UPDATED: 4:51 P.M. with funeral arrangements for Coleman family

COLUMBIA, ILL. -- Police said this afternoon that detectives are making progress in unraveling the mystery surrounding the killings of a mother and her two sons in a quiet neighborhood on Tuesday morning.

"We are not going to reveal anything to jeopardize the case," Major Case Squad leader Jeff Connor said at a press conference this afternooon.

Connor refused to discuss whether police had a suspect, but said detectives were meticulously combing through evidence collected in and around the scene of the crime.

Police are asking for anyone who knew the Coleman family to contact the Major Case Squad at 618-281-5151. He then said that police are not asking for the public's help in looking for suspect.

The press conference followed the appearance of police back out at the Columbia Lakes subdivision where the mother, Sheri Coleman, 31, and her two sons were found dead at 7 a.m. Tuesday. The detectives returned to the Colemans' home about 3 p.m. today to search for more evidence in the murders of a mother and her two sons -- crimes that have rocked a quiet subdivision.

About 10 detectives in five police cars arrived at the home, put on rubber gloves and went inside to search.

And, detectives returned to Interstate 255 and are searching the grassy area along the highway from the Columbia exit to the Jefferson Barracks Bridge. On Wednesday night, detectives spent hours sifting for clues along the highway along Interstate 255/I-270 from the bridge to Gravois Road.

The interstate would be the most common route used to drive from the Coleman home to south St. Louis County.

Meanwhile, the Coleman family is preparing the funerals of the mother and two sons.

Sheri Coleman and her two young sons, Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, will be buried on Saturday in her husband's hometown.

Visitation for the Colemans will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at Grace Church Ministries, 2100 State Street, in Chester. The Rev. Ronald Coleman -- Sheri Coleman's father-in-law and the boys' grandfather -- is a pastor at the church.

Funeral services Saturday will be private, as will the burials at Chester's Evergreen Cemetery, according to an employee of Pechacek-McClure Funeral Home in Chester, which is handling the arrangements.



OUR EARLIER STORY:

COLUMBIA, ILL. — The Colemans would have seemed like a hard family to hurt.

Christopher was a former Marine MP, a trusted security officer for a nationally known televangelist and knowledgeable about video surveillance.

Sheri was a one-time Air Force MP, beloved in her tucked-away neighborhood where visitors must pass a city-monitored camera, and where some of the neighbors are cops.

Their guard must have been up, given unspecified recent threats serious enough for them to notify police and aim a camera on the house at the mailbox.

But someone did manage to kill Sheri and the couple's two boys, leaving few enough clues that the Major Case Squad publicly reported no progress by Wednesday night, more than 36 hours after the bodies were found.

The principal revelation of the day was that Christopher Coleman told police he had been home Monday night and that his family was slain while he was at an early morning workout at a St. Louis County gym.

Jeff Connor, deputy commander of the Major Case Squad, said Coleman explained that he became concerned when his family did not answer the phone just before 7 a.m. and called police officers to check the house. Police found the bodies shortly before he arrived.

A law enforcement source said Coleman told investigators he had left home about 5:30 a.m.

The source also said that someone had painted the words, "I told you this would happen," on a wall inside the house. There was no further explanation of its meaning.

Neighbors had told reporters Tuesday that Coleman usually worked overnight for the Joyce Meyer Ministries, headquartered a short drive across the Jefferson Barracks Bridge and into Jefferson County. Connor said Coleman did not work Monday night.

Detectives said they interviewed Coleman as a matter of course in an investigation that also sent them into garbage cans and manholes looking for clues.

On Wednesday night, several teams of detectives from the case were walking along the right shoulder of westbound Interstate 255 from just west of the bridge to beyond Lindbergh Boulevard.

Police have not disclosed the victims' cause or time of death. Neighbors said detectives told them that Sheri Coleman, 31, and sons Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, were strangled in the home at 2854 Robert Drive.

Columbia police called in the Major Case Squad, a regional cooperative that had 25 detectives seeking Wednesday to establish a time line for the last hours of the victims' lives.

Said Connor, "We are still asking the public's help if anybody saw or heard anything unusual in the Columbia area, or if anybody knows the Coleman family and feels they may have information important to this investigation." (The police number is 618-281-5151.)

He said the Coleman family had called police in the past, but was not more specific. Neighbors said Christopher Coleman had talked of receiving threats in the mail.

A spokesman for the Joyce Meyer Ministries, a worldwide television evangelism ministry based near Fenton, declined to comment Wednesday on Christopher Coleman's employment or the killings. Meyer herself visited the neighborhood Tuesday to offer comfort.

Friends and family said Sheri Coleman was active in the ministry and had gone on several overseas mission trips.

The Colemans lived since spring 2005 in the Columbia Lakes subdivision, on the bluffs in the north end of Columbia.

In January 2008, the couple formed a business called Executive Innovations, specializing in video surveillance. A spokesman for the Illinois secretary of state's office said the corporation was no longer in good standing because no annual report had been filed by year's end.

The Colemans met at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and were married while both were in the military as K-9 police officers — he with the Marine Corps and she with the Air Force.

He grew up in Chester, Ill. She was born in Berwyn, Ill., a close suburb of Chicago, and attended high school in Largo, Fla., near Tampa Bay.

Donald Weiss of Clearwater, Fla., Sheri's father, described her Wednesday as a "beautiful person with a very bubbly personality."

"She had two beautiful boys. She was an absolutely perfect mother," he said. "She was devoted to Joyce Meyer's church. She was a wonderful human being who didn't deserve this, whose children didn't deserve this."

Weiss and Sheri Coleman's mother, Angela, are divorced. Her mother and older brother live in Chicago.

Weiss said the family moved to Largo while Sheri was in grade school. She played softball for Largo High School and joined the Air Force shortly after graduation, he said.

Chris Coleman graduated from Chester High School in 1995 and joined the Marine Corps, serving until 1999. His father, the Rev. Ronald Coleman, is pastor of Grace Church Ministries in Chester. His family declined to speak with a reporter at their home Wednesday.

Funeral arrangements for Sheri Coleman and her sons were pending through Pechacek-McClure Funeral Home in Chester.

Ralph Stone of Columbia, who coached Garett Coleman on youth football and baseball teams, described the family as "very happy and polite. Speaking as a coach, they were the ultimate family to have. They never complained, and the boys were happy to do whatever was asked."

"Sheri pretty much lived for the boys and her husband," Stone said. "This is terrible. Everybody around here is doing a gut check, not understanding this at all, no matter what the outcome is. People can't see how any of this is possible."

Ed Settles, Columbia schools superintendent, said crisis teams met with students at Parkview Elementary School, which the Coleman boys attended, and other district schools.

"Our hope was to grieve together and provide an arena for healing, and we did that," Settles said. He called Garett and Gavin "two popular students. Both of our little ones will be sadly missed."



Elizabethe Holland and Carolyn Tuft of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.