Police grill man on killing of wife, sons

WATERLOO, Ill., April 28 (UPI) -- Police told an Illinois man they thought he killed his wife and two children so he could start a new life with his wife's high school friend, a video indicated.

However, suspect Christopher Coleman denied he killed Sheri Coleman, 31, and sons Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9, but did acknowledge he was friends with Tara Lintz, a high school friend of his wife's from Largo, Fla.

Christopher Coleman said he wouldn't call the relationship with the cocktail waitress an affair, even though they'd slept with each other, although he said his wife didn't like it.

"She told me one time when I went to Florida to stay away from her," he recalled in the video played in court.

Several hours after the bodies of the victims were found, and Illinois State Police Sgt. David Bivens started questioning him as a prime suspect, Coleman said, "I don't know what to tell you," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

"Come on, Chris, she was not alive when you left, the children weren't alive," Bivens said in the interrogation video, referring to when Coleman went for a workout at a St. Louis-area gym.

"They were," Coleman said.

Lintz arrived to testify Thursday afternoon. She tried to avoid testifying but lost a subpoena fight, the Post-Dispatch said.

Prosecutors claim Coleman and Lintz had an affair since November 2008 and planned to marry. They say Coleman told Lintz he would file for divorce May 5, 2009 -- the day Sheri Coleman and their two sons were found dead.

Coleman allegedly killed his family because he feared he would lose his job as a bodyguard for Charismatic Christian televangelist Joyce Meyer if he got a divorce. Meyer's ministry is headquartered in the St. Louis suburb of Fenton, Mo.