Murder on the Run

On the 6th of November 1955, Alton Coleman was born in Illinois. Because his mother was working three different jobs to support herself, Alton grew up in the care of his grandmother. From an early age, he was antisocial and didn’t get along with others, and those traits only got worse as he grew older.

When Alton was 18 years old, he was charged with his first sex crime. Over the next decade, he was charged with a total of five more similar crimes. He pled guilty to two of the crimes, was acquitted of two more, and the final two were dismissed. One of the two cases that was scheduled to go to court was the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl: but before the 1984 trial began, Alton decided to go on the run.

However, Alton didn’t flee from the law on his own. Debra Brown, a woman with an intellectual disability, came with him. Debra and Alton had met the previous year when she was engaged to a different man, but she quickly decided to leave her fiancé and move in with Alton. As well as her intellectual disability, Debra suffered from dependent personality disorder, giving her an irresistible urge to be looked after by other people. She relied on Alton, and was willing to do anything he asked, no matter the consequences. So, when Alton told Debra that he was going on the run, she didn’t hesitate to come with him.

Unlike Alton, Debra didn’t have any criminal charges. In fact, she had never been in trouble with the law at all…but when Alton started abducting, assaulting, and murdering young children, Debra didn’t just stand back and watch. In fact, she was a willing accomplice in the violence.

The couple’s first victim was a 9-year-old girl named Vernita Wheat, whose mother Alton had become friends with. They kidnapped her from Wisconsin on the 29th of May 1984, and her decomposed remains were found in an abandoned building almost a month later. She had been sexually assaulted before she was strangled to death. 

Shortly before Vernita’s body was found, Alton and Debra abducted two more children in Indiana: Annie Turks, who was nine, and Tamika Turks, who was seven. Both girls were sexually assaulted - Tamika died during the attack, but Annie managed to survive. That same day, Alton and Debra kidnapped 25-year-old Donna Williams. Just like Vernita Wheat, Donna was sexually assaulted and strangled to death, and then her body was dumped.

After attacking Annie and Tamika and murdering Donna, Alton decided that he needed a different vehicle to avoid being recognized. In Michigan, he and Debra broke into a house and attacked the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer-Jones. After beating the couple and destroying their telephone to delay them calling for help, Alton and Debra stole their car, and drove off to Ohio.

During their short time staying in Toledo, Ohio, Alton made friends with a single mother, Virginia Temple. After a few days, Virginia’s loved ones became concerned when she ceased all communication, and arranged for a welfare check. When authorities arrived at Virginia’s house, they initially saw no sign of her or her oldest daughter, 9-year-old Rachelle - but all of the younger children were in the house, uncared-for and appearing traumatized. A search of the home revealed that both Virginia and Rachelle had been strangled, and their bodies had been hidden inside a small crawl space under the house.

Straight after killing Virginia and Rachelle, Alton and Debra had changed their car again. Once again, they broke into a random house and robbed the owners, taking cash and their car, before eventually making their way to Cincinnati. Three days after their arrival in Cincinnati, 15-year-old Tonnie Storey vanished. The following week, her body was found - and it was lying on top of a bracelet that belonged to Virginia Temple.

Alton and Debra weren’t covering their tracks as well as they believed they were. The string of interstate murders had begun shortly after Alton went on the run, and authorities were able to link several of the crimes together. On the same day that Tonnie was kidnapped, the FBI made an announcement - they had added an eleventh name to their Ten Most Wanted List, including Alton Coleman as “a special addition.” 

On the 13th of July, Alton and Debra decided to briefly change their mode of transport, using bicycles to travel to Norwood, Ohio. They quickly attacked a couple, Marlene and Harry Walters, sexually assaulting and fatally beating Marlene, beating Harry to the point of unconsciousness, and then stealing the couple’s car. Alton’s fingerprints had been left at the crime scene on a shattered glass bottle, and both Alton and Debra had left their footprints behind in blood.

Moving through to Kentucky, Alton and Debra kidnapped a college professor, Oline Carmical Jr. They stole Oline’s car…but they kept the professor locked inside the trunk while they did it, keeping him inside throughout their drive back to Ohio. Once they got to Ohio, they ditched the car, with Oline still inside the trunk. Authorities located the abandoned car, and Oline was rescued unharmed. Alton and Debra then stole another car and drove off to Illinois, trading in their vehicle on the way after they killed an elderly man and took his car instead.

Three days after this final murder, Alton and Debra were recognized by a motorist who called the police, and they were arrested. They were carrying an enormous bag full of different shirts and caps, which they had been using to change their appearance several times throughout the day, hoping that it would prevent them from being noticed. When Alton was being strip-searched at the police station, officers discovered that he was wearing two thick pairs of socks, and had hidden a steak knife in between them. 

The following week, a group of more than 50 different investigators and law enforcement officers from throughout the United States met up, trying to plan the most successful strategy for prosecuting Alton and Debra. The group agreed on seeking the death penalty, and decided that the best way to achieve this result was to prosecute the duo in Ohio first. US Attorney Dan Webb summarized the decision, saying, “We are convinced that prosecution [in Ohio] can most quickly - and most likely - result in the swiftest imposition of the death penalty against Alton Coleman and Debra Brown.”

Sure enough, the couple were convicted in Ohio, found guilty of assaulting and murdering Tonnie Storey and Marlene Walters, and sentenced to death. Another 20-year sentence was added on for kidnapping, because Alton and Debra had locked Oline Carmical in the trunk of his own car and then driven him across state lines. Alton repeatedly claimed that his sentence was unconstitutional, but every time the case was sent before the Supreme Court, his sentence was upheld.

When the time for Alton’s execution came along, the Ohio Supreme Court was aware that many people who had survived Alton and Debra’s crimes wanted to be there to witness his death. Alton’s lawyers claimed that allowing so many people to be present would turn his death sentence “into a spectator sport” - but instead of reducing the number of witnesses to the execution, the court created a separate viewing venue to accommodate them all.

Shortly before his death, Alton wrote a letter in which he apologized for the crimes he had committed. He had a lavish last meal, which included filet mignon, fried chicken, french fries, onion rings, salad and cornbread, and a Cherry Coke to drink. He was executed via lethal injection on the 26th of April 2002. At the time he died, he was the only person in the US to be sentenced to death in three different states - Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana.

While Alton’s attempts to fight against his death sentence were unsuccessful, Debra was luckier. Governor Richard Celeste agreed to sentence Debra to life imprisonment instead, stating that he was doing so because Debra had been in a “master-slave” relationship where she would do anything that Alton asked, and because she had consistently low IQ scores showing a lack of critical thinking and understanding of the consequences of her actions. 

Although Debra had no history of criminal activity before going on the run with Alton, she didn’t show any remorse for her crimes during the early days of her imprisonment. In fact, while being sentenced during one of her trials, she wrote a note for the Judge, which said, “I killed the bitch and I don’t give a damn…I had fun out of it.”