Woman Sentenced to Die--1st Under ’77 State Law : Faces O.C. Trial in 2nd Killing

Cynthia Lynn Coffman, who admitted she helped her boyfriend kill two young women in the Southland in a weeklong crime rampage, today became the first woman sentenced to death in California since capital punishment was reinstated 12 years ago.

Coffman, 27, sitting eight feet from co-defendant James Gregory Marlow, 33, tearfully told a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge, “I’m sorry for what happened and I’m ashamed that I let it happen.”

But Judge Don A. Turner, who upheld jury death verdicts for both, said he agrees with the jury’s conclusion that Coffman “was in this thing up to the hilt and enjoyed it right up to the last minute.”

Coffman, who has an 8-year-old son, will be housed at the Correctional Institution for Women at Frontera. If her appeal, expected to take at least seven years, is unsuccessful, she will be executed at San Quentin State Prison, site of the state’s only gas chamber.

The last woman executed in California was Elizabeth Ann Duncan, on Aug. 8, 1962, for the murder of her daughter-in-law in Ventura County.

Coffman and Marlow, who has a long prison and arrest record, were convicted of first-degree murder five months ago for the Nov. 7, 1986, slaying of 20-year-old insurance clerk Corinna Novis. The young woman had given the couple a ride when they approached her in the parking lot of the Redlands Mall.

The two are scheduled to stand trial in Orange County for the murder of 19-year-old Lynell Murray, found dead in Huntington Beach five days after the Novis killing. Details of the Murray slaying at a Huntington Beach motel were presented at the penalty phase of the couple’s trial in San Bernardino.

The judge said it was clear to him that both Marlow and Coffman intended for the two young women to die.

“One of the reasons she was fascinated with Mr. Marlow and made him her man is that he had the strength to do the things she could not do,” Turner said.

Once lovers--he called her his Sinful and she has his nickname, Folsom Wolf, tattooed on her bottom--Coffman and Marlow became enemies during their San Bernardino trial

Coffman claimed during her testimony that she was under Marlow’s domination during the killings. She said she believed that Marlow intended only to kidnap and rob Novis, not to kill her. Coffman admitted, however, that after the two kidnaped Murray at a Huntington Beach store where she worked, she helped twist a towel around the victim’s neck in the motel room. She claimed she was upset that Marlow had had sex with the young woman but said she could not finish the job of killing her.

Coffman and Marlow met about six months before the killings, when Marlow was in jail in Barstow on suspicion of stealing his estranged wife’s car. Coffman, living in a Barstow apartment, had gone to the jail to visit her boyfriend.

After the Murray killing, armed with the second victim’s credit cards, the couple threw Novis’ credit cards and identification papers into a dumpster in Laguna Beach. Police say they made a fatal error: They also threw away some of their own identification papers.