Terror in East Lansing: The Tale of MSU Serial Killer Donald Miller (5 page)

It was decided that Ohio, which had the death
penalty, as opposed to Michigan, would try the suspects first. U.S.
Attorney Dan Webb pointed out, "We are convinced that prosecution
[in Ohio] can most quickly and most likely result in the swiftest
imposition of the death penalty against Alton Coleman and Debra
Brown."
¹⁴

The case against the suspects was fairly
strong, given the myriad of serious crimes they had committed in
six states. Coleman, in particular, seemed to have no qualms about
leaving his fingerprints behind at many of the crime scenes,
allowing law enforcement to positively connect him with the
crimes.

Though circumstantial evidence and witnesses
were able to place Brown with Coleman and the victims, authorities
still sought to obtain information about the crimes from Brown
without the commanding presence of Coleman, or an attorney. The
suspect was advised of her right to legal representation and she
decided it was best to remain silent and speak to an attorney. In
spite of this, Brown wound up confessing to local and federal
authorities to the crimes and offering details that could be used
against her and Coleman.

While on trial, Debra Brown's attorneys
challenged her statements as a violation of Brown's Fifth Amendment
right against self-incrimination, given that her interrogation
persisted even after her request to have an attorney. It was ruled
that Brown's rights were violated by a detective in Evanston and
therefore her confession was inadmissible. The same was not true
for Brown's statements made to federal agents in Chicago, which
would ultimately hold up in court and be used effectively against
her.

* * *

In May 1985, Alton Coleman and Debra Brown
were convicted in Ohio of aggravated murder in the death of Tonnie
Storey, and in June 1985, the same for killing Marlene Walters,
along with numerous other crimes of violence. Both Coleman and
Brown were sentenced to death for these crimes.

During sentencing, Brown, whose attorneys had
portrayed her as being in a "slave-master relationship" with the
domineering Coleman, sent a note to the judge which reportedly said
in reference to one of the victims, "I killed the bitch and I don't
give a damn. I had fun out of it."
¹⁵

In Indiana, the two convicted murderers had
separate trials, but the same results in being found guilty of the
rape and murder of young Tamika Turks and the attempted murder of
her nine-year-old aunt, Annie. Again Coleman and Brown each
received the death penalty. In addition, Coleman was given one
hundred years and Brown forty years for kidnapping and child
molestation.

Coleman went on to receive a death sentence
as well in Illinois, becoming the only person in the United States
at the time to be on death row in three states.

In January 1991, then Ohio Governor Richard
Celeste commuted Debra Brown's death sentence to life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole after a staff report found her to
be retarded with "childlike emotional development" and low IQ
scores, as well as possessing a dependent personality, which made
her vulnerable to Alton Coleman's influence.
¹⁶
Brown is
serving her time in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in
Marysville.

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 did 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.