Trapped Byflies J
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CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE ST Trapped by flies Iton Coleman was a terrifying, brutal rapist who killed those he preyed on as casually as you might swat a fly. As it happens, it was a fly-a fat, shiny bluebottle-that led to his execution. Knowledge of insect life cycles led to the crucial pinpointing of the time of death of one of his victims one month after she had been murdered. You couldn't expect to meet a nastier Securing convictions against the pair character than Alton Coleman. Plausible should have been easy, but Coleman had and sly, he won the confidence of the wriggled out of apparently straightforward people he met, then ruthlessly exploited it cases before. He knew just how to behave ALTON COLEMAN A to satisfy his voracious, violent, and perverse in court, with a confident manner that Born in 1956/n Waukegan, just north of Chicago, Alton Coleman was in trouble with the even sexual appetite. Indiscriminately carnal, oozed bogus innocence. So when police as a teenager. Arrested several times for rope, he he was attracted equally to men, women, prosecutors began planning to try him, escaped conviction by threatening witnesses. and children. He so terrified those he raped they looked first at crimes where the that he often escaped conviction because evidence was strongest-and in the states they did not dare testify against him. where the punishment would be harshest. Kenosha, Wisconsin. Then, on May 29, In the summer of 1984, Coleman's Coleman persuaded her to let him take her sporadic sequence of petty crime, rapes, Vernita Wheat nine-year-old daughter Vernita to pick up and sexual assaults suddenly accelerated. One of the cases they a used stereo as a belated Mother's Day With his girlfriend Debra Brown, he went picked was a murder present, and then go on to a local on a frenzied spree of rape and murder in Illinois, a state carnival. They never returned. that crossed five states. Then police that retained the caught up with the death penalty. It Gathering evidence pair in July, was as gruesome - Vernita's body was found three Coleman and and heartless weeks later in the bathroom of - I - Brown were as any that 00* a derelict building in nearby wanted for eight Coleman had Waukegan, Illinois. Her body was murders, seven committed, lie little more than a fly-blown shell. .' rapes, and had spent a month Investigators combed the bathroom 14 armed befriending a single lot evidence, unscrewing the whole robberies. mother in door so that they could examine it in the lab for fingerprints. They found one of Coleman's prints on the door, but this alone was not enough to convict him. What they needed was proof 1".. that the girl had died between the afternoon she was abducted and early the following morning. J Brown had admitted that Coleman had been out all night, and that when he returned to the apartment they shared at 8 AM., he told her he had done something real bad." I THE ACCOMPLICE Coleman's accomplice Debra Brawn wasjudged to be retarded and dominated by him, but was nevertheless sentenced to death. It is u,iciear whether she will be executed. E STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY CASE STUDY The FBI turned to forensic entomologist a much more precise resolution, something Bernard Greenberg to supply the link. To mathematical. He turned to an unusual get him started, they sent him the flying, source: agricultural entomology. buzzing, creeping, and wriggling inhabitants of Vernita's corpse, and the Pinpointing time heaps of pupae that surrounded the body. He knew that entomologists told farmers Greenberg, they hoped, would in return when to begin crop spraying so that the give them a time of death. hit insect pests at the most vulnerable It wasn't an easy task. The empty point in their life-cycle. They did this cocoons were from black blowflies that by using a concept called accumulated had hatched from eggs laid on the corpse degree hours." The agricultural soon after death, and the cloud of flies entomologists had discovered that the that hummed around the corpse when temperature-dependent growth of insects it was found was the second generation. could be distilled into a simple formula Since black blowflies complete their life of growth per unit of heat. So if it takes cycle in little more than two weeks, they a hypothetical insect 100 hours at 59°F didn't give Greenberg the precision he (15°C) to reach a certain stage, then it needed, so he turned to the unhatched, would take 50 hours at 86°F (30°C). unidentifiable cocoons that the FBI had Armed with more than 700 hourly collected from the bathroom floor. weather reports from a weather station These he gently incubated in laboratory near the crime scene, Greenberg set to cages. As the days went by, more black work, "winding hack the clock" from the blowflies emerged. Sheep blowflies moment the bluebottles started to hatch. followed, but were equally worthless- When he had finished, he had what he they also had too short .i life cycle. believed was an objective estimate for the moment the eggs were laid. It vas I GREENBERG midnight on May 30th. Bluebottles, 4 pioneer offorensic however, aren't active at night, so when 'ntomology, Bernard Greenberg appeared as an expert witness at dreenberg turned the trial ofAlton Coleman, he explained op sprayers' been laid calculations upside that the eggs had probably own to workout early the following morning. mw long Vernita It was enough to convince 4 Wheat had been I, the jury, and Alton lying dead. Coleman was I sentenced to death Hatching hope for Wheat's Finally, a month and a day after Vernita murder. Another' .1 was 4bductd, Greenberg got what he state beat them wanted. A baritone hum from the cages to it though, signaled that a squadron of far bluebortles and he was had emerged from their cocoons. He knew executed on " that at a constant 59°F (15 C), bluebottles April 26, take 33 days to metamorphose from newly 2002 for the ; ss laid egg through grub and cocoon to adult murder of fly. But June temperatures in Illinois are Marlene -' higher than this. They rarely drop below Walters, 44, 61°F (I 6-C), and the average in the from Ohio. ces' daytime is 7°F (25°C). At these higher [ temperatures, the life-cycle would be shorter. EXECUTION was "., A scientific estimate taking these Coleman eventually executed sariahies into account had always been not far killing Vernita knew used at this point, but Greenberg Wheat, but for another of that it could be made to seem like a his murders. Here,jailers 11 his guess' in a court of law. He wanted remove bagged body. ,. 41.