48 Hours Mystery: The Writing on the Wall | CBS News

Produced by Sara Ely Hulse and Clare Friedland
[This show originally aired on May 5, 2012. It was updated on July 19, 2014.]

COLUMBIA, Ill. (CBS) - On the morning of May 5, 2009, Christopher Coleman returned home from the gym to a scene of chaos and unimaginable horror.


"I told him, 'Hey, they -- they didn't make it' -- being the family," Detective Justin Barlow of the Columbia Police Department said. "[Chris] sat down on the driveway and started sobbing. Said he felt like he was gonna throw up. And then kind of curled up in the fetal position."

Detective Barlow had been the Coleman's neighbor for five years and was the first to respond when Chris could not reach his wife.

"This crime scene, it wasn't bloody," he told "48 Hours" correspondent Maureen Maher. "...but that didn't mean it was less gruesome."

"Were you at all prepared for what you were about to walk into?" Maher asked.

"I don't think anybody could be prepared for that," said Barlow.

Upstairs, where they should have been safe in their beds, were 31-year-old Sheri and the couple's two young boys, 11-year-old Garett, and 9-year-old Gavin.

"What is the lasting image you have in your mind from that day?" Maher asked Barlow.

"I would say the one that sticks out the most would probably be Garett, just because he's the one that -- that, you know, I -- I discovered," he said.

"Is that a haunting image for you?"

"Yeah. Little bit," Barlow nodded.

The killer had not only taken Garett's life, but had desecrated the body by leaving another disturbing message.

"The spray paint in his room was actually on the sheet that was over his body?" asked Maher.

coelmanthreat.jpg
"Punished" One of the Manson-style messages spray-painted on a wall in the Coleman home CBS NEWS
"It was and there was some remnants of the spray paint on him as well," said Barlow.

"We knew that -- that this case was gonna be probably the biggest one -- of our lives -- definitely our careers, probably our lives," said Chief Joe Edwards.

Columbia, Ill., is a small, quiet suburb outside of St. Louis. Chief Edwards calls it "a wonderful place to live and raise a family."

Chief Edwards immediately recognized that his two investigators were going to need some help and called in a special unit - Major Jeff Connor and the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis, which brought in an army of 25 seasoned cops.

"It's typically your smaller departments that need the resource -- need the help," Maj. Connor explained.

Hours after the murders, the Major Case Squad swung into high gear. The CSI team started processing the house, warrants were secured to go through the Coleman's phones and computers, while a very distraught Chris was taken to the police station to give his statement.

Coleman told investigators that it had been a normal morning. He got up and left for the gym around 5:40 a.m. and called Sheri numerous times to wake her up.

As neighbors woke to the news of the murders, they were both devastated and terrified.

"So as I got down the street, I see that it was at the Coleman house. And I text her right away and said, 'Is everything OK?' And I didn't get a response," said an emotional Vanessa Riegerix.

Riegerix, who lived down the street, said the Colemans appeared to have a perfect life raising their two beautiful sons.

"I always thought of them as the American family, the perfect family," Riegerix said. "...everybody would want their children like these two boys, polite -- always helpful ... they had a heart of gold."


21 PHOTOS
The Coleman triple murder
The couple had been married for 12 years and met when they were both in the military, training at the K9 unit. Sheri became a stay-at-home mom.

Chris, 32, the son of a preacher, used his Marine and security experience to land a job for a well-known televangelist, Joyce Meyer.

"Joyce Meyer is now known throughout the country, and known throughout the world -- as a leading voice in the evangelical movement," St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Nick Pistor explained. "She's extremely successful financially. ...I've seen figures from $50 million to $100 million a year."

Pistor has followed the Coleman case for two years and is a CBS News consultant.

"Joyce Meyer does conferences all throughout the world in countries that have -- that don't necessarily respond well -- to women who -- are preaching -- a Christian message. And so she wanted some deeper security," he said.

But being Joyce Meyer's head of security apparently put a target on Chris Coleman's back. In November 2008, Chris had begun receiving death threats to his work email.

"Whenever Chris Coleman reported the first death threat that he got from his e-mail account at w-- at his work at Joyce Meyer Ministries, he came to us at the police department," said Barlow.

The email read:

Tell Joyce to stop preaching the bull---- if I can't get to Joyce, then I will get to someone close to her
"We give the Coleman family... extra patrol which we just patrol the area a lot more than we normally would during a shift and give it special attention to make sure nobody's there," explained Barlow.

It was in January 2009, that a hand-delivered threat showed up in the mailbox at the Coleman family home. It read:

F--- You! Deny your God publically or else. No more oppurtunities [sic]. Time is running out for you and your family!
"Did it concern you as a neighbor living so closely when you heard that there were death treats being made to the guy who lived across the street?" Maher asked Barlow.

"Absolutely," he replied.

Each note seemed to escalate the seriousness of the situation and, on April 27, less than a week before the murders, a final missive arrived with an ultimatum:

Stop today or else. I know your schedule! You can't hide from me forever. I'm always watching. I know when you leave in the morning and I know when you stay home.
"You decided to ramp things up yourself to be proactive," Maher noted to Barlow. "And what did you do at your house?"

"We got one camera mounted up in my 5-year-old's bedroom and pointed it right at the mailbox," he replied.

With the camera aimed directly at the Coleman's mailbox, about 214 feet away approximately, according to Barlow, they hoped to get a clear shot of whoever was leaving the notes.

"...and be prepared for something that was gonna happen. And be as proactive about it as we could," said Barlow.

Instead, days later, the killer somehow snuck into the Coleman home and strangled Sheri, Garett and Gavin.

But if the murders were linked to the threats and Joyce Meyer Ministries, that meant the cops might now be on a global search for suspects.

"There was a lot of fear that there was somebody out there killin' families, and who was gonna be next?" said Maj. Connor.

QUESTIONING CHRIS COLEMAN
The small town of Columbia, Ill., was reeling with the sudden loss of Sheri, Garett and Gavin Coleman.

"This touched an entire community... The neighbors were shocked," reporter Nick Pistor explained. "They saw the young boys playing touch football with their father on the front lawn. These were little boys that they knew."

Close friends like Kathy LaPlante were crushed.

"You could just see the pain on everyone's face. It devastated the community," LaPlante said. "Sheri was a loving mother, loyal friend and sister to me. My life's not the same...it put hole in my heart."

"If I would've known for one millisecond she was in danger, I would've been down there," said Sheri's brother, Mario DiCiccio.

The Coleman Family
The Coleman Family THE COLEMAN FAMILY
For Sheri's brother and their mother, Angela, it was impossible to accept the reality of the brutal crime.

"She grew up to be a beautiful person on the outside as well as on the inside," Angela explained. "...they were her world, those boys. They were her world."

"Garett was more -- quiet and more like a -- more of a thinker. He was -- you could tell by lookin' in his eyes he was always thinking," Mario explained. "And Gavin was very...outgoing...he was like a social butterfly. ...his personality's just like his mom's. Just like his mother's."

"With Sheri, Garett and Gavin, I mean, I think that just... that's what the motivation was for everybody," said Det. Justin Barlow.

Hours into the investigation, the Major Case Squad continued to pursue their best lead -- finding whoever wrote those threats.

"We tracked down people across the country who didn't like Joyce Meyer. We interviewed them to find out where they were at on May the 4th and May the 5th," said Chief Joe Edwards.


And that morning they were hoping Chris Coleman might be able to point them in the right direction:

Det. Barlow: Who do you suspect? I mean. Out of all these emails and things you've been talking at work, there's got to be one person that stands out in your mind?
Chris Coleman: (voice cracks) I don't have a clue. I should have been there this morning.

But as police continued to talk to Coleman, they were surprised by how he was acting:

Sgt. Bivens: How do you think they died?
Chris Coleman: I have no idea. You guys haven't told me.

Sgt. Bivens: OK. Do you have any clues?

Chris Coleman: (Mumbles)

"Did he ever ask how his wife and children died? Maher asked Barlow.

"No," he replied.

"He never asked."

"No."

"What else sticks out in your mind from those first few hours?"

"Just the lack of reaction, I mean just the lack of curiosity of 'what's going on,'" said Barlow.

So police kept probing:

Sgt. Bivens: Was there a problem in your relationship? Was there anything currently that wasn't going so well in your relationship?
Chris Coleman: No, not really. I mean just a communication thing.

Sgt. Bivens: Had you seen anyone else outside of your wife.

Chris Coleman: What do you mean?

Sgt. Bivens: In a romantic way?

Chris Coleman: No.

Chris was adamant that he was not having a relationship outside of his marriage, so it seemed odd when he offered a stunning piece of information about another woman:

Chris Coleman: Tara in Florida that you guys are going to talk to, I talk to her a ton lately, but --
Sgt. Bivens: And what's with that?

Chris Coleman: Just a friend, somebody to talk to.

Tara is Tara Lintz -- a cocktail waitress and an old high school friend of Sheri's.

Sgt. Bivens: OK. You said you had a close friendship, but were you actually doing anything that you felt wouldn't be approved by your wife?
Chris Coleman: Some of the conversations, probably.

Coleman insisted they were just friends -- that he met Lintz through Sheri when their family went to Florida on vacation:

Sgt. Bivens: Did it have potential to go further?
Chris Coleman: No. I didn't want to do that to my kids.

Police in Lintz' hometown of St. Petersburg, Fla., were contacted to check out Chris' story.

Detective Shannon Halstead got the call.

"So, we went from the station to go make contact w ith her thinking it was gonna be a quick, 20-minute interview and it ended up being very different," she said.

That's because the information Halstead gained from Lintz about the relationship was very different than what Chris Coleman was telling police in Illinois.

"She provided the Blackberry and the laptop computer, obviously, had files of videos and emails ... relating to their relationship," Det. Halstead told Maher.

"Did you immediately step out and call St. Louis?"

"I did."

"And what did you say to them?"

"I said, 'I'm not positive, but I think this is his girlfriend,'" said Det. Halstead.

Armed with that information, Det. Barlow confronted Chris:

Det. Barlow: The one thing I did want to tell you right now, the St. Petersburg homicide unit is talking to Tara right now, and she showed us the pictures you sent her of you two, and we know you two have been having an affair.
"So was that a pretty big break for you guys?" Maher asked Det. Barlow.

"It was a -- important piece," he replied.

Investigators learned the couple had begun seeing each other in the fall of 2008, six months before the murders. During the affair, Chris would fly Lintz to meet him at locations where he was working for Joyce Meyer.

Det. Barlow: I know you guys went to Hawaii together. We pulled the Enterprise leasing cars receipt where you guys went to different trips together...
Chris Coleman: Well, I didn't think it was an affair.

Det. Barlow: You didn't think it was an affair?

Chris Coleman: No an affair is when you're like living with them and you plan to get married and everything.

"She had on her calendar -- a scheduled wedding to Chris Coleman, scheduled vacations, different accounts -- credit card accounts that they held together -- and I think she, honest to God, believed that he was going to leave his wife and two children," said Det. Halstead.

Chris' parents, Pastor Ron Coleman and his wife, Connie, were stunned to learn their son had an affair. They insisted it had nothing to do with the murders.

"He's always been a real gentle person-- kinda quiet," Connie Coleman told Maher.

"Is there any way there's a part of Chris that you don't know that could have been capable of this?" Maher asked.

"Not in my view," Ron Coleman replied. "... you couldn't put something around your kid's throat unless you're a monster. It's just not there. It's just not there."

While investigators believed Chris' affair with Tara Lintz was a strong motive for murder, there wasn't enough evidence to charge him. So after six long hours, Chris Coleman walked out a free man.

"It wasn't like we were wanting to believe that Chris is the one who did this. It's just that the evidence kept pointing to him," said Maj. Jeff Connor.

THE OTHER WOMAN
Every day, friends and neighbors are reminded of the beautiful lives that were stolen from them.

"The memorial -- in their subdivision is awesome. There's a bench and there's trees," Meegan Turnbeaugh explained. "...the community of Columbia Lakes got together and created that. ...So they wanted to do something positive. And they created a nice memorial."

Turnbeaugh says it's a fitting tribute - unlike the funeral service at Pastor Coleman's church.

"No friends, no family, no coaches. Nobody spoke about these three awesome people that were dead," she said.

In the days that followed the service, any sympathy for Chris Coleman was stripped away as news spread about his affair with Sheri's high school friend, Tara Lintz.

"Well, when the affair came out, and I had no idea, and I heard about it from someone else. I felt like every day I was just getting stabbed in the heart by these little pieces of information," said Kathy LaPlante.

Asked if she thought Coleman would be arrested, Turnbeaugh told Maher, "Yes. And I couldn't wait. I was nervous, to be honest with you."

The Major Case Squad felt that pressure.

"Obviously, in any case...you want to get the person responsible for it. But you want to get the right person," said Det. Justin Barlow.

But right away, there were red flags. Police were concerned when they found a basement window open and others unlocked.

"Here's a guy who's family is bein' threatened. They're gonna destroy his family while he's gone, and yet, that window was left unlocked, and it was obvious it was left unlocked, 'cause there was no forced entry," said Maj. Jeff Connor.

And remember that camera Det. Barlow installed in his house?

"We saw no strangers walking up and down the street. You saw no strange vehicles," said Chief Joe Edwards.

Chris had even installed his own surveillance cameras in his house.

"What about the surveillance equipment that was allegedly in the house?" Maher asked Maj. Connor.

"The recorder was missing," he replied.

"That's convenient."

"Yes."

An autopsy on Sheri revealed she fought violently with her killer, leaving her with two black eyes.

"Sheri was involved in an altercation before she was murdered. Those two boys weren't," said Chief Edwards.

Which made scratches found on Chris Coleman's arms all the more suspicious.

"When did you first notice the scratches on his arms?" Maher asked Det. Barlow.

"It was brought to my attention by people at the scene," he replied.

Det. Barlow: How are you doing?
Chris Coleman: Freezin.

Det. Barlow: Anything I can get you? You're freezing?

Police say Coleman tried to hide his arms during his interview.

"You can see on the video where he's asking for a blanket because he says he's cold. The only part of his body that he covers up are the -- you know, suspected-- marks on his arm," Barlow explained.

Det. Barlow: That'll work, won't it.
Chris Coleman: Yeah that's fine. As long as I can cover my arms. I'm freezing. [Covers his arms]

 48 HOURS SEGMENT EXTRAS
Chris Coleman police interview
"I remember in the interview room it being very warm in there," Barlow told Maher.

"Did you think he was in shock?"

"No."

Chris later claimed he got those scratches the day before when he was removing a satellite dish from his roof.

Asked if there was any DNA found at the scene that would implicate him, Det. Barlow said, "I'll just say there wasn't any DNA found that didn't belong there. No boogeyman, no -- unidentified DNA, anything like that."

There was incriminating evidence found on Chris' phone and computers, starting with X-rated snapshots and videos that Tara Lintz and Chris had sent each other.

"It was a serious affair. He had written down every -- her measurements, her favorite things. Everything about her he had stored so he could, you know -- buy her things or do whatever for her," reporter Nick Pistor said. "By November 5th of 2008, Chris had written on his computer that that was the day Tara changed his life."

For police, that date would set off alarms bells.

"And how many days after that, then, did the threats start to show up?" Maher asked Pistor.

"About nine days after that," he replied.

Nine days. The Colemans insist it's all a coincidence.

"It's my understanding that he had written down, 'November 5th, the day Tara changed my life.' That they had exchanged promise rings... And that he had even written down the name of their first child were it to be a little girl," Maher commented to Chris' parents. "Is that true?"

"That's not Chris," said Ron Coleman.

"Honestly, I cannot imagine him doin' that," Connie Coleman said. "He just didn't really operate in that -- in that arena of -- emotions. He just didn't. He was just very calm and logical sense."

Chris' parents believe their son is innocent and that it was an intruder who killed his family and left hateful messages. In fact, Chris even voluntarily provided samples of his own handwriting to police.

Asked what was the most important piece of evidence at the crime scene, Maj. Jeff Connor told Maher, "At the crime scene, probably the handwriting on the walls."

But those samples would later come back to haunt Chris Coleman.

"The crime scene lab coming back and saying that the handwriting found on the wall matches up to the handwriting -- from the handwriting example that Christopher Coleman gave at the Columbia Police Department," said Det. Barlow.

Finally, two weeks after the murders, police felt they had enough to make their case. Christopher Coleman was charged with the first-degree murder of his wife and two sons.

"If it was another time they would have had pitchforks and lanterns in their hands," Pistor said of the public's reaction. "They were out for vengeance. They wanted this case solved and they wanted it solved immediately and they wanted him to be found guilty immediately."

"Were you there when he was arrested?" Maher asked Ron Coleman.

"Yes. It was at night," he replied. "...the worst scenario. ... we'd lost Garett and Gavin and Sheri and now Chris is gone."

Sheri's friends and neighbors were relieved, but angry at the toll it had taken on them and their children.

"I've talked to some of the moms, and the children in the community wonder if their dad could do the same thing," said LaPlante.

And investigators insist all this pain was caused by Chris Coleman's obsession.

"And all because of a woman," Maher commented to Maj. Connor.

"I believe that had a major part of it," he said.

MOTIVE FOR MURDER?
"This crime was about greed, sex, selfishness, and narcissism. Chris Coleman decided he wanted a new life, and his family was in the way," Prosecutor Ed Parkinson told Maureen Maher. "He was obviously a monster who carried out a very sadistic plan."

By the time Chris Coleman went on trial in April 2011, prosecutor Ed Parkinson and his team had spent two years building their case.

"This was a huge case ... this was, like, a 10,000 piece puzzle," said Chief Joe Edwards.

The murders of Sheri Coleman and her two young boys were a big case for local media, as well. All the pre-trial publicity prompted the judge to bus in a jury from a county an hour-and-a-half away.

"What was the biggest challenge for you as a prosecutor in this case?" Maher asked Parkinson.

"People who turn out to be jurors have to accept the fact that parents kill their kids...it's just hard to accept," he replied. "He just looked like a good guy."

"How do you get that much hatred for a child?" Chief Edwards asked.

As unthinkable as it was, at every corner, investigators had turned up more evidence against Coleman. Some of it came from Sheri's own friends, who were determined to have their day in court.

"What was it like waiting for the two years for the trial?" Maher asked Meegan Turnbeaugh.

"It was life changing," she replied, "and not for the better."

"How did you feel about testifying?"

"I was scared to death. I was like, 'I'm gonna do this for Sheri.'"

Coleman, sporting a new hairdo and a bulletproof vest at his trial, would hear those friends bolster the prosecutor's claim that he had lied about his marriage in his interrogation:

Chris Coleman: We talked about it a while back about possibly maybe splitting up or something... We started meeting with actually one of the pastors...
Det. Justin Barlow: OK. From Joyce's church?

Chris Coleman: Yeah, things have been going awesome."

Coleman insisted that he and his wife had merely hit a few bumps in the road and were helped by counseling. Sheri told her friends a different story.

"She was in my room and she was crying and Chris wanted to leave her," Kathy LaPlante said. "And then he would start to say hurtful things like 'I never loved you.'"

But Sheri wasn't willing to let him go.

"And he would put on a face in front of the marriage counselor. And Sheri said when he got back home he'd yell at her and, you know, it would just be hell to pay," said LaPlante.

Prosecutor Parkinson says there's a reason Coleman wanted Sheri to be the one to divorce him.


21 PHOTOS
The Coleman triple murder
"I believe he became so enraptured by Tara Lintz...but he couldn't get divorced in his own mind, because then he'd lose his $100,000 job a year with Joyce Meyer Ministries," he said. "They frown on divorce, if it's your fault."

Parkinson believes Coleman was hoping to make a clean break before anyone caught on about the affair. In a videotaped deposition, Joyce Meyer confirmed her ministry's zero tolerance of adultery.

"If he would have been having an adulterous affair, while he was still married, then it could have definitely affected his job," said Meyer.

 48 HOURS SEGMENT EXTRAS
Joyce Meyer deposition excerpts
But eventually Sheri did find out her husband was having an affair with her best friend from high school.

"Sheri opened up her computer one night with a friend and said, 'Do you want to see the woman who's having an affair with my husband?' And showed images of Tara Lintz," said reporter Nick Pistor.

But Sheri still refused to get divorced. And something she said to her friend, Kathy LaPlante, will haunt her forever.

"When he came home, demanding a divorce...she told me that if anything happened to her, Chris did it," said LaPlante.

Several months later, Sheri and her sons were dead.

"What do you think the trigger was that made it May 5th?" Maher asked Parkinson.

"I think Tara was pressing him. I think he just got pushed into his own corner," the prosecutor replied.

"They had wedding dates planned. Chris had told Tara...that he was serving Sheri with divorce papers on May the 5th, the day of the homicides," Det. Justin Barlow told Maher.

"And had he ever filed divorce papers?"

"Not that we found, no," he replied.

"Did he ever speak to an attorney?"

"No."

After hearing all about this "other woman," the jury would finally get to meet her. It was the most anticipated moment of the trial: Tara Lintz making her entrance under police escort.

"She arrived at the courthouse ... almost like a Hollywood star arriving somewhere," Pistor recalled. "It was a packed courtroom gallery."

Lintz testified that she and Coleman talked or texted, "all the time, constantly" and that they often professed their love for each other. When asked whether she and Coleman had plans to marry, her short answer spoke volumes: "The divorce had to happen first."

"Do you think that Tara had anything to do with the murders?" Maher asked Parkinson.

"No, I don't," he replied.

"And you don't think she had any idea that something was about to happen?"

"Nope. Not from any of the evidence, I don't believe that," said Parkinson.

But the prosecutor does believe Coleman's lust for Tara Lintz had everything to do with it. And to drive his point home, he showed the court the sexually explicit videos and photos the two sent each other.

"We said, 'Lord please help us.' We don't have to look at this, but please help us sit here for his sake that he doesn't feel we're ashamed of him," Connie Coleman told Maher.

Now, instead of embarking on an exciting new life and keeping his six-figure income, Chris Coleman was facing the death penalty.

A GUT-WRENCHING CASE
Chris Coleman had a prominent local defense team at his side when he went on trial for his life. But John O'Gara and Bill Margulis had to admit they faced an uphill battle.

"The evidence was, although, all circumstantial, it was very overwhelming," said Margulis.

And at trial, one of the most critical pieces of evidence would be time of death. The prosecution maintains the three victims were killed hours before Coleman left the house to go to the gym.

"The bodies were stiff ... they had rigor mortis ... that everything pointed that they were dead by at least 3:00 in the morning," said reporter Nick Pistor.

"It could've been the whole case, quite frankly," said Prosecutor Ed Parkinson.

The defense insists that Sheri, Garett, and Gavin could have been killed that morning, during the hour and 10 minutes that Coleman was gone.

"You can use various formulas...the time of death is not an exact science," said Margulis.

As investigators kept building their case, something was troubling them about that trail of threatening letters and emails.

"It read: "If I can't get to Joyce then I will get to someone close to her," said Det. Justin Barlow.

"We didn't find anybody else who had received messages that were threatening to their family," said Chief Joe Edwards.

The prosecution's computer experts discovered there was good reason for that.

"Those threats were typed on his laptop," Parkinson told Maher.

"The email threats that came to him originated from..."

"...his own laptop," said Parkinson.

Those threats were sent from an account called destroychris@gmail.com. Defense attorney Bill Margulis insists someone else could have sent them.

"Anybody that had access to his computer, whether it was a co-worker or anybody else could've created that account," Margulis explained.

Investigators still had no so-called "smoking gun;" No DNA, no murder weapon and no eyewitness. But after analyzing the blood-red paint in those frightening messages on the walls, they believed they had something close to it.

"One can of that exact spray paint was purchased at a local hardware store. And the computerized signature said Christopher Coleman," said Edwards.

"You cannot paint that much without paint being somewhere on you," Ron Coleman said. "They literally cut him to the quick ... he pulled his own hair out for them ... there was not a trace of paint."

But if Coleman was the killer, it made a scene on the surveillance video -- recorded the afternoon before the bodies were discovered -- all the more chilling.

"It's a perfect suburban scene ... he played catch with his son at the house," Pistor said. "...and then, the next morning, they're dead. ...It's unexplainable."

Chris Coleman did not take the stand.

In a case that was gut-wrenching for everyone involved, it turns out, the jury was no exception.

"I didn't wanna believe that he could do that," said juror Gina West.

"I cried myself to sleep," juror Olivia Shopinski said. "Absolutely unimaginable. I mean, there's just so much hate. It's just hatred spread everywhere."

The first vote inside that jury room was 7 to 5, not guilty, but not because they believed Coleman was innocent.

"I mean, we all thought he did it. Who else would have done it?" said jury foreperson Jonece Pearman.

But many of the jurors were troubled by the circumstantial nature of the case.

"You wanted factual, tangible evidence that said he did it?" Maher asked.

"Make 'em prove it," said West.

As the deliberations entered a second day, crowds gathered outside the courthouse, the tension mounting. Sheri's mother remained optimistic.

"We will get justice for my daughter and my grandsons," Angela DiCiccio told reporters outside the courthouse. "I have what they call the mother instinct. I am very confident."

Incredibly, it was the jurors own detective work that, they say, pushed them over the top. When they looked at the back of a picture of Chris Coleman and Tara Lintz kissing, they noticed it was taken on Oct. 21, 2008.

"I think actually what I said was, 'Oh my God.' And I said, 'What was the date that he said the affair started?'" Pearman recalled.

"Yeah, the dates didn't match," West affirmed.

"Which wasn't til November -- and the picture was created in October," Pearman continued. "October, way before they said they had been seeing each other."

"And what did that say to you?" Maher asked Pearman.

"That was something black and white in front of my face that said if he could lie about this, he's lying about everything," she said.

After 15 hours of deliberations, the verdict was guilty. The crowd outside the courthouse erupted in applause and cheers.

"I had never seen anything like what happened on the lawn of the courthouse that night," said Pistor.

The verdict was handed down on May 5, 2011, two years to the day that Sheri, Garett, and Gavin were found murdered.

"I walked outta the courtroom and the first words out of my mouth, 'Yes, we did it, we got justice," Angela DiCiccio said.

The judge sentenced Coleman to life in prison, in part, because the State of Illinois' repeal of the death penalty was just months away from taking effect.


"48 Hours" spoke to Chris Coleman by phone, because cameras were not allowed inside the prison:

Maureen Maher: Did you kill your wife and your children?
Chris Coleman: No, absolutely not. I absolutely love my wife and my kids. And this, you know, it's not, it's not me.

Maureen Maher: How do you love your wife and be having an affair with one of her best friends?

Chris Coleman: Well...just because maybe I wasn't, you know, selfishly getting what I thought I...should be getting at home...from the physical side of things. But I still absolutely loved her.

Coleman denies he was planning to divorce Sheri to marry his mistress, Tara Lintz:

 48 HOURS SEGMENT EXTRAS
Coleman phone call with Maureen Maher
Maureen Maher: So why does Tara say that?
Chris Coleman: It was discussed on several different things...and you know, it was a conversation...but there was no specific plans or no dates...or nobody asking each other to be married or anything like that.

Maureen Maher: She also says that you told her that you were...serving divorce papers to Sheri.

Chris Coleman: You know, unfortunately, and I feel horrible about it... if I ever talk to Tara again, that would be something that I apologize to her about...that was a lie. ...I lied to Tara about that.

So if he didn't murder his family, who did?

Chris Coleman: I have absolutely no clue. Believe me, I have wracked my brain for two-and-a-half years trying to figure that part out. ...I just had to stop and give it to God, just release that and do my best to forgive that person and move on.

Forgiving and moving on has been difficult for Sheri's friends, who are still struggling to understand this incomprehensible crime.

"As a Christian, I feel like it's imperative that I forgive, because Jesus forgave me. And I want to forgive with all my heart," Kathy LaPlante said, choking up.

"What makes it so hard to do that?" Maher asked.

"Because they were so innocent," she said.

Sheri's family and friends want to ensure that she, Garett and Gavin are never forgotten. They've been raising money to help victims of domestic violence. And they hope to build a new Little League field and name it after those two young boys who loved to play ball.

"The boys had their whole life ahead of them...they didn't deserve it," Vanessa Riegerix said. "This should've never happened. Shoulda never happened."

After a long legal battle with the Colemans, Sheri's family was allowed to rebury Sheri and her sons in a cemetery closer to their home in Chicago.

Chris Coleman is appealing his conviction.

Serial Killer Paul Durousseau The Jacksonville Serial Killer Documentary

Serial Killer Paul Durousseau The Jacksonville Serial Killer Documentary

Paul Durousseau (born August 11, 1970) is a serial killer from the United States who murdered seven young women (including two who were pregnant) in the southeast United States between 1997 and 2003. German authorities suspect he may have killed several local women when he was stationed there with the Army during the early 1990s. Typically, Durousseau would gain the victim’s trust, enter the victim’s home, tie their hands, rape, then strangle them to death.[2] All of his known victims were young, single African-American women.

Personal life

Paul Durousseau was born in Beaumont, Texas. Little is known publicly about Paul Durousseau's childhood. His first offenses with the law as an adult took place on December 18, 1991 and on January 21, 1992 for carrying a concealed firearm in California.[3] In November 1992, he enlisted in the US Army[3] and was stationed in Germany, where he met Natoca, who would later become his wife.

The two married in 1995 in Las Vegas. In 1996, they were transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. On March 13, 1997, he was arrested for kidnapping and raping a young woman. However, in August of that year he was cleared of those charges. Soon after, he was found in possession of stolen goods. He was court-martialed in January 1999, found guilty and dishonorably discharged from the Army.[4]:3

The two moved to Durousseau's hometown of Jacksonville, Florida where they had two daughters. It was during that period that he committed most of the murders. He struggled to keep jobs and make ends meet, and the couple would often have fights over the issue of finances. In 1999, the police advised Durousseau's wife on how to file for a restraining order after he allegedly slapped her in the face and grabbed her by the neck. Later, she testified he got violently angry when she talked about getting a divorce. In September and October 2001, Durousseau spent 48 days in jail for domestic battery.[4]

Durousseau still managed to hold various legitimate jobs. In 2001, he was hired as a school bus driver and an animal control worker despite being a convicted felon. In 2003, he worked as a taxi driver in Jacksonville. It was erroneously reported that Gator City Taxi Company failed to run a background check on Durousseau[5] and it is now accepted that this is how he first came into contact with some of his victims. The City Of Jacksonville Department of Motor Vehicle/Taxicab Inspection office is responsible for background investigations of all persons applying for taxicab driver permits. Durousseau was issued a Taxicab Driver Permit from the City of Jacksonville.[6]

Neighbors and friends described him as a "lewd womanizer". He often asked young women when they planned to "make flicks" with him. A witness recalled Durousseau hitting on a girl that appeared to be 13 or 14 years old.[7]

Chronology of the murders

Less than one month after the acquittal over the rape charges, the nude body of 26-year-old Tracy Habersham was found on September 7, 1997 in Fort Benning.[8] She had been missing for 48 hours and was last seen leaving a party. She had been raped and strangled to death with a cord. Paul Durousseau was not a suspect in the murder but DNA would later tie him to the crime. He also would confess in Habersham's killing after his arrest.[3][9]

In 1999, he raped and killed 24-year-old Tyresa Mack in her apartment. Witnesses saw him leave her place with a television.[10] In 2001, he was arrested for raping a young woman in Jacksonville. He spent 30 days in jail and received two years' probation. On December 19, 2002, 18-year-old Nicole L. Williams' body was found wrapped in a blue blanket at the bottom of a ditch in Jacksonville. She had been reported missing two days earlier.[8]

On January 1, 2003, family members of 19-year-old Nikia Kilpatrick went to check on her. They had not had any news from her for several days. They found her body in the bedroom of her apartment. She had been raped then killed by strangulation with a cord two days before. Her two sons, an eleven-month-old and a two-year-old, were alive but malnourished. Kilpatrick was approximately six months pregnant at the time of her death.[4]

On January 9 of the same year, 20-year-old nurse assistant Shawanda Denise McCalister, who was also pregnant at the time of her death, was raped and strangled to death in her Jacksonville apartment. The murder scene was almost identical to that of Nikia Kilpatrick. She was killed on Durousseau's first day of driving a cab for Gator City Taxi. Her body was found the following day.

The next two victims were 17-year-old Jovanna Jefferson, and 19-year-old Surita Cohen. Their bodies were found close to each other in a ditch next to a construction site on New Kings Road in Jacksonville on February 5. Police estimated that Jefferson was murdered around January 20 and Cohen was killed 10 days later. Witnesses recount having seen the two last victims with a taxi driver fitting Paul Durousseau's description on the night they disappeared.

He was arrested and charged with five counts of murder on June 17, 2003. On December 13, 2007 he was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the murder of Tyresa Mack. As of August 18, 2013, he was still a resident on Florida's death row at Union Correctional Institution. No execution date has been set.

48 Hours Mystery - Muscle and Mayhem Documentary

MUSCLE AND MAYHEM: THE REAL-LIFE STORY BEHIND MIAMI'S MURDEROUS SUN GYM GANG

Group of bodybuilders at center of one of Miami's most notorious crimes: a complicated and deadly plot that involved kidnapping, money and murder

Produced by Chuck Stevenson, Jamie Stolz, Tamara Weitzman and Alicia Tejada

(CBS News) MIAMI -- Zsuzsanna Griga will never forget the kidnapping of her brother, Frank, and his girlfriend, Krisztina Furton in 1995.

"...he loved fast cars, beautiful girls and life," Griga said. "She was very beautiful. She was only 23 years old. My heart breaks when I think of what she went through."

Felix Jimenez, now retired from the Metro-Dade Police homicide department, was the lead detective on the case.

"Very handsome couple, they looked like they were made for each other," Jimenez explained. "Frank was the American success story -- an immigrant, came to this country with $10 dollars in his pocket and made millions."

He came from Budapest, Hungary, and found a minimum wage job in New York City.

Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton

Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton

"It was like a service station ... he was changing the oil, washing cars," Zsuzsanna Griga explained. "What he accomplished ... should make everyone proud because he went from nowhere to a millionaire on his own just by using his own resources."

In fewer than 10 years, Frank was living in an upscale Miami enclave called "Golden Beach" and running a phone sex line empire. He was on top of the world until May 24, 1995.

"I started calling him and he wouldn't pick up the phone," Zsuzsanna Griga said. "I kind of knew that something really bad happened then..."

The disappearance of Frank and Krisztina would become one of Miami's most notorious crimes. But who would want to kidnap them?

"How did this all go down?" Roberts asked Jimenez.

"So we got a call that there was a missing -- a wealthy couple that was missing out of Golden Beach," he explained. "That was a little strange because in homicide we need a crime scene. We need a dead body to respond to. They're few and far between when there's actually a missing person that we would respond. It has to be highly suspicious circumstances. And it so happened in this case there was."

At first, the detectives hoped they could find Frank and Krisztina alive.

"...the missing Hungarian couple had said that they were going to the Bahamas the -- the-- following day. So all their friends assumed that the reason they weren't home was because they were in the Bahamas," said Jimenez.

All that changed, though, when a police made a stunning discovery.

"Their Lamborghini was found in an abandoned, wooded area far outside of Miami," said Jimenez.

"At this point, we realized that something bad -- something bad had happened to this couple," said Sam Garafalo.

Garafalo, also retired, worked the case for his boss, Felix Jimenez. They are now both CBS News consultants.

"We got information and -- as soon as we got it, we ended up going to Golden Beach," he said.

"So you have a missing Hungarian couple and a Lamborghini," Roberts noted.

"We had more than that. We had a next door neighbor ... that had actually been to the house the last time they were seen alive and they invited her in and introduced her to two muscle-bound men that were driving a gold Mercedes and told them they were going out to dinner to discuss a business deal," said Jimenez.

The neighbor would tell police she'd met the driver of the gold Mercedes and knew his name: Danny Lugo.

"Danny was a big muscular guy," said Jimenez.

Police would soon learn that Lugo was a burley ex-convict who had served time for running a phony loan scam operation. After his release, he became the manager of a suburban Miami health club called Sun Gym.

"This is where the Sun Gym was located. This is what we would call the gang headquarters," said Jimenez.

"Danny Lugo was a Puerto Rican-Cuban kid from the Bronx," added Garafalo.

"He thought he was smarter than anybody else," Jimenez added. "He had a way of convincing people to do things they didn't want to do."

The investigation into Frank and Krisztina's disappearance continued. Detectives learned Lugo was the leader of a group made up of drifters and petty thieves who hung out at the Sun Gym. His main partner in crime was another muscle head, Adrian Doorbal.

"Adrian Doorbal was Danny Lugo's protege," said Jimenez.

"Doorbal was just an evil, he reminded me of just an evil guy," said Garafalo.

"He was a steroid freak. ... He's like 5 foot 7 tall and 5 foot 7 wide," Jimenez continued. "He'd do anything and everything that Danny Lugo told him to do."

In May 1995, Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal would be at the center of one of the most notorious crimes in Miami history: a complicated and deadly plot that involved kidnapping, money and murder.

Eighteen years later, the story was too much for Hollywood to resist. In the new movie "Pain and Gain", Lugo is portrayed by Mark Wahlberg.

The film, released by Paramount Pictures, is part of Viacom, a company affiliated with CBS.

The movie captures what Lugo was about in real life: his infatuation with getting rich, says Patty Barrientos, who worked alongside him at a gym.

"He'd say... 'I'm gonna have a lot of money... I wanna grow, I wanna be somebody very big...'" said Barrientos.

Asked if he was money hungry, Barrientos told Roberts, "Yes."

With the little money he had, he spent a lot of it at the Solid Gold Strip Club. It was here he began an affair with a one-time Penthouse model-turned exotic dancer named Sabina Petrescu.

"She was a very, very attractive woman," Jimenez said. "She fell for Danny and believed everything he told her."

Petrescu was another recent immigrant who made a splash in Miami. She was a finalist in the Miss Romania contest in 1990, then came to the United States to begin a modeling career. She made it onto the pages of Penthouse magazine, but filled the rest of her time as an exotic dancer.

"Danny treated her well ... he gave her a BMW," said Jimenez.

Petrescu would play a crucial role as police continued gathering more evidence connecting Lugo and Doorbal to the disappearance of Frank and Krisztina.

"We have the housekeeper who was also at the home when the -- the musclemen were there. We have the next door neighbor. We show them photographs. They make identification. So we have a lot to go on," said Jimenez.

Search warrants were executed for the homes of Lugo and Doorbal and their associates.

"I mean we had so many cops it wasn't even funny," said Garafalo.

"... in fact we mobilized right in this park," Jimenez pointed out.

Police quickly hit pay dirt in the apartment of Danny Lugo's girlfriend.

"There was some damning evidence there ... bloody clothing belonging to Frank and Krisztina, there was the kidnap kit -- a case with duct tape ...guns, [stun guns], handcuffs -- there was so much evidence in that apartment," said Jimenez.

Soon Adrian Doorbal was in custody and refused to talk to police.

"The main guy that we're after, Danny Lugo, is nowhere to be found," said Jimenez.

Danny Lugo had given them the slip.

"This case was all over the news," retired homicide detective Felix Jimenez told Troy Roberts. "Miami was riveted as to this attractive Hungarian couple ... you know, this yellow Lamborghini found in the Everglades and that they're missing and they continue to be missing."

But detectives had lost their lead suspect, Danny Lugo.

"Lugo's gone, we have a warrant for his arrest," Jimenez said. "He's just vanished. We don't know where he is."

They did have one good lead.

"We had his girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu," said Jimenez.

Sabina Petrescu, the magazine model-turned stripper, had quite a story to tell. She said her boyfriend wasn't a criminal. He told her he was a CIA agent.

"Number one, she was smitten with Danny Lugo, and number two, I think she believed what he was saying -- that he was a CIA operative -- that he was working for the U.S. government in kidnapping people that were dangerous to this country," said Jimenez.

Danny Lugo had convinced her he was a spy on a secret mission. So for now, she wouldn't tell detectives where Lugo was. But it would be just a matter of time.

In an incredible twist of fate, detectives in another department at Metro-Dade police had also been looking at Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal. Their case was the bizarre kidnapping of another Miami millionaire. Now, Lugo and Doorbal were front and center of two cases.

The Miami millionaire was Marc Schiller, an accountant.

"He was Argentinean born, grew up in the U.S., went to school, got his CPA license, he had a medical billing business that did very well," Jimenez explained.

The two crimes would become one huge case -- a case that Judge Alex Ferrer, now TV's "Judge Alex", and Miami-Dade prosecutor Gail Levine would never forget.

"This case was what made me who I am today, a career prosecutor," said Levine.

"Of all the cases I've tried this is by far the most fascinating case," said Ferrer.

Schiller would eventually tell police a wild story -- that five months before the murders of Frank and Krisztina, Schiller himself had been grabbed by a gang. Bound and gagged, he'd be dumped at a warehouse and held for more than a month.

"This is a warehouse that was rented by one of the members of the Sun Gym Gang," Jimenez told Roberts as they stood outside the building.

"They drove the van with Schiller inside into the warehouse."

"Mark Schiller was the perfect victim because he was involved in something that was illegal," said Levine.

"I think he got greedy and started to get involved in Medicare fraud," said Jimenez.

Danny Lugo learned about Schiller from Jorge Delgado, who also worked out at Sun Gym. Schiller and Delgado had been in business.

"Him and Jorge Delgado started a mortgage business together," said Jimenez.

But business went badly, and later Schiller and Delgado had a falling out over a deal. Delgado wanted revenge and told Lugo that Schiller would be an easy mark.

"They basically go 'He's not goin' to the cops ... he's involved in Medicare fraud. We'll shake him down...'" said Ferrer.

So what was the plan?" Roberts asked Levine.

"The plan was actually very simple: kidnap Marc Schiller, have him write his own ransom and then kill him," she replied.

"Simple as that?" Roberts asked.

"Simple as that," said Levine.

But catching Schiller to shake him down was tougher than it looked.

"It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic ... because they made these stupid attempts," Ferrer explained. "They would hide in his yard under blankets like they were some kind of ninja ... waiting for him to come out and get the paper at five in the morning and they were gonna kidnap him ... only to be surprised that cars were coming down the street and lighting them up with their headlights...

"So then they're running through yards, screaming 'abort, abort like they're on some secret mission for the government," he continued.

Hollywood could not resist this crazy scene. The gang used costumes and comic book code names like Batman and Robin and tried to stage an accident to kidnap Schiller.

"They're waiting for him to drive by to stage this accident," Ferrer explained. "They turned the car off and as he's driving by they're cranking it and the car won't start and he goes driving by. So it's like the Keystone Cops gone bad."

Finally, after multiple attempts, the "gang that couldn't shoot straight" enlisted some serious muscle and planned to take Schiller down outside a restaurant he owned.

"They waited in a van and they had their biggest gym rats come out," said Levine.

A co-conspirator, who "48 Hours" agreed to keep anonymous, worked with the Sun Gym gang to kidnap Schiller.

"I'm a good hearted person. I just made a mistake," he told Roberts.

"I was pretty hardcore..." he said of his weightlifting.

"At your peak you could bench 475 pounds?" Roberts asked.

"505," he replied.

"505? How big were you?"

"I was like a lean 270 pounds," he said.

"Big guy... intimidating," Roberts commented.

"Yeah."

He was desperate for money and sometimes worked at the Sun Gym. In 1994, Lugo and his gang were offering cash for a little help.

"He told me, 'Look, I gotta talk to you about something,'" the co-conspirator continued. "'... he owes me money'... and 'I need you to come with me and help me collect.'"

He agreed, and in November of 1994, brought his gun.

"So you had your .45 with you?" Roberts asked.

"I always carry my firearm," he said.

"We were parked right there," the man said, standing with Roberts in the parking lot, "... and as soon as he came out of his restaurant, they saw him so they said... 'There he is, there he is...'"

"It was one of those days in Miami where a storm was coming in," Schiller recalled.

Schiller is a man who cheated death and whose harrowing ordeal is now dramatized by actor Tony Shalhoub in the new movie.

"Why are you alive?" Roberts asked Schiller.

"I guess its divine intervention. I can't explain it," he replied.

Schiller's nightmare started just as he was about to head for home after work.

"I walked out to my car ... as soon as I opened my door ... I'm grabbed from behind by three guys," said Schiller.

"... and as soon as they grabbed him the guy grabbed the steering wheel... he was screaming the co-conspirator told Roberts.

"They just kept punching me ... and they had a Taser... and they kept Tasering [sic] me," said Schiller.

"They were Tasing him," the co-conspirator continued. "He was screaming ... 'What do you want, what do you want with me, what are you doin?"

"At that point, they dragged me to the van -- a white van," Schiller said. "They handcuffed my hands behind my back."

"You must have been terrified," Roberts commented.

"I thought they were gonna take me and kill me," he said.

"They duct taped him... they put tape on his mouth ... and we took off right out of here," said the co-conspirator.

"When we got to the warehouse," said Schiller, "they called the boss."

The boss was Danny Lugo, the same man at the center of the Krisztina Furton-Frank Griga murder case.

"... told him, 'The eagle has landed.' I guess I was the eagle," said Schiller.

"When I left ... Schiller was sitting in the chair ... he was taped up -- hands and legs ... and they were beating on him," the co-conspirator told Roberts.

Schiller was tortured endlessly. Sometimes, it was with fire.

"Doorbal would yell, 'Fire! Fire!' but real sick," Schiller said. "And he would burn me, you know, burn my skin ... and then he'd do this again ... and he was laughing so hard he was crying."

Other times, they played Russian roulette.

"They would place a gun to his head, they would take a revolver and spin it and pull the trigger," Jimenez explained. "For the first couple weeks, he wasn't even allowed to use the bathroom. He would have to urinate and defecate on himself."

But the worst was yet to come.

"At this point they told me, 'Well if you don't give us a list of everything you have ... we're gonna bring your wife down here and rape her in front of you," said Schiller.

Schiller says he was allowed to make one phone call. He called his family, telling his wife to take their two young children and flee to Colombia. She chose not to call the police.

Asked why she didn't she call police, Schiller told Roberts, "I don't know. I think at that point, it was prudent not to."

And for some inexplicable reason, none of Schiller's employees, friends or extended family raised the alarm. With his family safely out of the country, Schiller was still suffering. Finally, the daily torture was too much. He gave up, giving the gang everything.

"I signed. They told me my death sentence," said Schiller.

"He was signing over everything, including his life," Levine said. "It was $1.2 million in cash and assets and a $2 million life insurance policy."

"And pretty soon they had everything the man owned. They moved into his house, they changed the pool contract to their name. They were living there ... and partying in his home," Ferrer explained. "And they were taking some of the furniture they liked and putting it into their own apartments, wearing his jewelry, driving his Dodge Viper, and his Mercedes ... and just basically living off his money. ... Well, at that point, you can't let the guy live ... so they decide he's gotta go."

Having forced him to sign over his assets, the Sun Gym gang, led by Danny Lugo, was partying in Marc Schiller's house. In the Hollywood feature, "Pain and Gain", Mark Wahlberg's character depicts the depravity.

"They were living in the house. In my house," Schiller told Troy Roberts.

Despite his cooperation, Schiller still remained chained like an animal in the Miami warehouse.

"Schiller was tied to a pipe in a very small bathroom. That's where he spent the next 30 days, was handcuffed to that pipe," former homicide Felix Jimenez explained.

The businessman and father was living in kind of a hell associated with a Third World dungeon -- complete with racial slurs.

"They just told me, 'We got a matzo ball' ..." said Schiller.

"What does that mean?" Roberts asked.

"I guess they were referring to the fact I was Jewish," he replied.

Schiller can't forget the sick soundtrack that came with his daily beatings.

"They, I mean this whole time they were laughing uncontrollably. To them it was just a fun game," he said.

"While they were beating you?" Roberts asked.

"Yeah."

"Did any of your captors show you any kindness?"

"Yeah, the guy that was at night there, because they stopped feeding me," Schiller explained. "I was starved. I hadn't eaten for like three days. He brought me a can of a - canned ravioli, which I had to eat with my hands."

That would be one of the last meals the Sun Gym gang intended for Schiller to have as Lugo put his final plan into action.

"They give him alcohol to drink. Get him all drunk," said Judge Alex Ferrer.

"They plied you with alcohol for three straight days" Roberts noted to Schiller.

"It was probably more than that, it was probably like five days," he said.

"And then what did they do?"

"The last day? ... They set me in a chair, and they give me this concoction, a drink," said Schiller.

"Liquor, tequila, vodka and gave him sleeping pills. And eventually he passed out," said Jimenez.

Schiller was unconscious.

"They put him in his Toyota 4Runner, his SUV," said Ferrer.

"And they drove the car into a light pole. Doorbal was driving," Jimenez explained. "... and then douse the car with gasoline and set it on fire. And that was their attempt to kill him. They backed out about a block away to watch the car as it was engulfed in flames."

"The problem is, they don't buckle him in," Ferrer explained. "The flames revive him enough that he stumbles out of the car and towards the road."

The surprised Sun Gym gang moved in to finish off Marc Schiller.

"... and they see this guy that they just lit on fire standing by the side of the road and they yell, 'Run him over, run him over,'" said Ferrer.

"They drive forward and they try to run him over, they missed. But then they were able to back over him and then run over him again," said Jimenez.

"And they get back to their place, and they go, 'You think we killed him?' They're looking at the dent of the car, and they say, 'I don't know it's not a big dent, yeah but we ran him over, and we backed over him, I mean he must be dead,'" Ferrer continued.

Asked what he remembered next, Schiller told Roberts, "Waking up in a hospital."

It would be months before Schiller could grasp the full horror of how he ended up half dead at Jackson Memorial, Miami's top trauma center.

"I was in a coma when they picked me up," he told Roberts.

In the frenetic haze of the intensive care unit -- burned and bruised, his pelvis broken -- Marc Schiller tried to tell his story of abduction and torture to nurses, doctors -- anyone who might listen.

"Yeah, I told 'em I was kidnapped, and they go, 'No no, you were in a bad accident,'" he said. "And I go, 'No, no, no, no. I was kidnapped. And they just blew it off."

"How many times did you insist you had been kidnapped?" Roberts asked.

"About three and then I gave up," said Schiller.

"He's trying to convince the nurse to give him a phone, because he says he was kidnapped. And she just keeps going, 'No you weren't kidnapped, you were drunk, you hit a pole," said Ferrer.

"I knew they weren't gonna do anything,"said Schiller.

"Finally, she gives him the phone. He calls his lawyer," said Ferrer.

From there, it took just moments to figure out Marc Schiller needed a lot more than just a lawyer.

But even Ed Du Bois, with 50 years of experience as a private investigator, had never heard anything quite like Schiller's story.

"The call was unusual because the story was so bizarre," said Du Bois.

Du Bois met Schiller and believed his story. Soon, both men realized

Schiller had an even bigger problem: Lugo and Delgado were intent on finishing the job.

"I was a sitting duck," said Schiller.

"Did you fear that Delgado and Lugo were going to come to hospital to finish the job?" Roberts asked.

"Yeah. And my sister was there and my brother. And we were all in a panic," he said.

"And I said, 'The easy answer is for you to get out of the hospital," said Du Bois.

"Why didn't either of you go to the police at that point?" Roberts asked.

"Well ... we couldn't wait for the police," Du Bois replied.

Schiller's sister ripped the medical tubes from his arms.

"And the doctor said, 'You can't move him. He's in critical condition,'" said Schiller.

Schiller's brother and sister booked an air ambulance, grabbed their brother and bolted out of Miami, heading north -- not a minute too soon.

"We left at 8 o'clock in the morning. I guess they came at 10 to look for me, to kill us all, all three of us," said Schiller.

"Delgado and Lugo?" Roberts asked.

"Yeah, to the hospital," he replied.

The now desperate Sun Gym gang had tracked down their former captive.

"As they're walking the halls of Jackson Memorial Hospital looking for him, he's on an air ambulance flight to New York," said Ferrer.

A thousand miles from Miami, Marc Schiller, now supported by his family, began to heal; his body and bones fractured.

"First, I can't walk and second of all, who knows how many of these people are out there," he said.

Schiller would reunite with his family in Colombia. Weeks would pass, and, strangely, despite his ordeal, Schiller did not report it to police.

"What person gets kidnapped, held for a month, and when he finally gets free, leaves the country and doesn't call the police for four months?" Ferrer wondered.

"I think what's difficult to understand is why you did not go to the police sooner," Roberts commented to Schiller.

"I did," he said.

But according to authorities, it wasn't until April 1995, four months after his escape, that Schiller contacted police.

"'They want you to come to Miami to report it,'" Schiller said. "And I'm like, 'That's not happening.' ... who knows how many of these people are out there. ... I run into them by accident, I'm dead."

"Marc Schiller was asked to come and give testimony under oath four times ... and he stood up not only the prosecutor, but the police, to give that testimony four times," said prosecutor Gail Levine.

Prosecutor Levine would eventually lead the investigation and try the case. She says Schiller didn't come forward, because he had his own credibility issues due to his alleged involvement in Medicare fraud.

"The victim comes from Colombia. He has a lot of money, more money than

I would imagine most CPAs in Miami have," she explained.

"So after a while, you and Marc decided to go to the police?" Roberts asked Du Bois.

"Yeah," he replied.

But according to Du Bois and Schiller, when they finally did sit down with the cops...

"They've never listened at all," said Schiller.

"They never went out, never read them their rights, they never asked them a question, they never even said, 'Hello, here I am. We're breathin' down your neck,'" said Du Bois.

"They went to Metro-Dade's top unit that handles just crimes of this nature --just the biggest crimes. And they just didn't believe him," Ferrer explained.

It had been five months since Marc Schiller's ordeal. The muscle-headed gang had trashed his home and burned through his money. They were now hungry for another score.

"If the police had listened to him and investigated, Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton would probably be alive today," said Ferrer.

By May of 1995, five months after his harrowing escape, the Sun Gym gang had burned through all of Marc Schiller's money.

"They'd been partying and going to strip clubs, and dropping thousands of dollars on strippers and it was all his money," said Judge Alex Ferrer.

With Schiller's fortune spent, the gang targeted their next victims: Frank Griga and his beautiful girlfriend, Krisztina Furton.

"There was never any pretense. They knew they were gonna kill them from the outset," said Ferrer.

The millionaire had it all.

"Lugo and Doorbal, on the other hand, they wanted to live that life," Ferrer continued.

The life Frank Griga had built on those dial tones of his sex phone empire.

"It made me very proud that my kid brother made it so big," Zsuzsanna Griga said.

"You know we were very poor when we were young..." she continued.

"It's a true rags-to-riches story," said Roberts.

"Yes it is," Griga replied.

Zsuzsanna had seen her brother's love for the glittery side of the American dream.

"Money was there for him to make other people happy and to play, to buy toys," she said.

"His wealth did afford him certain luxury items," Roberts noted.

"Oh he loved cars, yes, he loved cars," Griga said.

Frank Griga's yellow Lamborghini was legendary. It was that car that caught the eye of Adrian Doorbal. He'd been told about it by a woman who once dated Frank Griga.

"And Doorbal's face lights up and says, 'Who has the yellow Lambo?' And she says, 'Oh, don't you know? That's my friend Frank. He's my old boyfriend," Levine explained. "And he says, 'How would I know him?' 'Oh, he comes into this dance club Solid Gold all the time. Don't you know him?' Doorbal wasn't that stupid. Bingo. We got our next victim."

Doorbal and Lugo approached Frank Griga with a phony, made-up business scheme and a meeting was set at the Solid Gold strip club.

"And they told him that they were investors and that they had a way to make 20-percent return on the dollar," said Levine.

But the real plan mirrored the violent abduction of Marc Schiller: kidnap and torture Frank Griga until he signed over every nickel he had and revealed to the gang where his assets were kept.

"They also needed Krisztina," said Levine.

Asked why, she told Roberts, "They needed Krisztina because if Frank was missing, Krisztina was going to go to the police, 'cause why wouldn't she go to the police? Frank was completely legal."

Lugo and Doorbal, posing as businessmen, lured Frank and Krisztina back to Doorbal's apartment. Within minutes, Doorbal was strangling Frank in the bedroom.

"Doorbal, not knowing his own steroid strength, either broke his neck or suffocated him," said Levine.

And she screams, and Danny tackles her and injects her with horse tranquilizer, which they had basically bought to tranquilize the two of them," said Ferrer.

"And it killed her?" Roberts asked Levine.

"Not initially," she replied.

"They had a dead person and another one, another person near death," said Garafalo.

Krisztina Furton, 23, who loved animals, swimming and had dreams of being a professional diver, was now shot full of horse tranquilizer. Then, Lugo demanded she give up the access code numbers to Frank Griga's house.

"And Doorbal goes and speaks to her and he comes back and says, his exact words were, 'The bitch is cold.' They had injected her with enough horse tranquiller to kill four 1,000-pound horses. And now they're both dead -- Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton. And these two guys don't have a dime," Ferrer explained.

Asked what did they do with the bodies, Levine told Roberts, "Well, they got creative."

With the help of Jorge Delgado, Doorbal and Lugo stuffed the bodies of Frank Griga into a couch and Krisztina Furton into a large cardboard box.

"So here you have these two muscular guys, and on a Saturday morning, during the middle of the day, it looks like they're moving. And they're moving boxes and they're moving a couch. And what they contain are two bodies," said Jimenez.

They took the bodies to an empty warehouse. The horror was just beginning.

"So they went to Home Depot and bought a chain saw. They come back and they're gonna use this to dismember the bodies. But the chain saw doesn't have enough power. So these geniuses take this chainsaw back to Home Depot and return it," said Ferrer.

"You're kidding me," said Roberts.

"... and they brought that back and they end up buying an electric chainsaw," said Garafalo.

"It boggles the mind that they would return a chain saw that they were going to use to dismember these people," Roberts told the detectives.

"There's a lot of things about this case that boggle the mind," said Jimenez.

But the second chain saw jammed in Krisztina Furton's beautiful, thick hair. That's when Doorbal and Lugo reached for an ax.

"And they started chopping the body parts. For hours," said Levine.

"And they disposed of the torsos in one part of the county in oil drums," said Ferrer.

"And they left those hands, heads and feet in buckets at the 31 mile marker," Levine continued.

"... in the Everglades, on the Alligator Alley that goes from Ft. Lauderdale to Naples," said Ferrer.

"I have never passed that mile marker without saying a little prayer for Frank and Krisztina," said Levine.

Another gang member would dump Frank Griga's yellow Lamborghini on the side of the road, in the swampy Florida Everglades.

Police didn't need a GPS. The map was clear and it led straight to the Sun Gym gang.

"And I remember saying, 'We don't have a missing persons, we have a very major homicide,'" said Levine.

Soon, Frank's big sister was on a flight to Miami.

"The bodies were found that day," Zsuzsanna Griga told Roberts of the day she arrived. "Sergeant Jimenez and Sgt. Garafalo ... came and picked me up at the airport and they explained that they just had, you know, they had the bodies. Yes." Griga paused before continuing. "Sorry. It's still very hard after 17 years."

As investigators put the pieces together, Marc Schiller's kidnap story echoed like thunder.

"And they said, 'I think we got another case just like yours ... could you come down to Miami?' I said, 'Yeah, yeah. I'll come to Miami,'" said Schiller.

The Sun Gym gang left a massive, bloody trail of evidence. The last of the muscle heads would be busted when Danny Lugo's girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu, told police that Lugo was hiding out in the Bahamas.

The crimes and the trial would captivate and horrify all of south Florida.

"It was disturbing on every level. And I've tried serial killers," Ferrer said. "But this case really got to me."

Almost four years after he was left for dead, Marc Schiller faced off again against the Sun Gym gang.

In February 1998, almost three years after the gruesome murders of Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton, Danny Lugo and Adrian Doorbal were set to go on trial.

The case would be career defining for prosecutor Gail Levine.

"It was so encompassing ... from the day I got the call, from the day I started investigating it, from the day I met the victim's family, from the day I met everybody involved, from the relationship that I developed with police in investigating the case," she explained.

Lugo's girlfriend, Sabina Petrescu, was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony. She knew all the gang's secrets and details of their plots, though she believed they were undercover CIA agents.

"Sabina Petrescu's probably one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life," Levine said, "but she was also one of the most naive women I have ever met in my life. She was in love with Danny Lugo and she thought he was her CIA agent."

With 100 witnesses and thousands of pieces of evidence, the case would drag on for 10 weeks, overseen by Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the State Attorney for Miami-Dade County.

"... when you have a case that's that grotesque and you know people suffered ... what do we do to bring justice to the victims of this case, either in their name or for their surviving members ," said Rundle.

Justice was what Marc Schiller got this time. He was in control as the prosecution's star witness.

"Walking in and seeing Lugo and Doorbal ... I realized that -- I was in the driver's seat ... because they never imagined that I'd be sitting there accusing them," said Schiller.

The prosecution rested. Lugo and Doorbal's attorneys chose not to put on a case.

"There's sometimes when, as a defense lawyer, you don't have anything to go on. You just don't. You can't claim misidentification. You can't claim anything," said Ferrer.

"What was the defense strategy?" Roberts asked Levine.

"Save their lives," she replied.

Jurors wasted little time making their decision. Within hours, they reached their verdict: Daniel Lugo was found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Krisztina Furton and Frank Griga.

Doorbal was also found guilty and both men were sentenced to death.

It's a moment Judge Ferrer will never forget.

"As I was sentencing him, Danny Lugo was standin' there lookin' at me, and his eyes were ... watery. Noel [Adrian] Doorbal, on the other hand, he was joking. He was turning around to his girlfriend, and making faces like a goofball," said Ferrer.

"You believe the jury got it right?" Roberts asked Levine.

"One-hundred percent," she replied.

"Think my final words were, probably, 'May God have mercy on your soul,'" said Ferrer.

Asked is she's gotten justice, Zsuzsanna Griga told Roberts, "What sort of justice can be done, OK? Short of bringing him back?

... he was reaching for the skies, " Griga continued. "And the message that he -- he had out there was ... you can do whatever you want. And this is what these guys -- broke short.

"Were you satisfied with the verdict? Roberts asked Schiller.

"Well, guilty, yeah, but -- I don't believe in the -- death penalty," he replied. "I think being in a jail cell for the rest of their life is worse punishment."

The ordeal wasn't over for Marc Schiller. As he left the court after the trial, he was surrounded by armed FBI agents who arrested him on charges relating to an extensive Medicare scam.

The Medicare fraud that made Schiller such an easy target for the gang had come back to haunt him.

"It was a sham," Ed Du Bois said. "They never returned the money to Marc Schiller. Marc Schiller did not commit that $14 million worth of Medicare fraud."

In a highly unusual twist, Judge Alex Ferrer stood up for Schiller during the federal fraud investigation. He described how important Schiller's testimony was in bringing down the Sun Gym gang.

"He was treated like a prisoner of war or actually worse. The torture and the beatings and the -- the attempts to kill him and all of that. For some reason, it just felt to me that that should be taken into consideration," said Ferrer.

Incredibly, one of Schiller's torturers, Jorge Delgado - the Sun Gym member who had first told Lugo about Schiller and his millions - ended up helping the federal government make their case.

In a plea deal, Schiller ended up serving two years in federal prison and paying $137,000 in restitution.

"He felt betrayed," Roberts noted to Levine.

"His jail sentence is what he did, but the pain and suffering that he endured, that -- nobody deserves that," she said. "Did Marc Schiller deserve to go to prison? I leave that to the federal government. I wasn't involved in that at all."

Today, while Schiller refuses to talk about the charges, he does say he lost everything -- his health, his home, his millions. Even now, with a big Hollywood movie, he won't get a dime.

"It's a comedy, which is unfortunate, because there was nothing funny that happened to me," he said. "These were inept, incompetent people, but they were at the same time malicious and cold-blooded murderers."

Ultimately, the rest of the gang went to prison, too. The co-conspirator was sentenced to two years imprisonment for his involvement in Schiller's kidnapping and Jorge Delgado got 15. In all, seven members of the gang would do time.

It's been 18 long years since the gang tortured and killed their way through Miami.

Gail Levine has continued her career at the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office. She's tried more than 80 cases.

Judge Alex Ferrer left the bench in 2005, and continues to enjoy success with his syndicated television show.

Video: Ferrer on his early life, career in Miami

Marc Schiller has just released his tell-all tale, "Pain and Gain - The Untold True Story".

Lugo and Doorbal remain on death row.

Lugo and Doorbal have appealed their convictions multiple times over the past 15 years.

Once their appeals have been exhausted, Florida's governor will sign a death warrant and they will be executed by lethal injection.