Debra Denise Brown

Victims

3 murder convictions - 1 in Indiana, for the murder of Tamika Turks, and 2 of aggravated murder in Ohio, for Tonnie Storey and Marlene Walters, together with convictions for attempted murder, child molesting, attempted aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery. The spree she took part in with Alton Coleman killed eight people; she was never convicted of the other five

Years active

May-July 1984

Location

Indiana/Ohio/Illinois, USA

Method

Strangulation

Status

Convicted in Lake County, Indiana of the murder of seven-year-old Tamika Turks and the attempted murder and child molesting of her nine-year-old niece, and sentenced to death on June 23, 1986 by Judge Richard W. Maroc. Separately convicted in the Court of Common Pleas, Hamilton County, Ohio on June 27, 1985 of two counts of aggravated murder, with further counts of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery, and sentenced to death there. The Indiana conviction and death sentence were affirmed on direct appeal in 1991 (Brown v. State, 577 N.E.2d 221) and certiorari was denied in 1992; post-conviction relief was refused in 1998. Outgoing Ohio Governor Richard Celeste commuted the Ohio death sentence to life imprisonment in January 1991, and the Indiana death sentence was later set aside on evidence of intellectual disability, leaving a term reported as 140 years. She has been held in Ohio since 1991 and is serving life.

Brown was born in 1962 in Waukegan, Illinois, the fifth of eleven children, and was assessed as having an IQ in the range of intellectual disability and as being dependent and highly suggestible. In 1983 she left her fiance to live with Alton Coleman.

Between May and July 1984 the two of them travelled through Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and eight people were killed: Vernita Wheat, nine; Tamika Turks, seven; Donna Williams, twenty-five; Virginia Temple and her daughter Rachelle, nine; Tonnie Storey, fifteen; Marlene Walters; and Eugene Scott. They were strangled, beaten or stabbed. There were also rapes, abductions and armed robberies. The pattern was that Coleman gained the confidence of Black families by presenting himself as a friend of a relative, and they were then attacked in their own homes. The FBI put Coleman on its ten most wanted list, the manhunt was national, and the two were arrested in Evanston, Illinois, on July 20, 1984.

Brown was tried separately in several jurisdictions. She was sentenced to death in Indiana on June 23, 1986 for the murder of Tamika Turks, and to death in Ohio for Marlene Walters. In 1991 the governor of Ohio, Richard Celeste, commuted her death sentence to life, citing her intellectual disability and her subordinate role, and the Indiana sentence was also reduced. She is serving life in Ohio.

Coleman was executed in Ohio on April 26, 2002. The division of responsibility between the two has been argued over ever since: the prosecutions treated Brown as a full participant, while the clemency decision accepted that she was led. Both accounts are in the record and this entry does not resolve them.