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Dad’s Deadly Affair Leads to Family's Brutal Murder · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: You know, usually when you talk about setting up a
0:01
Speaker 1: home security system, there is this ingrained expectation of a
0:06
Speaker 1: very clear, impenetrable boundary. You picture a castle wall.
0:10
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. You have the alarm sensors on the windows,
0:13
Speaker 2: the heavy deadbolts on the front door, you know, the
0:16
Speaker 2: motion sensor lights flooding the driveway the second anything moves.
0:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And the overarching philosophy behind all of that
0:23
Speaker 1: hardware is just incredibly simple. Keep the bad guys on
0:27
Speaker 1: the outside.
0:28
Speaker 2: Right. It creates this psychological perimeter for you. I mean,
0:30
Speaker 2: you lock the door, you hear that click, and you
0:33
Speaker 2: just feel this distinct separation between your private sanctuary and
0:38
Speaker 2: the unpredictable world out there.
0:40
Speaker 1: Right. Inside is safe. Outside is dangerous. It's this very clean,
0:44
Speaker 1: comforting binary.
0:45
Speaker 2: And we completely rely on that binary. When you lay
0:47
Speaker 2: your head on the pillow at night, you want to
0:49
Speaker 2: believe that danger is strictly an external force, something you
0:52
Speaker 2: can manage with technology and vigilance.
0:55
Speaker 1: But then you step into the reality of the 2009
0:57
Speaker 1: Coleman family murders and suddenly that whole concept of the
1:01
Speaker 1: castle wall is entirely inverted.
1:03
Speaker 2: It really is. It turns the whole thing upside down.
1:05
Speaker 1: It does. Because today you and I are going to
1:08
Speaker 1: explore a situation where a family built this meticulous, heavily
1:12
Speaker 1: monitored fortress complete with like active police surveillance to keep
1:17
Speaker 1: out external threats. They did everything you were supposed to do.
1:21
Speaker 2: Everything by the book.
1:22
Speaker 1: But they were completely unaware that the real danger, the
1:25
Speaker 1: actual monster, was already inside the house.
1:28
Speaker 2: It represents the absolute definition of a Trojan horse scenario,
1:32
Speaker 2: but played out in the most intimate, devastating way imaginable
1:36
Speaker 2: within a family unit. The threat wasn't breaching the walls, right?
1:39
Speaker 2: The threat was the one setting the alarms.
1:41
Speaker 1: And that is exactly the dark reality we are getting
1:44
Speaker 1: into today. So welcome to the show, everyone. We are
1:46
Speaker 1: taking a deep dive into a massive, honestly, incredibly dense
1:50
Speaker 1: report compiled by the Law and Crime Network regarding this
1:54
Speaker 1: horrific case from 2009.
1:55
Speaker 2: And it is a lot to get through, but the
1:57
Speaker 2: details are crucial.
1:58
Speaker 1: They really are. But the goal of this deep dive
2:01
Speaker 1: isn't just to walk you through a timeline of a
2:04
Speaker 1: true crime story. We want to deconstruct the actual anatomy
2:07
Speaker 1: of a premeditated deception.
2:09
Speaker 2: Right, exactly.
2:10
Speaker 1: You're going to hear how a seemingly perfect, idyllic American
2:14
Speaker 1: facade was methodically constructed layer by carefully curated layer. And
2:19
Speaker 1: it just brutally, violently dismantled.
2:21
Speaker 2: And in deconstructing that facade, we're going to look really
2:24
Speaker 2: closely at the underlying mechanisms because we need to understand
2:27
Speaker 2: not just what occurred, but the psychological drivers behind it.
2:30
Speaker 2: You know?
2:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. The why of it all.
2:32
Speaker 2: Exactly. We want to show you the profound intersection of
2:36
Speaker 2: behavioral analysis, physical forensics and the digital footprints left behind.
2:41
Speaker 2: you'll see how those distinct elements ultimately converge to unravel
2:45
Speaker 2: what the perpetrator genuinely believed was a flawless masterclass in manipulation.
2:50
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. Because to truly grasp the sheer
2:54
Speaker 1: shock of this crime, you have to understand the stage
2:57
Speaker 1: upon which it was set.
2:58
Speaker 2: The environment is everything here.
3:00
Speaker 1: It is. The contrast between the environment and the violence
3:03
Speaker 1: is just jarring. We are talking about Columbia, Illinois. If
3:07
Speaker 1: you picture a quiet, hyper-safe Midwestern suburb You are picturing Columbia.
3:12
Speaker 2: Right. It's that quintessential American town.
3:15
Speaker 1: Exactly.
3:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:15
Speaker 1: So it's just south across the river from St. Louis, Missouri.
3:19
Speaker 1: And statistically, at the time, Columbia was rated as being
3:22
Speaker 1: safer than 69 percent of U.S. cities. They had an
3:25
Speaker 1: average of just one violent crime per every 1,000 residents.
3:29
Speaker 2: And that statistic, that is the primary currency of a
3:32
Speaker 2: town like Columbia. I mean, when you choose to move
3:34
Speaker 2: to a suburb with those kinds of numbers, you are
3:38
Speaker 2: essentially buying a promise of tranquility.
3:40
Speaker 1: You're paying for peace of mind.
3:42
Speaker 2: Precisely. You aren't expecting home invasions. You are expecting, you know,
3:46
Speaker 2: PTA meetings, pristine lawns, weekend barbecues. It's an environment governed
3:51
Speaker 2: by absolute comforting predictability.
3:53
Speaker 1: And looking at the Coleman family, they seem to be
3:56
Speaker 1: the poster children for that exact predictability. You have Chris
4:00
Speaker 1: and Sherry Coleman. Let's look at their origins for a
4:03
Speaker 1: second because they are rooted in a very structured, disciplined environment.
4:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, they both came from a military background.
4:08
Speaker 1: They did. Both of them were military veterans. Chris served
4:11
Speaker 1: as a Marine. Sherry was in the Air Force. The
4:14
Speaker 1: source material notes they actually met back in May of 1997.
4:17
Speaker 2: And they met at a training seminar, right?
4:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, a canine training seminar at Lackland Air Force Base
4:22
Speaker 1: down in San Antonio, Texas. And they were incredibly young.
4:26
Speaker 1: He was 20, she was 19, both of them barely
4:29
Speaker 1: out of high school.
4:30
Speaker 2: And that military background provides crucial context for how they
4:34
Speaker 2: operated as a unit. The military instills this profound sense
4:38
Speaker 2: of order. a deep respect for the chain of command,
4:41
Speaker 2: and a very specific, rigid way of presenting oneself to
4:44
Speaker 2: the world.
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Speaker 1: Which they totally adopted.
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Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. When two people meet in that highly structured
4:49
Speaker 2: environment and commit to each other so rapidly, I mean,
4:52
Speaker 2: they married just a few months after meeting, they are
4:54
Speaker 2: building their foundational relationship on shared values of duty, protocol,
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Speaker 2: and structure.
5:00
Speaker 1: And they built their life fast. They had two boys, Garrett,
5:04
Speaker 1: who was 11 at the time of the crime, and Gavin,
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Speaker 1: who was 9. and seeking that stable suburban existence we
5:09
Speaker 1: just talked about. Sherry completely embraced the life of a homemaker.
5:13
Speaker 2: She leaned into that traditional role.
5:15
Speaker 1: She did. She's the one providing that bedrock of domestic
5:18
Speaker 1: stability for the boys. Chris, meanwhile, transitioned out of the
5:21
Speaker 1: military and into private security.
5:23
Speaker 2: And he had a very specific upbringing that helped with that,
5:26
Speaker 2: didn't he?
5:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, he actually grew up as the son of two
5:29
Speaker 1: evangelical pastors in Monroe County, Illinois. So he took that
5:33
Speaker 1: deeply ingrained Christian upbringing... combined it with his Marine Corps
5:36
Speaker 1: discipline and physical training, and parlayed it into a highly
5:40
Speaker 1: lucrative career.
5:41
Speaker 2: It's a very specific niche he carved out for himself.
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Speaker 1: Very specific. He became the personal bodyguard for a very prominent,
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Speaker 1: globally recognized televangelist, Joyce Meyer. And you have to realize,
5:53
Speaker 1: this wasn't just a side gig opening car doors.
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Speaker 2: No, this was high-level executive protection.
5:58
Speaker 1: Exactly. He rose through the ranks of her security detail
6:03
Speaker 1: to earn $ 100, 000 a year.
6:05
Speaker 2: Which, you know, earning six figures in a Midwestern suburb
6:09
Speaker 2: in 2009, that provides a very comfortable, insulated lifestyle. It
6:12
Speaker 2: allowed them to maintain that pristine image.
6:14
Speaker 1: Definitely.
6:15
Speaker 2: But a position like that comes with intense, often unspoken
6:18
Speaker 2: strings attached. Working as the personal bodyguard for the head
6:21
Speaker 2: of an international Christian ministry is not a normal nine-to-five
6:25
Speaker 2: corporate job where you just clock out and go home.
6:27
Speaker 1: Not at all. And this is the contrast that I
6:29
Speaker 1: just keep getting stuck on when I look at this case.
6:32
Speaker 1: For Chris... It is like living in two entirely different gravities.
6:35
Speaker 2: That's a really good way to put it. Right.
6:37
Speaker 1: On one hand, you have this quiet, grounded domestic life
6:42
Speaker 1: in a sleepy Illinois suburb with a wife and two
6:45
Speaker 1: young boys who just want to play in the yard.
6:48
Speaker 1: But juxtaposed against that, his professional life is in the stratosphere.
6:52
Speaker 2: The travel alone was massive.
6:54
Speaker 1: Huge. He is traveling constantly. He's flying on private jets.
6:58
Speaker 1: He's providing security at massive international crusades. traveling out of
7:01
Speaker 1: the country two to three times a year, doing 13
7:04
Speaker 1: major rabbinic conferences across the U.S. annually.
7:07
Speaker 2: And crucially, he is living under the intense, magnifying moral
7:10
Speaker 2: scrutiny of a high-profile religious ministry. In that world, public
7:15
Speaker 2: image and moral purity are absolutely everything.
7:18
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this, put yourself in those
7:20
Speaker 1: shoes for a minute. What does that kind of sustained
7:22
Speaker 1: dual life pressure actually do to a person over a decade?
7:26
Speaker 2: You really have to consider the core function of a bodyguard.
7:30
Speaker 2: Your entire professional existence is based on hypervigilance. You are
7:35
Speaker 2: trained to constantly scan for threats, right?
7:38
Speaker 1: Right. Head on a swivel.
7:40
Speaker 2: Exactly. To maintain absolute control of a room, to project authority,
7:45
Speaker 2: and to display unshakable calm. Now, layer that over the
7:49
Speaker 2: spiritual environment of a massive evangelical ministry.
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Speaker 1: That's a heavy mix. It is.
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Speaker 2: You aren't just protecting a corporate CEO. You are ostensibly protecting...
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Speaker 2: A spiritual leader, someone viewed by millions as a literal
8:03
Speaker 2: conduit to God. Therefore, your own moral character is constantly
8:07
Speaker 2: on display as an extension of that leader.
8:09
Speaker 1: Like you have to be above reproach.
8:10
Speaker 2: Precisely. The pressure to appear perfect, to be the ideal
8:14
Speaker 2: Christian husband, the flawless father, the righteous protector, it becomes
8:17
Speaker 2: a suffocating suit of armor. You cannot show weakness. You
8:20
Speaker 2: cannot display marital strife.
8:22
Speaker 1: You definitely can't.
8:23
Speaker 2: And you certainly cannot violate the strict moral tenets of
8:26
Speaker 2: your employer. without risking your entire livelihood, your social circle,
8:30
Speaker 2: and your standing in the community.
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Speaker 1: So the stakes for Chris to maintain the illusion of
8:34
Speaker 1: the all-American family weren't just about avoiding neighborhood gossip over
8:38
Speaker 1: the fence. They were intrinsically tied to his identity, his
8:41
Speaker 1: substantial income, and his entire worldview.
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Speaker 2: And when a person possessing highly narcissistic traits realizes that
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Speaker 2: their messy internal reality no longer matches that pristine, highly
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Speaker 2: profitable external illusion... They rarely just step away. Right.
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Speaker 1: They don't just hand in their resignation.
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Speaker 2: No, they don't simply quit or admit failure. They look
9:02
Speaker 2: for ways to eliminate the problem without damaging the illusion
9:05
Speaker 2: they've built.
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Speaker 1: Which brings us to the fracturing of that illusion. But
9:09
Speaker 1: looking at the timeline in the Law and Crime Report,
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Speaker 1: it doesn't fracture from within, well, at least not in
9:15
Speaker 1: the way that anyone in Columbia, Illinois could see.
9:17
Speaker 2: Right. It appeared to come from the outside.
9:19
Speaker 1: Exactly. It starts with this aggressive, terrifying external threat. And
9:24
Speaker 1: the threat is directed right at the heart of Chris's
9:26
Speaker 1: high-stakes career.
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Speaker 2: The timeline of terror officially begins in mid-November 2008.
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Speaker 1: And it starts in the digital realm. An email is
9:35
Speaker 1: sent out. It goes to Chris, to his boss, Joyce Meyer,
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Speaker 1: and to Joyce's son. The email address itself is designed
9:42
Speaker 1: to just chill your blood. It's sent from destroychris at gmail.com.
9:46
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
9:47
Speaker 1: And the subject line doesn't mince words at all. It
9:50
Speaker 1: simply reads, Chris's family, they are dead.
9:55
Speaker 2: Imagine being on the receiving end of that. I mean,
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Speaker 2: the psychological impact of an email like that is profound
10:00
Speaker 2: and it ripples outward. It isn't just terrifying for Chris.
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Speaker 2: It puts the entire executive team of the ministry on
10:07
Speaker 2: high alert.
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Speaker 1: Because it threatens the whole operation.
10:09
Speaker 2: Exactly. You have a global religious figure whose head of
10:12
Speaker 2: security is now being actively targeted. And the contents of
10:15
Speaker 2: the email were highly, highly specific.
10:17
Speaker 1: Oh, incredibly specific. It wasn't just a vague, angry troll online.
10:21
Speaker 1: The email was filled with obscenities. It demanded that Joyce
10:24
Speaker 1: Meyer stop preaching the bullshit. Otherwise, the sender would execute
10:27
Speaker 1: Chris's family.
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Speaker 2: The escalation there is intense.
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Speaker 1: But here is the part that takes it from a
10:31
Speaker 1: disturbing prank to an active threat matrix. The author of
10:35
Speaker 1: this email laid out geographical vulnerabilities. They explicitly stated they
10:41
Speaker 1: would kill the family while they slept during the upcoming
10:44
Speaker 1: Houston conference.
10:45
Speaker 2: They knew the schedule.
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Speaker 1: They did. The email went on to say that if
10:49
Speaker 1: they missed them in Houston, they would kill them during
10:51
Speaker 1: a scheduled book tour or the upcoming ministry trip to India.
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Speaker 1: The author flat out stated, I know where he lives
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Speaker 1: and I know they are alone.
11:01
Speaker 2: The leverage here is the insider knowledge. That is what
11:04
Speaker 2: elevates the threat level for law enforcement and private security alike.
11:08
Speaker 2: It wasn't just a random stalker throwing darts at a calendar.
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Speaker 1: Right, they weren't guessing.
11:12
Speaker 2: No, it was someone who intimately understood the intricacies of
11:15
Speaker 2: Chris's travel schedule. They knew that his job, the very
11:18
Speaker 2: mechanism providing the $ 100, 000 salary for his family, was the
11:22
Speaker 2: exact thing leaving them vulnerable.
11:25
Speaker 1: And that's so twisted.
11:26
Speaker 2: It really is. By tying the threat directly to his
11:30
Speaker 2: specific scheduled absences, the author was maximizing the psychological terror
11:34
Speaker 2: for his wife, Sherry. I mean, she was the one
11:36
Speaker 2: who had to stay behind in that house with two
11:38
Speaker 2: young boys, knowing a predator was tracking her husband's flights.
11:42
Speaker 1: And it didn't stay safely contained behind a computer screen.
11:45
Speaker 1: The terror bled out into the real world. In January 2009,
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Speaker 1: an unsigned, physical, handwritten letter is left directly in the
11:55
Speaker 1: Coleman family's mailbox.
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Speaker 2: Right at their home.
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Speaker 1: Right at the house. It contained similar obscenities and demanded
12:00
Speaker 1: that they deny your God publicly or else no more
12:03
Speaker 1: opportunities time is running out for you and your family.
12:06
Speaker 2: And there's something specific about that letter, isn't there?
12:08
Speaker 1: Yes. I want to highlight a tiny detail from the
12:11
Speaker 1: source material here because it becomes absolutely massive later on.
12:14
Speaker 1: In that handwritten letter, the word opportunities was misspelled. The
12:18
Speaker 1: author spelled it with a U instead.
12:19
Speaker 2: Of an O. A seemingly minor detail, right? Just a
12:22
Speaker 2: simple phonetic typo. But in the world of forensics, behavioral analysis,
12:26
Speaker 2: and linguistic profiling, these unique anomalies are gold dust.
12:30
Speaker 1: They really are.
12:31
Speaker 2: They are the specific idiosyncratic threads that investigators pull to
12:35
Speaker 2: unravel a disguised identity.
12:38
Speaker 1: Then, a few months later in April 2009, there's another
12:41
Speaker 1: physical letter. This one is framed as a last warning.
12:45
Speaker 1: It explicitly ties this whole vendetta to Chris's role, protecting
12:49
Speaker 1: what the author called a fake religious life of stealing
12:52
Speaker 1: people's money.
12:53
Speaker 2: Really leaning into the anti-religion angle.
12:56
Speaker 1: Heavily. The author wrote, your worst nightmare is about to happen.
13:01
Speaker 1: So you see the escalation. It moves from an anonymous
13:03
Speaker 1: email to a physical drop in their personal mailbox to
13:07
Speaker 1: a final countdown.
13:08
Speaker 2: And this escalation protocol triggers the countermeasures. Chris does what
13:11
Speaker 2: anyone in his position is supposed to do. He contacts
13:15
Speaker 2: a local police.
13:16
Speaker 1: He does. And he gets localized help from a neighbor.
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Speaker 1: Detective Sergeant Justin Barlow, who is a Columbia police officer
13:22
Speaker 1: and happens to live nearby in the neighborhood, agrees to
13:24
Speaker 1: keep a close eye out.
13:26
Speaker 2: Which makes sense, utilizing a trusted neighbor. Right.
13:28
Speaker 1: Barlow uses his professional expertise and actually sets up a
13:31
Speaker 1: police security camera specifically aimed at the Coleman's mailbox to
13:35
Speaker 1: catch whoever is brazen enough to drop off these letters.
13:38
Speaker 2: It's a highly logical measured response by local law enforcement.
13:42
Speaker 2: They are trying to assist a citizen and a neighbor
13:45
Speaker 2: who is clearly in distress.
13:48
Speaker 1: OK, but I have to stop here and actively question
13:50
Speaker 1: the logic of this situation on behalf of anyone listening
13:53
Speaker 1: who might be scratching their head.
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Speaker 2: Call for it.
13:55
Speaker 1: Think about this. If you are Chris Coleman, you are
14:00
Speaker 1: an elite, highly trained, highly paid bodyguard. Your literal everyday
14:06
Speaker 1: profession involves threat assessment, secure perimeters, and VIP protection.
14:10
Speaker 2: Right. That's what he does for a living.
14:12
Speaker 1: And your family is being repeatedly, explicitly threatened with violent death,
14:16
Speaker 1: specifically tied to the moments you leave town. Why on
14:20
Speaker 1: earth are you relying on a neighbor's single mailbox camera?
14:24
Speaker 2: It does seem completely inadequate.
14:25
Speaker 1: It's baffling. If it were me and I had that
14:28
Speaker 1: kind of money and training, why are you leaving your
14:30
Speaker 1: wife and two young children alone in a suburban house?
14:32
Speaker 1: Why not immediately relocate your family to a hotel or
14:36
Speaker 1: hire a private security firm to sit outside or move
14:38
Speaker 1: them to a secure ministry compound while you travel to
14:41
Speaker 1: India or Houston?
14:42
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how our perception of a behavioral
14:45
Speaker 2: response changes entirely depending on the lens through which we
14:48
Speaker 2: view it.
14:49
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
14:50
Speaker 2: Well, to the outside observer, to the neighbors, to the
14:53
Speaker 2: Joyce Meyer ministry, and to the local police at the time,
14:57
Speaker 2: it looks like a man trying to bravely hold his ground.
15:01
Speaker 2: It looks like a tragic, perhaps stubborn, underestimation of a stalker.
15:05
Speaker 1: Like he's just being proud.
15:07
Speaker 2: Exactly. It perfectly plays into the cultural narrative of the stoic,
15:12
Speaker 2: protective man who refuses to be intimidated out of his
15:15
Speaker 2: own castle.
15:16
Speaker 1: But looking at it critically, it defies all of his
15:19
Speaker 1: professional training. If his boss received that threat, he would
15:22
Speaker 1: have moved her to a bunker. But for his family,
15:25
Speaker 1: he just lets a neighbor put up a camera.
15:27
Speaker 2: And that profound disconnect is the behavioral red flag. When
15:30
Speaker 2: a person's actions completely contradict their foundational training, their professional instincts,
15:35
Speaker 2: and basic self-preservation for their loved ones, investigators have to
15:39
Speaker 2: ask why.
15:40
Speaker 1: They have to look deeper.
15:41
Speaker 2: Right. In hindsight, we can clearly see that this wasn't
15:44
Speaker 2: a tragic underestimation of a threat. This was the meticulous
15:47
Speaker 2: stage setting of a false narrative.
15:49
Speaker 1: He was building the perimeter wall, but he was intentionally
15:53
Speaker 1: making sure it looked like someone was trying to scale it.
15:55
Speaker 2: He was establishing a deeply documented, verifiable history of an
15:59
Speaker 2: external enemy. He involved his powerful employer. He involved the
16:03
Speaker 2: local police. He involved his neighbor with a badge.
16:06
Speaker 1: Creating a massive paper trail.
16:07
Speaker 2: He was actively creating a paper trail of victimization so
16:11
Speaker 2: that when the terrible event eventually occurred, everyone's mind, the
16:15
Speaker 2: police mind, the media, the church, would immediately jump to
16:19
Speaker 2: the crazed anti-religion stalker rather than looking at the husband.
16:24
Speaker 1: And tragically, that terrible event did occur. The theoretical threats
16:27
Speaker 1: they had been documenting for months materialized into a horrific
16:31
Speaker 1: reality on the morning of May 5th, 2009.
16:33
Speaker 2: Yes.
16:34
Speaker 1: But as we walk through the exact timeline of this morning,
16:37
Speaker 1: it immediately introduces bizarre paradoxes that police are trained to spot.
16:40
Speaker 2: The timeline is the absolute spine of this entire investigation.
16:44
Speaker 2: The minutes matter here. Let's trace his reported movements carefully.
16:48
Speaker 1: It is a Tuesday. The air is mild. At 5.43 a.m.,
16:51
Speaker 1: according to Chris, he leaves the house in Columbia to
16:54
Speaker 1: go to a gym in South St. Louis County.
16:56
Speaker 2: Okay, so he's out of the house early. Early.
16:58
Speaker 1: While he is supposedly out at the gym, he calls
17:01
Speaker 1: his wife Sherry twice. He leaves a voicemail. He also
17:05
Speaker 1: sends her a text message. He gets no answer to
17:07
Speaker 1: any of these.
17:08
Speaker 2: Which, you know, could just be someone sleeping in.
17:11
Speaker 1: Exactly. But then, at 6.45 a.m., while he is driving
17:15
Speaker 1: back home over the Jefferson Barracks Bridge, which crosses the
17:18
Speaker 1: Mississippi River, he calls his neighbor, Detective Sergeant Barlow, to
17:23
Speaker 1: ask for a welfare check on his own house.
17:25
Speaker 2: That's quite a leap.
17:26
Speaker 1: He tells Barlow that Sherry usually picks up the phone
17:29
Speaker 1: and is usually awake by this time, and he's worried
17:32
Speaker 1: because of the threat.
17:33
Speaker 2: Let's pause right there and deeply analyze that specific behavior.
17:37
Speaker 2: He has been out of his house for barely an hour.
17:39
Speaker 2: It's not even 7 a.m. yet. Right. Now, yes, there
17:42
Speaker 2: is a documented history of threats, which would understandably heighten
17:45
Speaker 2: any husband's anxiety. But escalating straight to a police welfare
17:49
Speaker 2: check because your wife didn't answer a text at 630
17:52
Speaker 2: in the morning while you were at the gym, that
17:54
Speaker 2: is a very, very rapid acceleration.
17:57
Speaker 1: It's almost like he needed the police to be the
17:59
Speaker 1: ones to breach the perimeter. He needed them to find
18:02
Speaker 1: what was inside.
18:03
Speaker 2: It is a classic textbook hallmark of crime scene staging.
18:08
Speaker 2: The perpetrator desperately wants to ensure that they are not
18:11
Speaker 2: the first one to officially discover the bodies.
18:14
Speaker 1: They want distance from the discovery.
18:16
Speaker 2: Exactly. They want credible third-party witnesses, preferably law enforcement, to
18:22
Speaker 2: establish the initial state of the scene. They want someone
18:25
Speaker 2: else to note the broken window or the open door.
18:28
Speaker 2: And crucially, they want an audience to observe their shock
18:32
Speaker 2: upon learning the devastating news.
18:34
Speaker 1: Well, Barlow takes the call seriously because he is intimately
18:38
Speaker 1: aware of the death threats. He meets another Columbia police
18:41
Speaker 1: officer in front of the Coleman house. They ring the
18:43
Speaker 1: doorbell and they get no response.
18:45
Speaker 2: So they have to check the perimeter. Right.
18:46
Speaker 1: They walk around to the back of the property and
18:48
Speaker 1: they find an open window. The window screen has been
18:51
Speaker 1: removed and is leaning against a table and some patio chairs.
18:54
Speaker 2: Again, we see the staging elements. An open window in
18:57
Speaker 2: the back of a house with a screen neatly propped
19:00
Speaker 2: against a chair is the universal... Almost cinematic symbol for
19:05
Speaker 2: an intruder was here.
19:06
Speaker 1: The officers decide to go inside through that open window.
19:10
Speaker 1: Immediately upon entering, they are hit with a strong, distinct
19:14
Speaker 1: chemical smell of spray paint lingering in the air.
19:17
Speaker 2: That must have been overwhelming.
19:18
Speaker 1: And when they come up the stairs from the basement
19:20
Speaker 1: level into the main living area, they step into a
19:23
Speaker 1: waking nightmare. The walls of this pristine suburban home are
19:27
Speaker 1: covered in disturbing writings. scrawled in bright blood-red spray paint.
19:32
Speaker 2: Just massive red letters everywhere. Yeah.
19:35
Speaker 1: The graffiti says things like, You have paid punished, and
19:38
Speaker 1: I am always watching.
19:39
Speaker 2: The visual shock of that, combined with the chemical odor,
19:42
Speaker 2: completely sets the atmosphere of a home invasion driven by
19:45
Speaker 2: deep-seated hatred. And then they discover the family.
19:49
Speaker 1: We have to relax. these facts impartially based on the
19:51
Speaker 1: law and crime report, but they are incredibly grim and
19:54
Speaker 1: difficult to process. The officers find Sherry in her bedroom.
19:58
Speaker 1: She is naked and lying face down.
20:00
Speaker 2: And the officers notice something immediately.
20:02
Speaker 1: They did. The veteran officers immediately note something crucial. Her
20:07
Speaker 1: body is already setting into rigor mortis. In their respective
20:10
Speaker 1: bedrooms down the hall, 11-year-old Garrett and 9-year-old Gavin are
20:14
Speaker 1: also found dead.
20:16
Speaker 2: It's just horrific.
20:17
Speaker 1: There is more of that red spray paint on the
20:19
Speaker 1: walls in their rooms. And horrifyingly, the killer sprayed the
20:23
Speaker 1: paint directly onto the boys' bodies and their bedsheets.
20:26
Speaker 2: The sheer brutality and the desecration of the scene is staggering.
20:30
Speaker 2: It goes beyond just murder into profound disrespect.
20:34
Speaker 1: The medical examiner determines that all three of them were
20:37
Speaker 1: murdered by ligature strangulation. and the crime scene technicians discovered
20:41
Speaker 1: devastating detail. Sherry's hair is found on Gavin's body, which
20:45
Speaker 1: indicated to investigators that she had been murdered first and
20:48
Speaker 1: the killer had carried trace evidence of her to the
20:50
Speaker 1: children's rooms.
20:51
Speaker 2: The mechanism of death here, the use of ligature, is
20:54
Speaker 2: highly significant from a behavioral profiling standpoint. Strangulation is a
20:58
Speaker 2: highly intimate, hands-on method of killing.
21:01
Speaker 1: It's not quick either.
21:02
Speaker 2: No, it isn't a gunshot fired from across a room.
21:05
Speaker 2: It requires sustained physical force, immense exertion, and close physical
21:10
Speaker 2: proximity to the victim for several minutes as they fight
21:13
Speaker 2: for their life. It is deeply personal.
21:16
Speaker 1: And the sequencing. Right.
21:17
Speaker 2: The sequencing that the trace evidence suggests, killing the mother
21:20
Speaker 2: first to eliminate the primary adult threat, then systematically moving
21:24
Speaker 2: to the children, it demonstrates a chilling level of calculated execution.
21:29
Speaker 1: While the police are taking in this horrifying scene and
21:32
Speaker 1: trying to secure the house, they hear a door open
21:34
Speaker 1: down in the basement. It's Chris, finally returning from the gym.
21:38
Speaker 2: He finally arrives.
21:39
Speaker 1: They intercept him, tell him there is a situation, and
21:42
Speaker 1: instruct him to stay outside while they finish clearing the property.
21:46
Speaker 1: Once the house is secure, they go out to break
21:47
Speaker 1: the news to him. The timeline notes this happens at 6.56 a.m.
21:51
Speaker 2: Let's look closely at the time discrepancy in his morning commute.
21:54
Speaker 2: Because he called Sergeant Barlow from the Jefferson Barracks Bridge
21:57
Speaker 2: at 6.45 a.m., he physically arrives at the house at 6.56 a.m.
22:01
Speaker 2: So that's 11 minutes. That is an 11 to 13
22:05
Speaker 2: minute time frame for a drive that on a Tuesday
22:08
Speaker 2: morning usually takes about seven minutes.
22:10
Speaker 1: Right. If you're a detective, you immediately ask, where do
22:14
Speaker 1: those extra five to six minutes go?
22:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.
22:16
Speaker 1: If you are so panicked about your family that you
22:18
Speaker 1: call in a police welfare check, why are you driving slowly?
22:22
Speaker 2: Exactly.
22:23
Speaker 1: Or more sinisterly, was he stopping somewhere along the route
22:26
Speaker 1: to dispose of evidence?
22:28
Speaker 2: Law enforcement immediately flagged that gap. When time is unaccounted
22:33
Speaker 2: for in the immediate aftermath of a violent crime, it's
22:35
Speaker 2: a massive red flag. But his physical reaction to the
22:38
Speaker 2: news of his family's annihilation was an even bigger red
22:41
Speaker 2: flag for the officers on the scene.
22:43
Speaker 1: The police inform him that his wife and children are dead.
22:46
Speaker 1: He starts to cry. But he makes absolutely no attempt
22:48
Speaker 1: to go inside the house to see them.
22:50
Speaker 2: That passive reaction goes against almost every natural ingrained human instinct.
22:55
Speaker 1: It really does.
22:56
Speaker 2: When a parent or a spouse is told their loved
22:58
Speaker 2: ones have been hurt or killed inside a structure, The
23:01
Speaker 2: overwhelming visceral reaction is to rush to them, to see
23:04
Speaker 2: for themselves, to hold them, to demand to know if
23:07
Speaker 2: the paramedics have made a mistake.
23:09
Speaker 1: We would have to hold them back.
23:10
Speaker 2: Yes. First responders will tell you that they often have
23:14
Speaker 2: to physically tackle or restrain family members from contaminating a
23:18
Speaker 2: crime scene because their primal desperation to get to their
23:21
Speaker 2: children is so overpowering.
23:24
Speaker 1: But Chris just stays outside on the grass.
23:26
Speaker 2: He stays outside. He produces tears, but he doesn't try
23:30
Speaker 2: to breach the perimeter. Police are highly trained to observe
23:33
Speaker 2: these subtle behavioral differences in immediate aftermath of a tragedy.
23:38
Speaker 2: They're looking for the gap between genuine chaotic shock and
23:43
Speaker 2: performative grief.
23:44
Speaker 1: Performative grief.
23:45
Speaker 2: Genuine shock is messy. It's desperate. It's angry. It's physically demanding.
23:50
Speaker 2: Performative grief is usually passive. The person is playing the
23:54
Speaker 2: role of the sad survivor, acting out what they think
23:56
Speaker 2: a sad person looks like, but they completely lack the chaotic,
24:00
Speaker 2: primal drive to interact with the reality of the scene.
24:03
Speaker 1: Chris played the role of the weeping father, but he
24:06
Speaker 1: missed the underlying instinct.
24:07
Speaker 2: Completely missed it.
24:09
Speaker 1: So instantly, the physical evidence and the behavioral cues at
24:12
Speaker 1: the scene flat out contradict the narrative Chris has been
24:15
Speaker 1: building for six months. The investigation immediately shifts gears. It
24:19
Speaker 1: goes from a frantic hunt for this mysterious external intruder
24:22
Speaker 1: who hates Joyce Meyer to an intense, focused interrogation of
24:27
Speaker 1: the husband and father.
24:28
Speaker 2: Because the biological reality of the crime scene betrayed his
24:31
Speaker 2: narrative before he even opened his mouth in the interview room. Yes.
24:34
Speaker 1: Let's get into how the biology dismantles his alibi. The
24:38
Speaker 1: medical examiner arrives at the house and examines the bodies.
24:41
Speaker 1: And they specifically look at rigor mortis.
24:43
Speaker 2: This is key.
24:44
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned earlier that the patrol officers noticed this
24:47
Speaker 1: right away. But explain for the listener how rigor mortis
24:51
Speaker 1: actually works and why it's the ticking clock that caught him.
24:54
Speaker 2: So rigor mortis is the stiffening of the body's muscles
24:57
Speaker 2: after death. It happens due to chemical changes, specifically the
25:01
Speaker 2: depletion of ATP in the myofibrils of the muscle tissue.
25:04
Speaker 1: It's a biological process.
25:06
Speaker 2: Exactly. It follows a very predictable timeline depending on environmental
25:10
Speaker 2: factors like room temperature. It usually starts within a couple
25:13
Speaker 2: of hours, peaks around 12 hours, and then gradually dissipates.
25:17
Speaker 1: Okay.
25:18
Speaker 2: An officer at the scene, who was used to seeing
25:20
Speaker 2: fresh fatalities from traffic accidents, immediately noticed that these bodies
25:24
Speaker 2: were already stiffening. They did not look like they had
25:28
Speaker 2: died 20 minutes ago.
25:30
Speaker 1: The medical examiner determined the official time of death based
25:33
Speaker 1: on the progression of this rigor mortis. And the timeline
25:36
Speaker 1: they established blew Chris's alibi completely out of the water.
25:41
Speaker 1: They concluded that the family died sometime between 3 a.m.
25:44
Speaker 2: And 5 a.m. Which is a massive, insurmountable problem for
25:48
Speaker 2: Chris's story, because by his own admission, he didn't leave
25:51
Speaker 2: for the gym until 5.43 a.m.
25:54
Speaker 1: Exactly. He claimed he woke up, kissed his wife goodbye,
25:58
Speaker 1: left her and the boys sleeping peacefully in their beds,
26:01
Speaker 1: and went to work out. The biology proved that they
26:03
Speaker 1: were dead long before he ever walked out the front door.
26:06
Speaker 2: They had to be.
26:07
Speaker 1: They were murdered while he was unquestionably inside the house
26:09
Speaker 1: with them.
26:10
Speaker 2: You cannot argue with cellular biology. It doesn't lie. It
26:13
Speaker 2: doesn't have an agenda against you. and it cannot be
26:16
Speaker 2: manipulated by a staged window screen or a fake stalker letter.
26:20
Speaker 2: It is an objective record of time.
26:22
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Knowing that the timeline
26:26
Speaker 1: proves he was in the house, the police take him
26:29
Speaker 1: in for a six-hour interrogation. And if you watch true crime,
26:33
Speaker 1: you might expect him to go in there screaming, slamming
26:36
Speaker 1: their hands on the table, accusing him of being a monster.
26:39
Speaker 2: Right, the TV approach.
26:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they don't do that. They use a highly
26:43
Speaker 1: specialized empathetic approach. They sit across from him, they speak softly,
26:47
Speaker 1: they look him in the eye, and they basically offer
26:49
Speaker 1: him an emotional out.
26:51
Speaker 2: It's a very specific tactic.
26:53
Speaker 1: They say things like, we understand how pressure can make
26:56
Speaker 1: people snap. One investigator literally looks at him and says,
26:59
Speaker 1: there's no way to turn clocks back. You can't turn
27:01
Speaker 1: clocks back.
27:02
Speaker 2: That is a textbook interrogation technique, often rooted in the
27:05
Speaker 2: read technique or similar methods of theme development.
27:08
Speaker 1: Break that down for us.
27:09
Speaker 2: If you aren't familiar with it, The goal of this
27:11
Speaker 2: approach isn't to bully a confession out of a suspect
27:14
Speaker 2: through intimidation. That rarely works and often leads to false confessions. Instead,
27:20
Speaker 2: the interrogator tries to minimize the moral weight of the crime.
27:24
Speaker 1: They make it seem like an accident.
27:25
Speaker 2: Basically, they offer the suspect a narrative that makes their
27:29
Speaker 2: horrific actions seem somewhat understandable or perhaps driven by a
27:34
Speaker 2: momentary uncontrollable impulse due to stress. You give them a
27:38
Speaker 2: way to confess without having to admit to being a
27:41
Speaker 2: cold-blooded calculating monster.
27:43
Speaker 1: Okay, I see.
27:44
Speaker 2: You say, hey, we know you were under a lot
27:46
Speaker 2: of stress with the ministry. You've been getting these threats.
27:49
Speaker 2: The marriage was tense. Things just got out of hand
27:51
Speaker 2: in the heat of the moment. We get it.
27:53
Speaker 1: So it's about lowering the psychological barrier to admitting guilt.
27:57
Speaker 1: But why wouldn't a suspect just see right through that?
27:59
Speaker 2: A truly innocent person usually does. An innocent person will
28:02
Speaker 2: get angry and say, what are you talking about? I
28:04
Speaker 2: didn't snap. I didn't do this.
28:06
Speaker 1: They defend themselves.
28:07
Speaker 2: Right. But a guilty person, especially one who is exhausted
28:11
Speaker 2: and realizing their plan is falling apart, might grab onto
28:15
Speaker 2: that lifeline. They might prefer the narrative of the stressed
28:19
Speaker 2: husband who made a tragic mistake over the narrative of
28:22
Speaker 2: the psychopathic family annihilator.
28:24
Speaker 1: But Chris doesn't bite. He refuses to confess. He sticks
28:28
Speaker 1: rigidly to his story that he'd left them alive. However...
28:31
Speaker 1: His physical behavior in that small interrogation room is incredibly suspicious.
28:36
Speaker 2: Very suspicious.
28:37
Speaker 1: During the interview, he asks the detectives for a blanket.
28:40
Speaker 1: Not because he's cold, but because he's trying to hide
28:42
Speaker 1: his arms. He has fresh scratch marks on his skin.
28:45
Speaker 2: Those are defensive wounds. When you strangle three human beings,
28:49
Speaker 2: especially a healthy adult woman who is fighting desperately for
28:51
Speaker 2: her life, there will be a struggle.
28:54
Speaker 1: She fought back.
28:55
Speaker 2: She's going to claw. She's going to fight. Those scratches
28:58
Speaker 2: were the biological receipts of that struggle, and he knew
29:00
Speaker 2: he had to hide them from the detectives.
29:03
Speaker 1: And beyond the physical hiding, there was a glaring auditory
29:07
Speaker 1: void during this six-hour interview. Throughout the entire ordeal, as
29:11
Speaker 1: the detectives are pressing him, Chris never once asks the
29:15
Speaker 1: police how his family died.
29:17
Speaker 2: That silence is the deafening sound of guilt.
29:20
Speaker 1: He never asks.
29:21
Speaker 2: An innocent person who has just had their entire world
29:24
Speaker 2: ripped away from them wants to know everything. they will
29:27
Speaker 2: bombard you with questions. Who did it? How did they
29:30
Speaker 2: get in? Did they suffer? Were they awake? Right.
29:32
Speaker 1: You'd want every detail.
29:33
Speaker 2: A guilty person doesn't ask those questions because they already
29:36
Speaker 2: possess all the answers. Furthermore, they are terrified that if
29:39
Speaker 2: they asked a question, But.
29:54
Speaker 1: The evidence gathering outside that room is turning into an
29:57
Speaker 1: absolute avalanche. The forensic teams are working, and the story
30:01
Speaker 1: they uncover is damning.
30:03
Speaker 2: The evidence just keeps piling up.
30:05
Speaker 1: First, they look at the bodies. Now, Chris's DNA naturally
30:09
Speaker 1: belongs in the house. He lives there. He sleeps in
30:11
Speaker 1: that bed. Yeah. But there is absolutely no unknown or
30:15
Speaker 1: foreign DNA found on Sherry or the boys. The phantom
30:19
Speaker 1: intruder left zero trace.
30:21
Speaker 2: From a forensic standpoint, that is almost a physical impossibility
30:24
Speaker 2: in a close-quarter struggle involving three victims. If a stranger
30:28
Speaker 2: breaks in and strangles three people to death, they are
30:30
Speaker 2: going to leave sweat, skin cells, hair, or saliva.
30:34
Speaker 1: Something has to be left behind.
30:35
Speaker 2: Exactly. The complete absence of an intruder's DNA is proof
30:38
Speaker 2: of the intruder's non-existence.
30:40
Speaker 1: Second, the spray paint. The terrifying, blood-red graffiti on the
30:45
Speaker 1: walls and the bedsheets. Investigators take a sample of Chris's handwriting,
30:49
Speaker 1: and they realize it is a match. The specific way
30:52
Speaker 1: he formed his letters in everyday life matched the spray-painted
30:55
Speaker 1: threats exactly.
30:56
Speaker 2: Handwriting analysis can be a complex and sometimes controversial science,
30:59
Speaker 2: but it holds weight.
31:00
Speaker 1: Even with spray paint?
31:01
Speaker 2: Yes. Even when a person is attempting to disguise their
31:04
Speaker 2: handwriting by using large block letters with a clumsy spray can,
31:09
Speaker 2: certain subconscious motor habits, the way they cross a T
31:13
Speaker 2: or loop a P, they still translate to the wall.
31:16
Speaker 1: But it gets so much worse for him than just
31:17
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis.
31:18
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
31:19
Speaker 1: During the interview, the detectives asked him casually if he
31:21
Speaker 1: owned any spray paint. He lied and said he didn't
31:24
Speaker 1: think so.
31:25
Speaker 2: Oh, huge mistake.
31:26
Speaker 1: But investigators did the basic police work. They pulled his
31:29
Speaker 1: financial records, they subpoenaed his bank, and they found a
31:33
Speaker 1: credit card receipt proving he had purchased that exact brand
31:37
Speaker 1: and that exact color of bright red spray paint months
31:40
Speaker 1: prior to the murders.
31:41
Speaker 2: He literally bought the murder weapon, the tool he used
31:44
Speaker 2: to desecrate his family and stage the scene... Using his
31:48
Speaker 2: own traceable credit card.
31:49
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. And remember Sergeant Barlow's security camera? The one that
31:54
Speaker 1: Chris agreed to set up to catch the person sending
31:56
Speaker 1: the threat.
31:56
Speaker 2: Oh, this part is just incredible.
31:58
Speaker 1: Investigators pull the tape from that morning. The camera, which
32:02
Speaker 1: had a clear, unobstructed view of the front of the property,
32:05
Speaker 1: showed absolutely no one approaching the mailbox to deliver any letters.
32:10
Speaker 1: And more importantly, it showed no one entering the house
32:13
Speaker 1: after Chris left for the gym at 543 a.m.
32:16
Speaker 2: The very security measure he helped initiate to prove his
32:19
Speaker 2: victimization became the ultimate unblinking witness against him. It definitively
32:25
Speaker 2: proved the perimeter was never breached by an outsider.
32:29
Speaker 1: And then there's the digital footprint. The whole six-month campaign
32:32
Speaker 1: of terror unravels with just a few keystrokes by the
32:35
Speaker 1: cybercrimes unit. That terrifying email address, destroychris at gmail.com.
32:40
Speaker 2: The one that started it all.
32:41
Speaker 1: The one that threatened Joyce Meyer. Investigators served a subpoena
32:45
Speaker 1: to Google, traced the IP address, and followed the digital breadcrumbs.
32:49
Speaker 1: It led directly back to a secondary account that Chris
32:51
Speaker 1: had set up himself six months earlier from his own devices.
32:55
Speaker 2: The call was coming from inside the house, quite literally
32:58
Speaker 2: and digitally.
32:58
Speaker 1: And the physical letters. Remember the one in January that
33:00
Speaker 1: misspelled the word opportunities with a U?
33:03
Speaker 2: Right, the phonetic spelling.
33:04
Speaker 1: Investigators got a warrant, seized Chris's personal computer, and searched
33:08
Speaker 1: his hard drive. They ran keyword searches and found that
33:12
Speaker 1: he habitually misspelled that exact word in that exact unique
33:15
Speaker 1: way across multiple mundane documents.
33:18
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate digital fingerprint. It is a subconscious
33:22
Speaker 2: linguistic error that seamlessly tied the physical threat letter found
33:26
Speaker 2: in the mailbox to the digital author sitting at the keyboard.
33:29
Speaker 1: I have to pause and marvel at this because it
33:31
Speaker 1: boggles the mind. It's what I call the arrogant criminal paradox.
33:34
Speaker 2: The arrogant criminal paradox. I like that.
33:36
Speaker 1: Right. How does someone spend six whole months... meticulously planning
33:41
Speaker 1: a murder, setting up dummy email accounts, staging a complex
33:45
Speaker 1: narrative of a crazed stalker targeting his billionaire boss, involving
33:48
Speaker 1: the police, and yet make elementary, brain-dead mistakes, like using
33:53
Speaker 1: his own traceable credit card for the spray paint.
33:56
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem to make sense.
33:57
Speaker 1: Or failing to use a basic word processor spellcheck. How
34:00
Speaker 1: do you reconcile that high level of premeditation with that
34:03
Speaker 1: staggering level of stupidity?
34:05
Speaker 2: It is a fascinating psychological phenomenon. And it is deeply
34:09
Speaker 2: rooted in the blind spots created by narcissism. A highly
34:13
Speaker 2: narcissistic personality genuinely believes they are simply smarter than everyone
34:18
Speaker 2: else in the room.
34:19
Speaker 1: They think they're untouchable.
34:20
Speaker 2: They believe they can outsmart the local police, outsmart the
34:23
Speaker 2: forensic system, and outsmart reality itself. Because they become so
34:28
Speaker 2: intensely focused on the grand narrative, the overarching masterpiece of
34:32
Speaker 2: their deception, they suffer from what psychologists call Cognitive tunneling.
34:37
Speaker 1: Cognitive tunneling. Yes.
34:39
Speaker 2: They completely lose sight of the mundane, basic details. They
34:43
Speaker 2: don't think a detective will bother checking a credit card
34:45
Speaker 2: receipt for a can of paint because they assume the
34:48
Speaker 2: detective will be far too dazzled by the brilliant fake
34:51
Speaker 2: stalker narrative they've spun.
34:52
Speaker 1: Like they're too clever for receipts.
34:54
Speaker 2: Exactly. They believe their own brilliance acts as a magical
34:57
Speaker 2: shield against basic foundational forensic reality.
35:01
Speaker 1: So the physical and digital evidence points squarely, irrefutably at Chris.
35:06
Speaker 1: The rigor mortis timeline, the paint receipt, the computer forensics,
35:09
Speaker 1: the security cameras. It's him.
35:11
Speaker 2: There's no doubt.
35:12
Speaker 1: But the why remains utterly baffling. Why go to these horrific,
35:17
Speaker 1: elaborate lengths? To understand the true motive, the source material
35:21
Speaker 1: tells us we have to look completely away from the
35:23
Speaker 1: crime scene in Illinois and look thousands of miles south
35:26
Speaker 1: toward Florida.
35:27
Speaker 2: We have to shift our focus to examine the secret
35:30
Speaker 2: life he was cultivating in the shadows of his marriage.
35:33
Speaker 1: During the investigation, Chris admitted there were some cracks in
35:35
Speaker 1: the marriage. He told police that he and Sherry had
35:38
Speaker 1: typical communication issues and had actually sat down and discussed
35:42
Speaker 1: divorce back in December 2008. But he claimed they decided
35:46
Speaker 1: to forego the divorce and try marital counseling instead.
35:50
Speaker 2: And if you understand the environment he worked in, that
35:53
Speaker 2: decision to avoid divorce was heavily influenced by the Joyce
35:55
Speaker 2: Meyer ministry.
35:56
Speaker 1: Why is that?
35:57
Speaker 2: Like many evangelical organizations, they held a very strict conservative
36:02
Speaker 2: stance on the sanctity of marriage. Divorce is heavily frowned upon.
36:06
Speaker 2: Chris knew that a messy divorce would seriously tarnish his
36:09
Speaker 2: image as a righteous protector and potentially jeopardize his standing
36:13
Speaker 2: within the ministry.
36:14
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Sherry was living in absolute terror. She knew something
36:19
Speaker 1: was deeply, fundamentally wrong in her home. She famously confided
36:23
Speaker 1: in a close friend, stating bluntly, That.
36:28
Speaker 2: Is a haunting premonition.
36:29
Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
36:30
Speaker 2: But it is common. Victims of domestic manipulation often sense
36:34
Speaker 2: the escalating danger long before there is an outbreak of
36:37
Speaker 2: physical violence. They recognize the subtle shifting behavior, the unexplainable coldness,
36:44
Speaker 2: the hidden agendas. They feel the temperature in the room drop.
36:47
Speaker 1: The shape of that danger turned out to be a
36:49
Speaker 1: 31-year-old cocktail waitress living in Florida named Tara Lentz.
36:53
Speaker 2: This is where the betrayal deepens from a standard marital
36:56
Speaker 2: affair into something almost incomprehensibly cruel to Sherry.
36:59
Speaker 1: The shocking twist here. Tara Lentz wasn't a stranger. Chris
37:03
Speaker 1: met at a bar while traveling. She was Sherry's friend
37:06
Speaker 1: from high school.
37:06
Speaker 2: Her own friend.
37:07
Speaker 1: They had grown up together, graduated just a year apart.
37:10
Speaker 1: And they reconnected because Sherry completely unwittingly suggested that her
37:15
Speaker 1: old friend Tara attend a Joyce Meyer conference down in
37:18
Speaker 1: Florida in November 2008, where Chris was working security.
37:22
Speaker 2: Let's look at that date closely. November 2008. Right. That
37:26
Speaker 2: is the exact same month the anonymous death threats against
37:29
Speaker 2: the Coleman family began arriving from the fake Gmail account.
37:32
Speaker 1: Yes. The timing is absolutely everything. When cornered, Chris claimed
37:37
Speaker 1: to investigators that Tara was just a friend, just someone
37:40
Speaker 1: to talk to about his marital stress.
37:42
Speaker 2: The standard excuse.
37:44
Speaker 1: But when police in Florida interviewed Tara and seized her
37:47
Speaker 1: digital devices, they extracted the data and the truth exploded.
37:52
Speaker 1: It wasn't a friendship. It was an intensive, deeply entrenched
37:56
Speaker 1: double life.
37:57
Speaker 2: The digital devices, once cloned and analyzed by forensic experts,
38:01
Speaker 2: revealed everything he had tried so desperately to hide.
38:04
Speaker 1: They found explicit photos and videos of Chris and Tara together,
38:07
Speaker 1: several hundred of them spanning across both of their devices.
38:10
Speaker 1: There was a sex tape they had filmed together during
38:12
Speaker 1: a romantic vacation to Hawaii. They had opened joint credit
38:16
Speaker 1: card accounts.
38:16
Speaker 2: Joint accounts. Yeah.
38:18
Speaker 1: If you're sharing lines of credit, this isn't a weekend fling.
38:21
Speaker 1: It is a parallel existence.
38:22
Speaker 2: And it became clear that Tara was operating under a
38:25
Speaker 2: completely different set of expectations than what Chris had casually
38:28
Speaker 2: told the police. She wasn't just a secret on the side.
38:31
Speaker 2: In her mind, she was the impending future wife.
38:34
Speaker 1: Literally. Investigators found that in Tara's digital calendar on her phone,
38:39
Speaker 1: she had an event explicitly scheduled called Wedding to Chris Coleman. Wow.
38:45
Speaker 1: And the notes found saved on Chris's phone. It's just
38:48
Speaker 1: staggering to read. He had detailed lists of Tara's ring size,
38:52
Speaker 1: her shoe size, her favorite flowers, her perfume preferences. He
38:55
Speaker 1: had a drafted note that said.
39:00
Speaker 2: He was completely invested.
39:02
Speaker 1: But the most chilling note of all, considering what he
39:04
Speaker 1: did to his sons, was one that simply read, He.
39:09
Speaker 2: Was actively, meticulously planning to replace his family. He wasn't
39:13
Speaker 2: just planning a divorce. He was conceptualizing a completely new
39:17
Speaker 2: domestic reality, complete with a new wife and hypothetical children,
39:20
Speaker 2: while his actual children were sleeping just down the hall
39:23
Speaker 2: from him.
39:23
Speaker 1: The peripheral details of this affair are just bizarre, too.
39:27
Speaker 1: I read this part of the report in sheer disbelief.
39:30
Speaker 1: Chris's brother, Keith, had apparently sent explicit photos to Tara.
39:35
Speaker 1: Sherry's own brother had messaged Tara on social media asking
39:39
Speaker 1: her to marry him.
39:40
Speaker 2: It's just a mess.
39:41
Speaker 1: It's like this bizarre, tangled web of inappropriate dynamics surrounding
39:45
Speaker 1: this central betrayal.
39:47
Speaker 2: It speaks to a chaotic emotional environment where boundaries were
39:50
Speaker 2: constantly being blurred or violated by multiple parties. But Chris's
39:54
Speaker 2: complete and utter detachment from reality is the most striking
39:57
Speaker 2: element of the entire affair.
39:59
Speaker 1: You want to talk about detachment. Chris was actively texting
40:02
Speaker 1: Tara during his family's funeral.
40:04
Speaker 2: At the funeral.
40:05
Speaker 1: He was sitting there in the church, ostensibly mourning the brutal,
40:08
Speaker 1: senseless murder of his wife and two young sons. And
40:11
Speaker 1: he's hiding his phone, typing out messages to his mistress,
40:14
Speaker 1: saying he loved her and missed her.
40:16
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate terrifying proof of his emotional void.
40:20
Speaker 2: To be able to completely compartmentalize a triple homicide, what
40:24
Speaker 2: you committed with your own hands, and then immediately seek
40:27
Speaker 2: romantic validation from the woman you committed it for while
40:31
Speaker 2: the victims are literally being buried.
40:32
Speaker 1: It's unfathomable.
40:34
Speaker 2: It is a level of psychopathy that is profoundly difficult
40:37
Speaker 2: for a normal person to process.
40:39
Speaker 1: So we have the affair established. We have the double
40:41
Speaker 1: life proven. But we have to ask the ultimate question
40:44
Speaker 1: that the jury had to ask. Why murder? People get
40:49
Speaker 1: divorced every single day.
40:50
Speaker 2: All the time.
40:51
Speaker 1: People have messy affairs every single day. They blow up
40:54
Speaker 1: their lives. They pay alimony. They endure the neighborhood gossip.
40:58
Speaker 1: And they move on. Why did Chris Coleman choose annihilation
41:02
Speaker 1: over hiring a divorce attorney?
41:03
Speaker 2: To understand that leap, we have to go back to
41:06
Speaker 2: the culture of the Joyce Meyer ministry. We have to
41:08
Speaker 2: look at the strict contractual employment rules governing his $ 100, 000
41:12
Speaker 2: a year job.
41:13
Speaker 1: The corporate culture, essentially.
41:14
Speaker 2: Yes. Exactly. During the trial, various employees and executives from
41:19
Speaker 2: the ministry took the stand to testify about their moral clauses.
41:23
Speaker 2: It was made abundantly clear to the court that an
41:25
Speaker 2: adulterous affair and a subsequent divorce would not just be
41:28
Speaker 2: frowned upon or require a meeting with HR.
41:31
Speaker 1: It would be more severe.
41:32
Speaker 2: It would likely result in the immediate, unceremonious termination of
41:36
Speaker 2: his employment.
41:37
Speaker 1: Because you can't have the high-profile, highly visible bodyguard of
41:41
Speaker 1: a global religious leader embroiled in a sordid, public cheating
41:45
Speaker 1: scandal with his wife's high school friend. It contradicts the
41:49
Speaker 1: entire message of the ministry.
41:51
Speaker 2: It damages the brand irreparably. So Chris was trapped in
41:54
Speaker 2: a cage of his own making, caught between his desires
41:57
Speaker 2: and his reality.
41:58
Speaker 1: He wanted both.
41:59
Speaker 2: He wanted his new life with Tara in Florida. He
42:01
Speaker 2: wanted the beach vacations, the promise rings and the fresh start.
42:04
Speaker 2: But he absolutely refused to surrender his $ 100, 000 salary, his prestige,
42:09
Speaker 2: his private jet travel and his righteous image in his community.
42:13
Speaker 1: The image was everything.
42:14
Speaker 2: If he divorced Sherry, he would be exposed as a
42:17
Speaker 2: fraud and an adulterer. He would instantly lose his job,
42:20
Speaker 2: he would lose his social status, and he would be
42:23
Speaker 2: financially ruined by years of child support and alimony.
42:27
Speaker 1: It's like a corporate hostile takeover, but enacted upon his
42:30
Speaker 1: own flesh and blood. He'd look at his family like
42:33
Speaker 1: a balance sheet.
42:34
Speaker 2: That's a chilling way to put it, but accurate.
42:37
Speaker 1: He wanted to acquire the new assets, the job security,
42:40
Speaker 1: the new woman, without carrying any of the liabilities, the alimony,
42:44
Speaker 1: the ruined reputation. And because he is a narcissist who
42:48
Speaker 1: fundamentally believes his needs supersedes all human life, he chose
42:51
Speaker 1: the most horrific liquidation possible. He calculated that murdering his
42:56
Speaker 1: wife and two innocent boys with a ligature was more
42:59
Speaker 1: convenient than suffering a temporary loss of social and financial status.
43:03
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate commodification of human life. His family
43:06
Speaker 2: simply became an obstacle to his comfort, so he engineered
43:10
Speaker 2: a complex six-month scenario to remove them While simultaneously planning
43:14
Speaker 2: to play the role of the tragic, aggrieved victim to
43:17
Speaker 2: garner sympathy rather than scorn, he thought he could have everything.
43:21
Speaker 1: Having established this horrifying motive and the incredibly tight biological timeline,
43:26
Speaker 1: the state brings the case to court. Chris is officially
43:29
Speaker 1: charged with three counts of first-degree murder. But as anyone
43:33
Speaker 1: who follows the justice system knows, a mountain of circumstantial
43:37
Speaker 1: evidence doesn't always guarantee an easy conviction. No, it rarely does.
43:41
Speaker 1: Trials are entirely human endeavors, prone to human error and emotion.
43:46
Speaker 1: And juries, quite rightly, require absolute certainty before taking away
43:50
Speaker 1: a man's freedom.
43:51
Speaker 2: And the jury in the Coleman case faced a very
43:53
Speaker 2: real dilemma. Despite all the evidence we just laid out,
43:55
Speaker 2: the paint receipt, the IP addresses, the rigor mortis timeline,
43:59
Speaker 2: there was no confession. He never broke.
44:02
Speaker 1: He held firm.
44:02
Speaker 2: And crucially, for a jury conditioned by CSI and modern
44:06
Speaker 2: crime shows, there was no smoking gun forensic DNA that
44:10
Speaker 2: definitively pointed to him committing the murders.
44:13
Speaker 1: Which is a very common hurdle for prosecutors in domestic homicides.
44:16
Speaker 1: The defense's argument is always straightforward. Of course his DNA
44:19
Speaker 1: is in the house. He lives there. He sleeps in
44:21
Speaker 1: that bed. He hugs those boys.
44:23
Speaker 2: Exactly. How do you prove it's the murder DNA? Right.
44:26
Speaker 2: Unless investigators find something highly specific, like the victim's blood
44:30
Speaker 2: spatter on his gym clothing... or a foreign fiber under
44:33
Speaker 2: the victim's fingernails that matches his jacket, the lack of
44:37
Speaker 2: foreign DNA doesn't inherently prove he did it. It just
44:41
Speaker 2: fails to prove a stranger did it.
44:43
Speaker 1: This lack of direct, irrefutable physical proof really weighed heavily
44:48
Speaker 1: on the jury. Early in the deliberations, they were actually deadlocked.
44:52
Speaker 1: The source material notes they were split 7 to 5
44:54
Speaker 1: in favor of a not guilty verdict.
44:56
Speaker 2: Seven to five for not guilty.
44:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, they even sent a note to the judge saying
45:00
Speaker 1: they were a hung jury and couldn't reach a consensus.
45:02
Speaker 2: Which shows you just how effective his staging almost was.
45:06
Speaker 2: The six-month narrative of the crazed stalker, combined with the
45:10
Speaker 2: lack of a confession and the lack of a bloody fingerprint,
45:13
Speaker 2: was just enough to create a seed of reasonable doubt
45:16
Speaker 2: in the minds of half the jury.
45:18
Speaker 1: But then came the turning point. On the second day
45:20
Speaker 1: of deliberations, the jurors decided they needed to dig deeper.
45:24
Speaker 1: They started meticulously going through the digital evidence files that
45:27
Speaker 1: had been extracted from Tara Lintz's BlackBerry.
45:30
Speaker 2: For context, BlackBerrys were the dominant high-end smartphone of that era.
45:35
Speaker 2: And while they seem ancient now, they logged a tremendous
45:38
Speaker 2: amount of internal data that users were largely unaware of.
45:41
Speaker 1: The jurors are scrolling through this evidence, looking at thousands
45:44
Speaker 1: of messages, and they find a single photograph. It's a
45:48
Speaker 1: picture of Chris and Tara kissing. But it wasn't the
45:51
Speaker 1: image itself that cracked the case wide open. It was
45:54
Speaker 1: the hidden data attached to it. The jury discovered that
45:57
Speaker 1: the photo was taken on October 21, 2008.
46:01
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, the significance
46:03
Speaker 2: of that specific date is monumental to the prosecution's timeline.
46:07
Speaker 1: Explain why for the listener. Why does a photo from
46:10
Speaker 1: October blow up the case?
46:12
Speaker 2: Because both Chris and Tara had sworn up and down
46:14
Speaker 2: to investigators under intense questioning that their physical affair didn't
46:18
Speaker 2: start until November of 2008.
46:19
Speaker 1: Oh.
46:21
Speaker 2: Which, conveniently, was right around the exact time the anonymous
46:24
Speaker 2: death threats against the family began.
46:26
Speaker 1: Ah, so the defense was trying to argue that the
46:28
Speaker 1: threats and the affair were coincidental. Or perhaps that the
46:32
Speaker 1: affair was just a foolish stress response to the trauma
46:34
Speaker 1: of the threats.
46:35
Speaker 2: Exactly. But that single piece of digital metadata, the EXIF data,
46:40
Speaker 2: embedded in the image file that records the exact date
46:43
Speaker 2: and time a photo is snapped, it destroyed Chris's carefully
46:47
Speaker 2: constructed timeline. And by extension, it destroyed his entire credibility.
46:52
Speaker 1: It proved that the physical affair predated the very first
46:55
Speaker 1: death threat in mid-November. It proved that he was already
46:59
Speaker 1: deeply romantically involved with Tara before the phantom stalker ever
47:03
Speaker 1: sent that first email from the Sage email account.
47:06
Speaker 2: The jury realized a fundamental truth of human behavior in
47:08
Speaker 2: a courtroom. If a suspect is lying about the origin
47:11
Speaker 2: of the affair, he is lying about the motive. And
47:14
Speaker 2: if he's lying about the motive, he is lying about
47:16
Speaker 2: everything else.
47:17
Speaker 1: A whole house of cards falls.
47:18
Speaker 2: That hidden metadata on a BlackBerry photo cemented the timeline
47:22
Speaker 2: of premeditation. It proved he didn't just snap one morning.
47:24
Speaker 2: He planned it for months.
47:26
Speaker 1: And that realization flipped the room completely. After 15 hours
47:29
Speaker 1: of total deliberation, the jury came back with a unified verdict.
47:34
Speaker 1: Guilty on all three counts.
47:35
Speaker 2: It was the right call.
47:36
Speaker 1: Chris Coleman was convicted of the first-degree murder of his
47:39
Speaker 1: wife and his two sons. He was sentenced to life
47:41
Speaker 1: in prison without the possibility of parole. The only reason
47:45
Speaker 1: he escaped the death penalty was because the state of
47:47
Speaker 1: Illinois was just months away from legally repealing it.
47:50
Speaker 2: A life sentence without the possibility of parole is the
47:53
Speaker 2: only appropriate response a civilized society can have to that
47:56
Speaker 2: level of calculated intimate brutality.
47:58
Speaker 1: To this day, he maintains his innocence. He has unsuccessfully
48:02
Speaker 1: appealed his conviction, and his excuse is almost laughable. He
48:06
Speaker 1: claims that he had a hacked second laptop and that
48:09
Speaker 1: some mysterious elite hacker used must have used it to
48:12
Speaker 1: create the destroyed Chris email account to frame him.
48:15
Speaker 2: It is the desperate, pathetic grasping of a narcissist who
48:18
Speaker 2: absolutely refuses to accept that his masterpiece of deception failed.
48:23
Speaker 2: He will likely cling to that absurd, invisible hacker narrative
48:26
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life in a cell.
48:27
Speaker 1: What's deeply tragic, beyond the profound loss of Sherry and
48:31
Speaker 1: those two little boys, is how some of the people
48:33
Speaker 1: around him reacted in the aftermath. We have to note
48:37
Speaker 1: the enablers in this story. Chris's father, Pastor Ron Coleman,
48:41
Speaker 1: publicly denied that his son could have possibly committed the murders.
48:44
Speaker 2: That happens often with families, but it's hard to hear.
48:47
Speaker 1: It gets worse. In fact, he went so far as
48:49
Speaker 1: to blame the victim. He gave a statement saying that
48:52
Speaker 1: Tara was just meeting a need and that if a
48:55
Speaker 1: wife doesn't respect the man, he's going to find respect
48:57
Speaker 1: someplace else.
48:58
Speaker 2: That kind of rhetoric is a devastating example of how
49:01
Speaker 2: deeply entrenched patriarchal and protective family dynamics can completely blind
49:06
Speaker 2: people to reality.
49:07
Speaker 1: It's disgusting. It's disgusting.
49:10
Speaker 2: It is sickening. Sherry's family understandably fought back against this narrative.
49:13
Speaker 2: They actually filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Joyce Meyer Ministries.
49:18
Speaker 2: They argued that the ministry failed to suspect that Chris
49:19
Speaker 2: was the one sending the threats and.
49:21
Speaker 1: Failed to warn Sherry about the immense danger she was
49:38
Speaker 1: in while her husband worked for them.
49:40
Speaker 2: It's a highly complex legal argument regarding the duty of
49:44
Speaker 2: care an employer has when an employee's family is threatened
49:47
Speaker 2: in direct relation to their job. How much is an
49:50
Speaker 2: employer responsible for investigating the personal lives of their security personnel?
49:55
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the courts didn't side with the family. The lawsuit
49:58
Speaker 1: was dismissed in 2013. The legal system determined that the
50:02
Speaker 1: responsibility for the murders rests solely on the shoulders of
50:04
Speaker 1: Chris Coleman.
50:06
Speaker 2: As it legally and morally should. He was the one
50:08
Speaker 2: who pulled the ligature.
50:09
Speaker 1: The Law and Crime Report concludes by noting an incredibly
50:12
Speaker 1: eerie parallel that I want to bring up. Today, Chris
50:15
Speaker 1: Coleman is serving his life sentence at the Dodge Correctional
50:18
Speaker 1: Institution in Wisconsin, and he happens to be housed in
50:21
Speaker 1: the exact same prison as another notorious figure you might
50:24
Speaker 1: have heard of, Chris Watts.
50:26
Speaker 2: The structural similarities between those two cases are chilling.
50:30
Speaker 1: Chris Watts committed a nearly identical crime in 2018. He
50:34
Speaker 1: murdered his pregnant wife, and his two young daughters because
50:37
Speaker 1: he was having a passionate affair with a co-worker and
50:40
Speaker 1: wanted a fresh start without the financial and social burden
50:44
Speaker 1: of his family.
50:45
Speaker 2: Just a horrific echo.
50:46
Speaker 1: Two men, almost exactly a decade apart, who chose to
50:50
Speaker 1: annihilate their families for the exact same reasons, using almost
50:53
Speaker 1: the exact same logic, now sitting in the exact same
50:56
Speaker 1: prison facility.
50:57
Speaker 2: It highlights a very specific, very terrifying pathology. It is
51:01
Speaker 2: the psychology of the family annihilator. These are men who
51:05
Speaker 2: view their families not as human beings with intrinsic value, dreams,
51:08
Speaker 2: and a right to life, but as disposable commodities.
51:11
Speaker 1: They're just objects to them.
51:13
Speaker 2: They are seen as accessories that can be discarded and
51:15
Speaker 2: replaced when a newer, more exciting prospect comes along.
51:18
Speaker 1: Okay, so what does this all mean for us? We've
51:21
Speaker 1: traced the harrowing timeline. We've broken down the digital evidence.
51:25
Speaker 1: We've analyzed the psychology. You and I are looking at
51:28
Speaker 1: a tragedy where a man constructed a massive phantom enemy
51:32
Speaker 1: that A fake stalker, complete with misspelled letters and ominous
51:36
Speaker 1: geographic warnings, all to cover up his own incredibly mundane,
51:42
Speaker 1: cowardly desires.
51:43
Speaker 2: He just wanted an out.
51:44
Speaker 1: He just wanted a new girlfriend and he wanted to
51:46
Speaker 1: keep his high-paying job. And to protect his status, he
51:50
Speaker 1: chose to annihilate his family.
51:52
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate betrayal of trust. The person tasked
51:55
Speaker 2: by society and by his vows with protecting them was
51:59
Speaker 2: the architect of their destruction.
52:00
Speaker 1: And I think there is a profound connection here for
52:02
Speaker 1: you listening, regardless of your background. We live in an
52:05
Speaker 1: era where almost everyone curates a public image. Whether it's
52:08
Speaker 1: the photos you post on social media, the persona you
52:10
Speaker 1: project in your professional networks, or the face you wear
52:13
Speaker 1: within your local community.
52:14
Speaker 2: I don't want people to see us a certain way.
52:16
Speaker 1: The Coleman case is the absolute darkest, most extreme example
52:21
Speaker 1: of what happens when protecting that curated image. The illusion
52:25
Speaker 1: of the perfect Christian family man and elite protector. becomes
52:29
Speaker 1: more important than human life and reality itself.
52:32
Speaker 2: It's a stark warning about the profound dangers of prioritizing
52:35
Speaker 2: reputation over authenticity. When the image becomes more important than
52:39
Speaker 2: the truth, morality completely collapses. But it also raises an
52:43
Speaker 2: important question, one that I think is worth dwelling on
52:45
Speaker 2: as we wrap up.
52:46
Speaker 1: What's that?
52:47
Speaker 2: The entire resolution of this case, the ability of that
52:49
Speaker 2: jury to finally see through the smoke and mirrors and
52:52
Speaker 2: convict him, hinged entirely on digital breadcrumbs. It came down
52:56
Speaker 2: to a misspelled word tracked on a hard drive through
52:58
Speaker 2: a keyword search, an IP address linked to a dummy
53:01
Speaker 2: Gmail account, and the hidden EXIF metadata on a BlackBerry photograph.
53:05
Speaker 1: The silent digital witnesses that he forgot about.
53:08
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, my question
53:11
Speaker 2: is this. If this exact crime had occurred in an
53:14
Speaker 2: analog era, if he had done this in 1989 instead
53:17
Speaker 2: of 2009, before emails, IP addresses, and smartphones recording metadata...
53:24
Speaker 2: Would a jury have let a family annihilator walk free
53:27
Speaker 2: simply because he played the part of the grieving, persecuted
53:30
Speaker 2: father so convincingly?
53:32
Speaker 1: That's a scary thought.
53:33
Speaker 2: How much of our modern concept of justice, our actual
53:36
Speaker 2: ability to catch the monsters hiding among us, relies purely
53:39
Speaker 2: on their inability to truly erase their technological tracks?
53:43
Speaker 1: That is a chilling thought to leave on because it
53:45
Speaker 1: brings us right back to the beginning, to the idea
53:47
Speaker 1: of the perimeter. The Coleman family built a fortress. They
53:50
Speaker 1: had the locks. They had the neighborhood with the police badge.
53:52
Speaker 1: They had the security camera watching the street.
53:53
Speaker 2: Because we did everything, right?
53:54
Speaker 1: We did everything you're supposed to do to keep the
53:57
Speaker 1: danger outside the castle walls. But the alarms never sounded
54:00
Speaker 1: because the monster was never outside. He was the one
54:03
Speaker 1: locking the doors from the inside.
54:05
Speaker 2: And no camera on a mailbox and no deadbolt on
54:07
Speaker 2: a door can protect you from that.
54:09
Speaker 1: It's a tragic reminder that sometimes the most dangerous lies
54:13
Speaker 1: aren't the ones told by strangers in the dark, but
54:16
Speaker 1: the ones told by the people sitting right across from
54:19
Speaker 1: us at the breakfast table.