It even included a name for a child
they hoped for: 'Zoe Lynn Coleman'.
According to the prosecution, he
started sending his family threatening, expletive-filled messages
from a gmail account he set up himself.
The first read simply: 'Your
family is done'. They continued with 'tell Joyce to stop preaching
[expletive] or your Chris's family will die' and 'I will kill them
all as they sleep.'
But prosecutors say the threats
were in fact a ploy to set up a mystery stalker as the murderer, the
St Louis Post-Despatch reports.
They claim he decided to kill his
wife rather than reveal his affair and go through a divorce, which
he believed would cost him his job with the Florida-based preacher.
He had known Ms Meyer since he was a
boy, and helped build up her security department before becoming
her bodyguard and travelling with her across the world, the St
Louis Post-Despatch reports.
In a pre-recorded testimony
played to the court on Friday, the high-profile evangelist said
if Coleman had been having an affair 'it could definitely have
affected his job.'
She said he was an 'excellent
employee', but told the court he had started carrying a personal
cell phone with him shortly before the murders.
And the day before the
killings, he uncharacteristically said he wasn't feeling well -
so she gave him the day off.
The next day, May 5, 2009, Coleman
left his comfortable suburban house in Waterloo to go to the gym at
5.43am.
After his workout he said he
called home and was worried when no-one answered, so he rang a
neighbour, police officer Justin Barlow, to check on his family.
Officer Jason Donjon, who entered
the house with Mr Barlow, testified last week they found the house
was covered in threatening messages daubed in red paint.
The graffiti read: 'I am
watching', 'punished' and 'u have paid'.
Then they discovered the bodies of
Mrs Coleman and her two sons, killed in separate bedrooms.
Coleman sobbed and his
mother-in-law left the room crying as the graphic images of what the
two officers found were shown to the court on a big screen last
week.
Mrs Coleman was left naked in bed,
strangled with a ligature. Her eldest son, Garett, was curled up in
bed with spray paint on his sheets.
Finally the youngest, Gavin, was
seen lying face down with his limbs dangling either side of the bed
and swear words daubed on his covers.
Later, pathologist Dr Raj Nanduri,
who performed the autopsy, said it was likely the victims were
strangled between 3am and 5am - before Coleman left for the gym.
However under cross-examination,
he said 'the time of death cannot be determined accurately'.
Miss Lintz took to the stand on
Thursday, dressed smartly in a black suit, a pink blouse, and black
patent leather heels.
She was wearing a ring which she
admitted was a 'promise ring' given to her by Coleman, who she
hadn't seen since the murders.
Miss Lintz told the court she met
Coleman in November 2008, and began a sexual relationship with
him the following month.
She said they communicated
'constantly' by text, and he was texting her the night before
the murders - the day he told her he would serve Mrs Coleman
with divorce papers.
Police claim they found a
video of the couple having sex in a Hawaii hotel room, but Miss
Lintz said she didn't remember making the tape.
Before she gave evidence, the
jury had seen a series of naked photos she and Coleman had sent
to each other.
He also made a video of himself
masturbating, in which he says: 'You are the only person I
have ever done this for ... I cannot wait to see you in
Hawaii. I love you, baby.'
Coleman pleads not guilty
to all charges. His defence lawyer claims the threatening
emails could have been sent from any computer, and said
there was no evidence of red paint beneath his fingernails.
William Margulis told the
court he was looking for a job and planned to leave Joyce
Meyer Ministries.
He accepted his client had
been having an affair, but said the Colemans had been
getting on better in the weeks before the killings.
The trial continues.