Killer Couple

James Marlow and Cynthia Coffman were a troubled couple who were convicted of murdering five people during a deadly rampage that spanned multiple states. The last two victims, 20-year old Corrina Novis and 19-year old Lynell Murray were kidnapped and found strangled and sodomized, and the murderous pair were found guilty of the crimes. Whereas both Marlow and Coffman received the death penalty for Novis’ death, Marlow received a second death sentence for Murray’s while Coffman was sentence to life without the possibility of parole in Murray’s murder. Both defendants sought to shift the onus of blame to the other with Marlow claiming it was Coffman’s idea to kill the girls while he only wanted to rob them and Coffman alleging that she was the victim of battered women’s syndrome. Neither ploy was successful as the pair were convicted across the board for robbery, kidnapping, sodomy, and murder. Coffman has the distinction of being the first woman sentenced to death in California following the state’s reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977.