Charles Coleman

Charles Troy Coleman (March 15, 1947 – September 10, 1990) was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who was executed in 1990 by the state of Oklahoma.

Coleman was born on March 15, 1947, in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

He was one of eight siblings born into a low-income family that moved states frequently.

His parents spent most of their money on alcohol.

Coleman was described as a career criminal who had a lengthy criminal history on record.

His criminal career began as early as age 11 when he stabbed a mule while gigging frogs with his brother.

He then escaped from jail by slipping through the bars of his cell.

His father later punished him for the offense by whipping him.

At age 13, Coleman ran away from home.

At age 15, he committed a burglary, and one month later, he escaped from a juvenile court after pulling a gun on an officer.

At age 16, he got married, and the couple moved around all over the country, living in at least twenty states.

Coleman continued to commit crimes and built up a lengthy rap sheet of offenses in multiple states.

His offenses included: burglary, grand theft, auto larceny, carrying a concealed weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, and receiving stolen property.

He became the first person to be executed in Oklahoma since the 1966 electrocution of James Donald French after the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, and the first person in Oklahoma to be executed by lethal injection.

On August 24, 1975, 44-year-old Will Stidham was found dead inside his pickup truck in Bakersfield, California.

He had been beaten to death with a tire iron, and his wallet had been stolen.

Stidham was the father of Coleman's girlfriend, 17-year-old Shirley Stidham.

Authorities suspected Coleman was involved in the murder because Will Stidham had supposedly told Coleman not to date his daughter.

Coleman's fingerprints were also found on the pickup truck Will's body had been found in.

One of Coleman's brothers, Abraham Coleman, had allegedly bragged to a woman about being involved in the killing.

However, he later denied this and said he had nothing to do with it.

He passed a lie detector test, and Shirley Stidham provided Charles Coleman with an alibi, claiming he had been with her when her father had been murdered.

However, according to media accounts, several months after the murder, Shirley Stidham had told police that her father had slapped her in front of Coleman.

Coleman had then promised her that if she gave him a little more time, her father would not be around any longer.

Coleman was prosecuted for the murder but was acquitted in July 1976.

Attorneys who prosecuted him claim his charisma and charm helped him gain an acquittal, but they remained convinced he was guilty of the murder.

He was convicted in 1979 of the murder of John Seward, who, along with his wife, was killed by a shotgun blast in rural Muskogee County, when they interrupted a robbery at a relative's house.

He also murdered Russell E. Lewis in a fatal carjacking in 1979 and is suspected of murdering the father of his former girlfriend in 1975.

Despite killing at least three people, he was never convicted of the murder of Seward's wife and his sentence for Lewis's murder was overturned.

Coleman was sentenced to death for the murder of John Seward and was executed after almost twelve years on death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

He was executed via lethal injection at the age of 43 after exhausting all appeals.

In January 1979, while serving time in prison in California for a parole violation, Coleman was released and given a thirty-day travel permit to explore job possibilities in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, his native home county.

Coleman returned to his home state but remained there longer than the thirty days he had been given.

On February 9, 1979, Coleman broke into the home of Dale and Delthea Warren in Muskogee County.

While burglarizing the home, he was interrupted by 68-year-old John Seward and his wife, 62-year-old Roxie Seward.

John Seward was the brother of Delthea Warren.

Armed with a .28 gauge shotgun, Coleman took the Seward's hostage and led them into the home's basement at gunpoint.

He then fatally shot each of the victims with the shotgun, killing John via a single gunshot wound to the back of the head and killing Roxie via four gunshot wounds inflicted from only a few inches away.

Coleman then fled the home.

The bodies of the Seward's were found later that day at around 4:15 p.m. in the basement of the Warren's home.