Roger Keith Coleman V: In or Out

Paul and I met outside the offices of Arnold & Porter on a mild spring day in late April. We were about to meet Kitty Behan and Sharon Paul to discuss making a film about Roger Keith Coleman who was scheduled to be executed the following week for the rape and murder of Wanda McCoy. By the time we sat waiting in the partner's conference room for Kitty and Sharon to join us I was feeling uneasy. Paul was in his element, about to flush out his prey, and sensing my mood refused to engage in conversation so we sat in stony silence.

I just wasn't convinced anymore that this was really a slam dunk case of a two-hankie film about a guy who was just minding his own business when they strung him up. True, to outsiders this kind of justice may have seemed like a bunch of Appalachian inbreds going after the town hunchback. After all, Coleman was a convicted rapist and he knew the victim, a girl so timid she would never open the door to a stranger, according to her husband, Brad. It was a quick trial - they took only four days to give him the death penalty, which in our complicated legal system (at least for high-profile trials), seemed obscene.

But the more I read, perhaps the more I meditated on the weaving together of the facts of the younger Coleman's life, the more I felt a kinship with the townsfolk who had been sitting on the jury. Although it's entirely possible that someone like Coleman could have gotten a raw deal, this was a small town and the common intuition of those who lived and worked there in close quarters seemed to have quickly isolated the most probable perpetrator and then the evidence fell into place.

The same evidence Kitty Behan was trying now to overturn in her last-ditch bid with a habeas corpus petition (which wasn't going well due to their inability to refute the physical evidence with new results). And this was the part that started to bother me. The common misconception propagated by the media was that the evidence against Coleman was circumstantial (read flimsy). But in Coleman's case summary I found out there was a significant amount of physical evidence as well. The circumstantial factors were that Wanda's husband, Brad, said she would never have opened her door to a stranger and there was no sign of forced entry, so Coleman was one of only a handful of people she would have admitted. Add to that, Coleman had been cut loose from his shift at the mines early and despite a partial alibi was knocking around in the dark for a period of time with no-one to vouch for his whereabouts.

But the real case revolved around the physical evidence: Hair, blood and semen samples were as closely matched to Coleman as was possible in pre-DNA testing days. He had the blood spattered on his pants, the semen and hairs were on Wanda.

What I found most interesting in the end was how Coleman had managed to convince so many people of his innocence. Hard, contradictory evidence was non-existent, there were only hints at the possiblity of other individuals who may or may not have been involved, and although his legal representation was mediocre, it was the case on both sides for there were several slip-ups on the prosecution's side with respect to lost or unexamined fingerprint and soil evidence.

And as for his 1977 rape conviction, his supporters (which now included Amnesty International) seemed to believe his contention that this was just another in a life-long trial of mis-identification (the victim, Brenda Ratcliffe, picked him from a yearbook photo although a witness said he'd been talking to Coleman during the time of the rape). With his sad-sack demeanor it seemed possible he had become a whipping boy of sorts, with one bad luck story tipping another in a long chain of circumstantial dominoes.

I was ruminating about all this when the door to the conference room opened and Kitty walked in followed by a shy, almost waif-like presence, the soon-to-be-martyred Sharon Paul. We stood up to greet them.

Kitty Behan was petite, neatly bobbed with nary a hair out of place, and as expected, brisk and efficient. Sharon, pulled along in her wake, was thin and wan from exhaustion, with a cloud of dark hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She held back a little, looking over at us hesitantly and then focused on me, smiling apologetically. While Paul preened a little and moved in on Kitty like a shark recognizing its own, I lingered over my connection with Sharon. Her hand was tiny and her grasp barely more than a soft glove to squeeze reassuringly. For a brief moment she looked at me and I felt a wave of embarassment, almost as if I'd tricked her into something she would later regret.

"Well...." said Kitty. And we looked each other over.

Which wasn't easy as we'd all sat down in the big leather chairs, like ducks in a row along one side. Paul had positioned himself next to Kitty, no doubt to maintain power eye contact, and I sat at the end, framing Sharon, who seemed fearful to be bookened by two strangers.

Here I was at the tail end of the group, distanced from Kitty's assuring energy, and in my isolation I finally realized that I couldn't make the movie that Sharon and Roger wanted. The same gut instinct that had settled quickly into the jury was now mine as well. He wasn't a victim, he was a guy who had been on a long but inevitable road to the dark end he was facing. I felt certain he really had raped his first victim, opened his pants to another in a dark, deserted library, and in the end in an escalation of desire, cut into Wanda's throat with such force it nearly severed her head. He stalked women and dreamed of pushing himself into their lives and their bodies. He needed the power it gave him, and his victims lived in fear for the days he came close to them on the town streets and gave them the look. The I'll be back for you look, so said Brenda Ratcliffe.

Though the outcry from the national press and the various volunteer justice organizations was loud, no-one from Grundy had joined the fracas. I suspected now it was because they knew their neighbors well, they shared their daily lives and intimacies, shared their fears and their stories, and over time, accepted that Coleman was a bad seed amongst them.

Kitty opened up her briefcase and handed us a large chunk of bound looseleaf paper. "We've made a copy for you of his diary," she said with reverence. I looked over at Sharon who was pulling the papers down away from Paul, toward me. As Kitty went on about the facts of the case with Paul's rapt attention, I hesitantly took the package from Sharon. No longer a person of curious interest, he was now a real presence in the room. And the woman next to me loved him.

As the voices faded away, I opened the typewritten pages and began to read.

Next: Coleman's writings reveal a window into a complicated soul.

Phil Hartman On My Mind

Last night I woke up around 2 a.m. after a very vivid dream about Phil Hartman's last night. I want to talk about Phil but I'll wait until I'm finished the Coleman serial before telling you about the Phil that I knew and loved. The guy before Saturday Night Live, before Brynn, when he was just about my favorite dinner guest and the sweetest soul to hang out with.

Roger Keith Coleman IV: What Next?

Paul, my producing partner, was excited with our progress and we made plans to fly immediately to Washington as soon as I was able to get a meeting with Kitty. What took a little out of the balloon was his annoying smirk when I told him about my accomplishment with Sharon. It was one of those see-I-told-you-so kind of looks that made it seem as if he had actually done it instead of me.

We flew separately – Paul was coming from San Francisco where he had a business meeting (flying first class, of course) and I was at the back of coach next to the lavatories. It was the only flight I could get on short notice with my air miles and with a full plane I was resigned to my fate. The man next to me had a horrible cold and kept sneezing into a sodden handkerchief then glancing apologetically my way.

To keep busy (and to tune out the constant flushing behind me) I read as much as I could about the case on the five-hour trip to Dulles. I’d been to the library (this was pre-Internet) and pulled as much press coverage as I could. As I plowed through it all certain facts kept surfacing from various accounts that were starting to give me a headache.

I liked Sharon Paul, Roger Keith Coleman’s wistful and naïve girlfriend, but I was beginning to suspect that the link between us was revealing more than I’d bargained for as one who loved lost causes, especially when it came to men.

Sharon had found one of epic proportions in Coleman. Beginning as a kind gesture to an unfortunate, incarcerated and lonely soul, she responded to the growing intimacy between them over the years and inevitably the relationship blossomed into quite a passionate exchange. Passion tinged with longing, which is perfect for the Lost Cause brigade.

Although he’d come off in recent press as an earnest innocent desperately trying to reach out for help, his photos were not as tempting. There was nothing physically attractive about him to be sure, a colorless mannequin of sorts with huge glasses and a pumpkin complexion framed by a helmet of dull, brown hair. He sat stiffly for these portraits – almost as if he were still a miner sitting for an old tintype – perhaps it was this self-conscious, retro quality that made him believable. He didn’t seem hardened or sly by any measure. And yet…..

It’s been said by behavioral scientists that we can sum up a stranger in a matter of seconds and our judgments are usually quite accurate in their complex evaluation of a person’s totality. An interesting skill which would be quite useful if it weren’t for that tricky thing called our subconscious. The interplay between the hidden and the revealed in our own world is a complicated and sometimes devious thing and is one of the great mysteries of our nature. In my and Sharon’s case it meant seeing the shine on a wormy apple, but for a murderer it might mean the separation of an event from the personal memory of it, replaced by a version more palatable to the damaged id. And in Coleman’s case I began to wonder, as I read through some of his life story, if he hadn’t been able to completely exorcise watershed events that would have defined him forever once he was gone.

Perhaps his relationship to Sharon hastened this process: She believed in him absolutely and she was a woman of unshakeable honor and kindness. I could see her life through the quiet voice on the phone, the screen door to her small railroad flat near work, a private life of work, church, and few close friends. Perhaps a cat and a collection of colored glass arranged on the kitchen window shelf. Their relationship transformed both of them and in that process they both found a certain power.

A lot of people believed that Coleman was innocent. Uncertainty tainted the circumstantial evidence and the mystery deepened with tales of confessions by persons unknown. Then there was the odd death of someone who could have helped prove his innocence.

And yet….

There was the matter of Coleman’s attempted rape conviction five years before Wanda Fay McCoy died. I read through court transcripts from this case and the more I heard victim Brenda Ratcliff’s story the more troubled I became.

Coleman vigorously denied trying to rape Ratcliff by gunpoint while her young daughter cowered in another room. After all, neighbors had only seen them struggling on the porch. He was earnest and saddened, he said, by the ease at which one woman’s word had been taken over what had been a misunderstanding. And although Ratcliff strenuously defended the truth of what had happened (and the judge agreed, sentencing Coleman to 18 months), the press was too focused on the possibility of Coleman’s innocence of the McCoy rape and murder to give it much weight. Others actually took the position that although he might have committed the earlier crime it had no bearing on the facts of the McCoy murder. Moreover, it pointed to a biased system with a 'rush-to-judgement' mentality.

There is always something hidden in Lost Causes. But was it Coleman’s true identity as an innocent misfit destined to be everyone’s whipping boy, or was he a cold-blooded killer disguised as an innocent misfit destined to be everyone’s whipping boy? A puzzler, for certain.

Next: Paul and I meet Kitty and Sharon at the D.C. offices of Arnold & Porter.

The Big Picture Update: Fade In Magazine piece

I picked up a copy of Fade In today and on the cover was Will Farrell and among the cover teasers, "Dumped: When Your Film is In the Can and Stays There".

As I thumbed through the magazine I started to get nervous about what I'd said to reporter, Steven Galloway. I've been a journalist for different news organizations and understand the subtleties of how we craft stories to keep on point. Like a novel or a screenplay these pieces, however small, need a compelling opening, a meaty and interesting body, and a great sum-up ending. Not an easy thing to do when you are dealing with a lot of unpredictable factors, including wiggly facts, dead-end leads, or taciturn interviewees who answer in monosyllables. It's a relief when you get good quotes and it makes the story a lot easier to deliver, especially as the deadline is always looming in the picture. And while journalists may not have an agenda, they have to come up with a clear and compelling story, even if they are covering the daily business of small-town city hall (which can be deadly boring to sit through). So you never know what they're going to do with you.

He used a lot of our conversation throughout the piece and the information was accurate as far as I know. Since some of the information I gave him was second-hand (which I prefaced as such) I was only concerned that those people mentioned (and their actions) would not offend.

Although he talked about several films in this piece, Galloway said in the opening paragraph that The Big Picture had been one of the best films at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and had launched Chris' Guest's career, despite tanking at the box office. I'm glad people now know what happened and why it never grossed more than the meager $30,000 listed in the Internet Movie Database.

I mentioned in my series that some of the people have died since the film was made. Dawn Steel died in 1997 at the age of 51 of a brain tumor and left a husband and small child behind. The actor who played Alan Habel, the studio chief we modeled after Robert Shapiro (once head of Warner Brothers and our one-time boss), J.T. Walsh, died of a heart attack in 1998 shortly after making Pleasantville. He was a lovely man and a great character actor who had a prolific career. In his interview for The Big Picture documentary, he told me that he would try out for anything, even a woman's part, to keep working. "I'd just play it a little light in the loafers," he deadpanned.

Some other trivia:

In the no-names-please department, the first actress in the part that eventually went to Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) was released after we shot a couple of scenes with her and Kevin Bacon. The official reason was that she seemed intimidated by Kevin instead of the conniving, manipulative bitch she was meant to be. But it might also have had something to do with the fact that she showed up for her audition, shall we say, considerably more endowed than she actually was and there were concerns that in some of the lingerie shots, she wouldn't be able to deliver......


Also, Jason Gould, who plays one of the film students who becomes an agent later in the film is the son of Barbara Streisand and Elliot Gould, who appears in his student film (along with Roddy McDowell).

And finally, Emily Longstreth disappeared from view after her terrific performance in The Big Picture. One wonders.

Of course if you look at my profile in IMDB it looks like I disappeared too......and I'm still here.

Hmmmmm.

Roger Keith Coleman III: The Girlfriend

Here we were: Producers without an office on a studio lot, no secretary to answer our phone (singular), and some hastily-made business cards from Kwik-Print. There is no worse feeling in Hollywood than competing for attention when your personal pull is equivalent to that of a gnat. However, gnats have an important job in this town - swarms of them fill in all the spaces between the movements of the Big Players and this roster can change from moment to moment which is why the gnats keep at it. Aside from the eternal optimism that's mandatory for this job, we are also the masters of schadenfreude, taking perverse pleasure in the inevitable downturn of any number of careers in the normal course of events (we are, after all, the champions of passing fads). One person's blowout is another's opening into the fast lane.

For as long as the ride goes.....

Anyway, back to the story at hand: In 1992 Roger Keith Coleman, convicted rapist and murder, was languishing on death row....but wait, not really languishing. He was doing more interviews than Bono, making the cover of various magazines, including Time, guest-spotting on Larry King Live (remotely of course), and talking to as many journalists as his busy schedule would allow. And in between, writing earnestly in his homespun diary.

When I was eventually given access to these papers, I liked what I read. In his sad, patient recollections of an ordinary life before prison, and his belief in the inherent goodness of people, he was sincere and guileless. He seemed genuine and down-to earth, more like a stray leaf being carried down a fast-moving river than a man with darkness in his soul. And reading through the pages and pages of a man's life when you know the electric chair is waiting at the end is as intimate as it gets. It was as if he were trying to make up for the loss of his future by memorializing the minutia of his past into something that could never be destroyed. And through it all, despite a few nagging inconsistencies that we all ignored, his innocence rang true.

Part of this was a sense of inevitability about the whole thing that made you want to dig deeper and feel a bit of the soil in his real life. His childhood and young marriage in small-town Grundy, deep in the mining culture of rural Virginia, appeared to have gradually become tangled up in the legendary (and onetime bitter) relationship between the Hatfields and the McCoys. He had married into the McCoy family (the victim, Wanda McCoy was his sister-in-law) and shortly before the murder he was identified by Pat Hatfield as the man who had jacked off in front of her while she was working alone one night at the town library. It could be that every other resident of Grundy was related to one or the other family but it certainly made for good storytelling in the press. Coleman hated to be reminded of the indecent exposure charge because he said he'd been mis-identified and the case had never been prosecuted anyway (the DA said it was because he focused on the murder case instead). To talk with him , he seemed a bit dazed about the way his life had been pre-empted by a dark fate, one that he fervently believed was not his own.

And many people agreed with him. Besides his Washington lawyers, Arnold & Porter, he had the attention of investigator, Jim McCloskey, who started Centurion MInistries in Princeton to help overturn wrongful convictions, and until this year believed wholeheartedly in Coleman's innocence. He'd even saved a vial of DNA for the time when better testing would clear him posthumously.

There was another red herring: A woman had come forward after the trial to tell authorities that a man had tried to rape her and had confessed to McCoy's murder. But in a deepening mystery she was found dead the day after she went to the press. And nothing had been done to investigate this strange series of events.

But now you may ask, how was it that we got the diary referred to earlier? By chance and happenstance, and a little luck. When phone calls to Coleman's attorney's met with a polite "get in line" response, I decided to dig around on my own and look for another way in. The opportunity came in the form of a conversation with someone who'd been mentioned in one of the articles I'd read, a young woman who'd been Coleman's prison correspondant and confident for several years.

Sharon Paul was a shy, sweet, and trusting girl. Her number was listed in the phone book so I called her one early evening after she'd returned home from work. When she picked up I said as quickly as I could that I didn't want to bother her but that I just wanted to let her know how much I empathized with her situaton and how frustrated she must feel not being able to do more than she was.

Maybe when you've just come from living in the cold-water remains of your once grand marriage that speaks softly to another floundering soul but she didn't hang up on me. We talked for about an hour, mostly about my trip to the far north where I'd lived with a group of native Canadians who were suffering from cultural genocide and the degrading effects of mass alcoholism. I had been bounced from a relationship up there too and before long we were commiserating on the injustices of life and the loss of good people from an intrinsically evil world.

Sharon it turned out was more than just a pen-pal. They were in love, they wanted to be married, and it was agonizing for her to see him in such pain. She was the person who told me about the diaries first. "He's a good person," she told me softly. "His letters told me that and then I really got to know him. You can see how hard it is to live with these accusations when you read his story." When I told her that I hadn't actually been able to reach his lawyers, let alone get a meeting, she thought for a moment and said, "Call Kitty and let her know that I'll come down to meet you if you can make it to Washington."

Let's hear it for girl power!

Next: Dig deeper and black and white become shades of gray.