http://www.suntimes.com/news/4932442-455/blue-island-man-charged-with-raping-killing-three-women.html Blue Island man charged with raping, killing three women
BY LAUREN FITZPATRICK Sun-Times Media lfitzpatrick@southtownstar.com Apr 21, 2011 05:00AM
The last time her mother saw her, Kimika Coleman was on her cell phone.
The 18-year-old was home that night in Chicago’s South Deering neighborhood when Kimberly Coleman came in from work. Then she moved to the porch to keep chatting.
And by the time her mother thought to ask her to run to the store for milk, Kimika Coleman was gone.
Kimberly Coleman didn’t know her middle child had been talking for a few weeks to an older man she had met on a singles party line. And she couldn’t know that man had chatted up, raped and killed another 18-year-old a few weeks before, as police and prosecutors charged Wednesday. Or that he wouldattack and killagain, as prosecutors allege.
Sonny Pierce, 27, of Blue Island, wooed Kimika Coleman, still in high school, as he had Kiara Windom from Harvey, and took each girl to his ramshackle apartment in Blue Island in August 2009. He raped and strangled them, then dumped their bodies in an alley — Windom on the Southeast Side, Coleman inBlue Island, just hours after she had left her house, authorities said.
Pierce, 27, was charged Wednesday with murdering both women, and also Mariah Edwards, 17, of Blue Island, in July 2010.
Pierce told police he invited Edwards to his home to rape her in front of other men, and beat her with themen until she was dead, prosecutors said. He has refused to tell police where he dumped her remains, which were encased in a garbage bag, prosecutors said.
Police recovered a video Pierce made of himself having what Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez described as “violent sexual relations,” with Edwards.
“This 17-year-old girl appears to be lifeless,” Alvarez said. “We believe she was deceased when the video was taken.”
Alvarez would not comment on whether other men were involved or other suspects were being questioned.
“These young teenagers were brutalized and their lives were cut short in yet another example of hinous crimes of violence against women,” Alvarez said Wednesday at a news conference, flanked by investigators from the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, Blue Island Police, Illinois State Police and her office’s cold case unit.
Judge Darron E. Bowden ordered Pierce held without bail Wednesday in Cook County Court in Markham, saidOrland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy, whoheads the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.
Pierce has been in jail since August, when he was arrested in connection with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl he allegedly lured from outside her house and dragged her into his apartment, Alvarez said.
DNA collected after that attack linked Pierce to Windom and Coleman, McCarthy said. Cell phone records also tied Pierce to his victims, prosecutors said.
Investigators found 20 calls between Windom’s cell phone and Pierce the night before her body was found, prosecutors said.
Police asked the public to come forward with information about Pierce, his alleged crimes or other missing women from the area.
Pierce’s mother, Esther Pierce, defended her son.
“I don’t think my son’s guilty. He’s my womb child and I’m going to stand and pray for my seed,” she said from her apartment, next to his near 121st and Vincennes.
She acknowledged that her son, who has a 1-year-old daughter,had taken pictures of himself having sex with women, which she had told him he shouldn’t do because “it’s nasty.”
Regarding the video authorities say they have of Pierce having sex with a possibly lifeless body, she said it’s not known whether the woman was alive or just sleeping.
“Hear the truth, world, we’re dealing with an injustice,” she said. “Hear the truth.” Windom’s mother, Hallena Johnson, took little solace in hearing that prosecutors think they have the man who killed her daughter.
“Nothing’s going to bring my daughter back, but I wish this state still had the death penalty for that man,” Johnson said. “He took someone’s else’s life. He should have his life taken.”
Edwards lived in an apartment complex across the street from Pierce’s building, said her brother, Tony Edwards, 35, of the Roseland neighborhood.
He said his sister was an aspiring rapper.
“I miss her face, her smile, her laughter . . . the way she got on my nerves,” he said. “She didn’t deserve that no matter what she did in her life.”
Contributing: Phil Kadner, Casey Toner
