Arrests End Odyssey of Crime, Police Say : Troubled Pasts, Broken Homes Mark Lives of Suspects in Kidnap-Murders

He came from a troubled family in the coal mining hills of eastern Kentucky, moved to California with his grandmother and sister, and later tattooed his arm with a swastika and joined the Aryan Brotherhood.

She was the product of a strict Catholic upbringing in St. Louis, moved to Arizona and lost custody of her son, and liked to “drink, have fun . . . to fill the emptiness of her life,” a friend said.

About six months ago, the two met. James Gregory Marlow, 30, a muscular ex-convict and martial arts enthusiast known as “Squeeze,” linked up in Barstow with Cynthia Lynn Coffman, 24, a wispy brunette whom Marlow called “Sinful.” And their odyssey began.

Shaved Her Head

They reportedly were married on the back of a motorcycle. They drove to Kentucky and back, camping out of a car and sleeping in the woods. Once, in a fit of anger, he shaved her head.

Now they’ve been implicated in the kidnap-murders of two young Southern California women--apparently selected at random.

They were arrested a little more than a week ago near Big Bear Lake in connection with the death of Corinna D. Novis of Redlands and are prime suspects in the motel-room strangulation of Lynel Murray of Huntington Beach. Police in Kentucky are investigating whether the couple might be linked to the death of a man whose remains were found by deer hunters Wednesday in a remote area near Marlow’s home town.

Had they not been caught, police said, Marlow and Coffman would have continued “scouting” for victims. According to authorities, the couple planned to head for Phoenix where their next victim would be a pregnant woman.

Friends and neighbors said Coffman got to know Marlow through her former boyfriend, when the two men were in a Barstow jail at the same time. Marlow moved in with Coffman at the Terminal Apartments on Crooks Street in Barstow.

Friends and former neighbors remember Coffman as an easily influenced woman who seemed afraid of Marlow. Until a few months ago, apparently, she did not have a criminal record. Marlow, on the other hand, had stolen from his grandmother as a child, according to a relative. Kentucky authorities say he has a long string of arrests there. A former neighbor in Barstow described Marlow as a “smart ass” with a violent temper, who once threatened the neighbor’s life over $15 owed to Coffman.

As Sinful and Squeeze, according to law enforcement authorities, they were ruthless criminals who moved from town to town, robbing to support themselves. Police have said they both are “heavy speed users.” Their motive for killing, authorities said, was robbery and in the case of Miss Novis, “sexual gratification.”

“These are not the Waltons,” said Redlands Police Capt. Lewis Nelson, referring to Marlow’s rural roots.

“I don’t think Bonnie and Clyde were quite this brutal,” said Huntington Beach Police Sgt. Bill Van Cleve.

Cynthia Lynn Coffman wasn’t brought up for a life of crime.

“I don’t think anything that has happened to her now came anywhere from her background,” said Coffman’s former roommate, Judy Swapp, 30, of Greenhaven, Ariz., who called herself one of Coffman’s best friends.

“I think it happened because she got caught up with the wrong guy. Because Cindy was out to have a good time, to get drunk and party and have a good time. Cindy was not a violent person. I trusted her with my newborn child,” Swapp said in a telephone interview.

Growing up in Missouri, Coffman had a “very religious background,” Swapp said. Coffman’s parents were divorced; her mother and stepfather raised her, her older brother and her two younger stepsisters, she said.

Coffman continued to live with her mother and stepfather after she got pregnant about six years ago. “They didn’t give her a hard time about it. They just accepted (the baby) as a new member of the family,” Swapp said. Two weeks after her son was born, Coffman married the baby’s father, with whom she had gone to high school. The marriage broke up about three years ago. “All marriages have problems, I guess. They weren’t compatible,” Swapp said.

Soon after, Coffman moved to Page, Ariz., a town of 6,500 near Lake Powell. Leaving her son behind until she settled, Coffman arrived in Page with a St. Louis girlfriend, Swapp said. The girlfriend went home after a couple of weeks, but Coffman stayed and got a job at the Windy Mesa bar, where Swapp now works.

About five months later, when she tried to bring her son to Arizona, Coffman learned that her ex-husband had filed child abandonment papers. After a fight, she lost custody of her son.

“I think (that’s) the one thing that hurt her most in her life,” Swapp said.

Only Saw Son Once

Coffman lost custody of her son and saw him again only once, she said.

“She had him for maybe six hours,” Swapp said. “She went out and they had lunch, bought ice cream cones, spent meaningful time together. And she drove all the way to Missouri to do that just because she missed him. For one day. That was the last time she saw him. . . . That was about a year and a half ago.”

While working in Page, Coffman met Doug Huntley and lived with him for about eight months. Then Huntley left to find work in California and Coffman moved in with Swapp.

Her roommate described the slightly built Coffman as “happy-go-lucky. Well, not real happy-go-lucky. She wanted to party. She was just out looking for a good time.” But the drinking and partying were cover-ups, she said. “She was looking to fill the emptiness in her life.”

Moved to Barstow

About a year ago, Coffman traded her life in Page for a new one in Barstow. She rejoined Huntley, setting up residence in his one-bedroom unit in the Terminal Apartments, a series of dilapidated stucco bungalows sandwiched between some railroad tracks and the dry Mojave River bed on the northern edge of the high desert town.

To the south is downtown Barstow, where taverns line Main Street. Cactuses dot the brown rolling hills to the north, where State Highway 58 winds past Mountain View Cemetery to Ft. Irwin Army Base, where some of the Terminal Apartment residents work in civilian jobs.

“Ain’t nobody liked her,” said a neighbor, Frank Flurry. “She was a very unlikeable person. Unless she could get something out of you, that’s the only way she would be friends with you.”

Apartment manager Harry Dewey agreed that Coffman never “had a happy face” but once she opened up to him about the child she left behind.

“I think we were talking about my kids, and we just kind of got around to hers,” Dewey recalled. “And she got to talking about things. She got one of those sad looks on her face. I really felt sorry for her . . . she just kind of acted like she’d had problems from the time she was young.

“She indicated to me--I don’t know what it was that went wrong--but she said she was a pretty good little Catholic and went to church all the time. But somewhere along the line something went terribly wrong.”

Drug Charge

On April 5, things went wrong again for Coffman. She and Huntley were stopped by the California Highway Patrol and both were charged with being under the influence of drugs and carrying a loaded firearm. In addition, he was charged with driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and carrying a dagger, she with possession of a dangerous drug, methamphetamine, and carrying a concealed weapon, a pistol.

They pleaded not guilty, but Huntley later plea-bargained, admitting his guilt in exchange for dropping most of the charges. He was sentenced to three years probation but ordered to spend 42 days in jail, according to court records.

While in jail in Barstow, Huntley met Marlow--who also was arrested April 5 while driving his estranged wife’s car, which had been reported stolen. Kathleen Marlow did not press charges out of fear of Marlow’s reaction, according to her mother, who did not want to be identified.

Huntley introduced Marlow to Coffman, and “they became an item,” recalled Swapp, Coffman’s former roommate. Huntley dropped out of the picture after he was picked up on a warrant for not paying child support and sent back to Arizona.

James Gregory Marlow was no stranger to jail life. He spent time behind bars in Kentucky and California and was following in his mother’s footsteps, according to a family member.

Marlow and his sister, Veronica Kay Koppers, grew up in Whitley City, population 1,683, the county seat of McCreary County, deep in eastern Kentucky’s coal-mining country. The two have been in trouble for most of the last 20 years, said their uncle, Ninville Walls of nearby Pine Knot.

They were raised by their grandmother because their mother, Doris Walls Marlow Hill, was an ex-convict with a drinking and drug problem, Walls said. Their mother died in a mobile home fire several years ago in Ohio, Walls said.

“She was just like Greg . . . like both of the kids,” he said. “She was always in trouble . . .

“I think they’ve just been badly raised. They had no supervision. They did as they pleased. I really blame my mama and my sister for the way they are. They never gave them no education.”

Pleaded Guilty

On the West Coast, Marlow apparently wasted little time getting into trouble with the law. At 18, he pleaded guilty to committing a burglary in Colton. Court documents show that in June, 1975, Marlow had seven cases--including two burglary and three grand theft charges--pending against him as a juvenile.

“Subject’s address and employment background is very unstable and there is a lack of meaningful ties to the area,” said a Probation Department note in the court records. “Family relations are not very strong. Bail reduction is not recommended.”

A few months later, Marlow pleaded guilty to another burglary, this one in Fontana, and was sentenced to the California Youth Authority.

Marlow apparently returned to Kentucky, where, in 1978, he was charged with receiving stolen property, forging checks and jail escape when he walked out of a courtroom.

He was convicted and sentenced to five years, but was given probation on the condition that he attend a drug rehabilitation program. Authorities said they have no record of Marlow ever enrolling in the program.

Recalls Arresting Him

McCreary County Sheriff Virgil Gibson said he remembers Marlow well and recalls arresting him “at least 12 times,” including once for theft of a police car and possession of marijuana. It is unclear whether the arrests led to charges or convictions.

Marlow later headed back to California, where according to court documents, he began a new crime spree, this one violent.

On Nov. 5, 1979, Marlow and another man, Alan Blake Smallwood were involved in the armed robbery of a man and two women in Upland.

Jeffrey Robert Johnson, one of the victims, testified that the suspects knocked on the door and demanded cocaine. After Johnson denied any knowledge of drugs, a man later identified as Marlow hit Johnson with a motorcycle chain and threatened to kill him, according to court testimony.

The next day, one of the owners of the Leather Mart, Joanne Cid, was fitting knee-high moccasins on a customer at about 3:30 p.m. when Marlow entered and stood at the front counter. Cid later testified that she asked Marlow if she could help him and he replied, “Yes. You can go lay on the floor because I have a gun pointed at you.” Cid said she never saw a gun but saw a pointed object in Marlow’s pocket.

Grabbed $75

“I looked back at the guy, and he kind of half-smiled and said, ‘I’m serious,’ ” Cid testified. She and her customer got down on the floor, Marlow grabbed $75 out of the cash register and a rabbit fur coat.

The next stop was Nov. 20 at the San Bernardino County Methadone Maintenance Clinic in Upland. A witness later testified that Marlow stood at the doorway with a cocked shotgun, the barrel protruding from under his coat. According to the witness, Marlow said only two things during the robbery: “Stand still,” and, yelling to his partner, Alan Smallwood, “Alan, shoot him in the legs. Show them you mean business.”

Less than a week later, Marlow was arrested for possession for sale of a controlled substance, methadone, and possession of a deadly weapon, a sawed-off shotgun.

Marlow was convicted May 15, 1980, of two counts of robbery and sentenced to five years in state prison. A San Bernardino County judge, in denying probation, said: “The court finds that if the defendant is not imprisoned he will continue to be a threat to the community, the property rights of others, and (the) persons of others.”

Married in Prison

Two months later, while an inmate at Folsom Prison, Marlow was married. He had met his wife, Kathleen, a few months earlier while he was still in San Bernardino County Jail, according to Kathleen’s mother.

Through the years, Marlow had developed a taste for tattoos. According to police, the 6-foot, 190-pound suspect has a swastika etched onto an upper arm, a heart tattooed on an arm and more tattoos on his chest, arms and penis. One tattoo, a wolf on the right side of his body, earned him the nickname of Folsom Wolf, in honor of his time served at the state prison. While at Folson, police said, the blue-eyed, brown-haired Marlow joined the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison white supremacy gang.

Paroled in May, 1983, Marlow moved to the town of Lenwood, near Barstow, and lived with his wife and her mother. For a while, life was untroubled, according to Marlow’s mother-in-law. He did odd jobs and worked for Chuck’s Rent-A-Throne, a portable toilet company.

“We thought he’d turn over a new leaf when he came home from prison. He seemed to be doing well by us until things went bad again,” she said.

That happened last March, the mother-in-law said, when Marlow beat his wife “pretty bad” after she found him in a bar after work. Kathleen, 33, wound up in a home for battered women in Barstow and filed for divorce March 18. After the beating, Marlow allegedly stole Kathleen’s car.

That landed him in jail April 5, and sent Marlow on a fateful path that would converge with Coffman’s.

Not much is officially known about Marlow and Coffman’s summertime journey to Kentucky and back.

“We knew he had this woman whose nickname was ‘Sinful.’ Gregory (Marlow) used to keep her dressed up in old Army outfits and he’s supposed to have gotten angry and shaved her hair off,” said McCreary County Sheriff Gibson.

Marlow is wanted in connection with a July 26 burglary in which a shotgun and women’s watches were stolen from a home near McCreary County.

Marlow also is a suspected of stealing a car from a McCreary County auto repair shop in September. The burglary victim said he was told by authorities that Marlow drove the car to Arizona with an unidentified woman.

Sensed Something Was Wrong

When the couple arrived at Judy Swapp’s Greenhaven, Ariz., home one night recently, Coffman’s former roommate immediately sensed that something was wrong. When Swapp saw Coffman, she had a scarf over her head, no makeup on, a camouflage jacket on her back and a tough-looking man at her side. Swapp said her former roommate had always been well-dressed, her nails always long and manicured, her hair always curled.

“When she came in and pulled the scarf off, I couldn’t believe it,” Swapp recalled. Coffman’s hair had been clipped to a stubble.

Swapp said Coffman told her it was because bugs had laid eggs in her hair, but Swapp didn’t believe the story.

Boomer Gillis, a Page-area artist who also saw Coffman during her recent Arizona visit, recalled, “I saw this guy and I immediately said, this is wrong. And when I saw her hair, I said, ‘What happened to you?’ Then I saw him and I intuitively knew it had something to do with him.”

In Arizona, Marlow and Coffman told Swagg that they had gotten married in California before they began their journey--a claim that authorities have not confirmed.

Swapp said when Marlow told her that they had been married on the back of his Harley-Davidson, Coffman became suddenly quiet. “I said, ‘Cindy!’ She just kind of laughed and said ‘Yeah, really . . . ‘

“The whole time there was a look in her eye like she wanted to talk to me and yet she never left his side. She seemed like his little puppy dog.”

Marlow and Coffman departed Arizona quickly and quietly, leaving behind a silver dollar for a friend they stayed with, Swapp said.

Their whereabouts for the next month are not clear. They apparently laid low for a while.

Until Nov. 7.

Twenty-year-old Corinna D. Novis was leaving the Redlands Mall to get a manicure at a beauty salon when she was approached in the parking lot by Marlow and Coffman, who asked for a ride to the University of Redlands, according to police.

Random Kidnapping

“She was a very nice, caring lady, very trusting,” said Redlands Police Chief Robert Brickley. “It was a random kidnaping. They selected a young woman in front of the mall. They did not know this woman. It could have been anybody.”

Coffman and Marlow pulled out a .22-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, drove her to Fontana and sexually molested her, then took her to a remote agricultural area, according to a Teletype memo issued to law enforcement agencies by Huntington Beach police. There, she was strangled and buried in a shallow grave, the memo states. The cause of death may have been suffocation, said San Bernardino County Coroner Brian McCormick, “but we are not ruling out strangulation.”

The suspects then drove Miss Novis’ 1986 white Honda CRX to Miss Novis’ apartment, where they stole several small items, including a telephone answering machine and typewriter, the memo said. Afterwards, they drove to several places in San Bernardino to sell the items for drug money and visit “other people,” according to the memo.

Through investigation, according to the memo, police learned that the suspects were looking for a young, attractive female with long red fingernails and a new car.

Coffman and Marlow then traveled to Orange County, where they were identified as being in Huntington Beach on Nov. 10, in the Laguna Beach area on Nov. 11 and in the the Corona del Mar and Huntington Beach areas on Nov. 12, the memo said.

At 6:20 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, Lynel Murray was getting ready to empty the cash register and close up Prime Cleaners on Hamilton Avenue in Huntington Beach. The blonde, blue-eyed Golden West College psychology student was on the phone, making plans to meet her boyfriend at 6:45 p.m., when a customer walked in.

According to police, the 19-year-old Miss Murray was abducted about 6:30 p.m.

When Miss Murray did not show up for her date by 7:10 p.m., her boyfriend, Rob Whitecotton, grew nervous. He drove to Prime Cleaners and found it locked up, lights out, and Miss Murray’s blue and white 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass still parked out back. When he came back later with the shop owner, Hooshang Movafaghi, they discovered that all the cash, down to the penny, was missing and clothes were strewn about as if the place had been ransacked. Miss Murray’s bank card also was used that night to withdraw cash from her bank in Newport Beach, her family said--just as Miss Novis had taken money out the day she was abducted, according to police.

Oceanfront Lodge

As her friends and family frantically awaited, Miss Murray’s life was ending in a Huntington Beach motel room. Huntington Beach police believe that Coffman and Marlow drove Miss Murray to the Huntington Beach Inn, an oceanfront lodge, and in Room 307 strangled her and left her bound and face down in a tub of water. Her body was discovered by a maid the following afternoon.

Coffman and Marlow, however, apparently did not spend the night in Huntington Beach. According to the Huntington Beach police memo, the two suspects drove to Ontario and used Miss Murray’s charge card to rent a room at an Ontario hotel and dine at a nearby Denny’s that night.

The following morning, Thursday, Nov. 13, Marlow and Coffman apparently headed for the mountains. They abandoned Miss Novis’ car in a parking lot in Santa’s Village in Running Springs, wiping it clean with Armoral, and hitchhiked toward Big Bear Lake, in one instance accepting a ride with an unidentified couple and their three children, according to police. Then they checked into the Bavarian Lodge at Big Bear Lake, using Miss Murray’s credit card, police said.

Didn’t Look Like They Belonged

The lodge office manager remembered them well. The man was wearing a suit, the woman a dress and high heels. “They didn’t look like they belonged here and I thought, ‘Boy, are they from out of town,’ ” said Ina Aranguren. The couple also carried a lot of luggage and told her that their car had broken down, she said.

There was also a problem with the credit card they used, but when Aranguren tried to call the credit card company to check it out the line was busy, the manager recalled. If the problem persisted, she said, the couple offered to pay cash.

Police, by this time, were closing in. At about 7 p.m.--just a few hours after Miss Murray’s body was discovered in Huntington Beach--investigators canvassing the Big Bear area found her credit card receipt at the Bavarian Lodge, Aranguren said. But the couple had already left, perhaps scared off by the credit card snafu, she said.

A subsequent search of the suspects’ room produced seven earrings, including a single stud earring taken from Miss Murray, according to the police memo. “It is possible that the suspects took the one earring as a trophy,” it states.

Alleged Accomplices

A few hours later, police rounded up the suspects’ alleged accomplices in the kidnaping of Miss Novis. Marlow’s sister, Veronica Kay Koppers, and Richard Drinkhouse, 28, of Fontana, were arrested that night in the Rialto-Fontana area. Koppers has since been charged with false imprisonment and receiving stolen property, while Drinkhouse has been charged with kidnaping, kidnaping for robbery and false imprisonment.

Redlands police have refused to elaborate on Koppers’ and Drinkhouse’s involvement, but a spokesman said that they “knew what was going on before an after and did nothing to report it.”

With Marlow and Coffman still armed, at large, and considered dangerous, a dragnet of 100 law enforcement officers combed the Big Bear area, starting late at night on Thursday, Nov. 13.

The next morning, about 11:15 a.m., authorities found Miss Novis’ car, with a sleeping bag and some personal effects nearby.

And a few hours later, Marlow and Coffman’s journey came to an end.

A Dial-a-Ride driver spotted them as they were walking along California 38. He radioed his dispatcher, who notified the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. He then picked up the unwitting suspects and dropped them off at California 38 and Maple Street in Big Bear.

Waiting for Them

Sheriff’s deputies were waiting for them there.

Early the next morning, Saturday, Nov. 15, Coffman led Redlands police investigators to a vineyard in south Fontana, where at 4:30 a.m. investigators unearthed Miss Novis’ body--bound, gagged and face-down, according to authorities.

In questioning at Redlands’ police station, Coffman and Marlow told investigators that they killed a man in or near McCreary County, Ky., during their sojourn east last summer. The mostly skeletal remains of a man were discovered, along with a moped and baseball bat, Wednesday night by two hunters in the backwoods about 15 miles from Marlow’s home town, but Kentucky State Police said they are still investigating whether the death is linked to Marlow and Coffman. A forensics anthropologist has only established that the victim was Caucasian and died less than a year ago, but has not yet determined the man’s identity or cause of death, Kentucky police said.

Not Guilty Pleas

Koppers and Drinkhouse, the alleged accomplices in the kidnaping death of Corinna Novis, have pleaded not guilty to their charges.

Last Tuesday, Marlow and Coffman pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, kidnaping, kidnaping for robbery, robbery, and burglary in connection with Miss Novis’ abduction and strangulation in San Bernardino County. They are being held without bail.

Although they have been cooperating with authorities, Redlands police chief Brickley said a week ago that they so far have shown “no remorse.”