'No divorce' policy at ministry of employment, Wife and kids found strangled

Expert: Wife, sons dead before Coleman left home
(P-D)By Nicholas J.C. Pistor and By Elizabethe Holland
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
06/10/2009

WATERLOO -- Christopher Coleman must stand trial on first-degree murder charges that say he killed his wife and two sons, a judge ruled this morning.

Testimony at the preliminary hearing in Waterloo included several bombshells, including evidence allegedly found on a computer Coleman had used tying him to a threatening message he said had been emailed to him. Evidence outlined by Columbia Police Chief Joe Edwards also included details on a curious misspelling in the threatening messages, handwriting links to Coleman, and a noticeable abrasion on Coleman's arm.

Edwards also told of a no-divorce policy for employees at Joyce Meyer Ministries in Jefferson County, where Christopher Coleman was employed as security manager. If Coleman was to divorce, Edwards said, "he would end up losing his job."

Edwards, the sole witness in the hearing at the Monroe County Courthouse, said Coleman on May 4 told his girlfriend in Florida that he planned to have his wife, Sheri, served with divorce papers the next day. Instead, Sheri, 31, and their pre-teen sons were found strangled in their beds in Columbia, Ill., the next morning.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/0040C24F74D04EF7862575D1003B2944?OpenDocument

:cry:

of Joe the non-plumber......creepy....

At least they didn't get divorced, though. I guess this triple murder is what Jesus would have wanted. He got to meet those cute kids much earlier than he otherwise would have.

be placed entirely upon the husband/father who committed the murders. He alone is responsible for his actions.

His place of employment did not cause the guy to kill. While I do have have anything good to say about the employer, they are not responsible.

of such a policy. I do, however, think this guy is not going to have a job anyway. Why kill the kids??? wtf is wrong with people!!

Under the Ontario Human Rights Act, you can't discriminate for any reason unless you can prove that there is a bonafide reason for discrimination in terms of the person's ability to do the job. Whatever the ideology or beliefs of the Ministry, they would be hard-pressed to prove any correlation between getting a divorce and being unable to do that kind of work.

I doubt this is true in most of the USA, but I'm just a layman.

That said, while the Ministry's position is not admirable, he chose to murder his family on his accord, and they are not responsible for his responding to their policy in such an extreme and disgusting fashion.

It's right there with "don't eat your co-workers" as things you don't have to tell people not to do.

Interesting as a tag for the story, but irrelevant to the actions of the killer.

we CAN'T eat our co-workers?

NOW what do I do with all that barbecue sauce?

For much the same reason.

Granted, it takes a brutal piece of work to kill his wife and kids in order to hopefully still keep the good job and get to marry the mistress. But I still think many religious organizations care more about their image than actual breathing human beings.

This story disgusts me in all its angles. And yes, this religious organization has every right to fire people for divorce, and I have every right to think they are too selfish to pay any attention to as well.

since his employer was a private business, their contract is between them.

And unless you can prove some sort of discrimination, you're screwn.

can someone coldly kill their own kids like this? The thought is something that is so foreign to me it's almost unbelievable.

Sure some narcissistic asshole fundie could off his wife in hopes of finding a younger model but how can you justify killing your own kids?

Just totally fucked, the kind of killing that too often these days makes me question my opposition to the death penalty. I'm still opposed to it but I don't think I'll be complaining too hard if this guy is fairly convicted and strapped down.

and children, as part of his plan to marry a woman in Florida that he was having an affair with. The woman was a high school friend of his wife's. The two women were in contact over the internet, though the wife apparently had no idea about the affair.

The husband/father had e-mailed the girlfriend the night before the murders, and told her that the following day, he was going to tell his wife he was divorcing her.

He is a sociopath, who had been planning the murders for months, starting at the very least last November. He believed that he was smarter than the police. He wasn't. The lies he was planting led to the police to be keeping an eye on him.

strangle his children and wife, for another woman? That seems so personal. Very evil.

he spray-painted the house with vicious sayings. He even spray-painted the bed of his younger son, with the dead child in it.

One of the errors he made was tossing the gloves he used along the roadside on his way to the gym that morning. Another was to use his laptop at work to send threatening e-mails to his family.

As someone, sane I think, with two kids this kind of thing just baffles me. What kind of thought processes would allow him to actually carry out a plan like this?

Assuming he did it of course, the guy should be caged in a zoo like environment and any scientist who wants can have unlimited access to him. I'd love to get this guy in a PET scanner just to see if his warped brain actually functions differently from a normal one.

that went into this included a substantial amount of manipulating those around him. For example, he had convinced his wife to sign off the deed to their house last fall. I suspect that he had her believing that it was for tax purposes, considering the environment he grew up in, and found employment after his military service.

What sociopaths lack is conscience, and the ability to view others as human beings with needs of their own. They tend to view others as objects, there for their personal gratification, and to be discarded once they become a burden.

It's no coincidence that his crime is very similar to Dr. Jeffrey McDonald's. Like sociopaths tend to do, both of these fellows over-estimated their own intelligence, and underestimated that of others.

Selfish, ignorant murderer. How do you murder your own children for a woman - good fugging grief?

It's hard to see how people couldn't see him for what he is.

It's generally harder for people involved in an on-going relationship with a sociopath to recognize them for what they are, until the sociopath has no further need to invest energy in being "nice" to them. Up until that time, they frequently have the skills needed to appear quite charming and thoughtful.

On nutjob at a time. What is the new motto? Protect marriage, murder your spouse? At least he didn't get a divorce or marry a man so marriage is safe. The "good" thing about this kind of stuff is that is exposes the hypocrisy of the fundies.

That's as morality-basic as you can get.

This guy's using the no-divorce policy to his advantage to run off with another woman will back-fire on him. It doesn't explain anything, especially the brutality of murdering his innocent young sons. That is hard for any of us, including a jury to comprehend, because we are nurturers and protectors of our children.

And this just somehow seems so biblical. Who was that king? David was it?

;-)

:cry:

Didn't think so.