Cynthia Lynn Coffman was 24 when she and James Gregory Marlow were arrested in the San Bernardino Mountains on November 14, 1986. In the week before, two young women in Southern California had disappeared from their jobs. Corinna Novis, 20, an insurance company clerk, was taken in Redlands on November 7. Lynell Murray, 19, a college sophomore, was taken from the dry cleaners where she worked in Huntington Beach on November 12. Both were strangled. Within hours of the arrest Coffman led officers to Novis's grave in a vineyard in Fontana.
Two juries convicted her. In San Bernardino County she and Marlow were tried together for the Novis case, convicted of murder and five other felonies, and sentenced to death in 1989. In Orange County she was tried alone for Lynell Murray's murder, convicted with special circumstances and sentenced to life without parole. Her defense in both courts rested on her account of Marlow's violence toward her; the San Bernardino jury heard expert testimony that she had battered woman syndrome and rejected it. A third killing, of a man named Gregory Hill in Kentucky in July 1986, was described under oath by both defendants and attributed to them in court, but no trial of either for it was reported.
The California Supreme Court affirmed her death sentence in 2004. In September 2025 a federal judge in Los Angeles conditionally granted her petition for habeas corpus and ordered the death sentence vacated unless the state gives her a new penalty trial or resentences her. That ruling is on appeal, and the state prison system still listed her among its condemned prisoners in October 2026.
Coffman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1962, according to the California Supreme Court's account of the trial record. Her mother and stepfather testified at the penalty phase of her trial that her upbringing had been troubled. A psychologist called by the defense, Dr. Craig Rath, told the jury that impaired bonding in her early life, which he linked to a hernia she had as a small child, contributed to the relationship she later formed with Marlow.
In August 1980 she gave birth to a son. She married the boy's father, and her family described the marriage to the jury as difficult and the husband as physically abusive. The couple separated in April 1982. In April 1984 she left for Arizona and left her son with his father. By the time of her trial she had not seen him since Christmas 1984.
In those years she worked as a bartender and a waitress. She also sold methamphetamine, the court records, and she lived with a boyfriend. Her former employers testified at the penalty phase that she had been a good worker.
On April 5, 1986, a California Highway Patrol officer stopped her boyfriend for erratic driving near Barstow. Coffman ran toward a house with her purse. Officers found a small packet of cocaine or methamphetamine in the purse and a silver derringer in the house. Earlier that night, according to evidence later presented against her, she had pulled the derringer on men who were attacking her boyfriend outside a convenience store. She was charged with possessing a loaded weapon and methamphetamine and was released after five days in jail. The prosecution later offered the incident, and an episode in which she drove onto a sidewalk and forced the same boyfriend to jump out of the way, as evidence of prior violent conduct at her penalty trial.
The day after Coffman got out of jail, a man she had never met came to the apartment she shared with her boyfriend. He was James Gregory Marlow. He said he had been in jail with the boyfriend and would look in on her. They spent about an hour together that day, she testified.
Marlow was 30 in November 1986, according to United Press International. The California Supreme Court's opinion in his own appeal describes a childhood marked by neglect and abuse. His sister testified that their mother was a drug addict who neglected the children and who died in a fire in 1975; other witnesses described his father's abuse and his loneliness as a boy. A psychologist, Dr. Michael Kania, called the emotional abuse he suffered as a child extremely severe, perhaps the most severe he had seen in thousands of evaluations. Marlow had a 1978 conviction for escape in Kentucky. In November 1979 he took part in three armed robberies in Upland and Ontario, California, one of them at a methadone clinic, and he pleaded guilty. He was in prison for those robberies from 1980 to 1983. After his release, the court noted, he had no new arrests, completed parole and held jobs until he met Coffman.
By June 1986 the two had moved together to Newberry Springs, in San Bernardino County, where they stayed with a married couple. Coffman testified that Marlow began beating her. She said she came to call his violent side "Folsom Wolf," and that Marlow tattooed her with the words "Property of Folsom Wolf." She told the jury that she was under the influence of methamphetamine almost every day and that Marlow threatened to kill her son and her family if she ever left him.
In the early summer of 1986 the couple drove east in a stolen truck that had been repainted, through Colorado and St. Louis, to Kentucky. There they stayed with an acquaintance of Marlow's in the town of Pine Knot. They were married in what the court called a biker's wedding at the Kentucky home of that man's former wife.
According to Coffman's testimony, Marlow told her during the trip that its real purpose was a contract killing. The California Supreme Court summarized the evidence this way: their host and another man approached Marlow about killing a man named Gregory Hill. Coffman testified that she lured Hill out of his house and that a shot was fired. Marlow gave a different account, in which Coffman pressed him to carry out the killing. At his San Bernardino trial in February 1989 Marlow admitted that he and Coffman had been paid a little more than $5,000 to kill Hill. When the Orange County prosecution later sought the death penalty against Marlow, it presented evidence that he and Coffman killed Hill for financial gain in Whitley County, Kentucky, on or about July 7, 1986.
No Kentucky charge against Coffman or Marlow was reported. A Redlands police captain, Lewis Nelson, told United Press International the day after the arrests that the couple was probably linked to a homicide out of state, which he believed had happened in Kentucky. Hill's killing therefore stands as attributed to them, not as a conviction.
In mid-August 1986 the couple went to Atlanta, where Marlow found work. Coffman testified that he cut her hair there and assaulted her; Marlow denied it. They later burglarized the Arizona home of her former boyfriend's parents. Testimony summarized by the California Supreme Court also refers to an offer of $20,000 to kill a pregnant woman in Phoenix; no such killing appears in any record. In early October they were staying in Fontana, California, with Marlow's cousins, and late that month they moved in with Marlow's sister and her husband.
Corinna Novis was 20 and worked as a clerk at an insurance office in Redlands, in San Bernardino County. She drove a white Honda CRX and lived in her own apartment. The court records say little else about her life. Her supervisor at work reported her missing on Monday, November 10.
On the morning of November 7, by Coffman's account, Marlow had her put on a dress and told her they needed to "get a girl." He wore a borrowed suit. Coffman testified that she did not understand that he meant to kill anyone. Marlow later testified that the plan was a robbery to raise money for a trip to Arizona.
At about 5:30 p.m. Novis left work and cashed a check at a bank drive-through window near the Redlands Mall. Coffman approached her and asked for a ride, saying they needed to get to the University of Redlands. Novis was then forced at gunpoint and handcuffed, and Coffman drove her car.
Between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m. they arrived at a house in Fontana belonging to an acquaintance of Marlow's, a man with a disability who was home alone. He testified that he was afraid of Marlow, who had a gun. Marlow told him they needed Novis's bank card number so they could empty her account, and when the man objected, Marlow asked how she could talk to anybody "if she's under a pile of rocks." Marlow's sister arrived 10 to 15 minutes later and was told that Marlow had "someone" there. About 10 minutes after that, Coffman drove the sister to a convenience store and came back. Witnesses at the trial said Coffman did not seem frightened and appeared to go along willingly.
Inside the house Marlow took Novis to a bedroom. Coffman testified that he told her to join them, that she left instead, and that she believed he was going to assault Novis. Marlow denied the sexual allegations. The two witnesses in the house later saw Novis led out with her mouth taped and her hands cuffed.
Coffman then drove Marlow and Novis to a rural spot in Fontana. By her account, Marlow took Novis out of the car while she drove off to look for drugs, and Marlow then returned alone. She told the jury she did not know that Novis was dead. Marlow testified that Coffman insisted that he "do something," and that he choked Novis. In a statement to a Redlands police sergeant on November 17, 1986, which the prosecution used against her, Coffman said they had not obtained the right bank code because Novis "was already gone by then."
The autopsy, performed on November 17 by Dr. Gregory Reiber, put the time of death five to ten days earlier. He concluded that the most likely cause was ligature strangulation, with suffocation also possible.
That night the couple went to Novis's bank but could not withdraw money. They then went to her apartment, where they found her bank code and took a typewriter, an answering machine and some cash. On November 8 Coffman pawned the typewriter for $50, using Novis's identification. The answering machine was traded for methamphetamine. Marlow asked his brother-in-law for "cold," or untraceable, license plates.
On November 11 the manager of a fast-food restaurant in Laguna Beach, in Orange County, found a bag near a trash bin behind the building. In it were Coffman's and Novis's driver's licenses, Novis's checks and bank card, and identification papers belonging to Marlow. On November 12 Marlow and Coffman told the brother-in-law that they had been "casing out the rich people." Marlow saw a newspaper article about Novis's disappearance and told Coffman they had to get rid of her car.
Lynell Murray was 19, a college sophomore, and she worked at a dry cleaners in a shopping mall in Huntington Beach. On November 12, 1986, she was due to finish her shift at 6:30 p.m. and meet her boyfriend. At about 6:00 p.m. a customer saw Marlow and Coffman embracing in the alley behind the shop. Murray did not arrive for the date. The shop was closed, and her car was still in the lot. At 8:30 p.m. the owner found the store ransacked, with cash and clothing missing.
That evening Coffman checked into a beachfront hotel in Huntington Beach using Murray's credit card and signing Murray's name. Within minutes, $80 and then $60 were withdrawn from Murray's checking account at a bank machine. On November 13 a hotel employee found Murray's body in the room. She had died of ligature strangulation. A footprint at the scene was later linked to Marlow's boots. The two California victims did not know their abductors, the Redlands police captain told United Press International.
The couple kept using Murray's card. Coffman used it at a hotel in Ontario, and a restaurant waiter saw the two of them kissing at about midnight on November 13. They checked into a lodge in Big Bear on November 12 or 13 with the same card, and later purchases on it alerted the authorities.
On November 14, 1986, after a nationwide alert, San Bernardino County deputies arrested Coffman and Marlow on a mountain road in the Big Bear area. United Press International reported that a shuttle bus driver who had driven them the day before recognized them while they were hitchhiking. The California Supreme Court's account says they were walking on Big Bear Boulevard in bathing suits in cold weather. They had been trying to use Murray's card at sporting goods stores.
Coffman had a loaded .22-caliber gun in her purse. Officers also found Murray's identification cards, receipts carrying Murray's forged signature, an earring matching one missing from Murray's body, and money from the dry cleaners. Novis's car was found off a dirt road in the mountains near the couple's sleeping bag. Coffman's fingerprints were on its license plate, hood and ashtray, and a print on the hood matched Marlow. An earring belonging to Novis was later found among Coffman's belongings.
Both were questioned after the arrest. Officers falsely told Coffman that Marlow was informing on her, and the questioning continued after both had invoked their right to remain silent. Coffman then led officers to Corinna Novis's body in Fontana on November 15, United Press International reported, eight days after she was last seen.
The trial judge later ruled that the couple's statements were voluntary and could be used to impeach their testimony, and that the location of the body was admissible because it would inevitably have been discovered. On appeal, the California Supreme Court held that the questioning before the body was found fell within the rescue doctrine, because Novis had been missing only a week when it took place.
Two other people were arrested as accessories in the Novis kidnapping, according to United Press International: Marlow's sister and the acquaintance whose house had been used. A police captain declined to discuss their roles and said the cases were still being evaluated. No charges against either were reported, and both later testified at the trial.
Coffman and Marlow were tried together in San Bernardino County Superior Court for the Novis case (No. SCR-45400). Judge Don Turner was assigned to preside over Coffman's case for all purposes. She moved to disqualify him for bias; Turner denied any bias in a declaration, and another judge denied the motion. Motions to sever the two defendants' trials and to move the trial out of the county were also denied. The California Supreme Court later upheld both rulings, noting the size of the county and that neither the victim nor the defendants had been prominent before the crimes.
Before trial, Coffman's lawyers also claimed that the police had interfered with the defense, by pressing potential witnesses and spreading disinformation in Page, Arizona, and that a delay in paying investigative costs had kept a key witness, Marlow's former wife, from testifying at the guilt phase. The trial court rejected the claim, and so did the Supreme Court, which said that reluctant witnesses with differing stories were common and did not show any violation of her rights. Marlow's former wife did testify at the penalty phase.
Both defendants testified, and each blamed the other. Coffman told the jury that Marlow controlled her through violence and threats, including threats against her son. She admitted taking part in other killings out of fear for her son's safety and her own, and said she had not intended to kill Novis. Marlow testified that he had killed Novis after Coffman pressed him to, and he denied most of what Coffman said about him.
The defense called Dr. Lenore Walker, a psychologist and an expert on battered woman syndrome. She testified that Coffman was credible and that she suffered from battered woman syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder with depression. A clinical psychologist called by the prosecution, Dr. Michael Kania, testified that Coffman was exaggerating her symptoms, was possibly malingering, and did not have post-traumatic stress disorder. A man who had been held in jail with Coffman testified for the prosecution that she had told him that killing Novis made her "feel really good" and that she had been there when Novis was buried. A forensic pathologist called for Marlow, Dr. Robert Bucklin, disputed parts of the autopsy findings.
The jury convicted both defendants of murder, kidnapping, kidnapping for robbery, robbery, residential burglary and forcible sodomy. It found true four special circumstances: that the murder was committed during a robbery, a kidnapping, a sodomy and a burglary. It also found that each defendant was personally armed with a firearm. Marlow waived a jury on two prior serious felony convictions, which the judge found true.
At the penalty phase the prosecution put the Lynell Murray killing before the jury as evidence against both defendants. Against Marlow it also offered the 1979 robberies and an attack in February 1988, while he was in jail awaiting trial, in which he shot a blow dart at a jail trustee. Against Coffman it offered the April 1986 incident with the derringer and the sidewalk incident involving her former boyfriend.
For Marlow, his sister and others described his childhood. A psychologist who had examined him in 1975 described him then as a "pathetic young man" with a chaotic history, and a former accomplice described recruiting him into the 1979 robberies. For Coffman, Marlow's former wife testified about his violence and jealousy toward her during their marriage. Coffman's former employers, her mother and her stepfather testified, and Dr. Rath gave his account of her early life.
The jury returned verdicts of death for both. The trial court entered judgment accordingly. The California Supreme Court gives the date of the judgment as August 31, 1989; the state corrections department lists Coffman's sentencing date as August 30, 1989.
The Murray case was prosecuted separately in Orange County, and the two defendants were tried apart. In her own trial Coffman was convicted of Lynell Murray's murder with special circumstances and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The Court of Appeal for the Fourth District, Division Three, affirmed that judgment on January 31, 1995, and the California Supreme Court declined to review it.
Marlow's Orange County trial took a different course. At the close of the prosecution's case in the guilt phase, on March 10, 1992, he pleaded guilty to every charge: burglary, murder, kidnapping, robbery and rape of Lynell Murray. He admitted special circumstances that the murder was committed during a robbery, a burglary and a rape, and that he was armed with a firearm, and the court found his two prior serious felony convictions true after he waived a jury on them. A jury then sentenced him to death. The state corrections department lists his Orange County sentencing date as May 8, 1992. At that penalty trial the prosecution presented the Kentucky killing, the 1979 robberies and the Novis case, including Marlow's own 1989 testimony that he had kidnapped and robbed Novis before strangling her.
Death judgments in California are appealed automatically to the state Supreme Court. Coffman's and Marlow's joint appeal in the Novis case (No. S011960) was decided on August 19, 2004, in an opinion by Justice Werdegar, joined by the rest of the court. The court rejected every claim and affirmed the judgment in its entirety, including the rulings on severance, venue, jury selection, juror bias, the disqualification motion, the alleged interference with the defense and the voluntariness of the statements. A modification filed on October 27, 2004, made a small wording change and did not affect the judgment, and rehearing was denied the same day. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari for both defendants on May 31, 2005. Coffman was represented in later proceedings by the state's Habeas Corpus Resource Center.
Marlow's separate appeal of his Orange County death sentence (No. S026614) was decided the same day. The court rejected his claims about separate prosecutions, self-representation, his guilty plea, the use of his earlier testimony, excluded mitigation evidence, the prosecutor's closing argument and the constitutionality of the death penalty law, and affirmed.
Coffman's federal habeas corpus petition was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on November 15, 2006 (No. CV 06-7304 AB). On September 4, 2025, Judge André Birotte Jr. entered judgment conditionally granting the petition. The judgment ordered that the death sentence in the San Bernardino County case be vacated and directed the state, within 120 days, either to give her a new penalty trial or to vacate the death sentence and resentence her under California law and the Constitution. The judgment names as respondent the warden of the Central California Women's Facility. The final judgment page does not set out which claims succeeded or why. The judgment concerns the death sentence; it does not order a new trial on guilt.
An appeal, Coffman v. De La Cruz, No. 25-6327, was opened in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on October 8, 2025, with Coffman listed as appellant. Her lawyer withdrew that fall, and new counsel was appointed in November 2025. On February 10, 2026, the court granted an unopposed extension that set the opening brief for August 3, 2026, and the answering brief for October 2, 2026. As of February 2026 the docket showed no merits decision, and it did not show whether the state had also appealed.
Women sentenced to death in California have been housed at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. On March 13, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions as a reprieve for everyone sentenced to death, closing the execution chamber at San Quentin and calling for repeal of the lethal injection protocol. The order released no one and changed no conviction or sentence.
Under a transfer program begun as a pilot in January 2020 and made permanent in January 2024, the department moved condemned prisoners out of segregated housing and into the general population of other high-security prisons. Women held in condemned housing at Chowchilla were moved into the general population there; the department reported 20 death-sentenced women at the facility as of October 7, 2025. The department says the transfers do not change anyone's sentence.
The department's condemned list, updated October 2, 2026, still includes Cynthia Coffman, aged 64, with a sentencing date of August 30, 1989, an offense date of November 7, 1986, and San Bernardino as the county of trial. The same list includes James Marlow, aged 70, twice: for the San Bernardino County case and for the Orange County case. As of October 2026, both remain listed among California's condemned, Coffman's death sentence is subject to the federal judgment of September 4, 2025, and that case is pending in the Ninth Circuit.
Proven, by jury verdicts final in the state courts: Coffman's convictions for the murder of Corinna Novis with special circumstances and the related felonies, and for the murder of Lynell Murray with special circumstances. Marlow's guilt in the Novis case rests on the same jury verdict, and in the Murray case on his own guilty plea.
Not settled: whether Coffman's death sentence will stand. A federal district court has ordered it vacated on conditions, and the appeal is pending.
Attributed, no trial reported: the killing of Gregory Hill in Kentucky in July 1986. Marlow admitted it under oath; Coffman described luring Hill from his house; prosecutors presented it as aggravating evidence against Marlow. No Kentucky charge was reported.
Contested at trial: who was in control. Coffman's account, supported by Dr. Walker, was that she acted under Marlow's violence and threats. The prosecution's psychologist said she was exaggerating; a jailhouse witness quoted her as pleased by the killing; Marlow said she pushed him to it. The San Bernardino jury rejected her defense, and the Orange County jury convicted her as well.
Details on which the records differ: the date of the death judgment (August 31, 1989, in the Supreme Court's opinion; August 30, 1989, on the corrections department list); how the couple was found on November 14 (walking in bathing suits on Big Bear Boulevard, in the court's account; hitchhiking and spotted by a shuttle bus driver, in the 1986 wire report); the gun in Coffman's purse (a .22-caliber gun in one opinion, a revolver in the other); and the spelling of the second victim's first name, which the court opinions give as Lynell and the 1986 wire report as Lynel.
Other killings: other deaths have been linked to the couple in popular accounts. None is named in the court opinions, the wire report or the official records.
1962: Cynthia Lynn Coffman is born in St. Louis, Missouri.
1978: James Gregory Marlow is convicted of escape in Kentucky.
November 1979: Marlow takes part in three armed robberies in Upland and Ontario, California; he pleads guilty and is in prison from 1980 to 1983.
August 1980: Coffman's son is born; she marries the boy's father.
April 1982: Coffman and her husband separate.
April 1984: she moves to Arizona, leaving her son with his father.
April 5, 1986: arrested near Barstow; charged with possessing a loaded weapon and methamphetamine; released after five days.
April 1986: the day after her release, Marlow comes to her apartment.
June 1986: the couple is living in Newberry Springs.
Summer 1986: they drive to Pine Knot, Kentucky, and marry in a biker's wedding.
About July 7, 1986: Gregory Hill is killed in Whitley County, Kentucky (attributed; admitted by Marlow under oath in 1989).
Mid-August 1986: Atlanta.
Early October 1986: staying with Marlow's cousins in Fontana; late October, with his sister and her husband.
November 7, 1986: Corinna Novis, 20, is abducted in Redlands, held at a house in Fontana and killed in Fontana.
November 8, 1986: Coffman pawns Novis's typewriter using Novis's identification.
November 10, 1986: Novis is reported missing.
November 11, 1986: a bag holding the couple's and Novis's identification is found behind a restaurant in Laguna Beach.
November 12, 1986: Lynell Murray, 19, is abducted from the dry cleaners where she worked in Huntington Beach; Coffman checks into a hotel with Murray's credit card.
November 13, 1986: Murray's body is found in the hotel room.
November 14, 1986: Coffman and Marlow are arrested in the Big Bear area.
November 15, 1986: Coffman leads officers to Novis's body in Fontana; two people are arrested as accessories.
November 17, 1986: Coffman's statement to a Redlands police sergeant; Novis's autopsy.
February 1988: Marlow attacks a jail trustee with a blow dart.
February 1989: Marlow testifies at the joint San Bernardino trial.
August 30 or 31, 1989: both are sentenced to death in San Bernardino County.
March 10, 1992: Marlow pleads guilty in the Murray case in Orange County.
May 8, 1992: Marlow is sentenced to death in Orange County.
January 31, 1995: the Court of Appeal affirms Coffman's Orange County conviction and life sentence without parole.
August 19, 2004: the California Supreme Court affirms the San Bernardino judgments and Marlow's Orange County death sentence.
October 27, 2004: rehearing denied.
May 31, 2005: the United States Supreme Court denies certiorari.
November 15, 2006: Coffman's federal habeas petition is filed.
March 13, 2019: Governor Newsom's moratorium on executions.
January 2020 to May 2024: condemned prisoners moved into general population.
September 4, 2025: Judge André Birotte Jr. conditionally grants habeas relief and orders the death sentence vacated on conditions.
October 8, 2025: Ninth Circuit appeal No. 25-6327 opened.
February 10, 2026: Ninth Circuit extends the briefing schedule.
October 2, 2026: both Coffman and Marlow still on the CDCR condemned list.