Police: 3 found dead in southwestern Illinois home

COLUMBIA -- A mother and her two young boys were found murdered on Tuesday in their southwestern Illinois home where police said they had previously investigated suspicious activity.

The victims were Sheri Coleman, 31, and her children, 11-year-old Garrett and 9-year-old Gavin, said Jeff Connor, deputy commander of the major case squad of greater St. Louis.

Coleman's husband, Chris, found the bodies inside the cream-colored house on Tuesday morning, he said. Officials did not yet have a cause of death for the victims and police did not have a suspect in custody, said Connor, who asked for the public's help with tips.

"It may not be unusual to them, but it may mean something to us," Connor said.

Police had some previous contact with the family related to "some interaction between an unknown individual and them," Connor said. He declined to elaborate.

Neighbors in the well-kept subdivision of ranch-style homes said the Coleman family received threatening letters and their mailbox was tampered with in the past week.

Michelle Kunzelman, 30, said police knocked on her neighboring door last week and asked "if we'd seen or heard anything with (the Colemans') mailbox."

Kunzelman, who guessed the victims' home backed by a manmade lake is just "eight feet from us," said she heard nothing unusual overnight from the Colemans' home.

"It's a complete shock to anyone who lives here," added Kunzelman, a sales rep who's spent her life in this fast-growing town of roughly 10,000 people southeast of St. Louis. "It's just a very big surprise. Columbia is known as being small, rural town, and this is just something out of the ordinary for us."

Chris Coleman worked in security for Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo. In a statement posted on its Web site, the ministry called him "a very dear friend," and the killings an "unexpected and devastating tragedy. Words are not enough."

Neighbor Harold Rushing, 77, said he saw Chris Coleman Tuesday morning and he was "visibly upset," flailing his arms as two police officers restrained him by the shoulders.

Rushing said the two boys often came to his house to romp in the back yard with his dogs.

"They'd lay in the grass and those dogs were all over them. That's where it kind of hits home for us," said Rushing, who moved to the cul-de-sac seven years ago. "They were just boys. They weren't troublemakers. They were good kids, just energetic boys."

Kunzelman remembered the two grade schoolers as "just happy little boys," often jumping in the trampoline in the family's back yard or playing catch with their dad.

"It's just shocking that anyone would do anything to them," said neighbor Jennifer Grimm, a 38-year-old stay-at-home mom. "It's just very upsetting ... I don't know what kind of evil person would do something like that."