magazine put a photograph of Virginia inmate Roger Keith Coleman on the cover. Coleman, dressed in a blue work shirt, black pants and tennis shoes, was sitting against a cinderblock wall. His hands are in his lap, his ankles clearly shackled. "THIS MAN MIGHT BE INNOCENT. THIS MAN IS DUE TO DIE" blared the headline about the convicted rapist and murderer who had a scheduled appointment with the Virginia electric chair the same week.
It was this magazine, and the resulting explosion of news coverage, both nationally and internationally, that introduced many to Roger Coleman and his story. Despite Coleman's repeated statements of innocence, as well as thousands of letters and phone calls that flooded the governor's office in Richmond and personal pleas for clemency from Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, Coleman was not given a movie-ready last minute reprieve. A portion of his last words brought death penalty opponents to tears and advocates questioning the system. "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty, as all other civilized countries have."
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| Wanda Thompson and Brad McCoy at his prom, 1978 (photo source) |
The Crime
It began eleven years earlier, in 1981 in Grundy, a small, working class town thirteen miles from the West Virginia border, fifteen miles from the Kentucky border, sixteen miles from the infamous site of the Hatfield and McCoy feud, and roughly fifty miles from both North Carolina and Tennessee. Grundy is in the heart of the Appalachians, seven hours from Virginia's capital city of Richmond. A coal mining town, Grundy hardly fit the slogan Virginia would adapt for itself - "Virginia is for Lovers" - or the genteel southern image of colonial style and plantation homes that would dot Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown. Only about five square miles in size and with a population of roughly 1,000 residents, alcohol wasn't sold in Grundy in 1981. Those who wanted liquor had to drive across state lines or partake in moonshine made in the mountains.
In spite of its small size and religious, hardworking citizens, wife beating, rape, and murder were not foreign to the area. Coal mining, being hard, dangerous work, especially in Buchanan County, it wasn't unusual for the sheriff's department to get domestic calls after workers returned home sweaty and covered in coal dust and grime. It also wasn't unusual for liquor - moonshine or otherwise - or drugs to be involved. Buchanan County had seven murders in 1980, making its murder rate twice that of the state as a whole. All seven of the cases had been successfully prosecuted by Mickey McGlothlin, the county's prosecutor.
Wanda Thompson McCoy wasn't from Grundy but Home Creek, about twelve miles outside of Grundy, very nearly in Kentucky. The fifteenth of sixteen children and the daughter of a coal miner, Wanda was a quiet and obedient girl, shy with strangers but without a mean bone in her body. A born homemaker, as a child she had liked nothing better than making clothing and working on crafts. She would be remembered as an average student in school with pretty strawberry blonde hair and a welcoming smile.
Her future husband, Brad McCoy, was a member of that McCoy clan. Brad's father Max, known as "Hezzie," was proud of the family's lineage. Hezzie worked for United Coal and on the side drove a white stretch limo for weddings and other events.
While the legendary McCoys were ill-tempered and rude, Brad was as soft-spoken and gentle as his future wife. Two years older than Wanda, he too went to Grundy Senior High School. They met through Wanda's older sister Lydia, who worked with Brad at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Brad initially nursed a crush on Lydia but Lydia suggested he turn his attention to Wanda and it wasn't long before the two hit it off and were going steady.
On June 13, 1978, Brad graduated from Grundy Senior High. Three days later, he began working for United Coal. His easygoing nature, combined with his brightness, helped him to place aboveground as a parts clerk in United Coal's Repair Shop No. 1. In July, he and Wanda were married at the Grundy Baptist Church. The McCoys and the Thompsons were happy with the match and apparently had no reservations over the age of the groom (18) or the bride (16).
The newlyweds moved into the subdivision of Longbottom, east of Grundy, and by Slate Creek. The subdivision consisted of newer brick and frame ranch homes in the front and older frame houses in the back. Brad and Wanda rented one of the older homes, located less than two blocks from Brad's parents.
Wanda had originally planned to return to school in the fall of 1978 and begin her junior year but she found that she enjoyed keeping house, making clothing, and working on her crafts. The life of a housewife suited her and Brad's salary was enough to support the two of them, so she dropped out of school.
Over the next nearly three years, Brad and Wanda settled into a comfortable routine of working and visiting with friends and family.
Tuesday, March 10, 1981 should have been just another day for Wanda and Brad. The couple, approaching their third wedding anniversary, had spent the morning at home. Wanda had watched television while she sewed and Brad read the newspaper and generally took it easy before he had to leave for his shift at United, which was the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. swing shift. It was a cold day in Grundy, around 42 degrees, when Brad left the house shortly after 2 p.m. to run a couple of errands before clocking in.
Brad would later remember his work shift as being fairly uneventful. There were no breakdowns, mine shutdowns, or accidents that day and he was able to take his regularly scheduled dinner break and eat the food that Wanda had prepared and packed for him. He took a coffee break at 9 p.m. so he could call home and check in on his wife. She did not like to be home alone, especially at night, when Brad was working and he tried to call her during his shift to soothe her anxiety and also break up the loneliness for her.
The two chatted for nearly fifteen minutes, about how the remainder of their day had gone, what Wanda was watching on television (BJ and the Bear) and how they would spend the tax refund money they were expecting. It seemed like dozens of other similar conversations they had had. Brad had no way of knowing it was to be the last time he would ever speak to her.
After hanging up the phone, Wanda apparently went back to watching television, curled up on the sofa with a handmade afghan wrapped around her. At some point she drank a Coke; the empty bottle was later found on the living room floor.
Brad left work promptly, as soon as his shift ended at eleven. Once he crossed the bridge over Slate Creek and drove up to Oak Street, he would have been able to see anyone coming and going from the front door of his home. He initially noticed nothing unusual this evening, other than the porch light was off. Wanda normally left it on for him when he was working. It was approximately 11:10 p.m.
Climbing the ten steps to the porch and front door, Brad found that the storm door was unlocked. He was immediately concerned as Wanda, a creature of habit, normally kept the house locked up tight. The front door of the home had a glass door pane and a previous resident had covered it over with paint. Brad had scratched a section off, creating a peephole of sorts, and he peered through this peephole into the living room where he saw Wanda's afghan lying on the sofa but no Wanda. Using his key, he let himself into the home and directly into the living room. The television set was on, as were the lights, and the coffee table, normally in front of the sofa, was out of place, the empty Coke bottle on the floor, likely having fallen off the table when it had been bumped or moved.
Brad may have already subconsciously known something was very wrong when he noticed the light on in the spare bedroom and headed that way.
Wanda McCoy, just nineteen years old, lay on the floor. She was on her back, her arms over her head, her legs spread straight out and her hair covering her face. Both her sweater and bra were pushed up around her neck, revealing her breasts. Her blue jeans lay on the bed and a pair of blue and white striped socks were still on her feet. A pair of dark blue satin underwear was twisted around her left ankle.
Wanda's head was surrounded by a large pool of blood that was continuing to grow and Brad could see that she had been stabbed twice in the chest. From somewhere underneath the sweater that was around her neck blood was still oozing.
Brad knew his wife was dead and so he did not touch her or disturb her body in any way. Given that the blood was still spreading in the room, he realized she had not been dead long. He ran back to the living room, where he called his father Hezzie, begging him to come over as Wanda had been raped or killed. Then, fearful for his own safety and worrying that the killer or killers might still be in the house, Brad waited first on the front porch for Hezzie before setting off on foot down the hill toward his parents' house. He ran into his father backing his car out of the garage. Seeing Brad's frantic state, Hezzie went back into the house for his gun and then also to call the Buchanan County Sheriff's Department. That call was logged in at 11:21 p.m.
Hezzie and Brad returned to the home Brad shared with Wanda. While Brad waited outside, Hezzie had briefly gone inside, viewed Wanda, and confirmed Brad's belief that she was dead. He was back outside on the porch with Brad when the first two officers arrived on the scene. It was now 11:25 p.m.
Deputy Sheriff Steve Coleman entered the house and went immediately to the spare bedroom. He lifted the heavy sweater around Wanda's neck and attempted to check for a pulse. Unsuccessful, he found that she had no intact vessel. Her throat had been cut so badly, her head was nearly severed from her body.
Grundy Chief of Police Randall Jackson arrived on the scene at 11:31 p.m. Viewing Wanda's body, he noted, as Brad had, that fresh blood was still oozing from underneath her sweater. Jackson felt Wanda's wrist and found no pulse but discovered that she was still warm.
He ordered the scene to be secured, as well as thoroughly searched. Like Brad, he considered that the killer or killers might still be hiding in the house.
Jackson arranged to have Dr. Thomas McDonald, the medical examiner who lived nearby, picked up by a patrol officer and brought to the scene. Dr. McDonald officially pronounced death around 11:45 p.m. and made a preliminary determination that Wanda had died due to the slashing wound in her neck. He also felt that she had been dragged from the living room to the bedroom. Based on body temperature, Dr. McDonald felt the time of death was somewhere between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Although Brad McCoy had been seen at work and leaving work at 11 p.m., an officer was dispatched to question him at his parents' house, where he was waiting. As with all murder cases, the spouse is always the first suspect.
At 11:45 p.m., Dr. McDonald left the scene to return to his own home. Chief Jackson waited for Jack Davidson, an investigator from the Virginia State Police whom he had called especially, to arrive from his home in Vansant, a town east of Grundy. Jackson hoped that Davidson would take over the investigation.
Inside the house, Wanda's body had stopped bleeding and had begun the first stages of rigor mortis.
The Investigation
One of Davidson's first acts in the investigation was to speak to Brad McCoy. He quickly cleared him as a suspect, although he did verify with United Coal what hours Brad had worked that day. He requested that Brad take a polygraph examination, an examination to which Brad agreed but that would not be administered for nearly two weeks for unexplained reasons. Later that evening, Brad became so agitated and upset that his parents took him to the local hospital, where he was sedated.
Examination of the McCoy home itself revealed more clues as to what had happened to Wanda and how. On the outside screen door, a latent fingerprint was lifted. On the front door molding, just over three feet from the floor, was a pressure, or pry, mark. Supporting Dr. McDonald's belief that Wanda had been dragged into the spare bedroom, there was a small bloodstain on the floor of the living room and the marks and patterns suggested that something was indeed dragged through it. Smaller bloodstains, or spatter, was found on the living room wall and on the white shade to a lamp that was on a table at the hallway entrance. Davidson believed that this was where Wanda was initially attacked and received the defensive wounds to her hands he had noted. Other than these three areas of blood only the coffee table and Coke bottle seemed out of place. To the trained investigator's eye, it seemed as though Wanda had let her killer or killers into the home.
The spare bedroom had more to tell. The massive amount of blood found in that room suggested that the fatal cut to Wanda's throat happened there. Noting the position of her arms over her head in the direction of the bedroom door, Davidson thought that Wanda had been dragged feet first into the bedroom. He also believed that she never regained consciousness, otherwise her hands would have been covered in her blood from the instinctual response to grab at or cover the throat wound.
A black substance coated Wanda's hands, which Davidson felt certain was coal dust from her killer or killers. The same black substance was also noted on the sleeves of her sweater and both of her upper thighs.
At 9:30 on the morning of Wednesday, March 11, paper bags were placed on Wanda's hands to protect them from contamination and loss of any potential evidence and her body was taken to Roanoke for autopsy.
The autopsy began at 8:30 on the morning of Thursday, March 12 and would testify to Wanda's frightening and violent end. Dr. David Oxley found that she had died from the brutal wound to her throat, some four inches deep and so vicious that it severed her right carotid artery, jugular vein and larynx. The wound was made with a single stroke by a sharp instrument and ran in a downward motion from the right side of Wanda's throat to her left.
She had also sustained two deep and penetrating stab wounds to her chest; one just below her breastbone and one near the inside of her left breast. The first wound penetrated her liver, the second, her left lung and heart. There was no significant bleeding resulting from either wound, leading Dr. Oxley to conclude that the wounds were delivered when Wanda was already dead or so near to death that it mattered very little.
Dr. Oxley discovered two foreign hairs on Wanda's genital area that did not match her own. Although he did not note any traumatic injury to either her vagina or rectum, he took swabs from both areas to test for the presence of sperm. He took samples of her blood and the black substance that had been found on her hands and those, along with her clothing, were preserved. Although Dr. Oxley noticed that Wanda's fingernails were broken and her hands covered with blood, he stated in his report that there was no significant amount of material underneath her fingernails and rather inexplicably, took no action to preserve it for analysis. He also neglected to test the blood on her hands, assuming it came from her own wounds. Dr. Oxley's report failed to mention the defensive wounds on Wanda's hands that Jack Davidson had noted or the large bruise or abrasion present on her upper right arm that was noticeable in the autopsy photos.
On Saturday, March 14, the funeral service for Wanda Faye Thompson McCoy was held in the Big Rock Freewill Baptist Church, the church she had attended Sunday School in as a child. The minister who had married Brad and Wanda nearly three years earlier joined two ministers from Big Rock to conduct the service after which her body was taken to Mountain Valley Memorial Park to be buried.
The residents of Grundy, most of whom had paid their respects to Wanda at the church and then again at the cemetery, were stunned and grief-stricken over her murder. Grundy had more than its fair share of violence but not to God-fearing good girls like Wanda.
On Monday, March 16, Jack Davidson learned that the vaginal and anal swabs Dr. Oxley had sent for analysis had tested positive for the presence of sperm. Two tests had to be done on the samples in order to get the blood type of the man who left the sperm in Wanda's vaginal canal: he was a type B secretor. (Brad McCoy, who admitted to having sexual relations with his wife roughly 48 hours before her death, was type A). The testing done on the anal swab, for whatever reason, came back "inconclusive." Although the scientific world was still over a decade away from DNA testing, the blood type was good news to investigators. Only ten to thirteen percent of the population in the southeastern United States have type B blood.
By comparison, the sample of the black material found on Wanda's hands, which Jack Davidson had been positive was coal dust, came back as being organic soil and plant material. However, as no such material had been found anywhere in the McCoys' home other than on Wanda's body, Davidson was certain it had been brought in by her killer or killers.
A Suspect
Brad McCoy had, naturally, been Davidson's first suspect in Wanda's murder. He was the first person Davidson spoke to, making note of his clothing and a cut on his left thumb. Brad had no scratches or wounds on him that Wanda would have left had she been fighting him for her life and his clothing had no bloodstains or tearing. Furthermore, he had cried copiously and cursed over what had befallen Wanda. He would provide relevant information to Davidson, though.
Brad informed Davidson that months earlier Wanda had been receiving nuisance and obscene phone calls and that the last person to visit their home had been Wanda's younger sister, Patricia (known as Trish). Before that, it had been Brad's friend and coworker, Junior Stevenson. According to Brad, he had had problems with a neighbor. He confirmed that Wanda had been afraid to be home alone at night and would keep the doors locked and bolted. She would never have given a stranger admittance into the house. Outside of Brad, his father and her father, the only other men she would have let into the home would have been Junior Stevenson, her former brother-in-law Danny Ray Stiltner, and Trish's husband, Roger Coleman.
Junior Stevenson was interviewed and said he had been so tired when he got home from work on the afternoon of the murder that his wife had to help him out of his truck. Once inside his home, he had fallen asleep on the sofa and had not woken until the next morning, when he got up to return to work. His wife verified his account.
In speaking with Wanda's mother Marie and her sister, Peggy, who had been married to Danny Ray Stiltner, Davidson learned that it had been Wanda's belief, as well as of the Thompson family, that Stiltner had been behind the obscene phone calls Wanda had received months earlier.
Despite these suspicions and a rumor that Danny felt Wanda was responsible for the breakup of his marriage with Peggy, Davidson did not interview Stiltner for two weeks. When he finally did, on March 24, Stiltner denied making any calls to Wanda and denied any involvement in her murder, saying he had been with his mother and father at the time Wanda was killed. He told Davidson that when he had been married to Peggy, Trish's husband Roger had come to their house often, bringing liquor. In contradiction to the rumor saying otherwise, Stiltner felt that it had been Roger that had caused the breakdown in his marriage, not Wanda, and that Roger was "crazy" and probably guilty of the murder.
Roger
Roger Keith Coleman had been born in Georgia to a military family. When his father was transferred to Germany eight months after he was born, Roger and his mother moved to Grundy to live with his father's family. Only four months after that, Roger's mother moved to Michigan and got a divorce. Although she sent for Roger, she eventually returned him to Grundy and his grandparents when he was six. Neither his father nor his mother seemed to have any interest in raising or caring for him and so his grandparents formally adopted him.
He was thirteen when he had his first brush with the law. He and a friend were caught making obscene phone calls to a female classmate in which she received numerous calls where descriptive sexual fantasies were told to her. Even her younger sister was subjected to them when she answered the phone. Roger claimed to have made the calls because he was lonely and a voice in his head told him to do it. As he had never been in trouble before, and he was a good student with an above-average IQ, a social worker advised that he receive psychiatric counseling, which he did.
Roger proved to be tenacious. He wanted to join the basketball team, despite his height (5'9") not suggesting he might be a natural, and so he did. He excelled in sports and did well academically in high school, although he didn't achieve the high marks his IQ inferred he might. He worked after school and on weekends, not only to put some money in his pocket, but also to give his grandparents for food and clothing. When he wasn't going to school or working, he spent his time fishing, hunting, hiking around the countryside and reading. Roger was an avid reader.
Getting closer to graduation, he wanted to avoid a life of working in the coal mines. Wanting to go to college but coming from a financially strapped family, he instead applied for enlistment in the Army. Everything seemed to be falling into place for him - until April 7, 1977.
On April 4, 1977, Grundy had been struck by flash floods that resulted in two buildings on Main Street being torn from their foundations and carried away in the raging waters, collapsed bridges and roads in and out of the city being blocked and closed. The emergency led to businesses being closed and that included the high school.
Brenda Rife was a schoolteacher in Grundy, along with her husband, Preston. She had been home with their six-year-old daughter Megan on April 7, while Preston had gone to check on the car lot he ran on the weekends and holidays. A young man she estimated to be around eighteen and wearing a Grundy High letter jacket and sailor hat came to her front door, claiming to be part of a crew of volunteers cleaning up the flood damage, and requested a glass of water. Once he was let into the house, he pulled a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket, along with a pistol, and ordered Brenda to tie her daughter to a chair. Terrified, she complied. At gunpoint, she was taken throughout the house and upon getting to the master bedroom, the man ripped her bathrobe open, pushed her down on the bed, climbed on top of her and began kissing her. She scratched him hard on the neck, infuriating him. As he went for his gun, she fled the room and ran for the sliding door downstairs, yelling for her daughter to follow her. The little girl was taped too tightly and could not escape her restraints and so Brenda went back for her child. The man caught her on the porch and a struggle ensued, with Brenda screaming for help. She managed to get ahold of his gun and throw it; when he ran to fetch it, she noticed two neighbors walking up the road, who had heard her screams. The man noticed them too, and after running to retrieve his hat, which had come off in the struggle, he fled the Rife home through a side door and took off into the woods.
The local authorities were busy with the flood damage and so once she had calmed herself, Brenda pulled out the last several years of Grundy High's yearbooks. In short order, she recognized the young man she believed had attacked her - Roger Coleman. When Brenda was taken later that day to Roger's place of employment, she gave a positive identification.
Roger denied having anything to do with the attack on Brenda Rife and had two witnesses (the Grundy High superintendent and his daughter) who placed him at the high school up until 10:30 that morning; Brenda Rife believed her attacker arrived at her home between 10 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. Despite the time discrepancy and the lack of any scratch marks on Roger's neck, he was arrested and charged with attempted rape.
Roger was out on bail when he graduated from high school on June 17, 1977. A month later, a jury found him guilty of the charge and on July 29, he was sentenced to three years in prison. Finding out about his conviction, the Army canceled his enlistment. His conviction, whether justifiable or not, put an end to Roger's dreams of college and escaping Grundy and the life of coal mining.
He served exactly twenty months and one day of his three year sentence, being released on March 30, 1979. By April, he was working in a mine a few miles outside of Grundy.
In the summer of 1979, he met Trish Thompson, Wanda McCoy's youngest sister and the one she was closest with. Trish was only fifteen years old, a vivacious and exuberant redhead. Initially thinking that Roger's convict past was exciting and dangerous, in reality she found him to be articulate, thoughtful, and intelligent. Their dating became serious very quickly and they were soon talking marriage. While the Thompson family had been supportive of Wanda marrying early, they were less than happy with Trish wanting to marry so early and to a man with a record. Although her parents and siblings begged her to at least finish high school, she would not be swayed. After gaining her parents' consent, she and Roger were married on August 8, 1980. Because Trish and Wanda were so close, it seemed only natural that Brad McCoy and Roger would become friends as well.
On January 12, 1981, almost exactly two months before Wanda was killed, two female librarians at the Buchanan County Public Library were victimized by a man who entered the library just before closing time and exposed himself to them. According to the librarians, the only two in the building since it was bitterly cold and snow was falling, he masturbated in front of them and ejaculated across their checkout desk before running out the door. Although a well known town drunk was at first suspected (he had run naked through the streets of Grundy only a week earlier), both women identified a photograph of Roger Coleman from a Grundy High School yearbook as the perpetrator.
That case was still pending (charges were eventually dropped) when Wanda McCoy was raped and murdered. The librarians claimed that a week after Wanda's death Roger Coleman returned to the library to read books in the forensics section of the library, as well as the part of the library that housed its copy of the Code of Virginia.
Jack Davidson Closes In
When Davidson heard that of the three men that Wanda would trust enough to let into the home when Brad wasn't there, one of them -- Roger Coleman -- had a record for sexual assault, he honed in on him as the prime suspect.
Before Davidson had questioned Danny Ray Stiltner or Junior Stevenson, he was anxious to learn Roger's whereabouts on the evening of March 10, 1981. Speaking to Davidson on March 11, Roger provided a very detailed account of his whereabouts on the night his sister-in-law was killed. He had left for work between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; he worked the night shift in a drill mine about three miles outside of Grundy. Upon arriving for work, he was informed that his shift had been laid off without notice. Roger said that he had chatted with another man at the mine before heading back home. When he reached Grundy, he realized he had left his coveralls and knee pads at the mine and turned around to go back and retrieve them, as he planned on searching for work the next day. He arrived at the mine the second time that evening between 9:45 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. After retrieving his gear, he spent about ten minutes talking to the shift foreman and other workers, departing once more around 10 p.m. He ran into a friend on the road home and said that the two had stopped their vehicles and chatted until around 10:30 p.m. From there, he drove to a nearby trailer park to visit with yet another friend, who was out of work; Roger said he thought the two of them might do some job hunting together the following day. Upon arriving at the friend's trailer, he found no lights on and did not bother knocking at the door. According to Roger, it was around 10:45 p.m. He did, however, see the neighbors across the street watching t.v. and recalling that he had left an eight-track music tape there days earlier, stopped by and retrieved it. He then returned to Grundy and went to the miner's bathhouse where, although he had not worked, he followed his usual routine of showering and changing into clean, non-work clothes. Roger took his work clothes, which were covered in coal dust, put them in a plastic bag and headed to the home he shared with his wife and his grandparents, arriving, he claimed, around 11:05 p.m.
Davidson noted that Roger had no obvious scratches on his arms, neck, or face. Still, he asked for the clothing Roger had worn and Roger turned them over, as well as a wet washcloth and a damp towel. The legs of the blue jeans were wet, which Roger said must have happened at the mine. Examination of the jeans found two or three small areas of blood on the right leg and a tiny speck on the left. That blood was found to be type O, the same type as Wanda's.
Two knives that Roger voluntarily turned over to detectives were examined and one, a pocketknife with a three-inch blade was found to have a very minute quantity of blood, so small that it could not be determined whether it was animal or human.
On March 13, hair samples were taken from Roger. The pubic hair sample was found to be "consistent" with the unknown pubic hair recovered from Wanda's body.
On April 13, an indictment for rape and capital murder was handed down against Roger Keith Coleman. He was arrested the same day and jailed without bond.
On Trial
At his arraignment on April 14, 1981, Roger informed Judge Nicholas Persin that he could not afford to hire an attorney. Although Persin spoke to experienced criminal defense attorneys in the area, all of them begged off for one reason or another and Persin did not push the issue or assign any of them the case. He instead chose Terry Jordan from Grundy and Steven Arey from Tazewell, neither of whom had tried a murder case and both of whom had very little criminal trial experience. They were officially appointed on April 16.
Nearly a year would pass before the case came to trial, a time in which Trish Thompson Coleman, Roger's wife and Wanda's sister, changed her opinion and support of Roger from innocence to guilt.
The case was called for trial on March 15, 1982, a year and a day after Wanda had been buried. The defense had brought a motion for change of venue, which was denied. Also denied was a request to sever the rape and murder charges.
Roger's defense team was seriously outmaneuvered by Mickey McGlothlin and the team of prosecutors but they did manage to score several points, namely that there was an unidentified fingerprint found on the McCoy front door that did not match Roger and that Dr. McDonald, when examining Wanda's body, had rolled her over, an action that could have led to the pubic hair being deposited on her. They also elicited testimony from their own expert that no coal dust was found on Wanda's body and that the black substance, initially thought to be coal dust (of which none was found) by investigators was actually soil.
Unfortunately for the defense, the couple that lived in the trailer park that had returned an eight-track cassette tape to Roger on the night of March 10, 1981 testified that he had arrived at 10:20 p.m., which would have given him a small window of time in which to rape and murder Wanda if she had been attacked and killed closer to 11 p.m.
The friend of Roger's who had spoken to him that night on the roadway until about 10:30 testified as such - but Roger's defense team failed to obtain his timecard, which showed his clock-in time at 10:41 p.m. and would have corroborated Roger's timeline.
The defense called Trish, Roger's estranged wife, as a witness, which turned out to be a blunder. Initially, Trish had told investigators that Roger had arrived home on the night her sister was murdered around 11:05 p.m. She had been in bed reading and had looked at the clock when he came in. On the stand, however, she denied knowing what time it was that Roger returned home. Rather than demonstrating he could not possibly have raped and killed his sister-in-law had he been home at 11:05, his attorneys succeeded in showing the animosity Trish had for Roger.
The defense also called his Roger's grandmother, as he and Trish had been living with his grandparents at the time of Wanda's murder. His grandmother testified that Roger arrived home at 11:05 p.m., but by doing so, she impeached her earlier statement to investigators that Roger had arrived home as the eleven o'clock news was ending. She claimed she had been mixed up a year earlier, as she had just gotten out of the hospital. Worse, she voluntarily added that Roger had not been drinking and was not acting nervous; as she had not been asked that question, the statement was perceived that Roger had indeed been drinking and had been acting nervous.
The state's last witness was a criminal by the name of Roger Matney, who had been in the Buchanan County Jail with Roger Coleman. Matney testified that Coleman confessed to him that he and another man had been at the McCoy residence with Wanda when Brad called around 9 p.m. and after that phone call, the other man had attacked Wanda with the knife, after which the two of them had raped her. Matney claimed that Coleman had drawn a diagram of the murder scene, although one was not produced. The defense attorneys did manage to elicit Matney's record and the fact that although he had been sentenced to four years' time a year earlier, he was already out - seemingly in exchange for his testimony. They didn't know, however, that at the time Matney was called as a witness, he was facing serious charges for beating and threatening to kill a fellow inmate while forcing him to perform oral sex. Nor were they aware that even Jack Davidson and Randy Jackson had little credence for Matney's testimony.
Roger took the witness stand on the morning of March 18, 1982 to testify on his own behalf. Despite badgering by the prosecution, he remained calm, cool, and collected as he recounted details from the year previous. He denied having anything to do with his sister-in-law's death and denied Roger Matney's account while admitting that he had told other inmates details of the case he said he learned from his wife and other family members. When asked to explain the drops of type O blood that was found on his jeans, his only explanation was that his cat could have scratched someone and that someone had bled on his pants. This allowed the prosecution to call Trish Coleman for rebuttal, to testify that she had never seen the cat scratch anyone.
The defense rested after Roger testified and the case went to the jury at 6:01 p.m. on the evening of March 18 The jury deliberated until 8:15 p.m., when they broke for dinner until 9:35 p.m. At 10:50 p.m., they announced they had a verdict. They found Roger guilty of rape and murder. For the rape charge, his punishment was life in prison. As the murder charge was a capital one, a separate hearing would need to be held to decide on his sentence.
The following day, March 19, 1982, over defense objections, Brenda Rife was called as a witness to describe to the jury what Roger had done to her and her daughter five years earlier. To counter Mrs. Rife's testimony, Roger's attorneys called two ministers to testify that Roger's religious conversion was sincere and that his life should be spared. Following brief closing arguments by both sides, at 2:33 p.m. the jury retired to deliberate on whether Roger Coleman should be put to death or receive life in prison. At 6:17 p.m. they returned to the courtroom with a verdict of death.
Death Row and Appeals
Under Virginia law, the presiding judge of a criminal trial has the right to review a death sentence and affirm it, or review it and substitute a life sentence. Judge Persin had never before sentenced anyone to death and, in fact, opposed capital punishment. He later admitted that he was surprised by the jury's verdict of death as he did not believe the prosecution's case met the required "absolute certainty" that was necessary to impose the death sentence. On April 23, 1982, after agonizing over the sentence since the jury returned its verdict, Persin announced to a packed courtroom that he could find no legal reason to overturn the jury's recommendation and sentenced Roger Keith Coleman to death. As he handed down the sentence, tears ran down his face.
On April 25, Coleman was transported seven hours away to the Richmond State Penitentiary, where he was placed in isolation while he was evaluated. Following his evaluation, he was sent to Mecklenburg Penitentiary. In 1982, Mecklenburg housed Virginia's most dangerous criminals, as well as being a cesspool of violence and corruption.
On August 27, his attorney Terry Jordan wrote him to say that the divorce Trish had filed after Coleman's trial ended had been granted three days earlier.
More bad news followed for Coleman when, in September of 1983, the direct appeal filed by Jordan and Steve Arey was rejected by the Virginia Supreme Court and his conviction and death sentence was reaffirmed. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1984.
The petition that he filed for writ of habeas corpus was denied on September 4, 1986 after a two-day hearing, although the clerk did not docket it until September 9, 1986, an action that caused a legal quagmire of sorts.
The following month, on October 7, Coleman filed a notice of appeal with the Circuit Court. It was 33 days after the official date of final judgment but within 30 days of the entry of that judgment. Under Virginia state law, missing the deadline for a notice of appeal constitutes a procedural default to further appeals.
On October 25, he moved the circuit court to correct the final judgment date to September 9, making his notice of appeal timely. The circuit court denied the motion, leading Coleman to appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia on December 3. It wouldn't be until May 19, 1987 that the Virginia Supreme Court issued an order denying Coleman's appeal based on the late filing, thus preventing him from entering any other appeals in the state court.
At that time, a subsequent petition for rehearing was also denied.
On April 26, 1988, Coleman next filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. In it, he presented four federal constitutional claims he had raised on direct appeal in the Virginia Supreme Court and seven claims he had raised for the first time in the state habeas. The District Court found that, based on the the dismissal of his appeal, he had procedurally defaulted the seven state claims but went on to address the merit of all eleven of his claims. The Court ruled against Coleman on all eleven claims and denied his petition. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth District affirmed the decision in 1990.
The Court did, however, grant Coleman's petition for permission to have PCR-DNA testing performed on evidence from the crime scene.
On October 29, 1990, his third attempt at a petition for writ of certiorari was finally granted by the Supreme Court, setting the case for argument on February 25, 1991.
On November 7, 1990, results from the PCR-DNA testing that was done in California were returned. The tests failed to eliminate Coleman as a suspect and, in fact, indicated that the donor of the sperm found in Wanda McCoy accounted for only two percent of the population. Roger Keith Coleman was in that two percent. However, three alleles were identified in the sperm sample, indicating two donors.
On June 24, 1991, in a six-to-three decision, the Supreme Court held that the mistake made by Coleman's lawyers in filing a document days late created a procedural default that prevented consideration of his federal petition for writ of habeas corpus.
Once again, Coleman filed a petition for rehearing and once again, on September 24, 1991, the petition was denied.
On October 14, 1991, Coleman's attorneys filed his second state habeas corpus petition in the Circuit Court of Buchanan County. In addition, the attorneys filed motions for discovery and a request for an evidentiary hearing based on new evidence that Coleman was not Wanda's killer. The Commonwealth filed a motion to dismiss and a hearing was held on the matter on December 4, 1991. On December 14, the Commonwealth's motion was granted.
Setting the Date
With fewer chances to prevent Coleman's execution, his attorneys and friends began going to the press, indicating that Coleman was innocent, that his attorneys had named a viable suspect (a next door neighbor of Brad and Wanda's with both a history of violence against women and alleged drug use), but that the Commonwealth of Virginia was prepared to execute him anyhow.
In February of 1992, the Commonwealth pressed for an execution date in March, while Coleman's attorneys requested that a date not be set until after a final petition for federal habeas corpus be heard and decided. Neither got their request. Roger Coleman was scheduled to be executed on May 20, 1992, unless another court or the governor of Virginia intervened.
While Governor Douglas Wilder had intervened on behalf of an inmate only hours before he was scheduled to die January 23, 1992, public support for the death penalty gained by the day and although Coleman's attorneys continued in their quest to prove that the former next door neighbor was Wanda's real killer, they knew their client was likely to die on May 20.
On March 31, 1992, the first national story about Roger Coleman appeared in Newsweek magazine, complete with a large photo of Coleman in handcuffs and leg chains and with text declaring him innocent of the crimes he was convicted of. In short order, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Republic all wrote articles on the case that were favorable to Coleman and berated the Commonwealth of Virginia for what would surely be a fatal error if they executed him.
Around the same time, at the end of March, Brad McCoy was persuaded to have his blood tested to be matched against the extra allele detected in the November 1990 PCR-DNA testing. On April 7, 1992, it was determined that the extra allele did appear to come from Brad and matched his account that he and Wanda had last had sexual relations a day or two prior to her murder.
On April 24, 1992, Coleman's attorneys filed his petition for writ of habeas corpus, along with a motion to stay his execution pending a final decision on the petition. Oral arguments by Coleman's attorneys and the Commonwealth were scheduled for May 6.
On May 1, 1992, Coleman was moved from the Mecklenburg Penitentiary to Greensville Penitentiary, in a deathwatch cell only steps away from the electric chair. Shortly after that transfer, Time magazine sent a writer and photographer to Greensville to interview and photograph Coleman.
On Monday, May 11, the issue of Time, with Roger Coleman on its cover, hit newsstands. It was the first time in 32 years that Time had devoted its cover to a condemned man.
On Tuesday, May 12, Coleman's final petition for writ of habeas corpus was denied.
On Thursday, May 14, a press conference was held in Richmond, in which a phone line was set up so that Coleman could participate; the media appeared in droves. That night, via a remote feed, Coleman, calm and articulate, appeared on Larry King Live.
By Friday, May 15, the governor's office was flooded with mail and phone calls, all begging for Coleman to be given clemency. Even Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa made public pleas for clemency. Media outlets from as far away as England, France, and Japan turned up not only in Richmond but Grundy.
On Saturday, May 16, Governor Wilder announced that he had not made a decision on Coleman's case but was reviewing it.
On Monday, May 18, a memorial service for Wanda was organized and held in Grundy by Brad and the Thompson family. Around 10 a.m., Coleman's lawyers learned from the governor's office that Governor Wilder would not be granting Coleman clemency.
On Tuesday, May 19, after weeks of back and forth arguments, arrangements were made for Coleman to take a lie detector test. His attorneys, wanting to use their own expert, asked for a seven to ten day postponement in the execution. Governor Wilder agreed to the lie detector test but insisted it be administered by the Virginia State Police on Wednesday morning, the day of Coleman's execution. That evening, the guards that had been assigned to Coleman were changed for a new "crew" that were assigned to watch over him and then escort him to the electric chair.
On Wednesday, May 20, shortly after 6 a.m., Coleman was taken to Richmond for the lie detector test. Despite being told otherwise, his attorneys were not allowed to be present. Reportedly, Coleman broke down in tears when the electrodes were first attached, necessitating a break. By the time the test was completed, the press had been alerted and were waiting outside as Coleman was returned to Greensville. Around noon, Coleman's legal team received the results that Coleman had failed the lie detector test and very soon after that, the story was picked up by the media. Coleman had a last visit with Sharon Paul, a woman he became pen pals with in 1983, with their relationship becoming romantic in 1988. After she left around 4 p.m., his attorneys visited with him and shared his last meal shortly after 6 p.m. - Tombstone pizza, Sprite and fudge stick cookies. By 9 p.m., Coleman's head was completely shaved and he was dressed in the approved prison attire for execution. Shortly after 11 p.m., with all appeals denied and no clemency to be granted by Governor Wilder, Coleman was strapped into the electric chair. Asked for any final words, Coleman said, "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have. My last words are for the woman I love. Love is eternal. My love for you will last forever. I love you, Sharon." The mask was then placed over Coleman's head and the switch was thrown.
Roger Keith Coleman was pronounced dead just over five minutes later. He was 33 years old and had spent just over ten years on Virginia's death row. He was the first Virginia inmate executed in 1992 and the 17th one to die that year in the United States.
No one from Wanda's family went to Coleman's execution, save Brad McCoy, who made the trip to Greensville with his brother. Brad was not allowed into the death chamber to witness the execution but he and his brother stood outside to wait for the official announcement. He later told reporters that he had waited for eleven years for justice for Wanda and it had been important for him to be there.
In the Years Following
Following his execution, Coleman's body was cremated. He had told Sharon in his final days that he wanted his ashes scattered in the mountains around Grundy.
On Saturday, May 23, 1992, Coleman's family, joined by Sharon and his legal team, as well as other Grundy residents, gathered outside the Coleman family home to pray and read a eulogy written by Jim McCloskey, the executive director of Centurion Ministries, a group that had been working with Coleman's attorneys to prove his innocence. Then a cassette player was flipped on so that as Sharon spread Coleman's ashes, "Amazing Grace," as performed by a lone bagpipe, could be heard.
The years moved on, the town of Grundy and its residents with them. Coleman's case was often cited by death penalty opponents, further fueled by the publication of May God Have Mercy in 1998, written by Chicago lawyer John C. Tucker, who had believed Coleman to be innocent of the crime for which he was executed.
In 2000, following the Georgia case of Ellis Wayne Felker, who had been executed in 1996 but then had post-execution DNA testing done four years later in an attempt to prove his guilt or innocence for the murder he was alleged to have committed, Centurion Ministries was joined by four publications, including The Washington Post, to have DNA evidence from the McCoy-Coleman case reexamined. In 2002, the Supreme Court of Virginia declined the request, leading Centurion to appeal directly to Governor Mark Warner.
On January 5, 2006, Governor Warner ordered retesting of Roger Coleman's DNA evidence. So that there might not be any accusations of corruption or favoritism, the tests were done at the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto, Canada. A week later, Governor Warner announced that the lab in Toronto had found that Roger Keith Coleman's DNA matched the semen that was recovered from Wanda McCoy's body, with no exclusions. Furthermore, there was only a one in 19 million chance of a random match, conclusively confirming Coleman's guilt.
The death penalty opponents who had hoped that the tests would reveal Coleman's innocence were disappointed and angry that Coleman's case not only did nothing to support their cause but harmed it. Coleman's legal team, his family and friends, were devastated by the results. Jim McCloskey told reporters that he felt "betrayed" by Coleman, whose last words had been the statement of "an innocent man is going to be murdered tonight." McCloskey did not understand how a guilty man could, with such dignity, make those words. In the years following the test results, his opinion mellowed and by 2020, he believed that Coleman and Wanda McCoy could possibly have been engaged in an affair, explaining the presence of Coleman's semen. He thought that the dirt found on Wanda's hands had come from her taking out the trash the night of her murder, allowing her true killer to gain entry to the home.
To this day, McCloskey continues to debate whether Coleman was truly guilty.
Brad McCoy remarried in February of 1983 and went on to have a son and a daughter with his second wife. He told John C. Tucker, the author of May God Have Mercy that although he had a wonderful life with his family, he would never be able to forget the image of Wanda that night in 1981. He also told Tucker that he had not initially suspected Roger Coleman; Coleman was not only his friend but was family. It was only after learning of the blood typing and hair results and of Coleman's earlier record that he accepted that Coleman had raped and murdered his wife.
Wanda's mother died in 2002, at the age of 82, and her father followed in 2005, at the age of 90. They were buried at Mountain Valley Memorial Park next to Wanda.
Sources:
Tucker, John C. May God Have Mercy. Dell Publishing, 1997.
