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.
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.
posted by vallie at 6:21 PM
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