Murder Defendants on Opposite Sides as Trial Set to Begin

Once lovers, James Gregory Marlow and Cynthia Lynn Coffman are now each other’s worst enemies.

Nearly two years ago, they were arrested in two rape-murders that shocked the Southland. Their trial in the first of those cases is scheduled to begin Monday in San Bernardino.

He sits on one side of the courtroom with his lawyers. She sits on the other side with hers.

Prosecutors in San Bernardino and Orange County--where the second killing occurred--are seeking the death penalty against them.

“They used to talk all the time, but that stopped quite a while ago,” said one court official who has observed most of their pretrial appearances.

Strangulation Deaths

Marlow, 32, and Coffman, 26, are accused in the strangulation deaths of 20-year-old Corrina D. Novis of Redlands on Nov. 7, 1986, and 19-year-old Lynel Murray, a Huntington Beach college student, five days later.

The couple’s Orange County murder trial is scheduled to follow the San Bernardino case, which is expected to last until the end of the year.

This week’s first days of jury selection are being accompanied by an 11th-hour attempt by Coffman’s lawyers to persuade an appellate court to order a separate trial for her. Her defense, according to court documents, is that Marlow dominated her and coerced her into helping him kill the two women.

“We simply have conflicting defenses,” said Donald W. Jordan Jr., Coffman’s lead trial attorney. “We have one dominant defendant and one non-dominant defendant.”

Marlow’s attorneys want a separate trial too.

‘Three-Sided Case’

“It’s a three-sided case,” said Ray L. Craig, Marlow’s lead trial lawyer. “It looks like we’re going to have to defend not only against the prosecutor, but against our co-defendant.”

At this stage, Jordan knows the chances of separate trials are remote. Superior Court Judge Don A. Turner has refused a request by Marlow’s lawyers, who took the issue to the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Bernardino and lost.

Prosecutors contend that separate trials would only mean “an instant replay,” because the physical evidence and witnesses against the two are the same. And prosecutors in the two counties say it’s clear: Both participated, and both deserve the death sentence.

“Cynthia Coffman knew those women were going to die,” Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. Toohey said right after their Orange County preliminary hearing. “This is not an all-Marlow case.”

If convicted and then sentenced to die, Coffman would become the only woman on California’s Death Row, which houses 156 men.

‘Doesn’t Deserve Death’

“When the facts come out, we think a jury will see this young woman does not deserve the death penalty,” Jordan said.

Marlow, who has a long criminal record, met Coffman through an acquaintance she was visiting when he was at San Bernardino County Jail six months before the killings.

The two apparently traveled together to Kentucky, where Marlow once lived, according to authorities and interviews with Coffman’s family. They also have been charged with a drug-related killing there.

They were living with Marlow’s half-sister, Veronica Koppers, and her husband, Paul, in San Bernardino in November, 1986. According to Paul Koppers’ testimony at a preliminary hearing, he told his wife on Thursday, Nov. 6 of that year, that Marlow and Coffman would have to leave.

By the defendants’ own admissions in police interviews, the next day began for them a chilling week of crime that led to an intensive investigation by more than half a dozen police agencies.

Chosen at Random

The victims, by Coffman’s own admissions during those interviews, apparently were chosen at random.

“It could have been anyone,” Redlands Police Chief Robert Brickley said at the time.

Corrina Novis had the misfortune of stopping at the Redlands Mall after getting off work at an insurance agency that Friday in November.

Marlow and Coffman--based on police interviews with one or more of the defendants--were at the mall to return a car to Veronica Koppers.

They asked Novis if she would give them a lift to the University of Redlands, and she agreed. Once in the car, they pulled a gun on her, handcuffed her and drove her to the home of a friend of Marlow’s in Fontana.

Police say they later drove her to a vineyard in a remote area south of Interstate 10 in Fontana, where she was slain and buried in a shallow grave.

Prosecutors say the couple then used Novis’ key to enter her apartment and steal her answering machine and her typewriter, which they sold for money and drugs.

Marlow and Coffman then drove Novis’ car to Orange County, where they slept on the beach near the Huntington Beach Pier and spent their days driving around and planning their next robbery, according to Coffman’s statements to police.

On Tuesday, Nov. 11, 1986, they spent half an hour watching Lynel Murray working alone at Prime Cleaners in Huntington Beach. The next day, they returned in the late afternoon, robbed her at gunpoint and took her in handcuffs to the Huntington Beach Inn.

A desk clerk identified Coffman as the woman who registered that night at the motel, using Murray’s credit card. By the time Murray’s body was found in one of the rooms the next morning, Marlow and Coffman had checked into a motel in Ontario.

The next day, a Thursday, the couple discovered through newspaper reports that they were wanted by the police as suspects in Novis’ disappearance. Police tied them to it when the victim’s identification papers were found beneath a trash bin in Laguna Beach with ID papers for Marlow and Coffman.

Caught a Week Later

According to police, they abandoned Novis’ car in a parking lot at Santa’s Village in Running Springs, near Big Bear.

The two were caught on Friday--a week after the Novis kidnaping--after an alert Dial-A-Ride bus driver remembered seeing them in the area.

Both suspects wanted to see lawyers right away. Court records made public so far do not show what happened in Marlow’s case. But with Coffman, the investigators pushed hard for a statement even after she asked for a lawyer.

While this appeared to violate her rights against self-incrimination and thus might make her confession inadmissible in court, the police had a greater concern: Finding Novis, who had been reported missing but whose fate was still unknown.

Marlow’s sister, Koppers, had told police that Marlow once had tied up a woman in the desert and abandoned her.

Guarded Admissions

Records show that Coffman at first made guarded admissions, then finally gave investigators almost an hour-by-hour account of the previous week’s events.

About 5 a.m. the next morning, Coffman led investigators to Novis’ grave.

Defense attorneys were prepared for a major dispute with prosecutors over using the defendants’ statements in court.

But San Bernardino Deputy Dist. Atty. Raymond L. Haight readily agreed not to use any of the defendants’ statements to police. Although Haight declined to talk with The Times, it is clear from the preliminary hearings in both the San Bernardino and Orange County cases and from other court records that he has a substantial case without their statements.

The prosecution has witnesses who will testify that Marlow and Coffman took Novis to Fontana in handcuffs and who can place them with the sale of the typewriter and the answering machine and with Novis’ car. Police have also found the handcuffs, which belonged to Koppers’ husband.

ID Found

Marlow’s and Coffman’s fingerprints were found all over the car. And the identification papers found together in Laguna Beach include Novis’ driver’s license, an ID card for Coffman and Marlow’s Department of Corrections Card.

There is one Coffman statement prosecutors have not ruled out using: Coffman’s alleged confession to a cellmate, Robyn Long, over a card game, that she and Marlow killed Murray together by twisting a towel around her neck, and that she was angry with Murray because Marlow had sex with the victim.

That statement is expected to be used against Coffman in the San Bernardino case if she is convicted and must face a penalty phase, where the prosecutor would be allowed to bring in evidence of other murders in addition to the Novis killing.

Jordan, her lawyer, recognizes how grave his client’s situation appears.

“But it’s a different issue when you are talking about degrees of responsibility,” he said.

‘Carry Out His Wishes’

In court papers, Jordan states that Marlow once tied up Coffman and left her alone in the desert, “apparently to die.” Marlow has shaved Coffman’s head, beat her, once stabbed her, once bit her, and “threatened her, both before the arrests and since.”

“Marlow felt that Coffman, as his woman, should act in accordance with his every wish, including suffering fear and pain herself, and imposing fear and pain on others to the point of death,” the papers say, and that Marlow not only made Coffman carry out his wishes, but “act as if they were her wishes too.”

Craig, a veteran homicide defense attorney from San Bernardino, refuses to discuss most questions about Marlow.

If the case reaches a penalty phase, Craig said, he would present “a plethora of mitigating factors” on Marlow’s behalf. He would not comment on the evidence but said he recognized what Marlow is up against.

“As we used to say in Oklahoma, we’ve got a tough row to hoe,” Craig said. “But the toughest rows always get hoed.”