, which was used to
escape the authorities in pursuit of him.

Later, Vernita's mother, Juanita Wheat, would
identify Coleman and Debra Brown through photographs. But on June
1, 1984, while Coleman was already on the run, Brown was
interrogated by authorities. She was able to successfully convince
them that she did not know of his whereabouts.

On June 19th, Vernita's badly decomposed
remains were found in the bathroom of a vacant building in
Waukegan—four blocks from the apartment of Coleman's grandmother.
The autopsy report listed the cause of death as ligature
strangulation.

After being indicted for the murder of
Vernita Wheat, a federal warrant was issued for the capture of a
killer, Alton Coleman.

* * *

Coleman and his accomplice Debra Brown made
their way to Gary, Indiana, as they sought to stay one step ahead
of the law and find new victims. The next two such people to cross
their paths were Tamika Turks, seven years old, and her aunt, Annie
Hilliard, who was nine. The two girls, on their way home from a
candy store, were intercepted by Brown and Coleman. After being
taken into the woods, they were raped and beaten, with both Coleman
and Brown taking part in the sexual assaults and torture.

According to one article, the killers forced
Annie to watch her niece being murdered with "Brown holding Tamika
to the ground and covering her nose and mouth and Coleman jumping
on her chest and face until her ribs fractured and punctured her
vital organs."
⁵

On June 19, 1984, the partially decomposed
remains of Tamika Turks were found. As with Vernita Wheat, the
official cause of death was ligature strangulation.