Unsolved slaying in Hazlehurst another case of delayed justice in Georgia

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.

Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and Twitter (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.

John Strickland, Greg Newham, Trice Thompson : Why are they not talking?

Trice Thompson, Rhonda Sue Coleman
Greg Newham,John Strickland

Will Rhonda Coleman’s 1990 homicide be the next to be solved? The GBI says "we're closing in on him"

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.