Vanessa Coleman Sentenced to 53 Years in Prison for Her Participation in the Knoxville Horror Gang-Rape-Torture-Murders

 
Vanessa Coleman at her sentencing hearing.
By Nicholas Stix

“Her behavior out there indicates that she has no regard for human life”
Judge Richard Baumgartner, referring to convict Vanessa Coleman

On Friday morning, Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner resisted defense attorney appeals that argued that Vanessa Coleman, 18 at the time of the Knoxville Horror murders, was “young and unable to fend for herself,” and should be classified as a “mitigated offender,” and receive a sentence of no more than 14 years in prison. She will be eligible for parole in 16 years.

The remorseless Coleman, who never sought even to feign regret, had been convicted on May 13 of “facilitating” the rapes and murder of Christian, but acquitted of the actual rapes and murder. Coleman’s defense counselors, Theodore Lavitt and Russell Green (who were assisted by three younger attorneys), portrayed her as having been as much a victim as Channon Christian. (According to my reader-researcher David in Tennessee, who attended three days of the trial, as well as the sentencing, this despicable tactic actually scored with some white female jurors.)

(I had booked airline tickets and a room, in order to be present for Coleman’s sentencing, but USAirways canceled my flight out of JFK, due to predicted thunder showers at some point on the itinerary.)

“The Knoxville Horror” is the name I coined for the atrocity that was committed between January 6 and 8, 2007, by a group of at least six blacks against the white couple, Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Lemaricus Davidson, then 25, his half-brother, Letavis Cobbins, 24, George Thomas, 24, and possibly as many as three other men carjacked and kidnapped Christian and Newsom at the Washington Pike apartments. Originally, authorities believed that the carjacking and kidnapping were carried out after midnight on Sunday, January 7, 2007, but now believe that those crimes were committed at approximately 10:30 p.m., on Saturday, January 6.

The kidnappers blindfolded their victims and took them to the house at 2316 Chipman Street that Davidson was renting, and where Coleman was waiting. There, Davidson and Cobbins and two other, still unidentified men raped Christian repeatedly in every orifice, until her lower lip was ripped from her gums. The men and/or Coleman savaged her private parts, repeatedly shoving a jagged object into, and/or kicking her vagina, hour after hour after hour. Some observers believe that Coleman engaged in the sexual torture out of sexual jealousy, because her boyfriend, Cobbins, found “the white girl” more attractive than her (which was undoubtedly the case).

The medical examiner found semen from Davidson, Cobbins, and two unidentified men on Channon Christian’s panties, but none from her boyfriend. That means that two rapist-murderers are still at large.

(An unidentified member or members of the gang also raped the bound Christopher Newsom with a blunt instrument, savaging Newsom’s anus.)

What is not a matter of conjecture is that Coleman’s DNA was found on the strips of fabric used to bind Channon Christian’s wrists.

What is also not a matter of conjecture is that, far from being a prisoner, or feeling any remorse for what she had done, days after the murders, a thrilled Vanessa Coleman wrote in her journal (as David wrote on May 8):

Here is an account from the Knoxville ABC station, “I’ve had one hell of an adventure in the big TN,” and “Ha Ha.”

[NS: Coleman’s “adventure in the big TN” consisted, in its entirety, of her participation in the gang rape, torture, and murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. So much for the disgusting contention by Coleman, her attorneys, and her family that she was a prisoner, and as much a victim as Channon Christian.]

We in the courtroom audience felt it blew apart the defense that Theodore Lavitt had put up through cross examination the last two days. Lavitt made only a brief cross on the journal even though he knew of it for months. He looked beaten to me, though I suppose he’ll think of something over the weekend. The jury, which by previous questions, seems to have some pro-defense jurors, asked no questions, perhaps out of shock. Being there in person, I could see the jury. I’ve read that most juries are half of what each side wants. This jury certainly looked half and half to me.

What is not a matter of conjecture is that in her January 31, 2007 police interrogation Coleman admitted that she was at the crime scene, while Channon Christian was being raped, beaten, tortured and murdered, and spoke of cooking her crime partners a hearty breakfast, after they had spent all night savaging the victims and murdering Christopher Newsom. According to Coleman’s own statement, she never looked in on Christian that morning, gave her anything to eat, tended to her wounds, or even gave her a thought. (Audio, Part I; audio, Part II; audio, Part III; transcript; read the transcript, the audiotapes are interminable, and of poor quality.)

Coleman also made all manner of unbelievable statements, such as denying that she could hear Channon Christian screaming in pain, even though she was just a few feet away from the doorless room in which Christian, who was not gagged, was being raped, beaten, and tortured, including cleaning fluid being poured down her throat and into her vagina, and one or more of her killers causing “blunt force trauma” to her genital area, either through hitting her there with a blunt object or kicking her there. She also denied ever having seen Newsom.

Christian had been beaten with enough force to cause bruising on her brain, but the worst injuries, [Medical Examiner Dr. Darinka] Mileusnic-Polchan said, were sustained in what she described as a savage sexual assault. “It’s much more than a simple sexual trauma,” she testified. “It’s extreme.” She said Christian was not only repeatedly raped both orally, vaginally and rectally, but that it appears an object was used in the attack. Christian had extensive injuries in the genital region and her mouth, including the tearing of the membrane that connected Christian’s lips to her gums.[“Jury wants to go home; deliberations in Boyd case to begin in a.m” by Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News Sentinel, April 15, 2008 ]

As I recounted in April 2008, Christian’s assailants unsuccessfully sought to eliminate all DNA evidence from her body. Although they had already decided to kill her, to further torture her, they washed her vagina, rectum, and mouth with an astringent cleaning solution while she was alive.

Christian ultimately asphyxiated when Lemaricus Davidson shoved the hogtied woman face first, her head covered with garbage bags, into a tight garbage barrel. Coleman, Cobbins, and Thomas were all present at the time.

Although I have been highly critical of Judge Richard Baumgartner, he was not at all fooled by Coleman, and in his remarks about her, and sentencing of her, he conducted himself admirably.

As a Knoxville News Sentinel staffer wrote anonymously on Friday,

KNOXVILLE - Calling her a street-smart teenager with no regard for human life, a Knox County judge today ordered Vanessa Coleman to serve a 53-year prison term for her convictions in the 2007 killings of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.

“We cannot tolerate this kind of crime,” Judge Richard Baumgartner said. “Anybody that thinks they can be put in this situation and do nothing about it - I’m telling you it’s unacceptable.”

The judge said an extended sentence was needed to protect the public. Coleman is a danger to society, he said.

The judge said Coleman could have [left] but chose not to leave as the crimes were being committed in January 2007 in and around co-defendant Lemaricus Davidson’s Chipman Street rental home.”

On Friday night, David wrote me,

I’m back home from Knoxville. Judge Baumgartner gave Vanessa Coleman a 53 year sentence. After the sentencing, while being led away, Coleman smiled at winked at her family.

Here is the story from WATE, the ABC station. Here is the story from WVLT, the CBS affiliate. This story is from WBIR, the NBC station.

I stood nearby while the Newsoms were talking to the WVLT reporter. Some distance away, I saw Coleman’s attorney, Theodore Lavitt, speaking to a reporter from Kentucky, I believe. I’ll bet you would have like to have asked Lavitt a few questions.

The WATE and WLTV segments have two videos each. The WBIR story has several more.

Vanessa Coleman’s father, Greg, gave what WVLT has called “an exclusive interview about a month after the jury found her guilty.” (It’s so brief that, unless the TV station censored most of it, to save the man from leaving himself open to public ridicule—something I’ve known media organizations to do on behalf of racist blacks—the whole thing probably lasted no more than a minute.

Greg Coleman still believes his daughter did nothing wrong in connection with the case.

“How are they going to find someone guilty with not a shred of evidence,” he asked during the interview.

Coleman was convicted in the spring by a Davidson County jury. Her father believes jurors were swayed by lies told on the witness stand.

“Someone else was only trying to save their own neck," he said of some of the prosecution’s star witnesses. “Such as Daphne [Sutton], when I think of the time frame that she was in the house, I think something should've been done there."

Even though Coleman is now headed to a state prison, her father still insists details about what happened in the Chipman Street house are being withheld.

"There are other people that should've been charged in this case that didn't," he said.

Coleman acknowledges most people believe his daughter is guilty, but said they'll continue to support her. He also plans to help her appeal the conviction.
“We can only go forward and try to make the appropriate steps."

I think the man’s a racist monster, and that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. That he is presumably middle-class, since he was able to hire a private attorney to defend his daughter, is merely more grist for my mill.

Like the vast majority of blacks today, Greg Coleman is an adherent of what I call the paranoid, black supremacist, jailhouse philosophy of law. “Jailhouse,” because it was once typical of racist black jailbirds, but has since become respectable among all black social classes. He doesn’t consider it a crime to harm a white.

As I noted earlier in this article, the evidence against Greg Coleman’s daughter was overwhelming. She incriminated herself during her police interview, her DNA was on the fabric strips used to tie Channon Christian’s wrists, and she was found in possession of items stolen from Christian.

Greg Coleman pointed the finger at Daphne Sutton, for the simple reason that Sutton is white. There is no evidence whatsoever tying Sutton to the rapes, torture, and murders.

That is not to say that Sutton is innocent of all crimes. By her own admission, once she found out that the police were after Davidson, she lied to them about his whereabouts. I have argued that she should be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact, but that is not what Greg Coleman is talking about. He is saying that Sutton should have been prosecuted for his daughter’s crimes, and the only basis he has for that position is his racism.

In the first Knoxville Horror trial, Eric Boyd was convicted in federal court as an accessory after the fact, and sentenced to 18 years in prison on October 15, 2008.

Letalvis Cobbins was convicted on 33 felony counts, including almost all major charges (murder, aggravated rape, etc.), and was sentenced to “life without parole” on August 25, 2009, which was later enhanced to “life plus 100 years.”

On October 29, 2009, Lemaricus Davidson was convicted on 35 out of 38 state felony counts, including all major charges, and two days later was sentenced to death. (In the state of Tennessee all death sentences are automatically appealed.)

And on December 8, 2009, George Thomas was convicted of all 38 charges against him; on March 4, 2010, Judge Baumgartner sentenced Thomas to two consecutive life terms in prison.

The killers and their accomplices will all be appealing their verdicts, and so we have hardly seen the last of them. But the national MSM will try their best to suppress news about them, a job at which they have so far done a bang-up job. And I will continue doing the job the MSM refuse to do.

When the MSM failed, in spring 2007, to suppress knowledge of the atrocity, they and Knoxville authorities went to Plan B, which was to lie through their teeth about the crime’s transparently racial character, and to demonize as “white supremacists” anyone (including this writer) who complained about the suppression, or who refused to parrot the politically correct talking points.

When killer George Thomas’ interview by police in Kentucky on January 11, 2007 concluded, he exclaimed, “Fuck that white girl, she don’t mean nothing to me!”

Knoxville police suppressed Thomas’ racist statement for almost three years.

Ringleader Lemaricus Davidson had been a member of the racist gang, the Black Gangster Disciples, while serving a token prison sentence for an earlier carjacking.

And most tellingly, as the blogger A Race Against Time showed, Davidson led his criminal cohorts to kidnap, rape, and murder Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom only one day after Davidson’s white girlfriend, Daphne Sutton, had left him, after his constant beatings. John Gill, a spokesman for District Attorney General Randy Nichols, had argued that because Davidson & Co. “socialized” (read: had sex) with whites, that the crime could not have been racially motivated. That was pure sophistry, because authorities never permit whites’ sexual involvement with blacks to be used to exculpate them from charges of “hate crimes” against blacks, and because racist black men who are obsessed with having consensual sex with white women, are also obsessed with raping white women.