The murder of 18-year-old Rhonda Sue Coleman in Hazlehurst, Georgia has remained unsolved for over 30 years despite leads, eyewitness accounts and evidence.
Showing posts with label Hazlehurst Georgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hazlehurst Georgia. Show all posts
Will Rhonda Coleman’s 1990 homicide be the next to be solved?
GBI says "we're closing in on him"
April 30, 2026, 3:46 PM CDT
By Meghan O'Brien
On July 1, 2023, the Coleman-Baker Act was enacted in the state of Georgia, allowing families to request that a cold case be re-examined by law enforcement. The act is, in part, named after Rhonda Sue Coleman, an 18-year-old whose body was found in a wooded area in Montgomery County, Georgia, on May 20, 1990.
Rhonda Sue Coleman
Dateline featured Rhonda’s story in our “Cold Case Spotlight” series in 2018. At the time, we spoke with Layla Miller Marshall, a classmate of Rhonda’s, who found her abandoned car on the side of the road in Hazlehurst, Georgia, on the evening of May 17, 1990, and called the police. “When her dad drove up was one of my most vivid memories. He was asking ‘Layla, where’s Rhonda?’ I said, ‘Mr. Coleman, I don’t know.’ And his eyes immediately filled up with water,” Layla said. “I could tell he knew something was very wrong right then.”
Rhonda’s body was found three days later in a wooded area by a hunter. The location was about 15 miles from where Layla found Rhonda’s car.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, “an autopsy was completed on Rhonda at the GBI crime lab and no cause of death was determined.” Dateline contacted the GBI for the latest on Rhonda’s case. Director of Public & Governmental Affairs Sara Lue responded by email that Rhonda’s case has “remained active with an assigned agent since her death.” Following the passage of the Coleman-Baker Act and the formation of the GBI Cold Case Unit, the bureau is “reviewing and investigating” leads and “conducting an extensive evidence review to ensure all testing is completed.” Lue wrote that the GBI “has conducted over 150 interviews and investigative acts in the past year with the aim of confirming previous and newly obtained information, as well as generating new investigative leads.”
The other namesake of the Coleman-Baker Act is University of Georgia law student Tara Baker. Tara was in her first year of law school when she was murdered in her Athens, Georgia, home on January 19, 2001. Her case went cold for 23 years. In 2024, an arrest was made, and earlier this year, justice was served.
Tara BakerKevin Baker
For this week’s Dateline episode, “A Window of Time,” on Tara’s case, Blayne Alexander interviewed local podcaster Cameron Jay Harrelson, who helped create the Coleman-Baker Act.
Cameron became involved in Tara’s case when he was a student at UGA and came across an article in the university’s student paper. “I have never had my life changed so much by someone that I’ve never met,” he told Dateline. “And Tara Baker did that for me.”
In 2020, Cameron created a podcast called Classic City Crime. Season 1 of the podcast was dedicated to telling Tara Baker’s story to “make sure she was never forgotten.”
But as Cameron dug into Tara’s story, he took a look at Georgia politics as well. “I really started researching and found that there was a federal law called the Homicide Victims’ Families’ Rights Act,” he said.
That law, which was introduced in 2021, allowed families to request a review of their loved one’s case. But Cameron saw a problem: it only applied to cases within federal jurisdiction. “That left every single unsolved murder in Athens and their family behind,” he said. “That left Tara Baker behind.”
When he learned about Rhonda’s cold case, Cameron brought the families together to craft what would later become the Coleman-Baker Act.
Tara’s mother, Virginia Baker, remembers first meeting Rhonda’s family. “They’re the most precious people,” she told Dateline. “My heart broke for them. And I thought, ‘Together we can do this.’”
In the spring of 2023, the act passed unanimously in the Georgia House and Senate. It allocated $5 million in funding to a GBI Cold Case Unit. The act also established a reporting requirement for every law enforcement agency in Georgia to begin researching and collecting their unsolved murder count.
Meredith Baker Schroeder, Cameron Jay Harrelson, Virginia Baker, Kevin BakerCameron Jay Harrelson
“Our win was getting the Coleman-Baker Act passed. Governor Kemp signed it right here in Athens with us present. It was amazing,” Cameron said.
“That day was a bit of a blur,” said Virginia Baker. She thought it was too late for Tara, but hoped the Coleman-Baker Act would help other families. “I wanted to see it help someone else, and I wanted to see it be part of [Tara’s] legacy,” she said.
Neither Virginia nor Cameron expected what happened next.
“You can only imagine the shock – the emotions that hit all of us – when we learned that not only did the Coleman-Baker Act bring about resolution in Tara’s case, but she was the very first case that they solved as a result,” Cameron said.
More than three decades later, Rhonda’s case is still unsolved. But the Coleman-Baker Act ensures it is still active with the GBI.
“We would like to have some sort of closure,” Rhonda’s mother, Gayle Coleman, told Dateline in 2018. “I don’t know if we will ever get all the answers, but we’re not gonna stop trying.”
In 2021, the reward for “information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person, or persons, responsible” for Rhonda’s death was increased to $150,000.
On the third anniversary of the bill’s passage earlier this week, the Rhonda Coleman Facebook page posted a statement from her family. “We have already seen what this law can do. The Coleman-Baker Act has helped lead to the resolution of cases like the murder of Tara Baker and others in our area and across the state. These are not just cases being closed, they are families finally getting answers,” they wrote. “For our family, this has meant something we have not felt in a very long time: hope. Hope that Rhonda’s case will be looked at with fresh eyes. Hope that someone will connect the pieces that have been sitting for decades. Hope that answers are still possible.”
The Baker family finally got the answers they needed. Rhonda’s family is still waiting. “I pray for them every day because I know how hard it is,” Virginia Baker said.
If you have a case to submit to the GBI for review under the Coleman-Baker Act, you can do so on their website.
In a recent episode of the true crime podcast, local inciter Roy Roberson implicates Mickey Beecher and Mark Hall Jr. in the unsolved murder of Rhonda Sue Coleman in May 1990.
Roberson claims that Mickey Beecher essentially confessed his involvement in the murder and events leading up to Rhonda's murder the night of May 17th.1990 in Hazlehurst Georgia.
Roy Roberson also claims Jeff Davis County Sheriff Mark Hall admitted to him that his son, Mark Hall Jr, was involved in Rhonda's abduction and murder. He stated,
"Mark Hall had reached the point that he knew he was going to have to arrest his son. It was eating Mark alive!"
Roy Roberson tells podcaster Sean Kipe that Sheriff Mark Hall was fighting an internal conflict over Marky Hall's role in the murder of the 19-year-old high school senior from Hazlehurst, Georgia.
Do you believe Roy Roberson's claims? Why would he wait all these years to disclose this information?
About Rhonda Sue Coleman
More than 30 years have passed since Rhonda Sue Coleman said goodbye to her family and friends for the last time. A vibrant young woman who dreamed of being a pediatric nurse was life was tragically taken on May 17, 1990. Rhonda was two weeks away from her graduation from Jeff Davis High School when she attended a party with her senior class but never made it home.
Later that evening, a classmate found her car abandoned on the side of the road with the door still open and the engine running. The only thing that remained was a set of her footprints leading away from the car. Three days later, Rhonda's body was found in a wooded area in neighboring Montgomery County.
Since that time, Rhonda's family and friends, have fought to bring her killer to justice despite the lack of information and substantive leads. Rhonda's case was recently featured on the podcast "Fox Hunter" that revealed new information and gave new life to the search for justice for Rhonda.
Unsolved slaying in Hazlehurst another case of delayed justice
More than 30 years have passed since the day Rhonda Sue Coleman left her home in Hazlehurst and did not return.
Rhonda, 18, was a graduating senior and had attended an event at a classmate’s home on a Thursday. That night, a friend found her car still running by the side of the road, her purse in the passenger seat and her footprints leading from her 1989 Chevy Cavalier to an unidentified vehicle. Three days later, police found her partially burned body in a wooded area the next county over.
Since then, her parents, Milton and Gayle Coleman, have fought valiantly to bring the killer to justice but have been frustrated by the lack of information, the poorly managed investigation and what they believe could be a cover-up by law enforcement.
“Over the years, we can’t get a lot of answers,” said Milton Coleman, who spoke with me by phone as he and his wife drove through town. Whenever they have asked for information, law enforcement officers have said “we can’t answer that,” Coleman said.
They didn’t even know the cause of their daughter’s death, which is listed as unknown on her death certificate.
For decades, the community has supported the much loved couple in their efforts to uncover information about Rhonda’s slaying, but Hazlehurst is a small town and not everyone has always felt comfortable sharing what they know. Milton and Gayle Coleman are both 70 now. They know they don’t have a lot of time left to get justice for their daughter, and they are at the point where they no longer care who they tick off.
Early this year, Sean Kipe, an Atlanta-based podcaster, picked up the threads of Rhonda’s case and unearthed new information, including physical evidence that will be revealed this week in an unanticipated 11th episode of “Fox Hunter.”
Kipe, an actor and musician with 20 years in the entertainment business, stumbled into podcasting, but found success uncovering new information in a 47-year-old murder case during his first podcast, “In the Red Clay.” He was drawn to Rhonda’s story in the hopes of doing the same. “The end goal is to give this family answers and to put the person or the people responsible for her death in prison where they belong,” Kipe said.
Supporters have raised more than $160,000 to offer as a reward for information. Just last week, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation began interviewing new witnesses revealed in the podcast, Kipe said.
And Milton and Gayle Coleman are helping to draft legislation that would change the way cold cases like Rhonda’s are handled in the future by allowing family members access to certain information and by having a special investigator take another look after a certain time period.
“The case is active and ongoing. There is nothing new to report,” said the director of public affairs for the GBI when I reached out with questions.
A year ago, in an effort to address the unsolved cases across the state, the GBI formed a formal cold case unit to focus exclusively on longstanding unsolved cases, GBI Director Vic Reynolds told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December 2020. A six-person team, comprised of retired agency investigators, work on cases that may have been open for as long as 40 years.
Rhonda’s case isn’t unique, but her story is particularly relatable.
She was young, beautiful, sporty and popular. She was planning to attend Georgia Southern in Statesboro to study nursing and work with newborns.
If a young woman isn’t safe coming home from a friend’s house on a weekday evening, then how can any woman feel safe?
In 2019, 49 women were murdered by men in Georgia, according to data from the Violence Policy Center. An estimated 9 in 10 women knew their killer.
Rhonda’s parents have long believed she was killed by someone she knew.
Describing how he went off to search for his daughter when she did not arrive home by curfew, Coleman spoke of arriving at the scene where Rhonda’s car had been abandoned. There he found police deputies already on-site. He ran through all the possibilities in his mind, but after a three-day search, on May 20, 1990, her body was found 15 miles from her car. They would find out from news reports that her body was partially burned. They would learn much later, and still unofficially, that the cause of death was strangulation or positional asphyxia.
A few years ago, frustrated with decades of dead ends, Milton and Gayle Coleman hired a private investigator, who began interviewing more people and conducting polygraph tests. But after so many years, people who may have had information have died.
Community members have speculated about possible suspects, but with testimony from Rhonda’s family and friends, Kipe lays the groundwork for an avenue of questioning directed at law enforcement officials.
Although Rhonda was found in Montgomery County, Jeff Davis County took over the case, something that doesn’t sit well with the Coleman family or with Kipe.
In the podcast, Kipe makes a point to interview a number of locals with information about the case, but Rhonda’s family remains frustrated that law enforcement has yet to take significant action.
“Why are there volumes of circumstantial evidence yet no arrests?” Kipe opined when we spoke on the phone. “Why is the district attorney not able to get a copy of the case file? Why is the case file being so highly protected by the GBI?”
Kipe is quick to note that he is by no means anti-law enforcement, but Rhonda’s case is bigger than just Rhonda, he said.
We know things can change with time — new evidence is uncovered, new technology can help evaluate old evidence and new media like podcasts can reach a wider audience.
And maybe, in this case, time will convince someone with information that a young woman’s life is worth more than fear of any consequence.
The murder of 18-year-old Rhonda Sue Coleman in Hazlehurst, Georgia has remained unsolved for over 30 years despite leads, eyewitness accounts and evidence.
Coming in July 2022 a new documentary film examined the case. Our award winning journalist goes behind the scenes to interview all the key players... including the main suspect "John S********d".
The evening of May 17, 1990, Rhonda Sue Coleman's parents saw her for the last time. In the 31 years since her murder, Milton and Gayle Coleman have never stopped loving her, or wanting answers to what happened.
Twenty-five years ago this week, Jeff Davis County was in a state of shock following the abduction and murder of 18-year-old high school senior Rhonda Sue Coleman.
On the night of May 17, 1990, Miss Coleman's 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier was found abandoned just off the Bell Telephone Road. The motor was still running. The head- on. The driver's lights were on. Door was wide open.
Three days later, her body. was found in a remote area of Montgomery County about 12 miles from Jeff Davis County. Then-Sheriff Mark Hall said a man driving his truck in the woods spotted the body and notified law enforcement officers.
The crime sparked an intense investigation by the Jeff Davis County Sheriff's Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Dozens of people were interviewed. Then they were interviewed again. And again.
Investigators dove into every piece of evidence they could find. Countless hours were spent on the case. Year after year,
At one point, now retired GBI Agent Martin Moses was assigned full-time duty to work on nothing else but the mysterious murder.
For the previous week. Gayle Coleman had thought murder, carefully about what she would investigated say. What words she would use gone. to describe the indescribable.
"After 25 years, we're still here." Gayle continued, as a sense of determination flowed into her voice. "We have not divorced. We have not left our community. We still love each other and we are planning to be together until we cross those Pearly Gates, too. Even though she was only 18, He won the battle but he has not won the war. He will not defeat us."
They have come through their experience stronger,closer and determined to live life as Rhonda would have wanted them to.
Over the years, investigators have followed leads in the case, but no arrests have been made.
Jason Seacrist, assistant special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Douglas office, said recently he was unable to comment on whether there were any new leads.
In the months after Coleman was killed, her mother and father struggled to cope.
“It was hard. Basically, you rearrange your whole life,” Milton said. “That was our life. She was our life. When you take that section out of it, you’ve got to start again. It was rough.”
Gayle Coleman said it was difficult to leave the house.
“We had to rebuild our relationship without her. You have to start from the ground up,” she said. “We didn’t want to go out around town because you would see people and you could see the pity in their eyes. We didn’t want to see that.”
Hazlehurst’s roughly 4,200 residents rallied around the Colemans after the murder. Many of the town’s businesses shut down on the day of Rhonda’s funeral, including the Piggly Wiggly where she worked. More than 1,000 people attended the service, some standing against the walls two and three deep as others spilled out into the vestibule of Southside Baptist Church.
There were more than 20,000 flowers laid at the roadside along Bell Telephone Road, just south of town where Coleman’s car was found. Milton said the outpouring of love from the community was a direct reflection of the type of person that Rhonda was. Gayle said that locals served as a brace for the couple as they sought to rebuild their lives, as she put it, “one brick at a time.”
“They were holding us up. We knew they were there. They helped us,” Gayle said. “There ain’t a soul in Hazlehurst that we still couldn’t call at midnight and they wouldn’t be right there.”
‘That was her future, and they took it away from her.’
Rhonda was 5-foot-5 with blonde hair and blue eyes.
When she and her folks lived uptown inside the city limits, she was into golf carts and motorcycles. The Colemans recall telling her that if she saved up enough for half of a motorcycle that she wanted, they would pay the rest.
It took Rhonda just three months, and Milton built her a track in the backyard to ride on.
Later when they moved to the country, Rhonda grew interested in horses, hog shows and ATVs. She also loved cars. She was on her fifth vehicle by the time she was 18 as the family routinely traded them in and out.
One Christmas, her parents surprised her by trading her car in for a four-wheel-drive truck. Her last vehicle, the Cavalier, was her first brand-new car.
“I liked to buy vehicles and fix them. She would take them,” Milton said with a laugh. “That is how she would wind up with so many vehicles. She learned to drive by driving an old truck in the field back behind the house. It wasn’t worth nothing, but you put them in that truck and turned them loose.”
Rhonda had a love for real and stuffed animal. Her parents got a red cocker spaniel named Princess Molly Bock as a graduation gift.
Milton and Gayle weren’t just Rhonda’s parents: they were her best friends. Unlike most teenagers, Rhonda preferred bringing friends over to her house to hang out, rather than going out.
Gayle said Rhonda had one serious boyfriend over the years.
When she was with her parents, Rhonda was never too bashful to tell them, “I love you,” or hug them no matter who was around. They had a special bond.
In the wake of Rhonda’s death, Gayle said her relationship with Milton was strained at times. But they clung together as they tried to learn to live without their daughter.
“We could have — if we had let it — end up divorced,” Gayle said. “But I believe that her love was the glue that held us together.”
The couple considered moving out of the home they’d shared with Rhonda.
But, as Milton said, “That is home. We can’t do that.”
For 23 years, Rhonda’s bedroom remained as she’d left it. The Colemans eventually removed her clothes from the closet and cleaned out her dresser. They turned it into a room for their great-niece. Gayle believes Rhonda would be proud to know that her room is again being lived in.
Certain times each year are hard for the Colemans. Graduation season is tough because they never saw Rhonda walk across the stage.
Rhonda wanted to be a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital, eventually settling down and getting married. There was already a plot of land in Hazlehurst for her to build a home on and still be close to her parents.
“I think about watching her daddy walk her down the aisle to get married,” Gayle said. “I think about sitting in the waiting room waiting on that first grandbaby. I think about if we would have had two or three grandbabies. You just wonder. That was her life. That was what she was going to do. That was her future, and they took it away from her.”
Still searching for justice
Jeff Davis County Sheriff Mark Hall, who was killed in the line of duty in 1992, investigated the case in the days after the murder. He told the Telegraph in 1990 that authorities believed Rhonda knew her assailant based on evidence gathered at the crime scene. He said it looked as though she had stepped out of her car to talk to someone.
“A pretty, sweet, little girl like that who had never done anything to anybody, and for some maniac — I don’t know what the hell else you would call him — to do a thing like that to her,” Hall said. “We have questioned a lot of people, but no one has been arrested yet.”
In the months that followed, GBI Agent Martin Moses was assigned to Coleman’s case due to its magnitude. The crime was widely reported across the region, making headlines in Atlanta papers. Moses also began probing another local woman’s death.
In November of 1989, Jeannette Carter, 34, was bludgeoned to death six months before Coleman was murdered. Investigators later said the two cases were not related.
Over the years, the Coleman case has been passed along to various investigators.
After five and half years, GBI investigator Pam Rushton delved into the investigation. Rushton said that the evidence showed that a vehicle had pulled in behind her but that there were no signs of a struggle.
“This was a senseless murder,” Rushton said in an interview with The Telegraph around the eighth anniversary of Rhonda’s slaying. “At some point the truth’s going to come out.”
Jason Seacrist, another GBI agent, is one of the latest in a line of investigators to help with the case. He couldn’t get into any specifics on where the GBI’s investigation currently stands, but Seacrist did say that in a case like this, investigators are always looking into new evidence and using new technology.
“Letting the victim’s family know what happened and being able to give them some answers is ultimately one of the most fulfilling things,” he said. “And we want to hold whoever is responsible accountable.”
The Colemans hired a private investigator a few years ago named Jody Ponsell.
Ponsell, a retired GBI agent and native of southeast Georgia, examined several facets of the case for Coleman’s family and their attorney. Having worked as a narcotics agent throughout the region around the time Coleman was slain, Ponsell was familiar with local law enforcement officials. He knew the terrain. With an easy drawl and a meticulous manner, he was no outsider.
Ponsell now works as an investigator for the district attorney’s office in the area that includes Jeff Davis County. Citing the ongoing official investigation, he declined to discuss what the authorities and what he himself may have learned about Coleman’s death.
However, reached by phone recently, Ponsell said he hopes that answers emerge.
“I’m no different than any of the other officers that have worked on that case,” he said. “It’s very near and dear to all of us. ... Everyone wants to see an opportunity arise at some point for justice for Rhonda and for her family.”
Rhonda’s father, Milton, said Ponsell’s investigation led to some eye-opening revelations, but he could not disclose what they were.
The Colemans continue to pursue justice for their daughter and honor her with ads in the local newspaper on special occasions. They never want anyone to forget about Rhonda, especially those who may be responsible for her murder.
“Every year we put things in the newspaper at Christmas and on her birthday,” Gayle said. “We put it on Facebook so that (her killer) can see it.”
Milton and Gayle are hopeful that one day soon justice will be served. They often think about what that day might be like when they get the news.
Milton had just one word to describe it: “closure.”
Gayle said it would hopefully bring answers to the questions that many have wondered about over the years.
“It would stop us from constantly wondering who it is, constantly wondering why and how,” Gayle said. “It would put that part of our mind at rest.”
‘Learned the meaning of love’
Over the years the case has attracted interest far and wide.
From local news outlets to NBC’s “Dateline,” Rhonda’s murder has been the subject of speculation and discussion for more than three decades.
A new podcast about Rhonda’s case was released on Aug. 3, by Sean Kipe, who recently produced “In the Red Clay,” a podcast that details the story of Billy Sunday Birt and his time with the Dixie Mafia.
The hope for the new podcast from Kipe, “Fox Hunter,” is for someone to come forward with information that leads to the case being solved. Kipe plans to help increase the $25,000 reward on the podcast by getting listeners to help donate to a fund.
The Colemans still hope, after 31 years, that Rhonda’s murder will be solved. Love, they said, has kept them going.
“It was mutual. That was the love we had,” Milton said. “We didn’t doubt our love for her or her love for us.”
The person who killed Rhonda Sue Coleman may have taken her from her parents, her family and her friends, but she still lives on through the love that Gayle and Milton share with one another.
“We knew what love was in our families growing up,” Gayle said. “When we had her, we really learned the meaning of love.”
31 years after Rhonda Sue Coleman’s murder her parents still seek answers
Rhonda Sue Coleman was murdered on May 17, 1990 near Hazlehurst in Jeff Davis County
The evening of May 17, 1990, Rhonda Sue Coleman's parents saw her for the last time. In the 31 years since her murder, Milton and Gayle Coleman have never stopped loving her, or wanting answers to what happened.
The evening of May 17, 1990, Rhonda Sue Coleman walked into her parents living room and said goodbye. The 18-year-old was heading to a party where she and other seniors at Jeff Davis County High would paint graduation banners.
The Colemans never let their daughter go out on a school night, but decided to make an exception. It would be the last time Milton and Gayle Coleman would see their only child alive.
“She leaned over, put her hand on the chairs and said she was fixing to leave,” her mother recalled recently in an interview with The Telegraph. “I literally watched her walk out that door.” Rhonda gave Gayle a kiss and said, “I love you.”
Rhonda didn’t arrive home by her 10:30 p.m. curfew. It was unlike her to come in late, but when she did, she always called. It wasn’t long before her father began looking for her.
A neighbor, Layla Marshall, spotted Rhonda’s 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier parked on a dirt road with its lights on, the engine running and purse inside. The driver’s door was open, but Rhonda was gone.
Crime Scene Photo: Rhonda's 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier was found with door open, engine running
Marshall called the sheriff’s department. Rhonda’s father and a sheriff’s deputy got there at the same time.
“We were looking before we got the news,” Milton Coleman said. “Three days later, we found out she was found dead.”
Coleman’s body was discovered in neighboring Montgomery County by a hunter about 15 miles away from her car. Her body was fully clothed and partially burned. Investigators have never divulged how Coleman was killed.
For the last 31 years, questions have lingered in the small town of Hazlehurst, about 90 miles southeast of Macon.
Who killed Rhonda Sue Coleman? Why? How? And how have they kept it a secret?
‘One brick at a time’
Over the years, investigators have followed leads in the case, but no arrests have been made.
Jason Seacrist, assistant special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Douglas office, said recently he was unable to comment on whether there were any new leads.
In the months after Coleman was killed, her mother and father struggled to cope.
“It was hard. Basically, you rearrange your whole life,” Milton said. “That was our life. She was our life. When you take that section out of it, you’ve got to start again. It was rough.” Gayle Coleman said it was difficult to leave the house.
“We had to rebuild our relationship without her. You have to start from the ground up,” she said. “We didn’t want to go out around town because you would see people and you could see the pity in their eyes. We didn’t want to see that.”
Hazlehurst and roughly 4,200 residents rallied around the Colemans after the murder. Many of the town’s businesses shut down on the day of Rhonda’s funeral, including the Piggly Wiggly where she worked. More than 1,000 people attended the service, some standing against the walls two and three deep as others spilled out into the vestibule of Southside Baptist Church.
There were more than 20,000 flowers laid at the roadside along Bell Telephone Road, just south of town where Coleman’s car was found. Milton said the outpouring of love from the community was a direct reflection of the type of person that Rhonda was. Gayle said that locals served as a brace for the couple as they sought to rebuild their lives, as she put it, “one brick at a time.”
“They were holding us up. We knew they were there. They helped us,” Gayle said. “There ain’t a soul in Hazlehurst that we still couldn’t call at midnight and they wouldn’t be right there.”
‘That was her future, and they took it away from her.’
Rhonda was 5-foot-5 with blonde hair and blue eyes.
When she and her folks lived uptown inside the city limits, she was into golf carts and motorcycles. The Colemans recall telling her that if she saved up enough for half of a motorcycle that she wanted, they would pay the rest.
It took Rhonda just three months, and Milton built her a track in the backyard to ride on.
Later when they moved to the country, Rhonda grew interested in horses, hog shows and ATVs. She also loved cars. She was on her fifth vehicle by the time she was 18 as the family routinely traded them in and out.
One Christmas, her parents surprised her by trading her car in for a four-wheel-drive truck. Her last vehicle, the Cavalier, was her first brand-new car.
“I liked to buy vehicles and fix them. She would take them,” Milton said with a laugh. “That is how she would wind up with so many vehicles. She learned to drive by driving an old truck in the field back behind the house. It wasn’t worth nothing, but you put them in that truck and turned them loose.”
Rhonda had a love for real and stuffed animal. Her parents got a red cocker spaniel named Princess Molly Bock as a graduation gift.
Milton and Gayle weren’t just Rhonda’s parents: they were her best friends. Unlike most teenagers, Rhonda preferred bringing friends over to her house to hang out, rather than going out.
Gayle said Rhonda had one serious boyfriend over the years.
When she was with her parents, Rhonda was never too bashful to tell them, “I love you,” or hug them no matter who was around. They had a special bond.
In the wake of Rhonda’s death, Gayle said her relationship with Milton was strained at times. But they clung together as they tried to learn to live without their daughter.
“We could have — if we had let it — end up divorced,” Gayle said. “But I believe that her love was the glue that held us together.”
Trice Thompson, Rhonda Sue Coleman John Strickland, Greg Newham
The couple considered moving out of the home they’d shared with Rhonda.
But, as Milton said, “That is home. We can’t do that.”
For 23 years, Rhonda’s bedroom remained as she’d left it. The Colemans eventually removed her clothes from the closet and cleaned out her dresser. They turned it into a room for their great-niece. Gayle believes Rhonda would be proud to know that her room is again being lived in.
Certain times each year are hard for the Colemans. Graduation season is tough because they never saw Rhonda walk across the stage.
Rhonda wanted to be a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital, eventually settling down and getting married. There was already a plot of land in Hazlehurst for her to build a home on and still be close to her parents.
“I think about watching her daddy walk her down the aisle to get married,” Gayle said. “I think about sitting in the waiting room waiting on that first grandbaby. I think about if we would have had two or three grandbabies. You just wonder. That was her life. That was what she was going to do. That was her future, and they took it away from her.”
Still searching for justice
Jeff Davis County Sheriff Mark Hall, who was killed in the line of duty in 1992, investigated the case in the days after the murder. He told the Telegraph in 1990 that authorities believed Rhonda knew her assailant based on evidence gathered at the crime scene. He said it looked as though she had stepped out of her car to talk to someone.
“A pretty, sweet, little girl like that who had never done anything to anybody, and for some maniac — I don’t know what the hell else you would call him — to do a thing like that to her,” Hall said. “We have questioned a lot of people, but no one has been arrested yet.”
In the months that followed, GBI Agent Martin Moses was assigned to Coleman’s case due to its magnitude. The crime was widely reported across the region, making headlines in Atlanta papers. Moses also began probing another local woman’s death.
In November of 1989, Jeannette Carter, 34, was bludgeoned to death six months before Coleman was murdered. Investigators later said the two cases were not related.
Over the years, the Coleman case has been passed along to various investigators.
After five and half years, GBI investigator Pam Rushton delved into the investigation. Rushton said that the evidence showed that a vehicle had pulled in behind her but that there were no signs of a struggle.
“This was a senseless murder,” Rushton said in an interview with The Telegraph around the eighth anniversary of Rhonda’s slaying. “At some point the truth’s going to come out.”
Jason Seacrist, another GBI agent, is one of the latest in a line of investigators to help with the case. He couldn’t get into any specifics on where the GBI’s investigation currently stands, but Seacrist did say that in a case like this, investigators are always looking into new evidence and using new technology.
“Letting the victim’s family know what happened and being able to give them some answers is ultimately one of the most fulfilling things,” he said. “And we want to hold whoever is responsible accountable.”
The Colemans hired a private investigator a few years ago named Jody Ponsell.
Ponsell, a retired GBI agent and native of southeast Georgia, examined several facets of the case for Coleman’s family and their attorney. Having worked as a narcotics agent throughout the region around the time Coleman was slain, Ponsell was familiar with local law enforcement officials. He knew the terrain. With an easy drawl and a meticulous manner, he was no outsider.
Ponsell now works as an investigator for the district attorney’s office in the area that includes Jeff Davis County. Citing the ongoing official investigation, he declined to discuss what the authorities and what he himself may have learned about Coleman’s death.
However, reached by phone recently, Ponsell said he hopes that answers emerge.
“I’m no different than any of the other officers that have worked on that case,” he said. “It’s very near and dear to all of us. ... Everyone wants to see an opportunity arise at some point for justice for Rhonda and for her family.”
Rhonda’s father, Milton, said Ponsell’s investigation led to some eye-opening revelations, but he could not disclose what they were.
The Colemans continue to pursue justice for their daughter and honor her with ads in the local newspaper on special occasions. They never want anyone to forget about Rhonda, especially those who may be responsible for her murder.
“Every year we put things in the newspaper at Christmas and on her birthday,” Gayle said. “We put it on Facebook so that (her killer) can see it.”
Milton and Gayle are hopeful that one day soon justice will be served. They often think about what that day might be like when they get the news.
Milton had just one word to describe it: “closure.”
Gayle said it would hopefully bring answers to the questions that many have wondered about over the years.
“It would stop us from constantly wondering who it is, constantly wondering why and how,” Gayle said. “It would put that part of our mind at rest.”
‘Learned the meaning of love’
Over the years the case has attracted interest far and wide.
From local news outlets to NBC’s “Dateline,” Rhonda’s murder has been the subject of speculation and discussion for more than three decades.
This summer, a new podcast about Rhonda’s case is set to be released by Sean Kipe, who recently produced “In the Red Clay,” a podcast that details the story of Billy Sunday Birt and his time with the Dixie Mafia.
The hope for the new podcast from Kipe, “Fox Hunter,” is for someone to come forward with information that leads to the case being solved. Kipe plans to help increase the $25,000 reward on the podcast by getting listeners to help donate to a fund.
The Colemans still hope, after 31 years, that Rhonda’s murder will be solved. Love, they said, has kept them going.
“It was mutual. That was the love we had,” Milton said. “We didn’t doubt our love for her or her love for us.”
The person who killed Rhonda Sue Coleman may have taken her from her parents, her family and her friends, but she still lives on through the love that Gayle and Milton share with one another.
“We knew what love was in our families growing up,” Gayle said. “When we had her, we really learned the meaning of love.”
Milton and Gayle Coleman have never stopped loving Rhonda Sue, or wanting answers to what happened and who killed their daughter in 1990
