Cynthia Coffman (murderer)


Cynthia Lynn Coffman is an American woman convicted in the 1986 deaths of two women in California. She was convicted along with her boyfriend, James Marlow. Coffman admits to committing the murders, but insists she suffered from battered woman syndrome. She was sentenced to death and is sitting on death row in Central California Women's Facility.

Background

She was born in St. Louis, Missouri. After her father left her family, she was raised by her mother. Coffman's mother attempted to give her and her brothers away at one point. By the age of 18, Coffman had married and become a mother, though the marriage did not last long. She moved to Arizona with a friend and met Marlow not long after he had got out of jail. They began to use methamphetamine together, got married and began to commit violent crimes.
Coffman and Marlow were accused of killing four women in October and November 1986. They were arrested on November 14, 1986, following which Coffman confessed to the murders. Coffman's attorneys say that she loved Marlow but that he battered, brainwashed and starved her, so she did not run from Marlow when the crime spree began.

Trial and punishment

They were put on trial in July 1989, and in 1990 sentenced to death. Coffman was the first woman to receive a death sentence in California since the reinstatement of the death penalty in that state in 1977. A further trial in 1992 convicted her of another murder, for which she received a sentence of life imprisonment.