Crimes That Shocked The World - The Most Chilling True-Life Stories From the Last 40 Years. Danny Collins
his brother produced a gun and threatened to shoot anyone who attempted to leave the house.
Throughout his testimony Cobbins made no mention of the rape and murder of Christopher Newsom, only recalling that Davidson and Thomas came back into the house for a while, left about half an hour later and returned with ‘dark stains’ on their shirts when they returned the second time. His inflammatory statement that so riled the father of Channon related to when he told the court that he had gone into the bedroom where Channon was bound on the bed and untied her bonds so that she could drink some of the water he had brought her.
At that point, according to Cobbins, the young woman offered him oral sex if he would convince Davidson to let her go. He claimed he accepted her offer and told the stunned jury he heard ‘noises that concerned him’ as he ejaculated. At that point the victim’s mother struggled to restrain her husband from attacking Cobbins. Cobbins was found guilty on 33 counts, including first degree felony murder, first degree premeditated murder, especially aggravated robbery, especially aggravated kidnapping with a weapon, aggravated rape with a weapon, aggravated rape with bodily injury, aggravated rape while aided by others, and theft of property.
He was found not guilty on five counts, including the murder of Newsom during his rape, the murder of Christian during Newsom’s rape, and three counts of aggravated rape of Newsom. The trial of Cobbins’s half brother Lemaricus Davidson began on 19 October 2009, with that of Vanessa Coleman and George Thomas to follow. Davidson’s defence strategy was to accuse Cobbins of lying about his and Davidson’s role with regard to the carjacking, rapes, and murders. However, his attorneys, Doug Trant and David Aldridge, presented a story very similar to that of Cobbins to explain the presence of their client’s semen on the dead girl.
According to Davidson, Christian had offered him vaginal sex in return for her life. It was a flawed tactic since, even if it had been believed, it could only have presented the picture of a terrified girl begging for her life and willing to make any sacrifice to escape death. It failed to save Davidson and on 28 October he was found guilty on all counts. On 30 October the jury imposed the death sentence for his role as ringleader in the killings.
Although no information was available at the time this book went to publication, there was no doubt in Davidson’s defence strategy that room had been left for the manoeuvre of appeal. Criminals sentenced to death in the USA may spend decades on Death Row while their anti-capital punishment lawyers, often working pro bono, bring repeated appeals for stays of executions to keep their clients away from lethal injection.
The appeal process in the United States is long, following a trail through various stages of hearings as far as the Federal Supreme Court, where an unfavourable decision leaves only a plea of clemency, seldom granted, to the state governor. Tennessee’s state governor is Phil Bredesen, a free-thinking Democrat hard on drugs and crime and a staunch supporter of family values. Of late, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), passed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, has severely constrained the time limit for appeal and the conditions under which an appeal can be heard.
The trial of George Geovonni Thomas was set for 1 December. The defence of Vanessa Coleman – who in her haste to condemn everyone but herself had made incriminating statements before counsel was appointed or a plea bargain arranged – had appealed a key ruling over immunity and no trial date had been set.
The murder house at 2316 Chipman Street was bought in October 2008 by Waste Collections Inc, the company that owned the adjoining land, and the house was demolished. In its place a memorial was erected to Channon Christian and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr, victims of the horrors of a fatal carjacking one night in Knoxville, Tennessee, that went far beyond the limits of human understanding.
South Croydon, London, England, September 2005
‘I want to be the next Kate Moss’
– aspiring teenage model Sally Anne Bowman in 2003.
The murder of Sally Anne Bowman in the London suburb of Croydon on September 2005 shocked a nation which was becoming increasingly blasé about horrific street slayings. Young men died bleeding from savage knife wounds after a pointless argument; children at play were snatched off the street to be sexually used and abused until their young lives were choked out of them by a pervert’s hand; street muggings were frequent and almost not to be remarked on; old age pensioners were beaten in their homes and died for the meagre content of their purses; football matches ended in a welter of missiles and café tables.
Yet the murder of Sally Anne Bowman, a young and aspiring model, was so horrific in its execution and the indignities committed on her body so repellent that everyone who heard of it sat up and took notice. And ironically and dramatically, for all the perpetrated horror and violence of that night it was a minor brawl about soccer that brought her killer to justice.
Those who knew Sally Anne during her short life would describe her as an enigmatic 18-year-old, in varying degrees opinionated, warm, argumentative, and naïve. The latter quality was possibly that which cost Sally Anne her life, although her refusal to be intimidated by the actions of a man whom she dismissed to her friends and employer as a ‘wacko’ would also be a contributory factor.
Sally Anne Bowman was born in South Croydon – at the time a part of the county of Surrey but now classified as a suburb of London’s sprawl – on 11 September 1987, the youngest of four sisters. Her early school years were spent at Cheam Fields Primary School in nearby Sutton, she moved on to Cheam High and later attended the British Record Industry Trust School of Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon. Pursuing her dream to follow another Croydon girl, the model Kate Moss, onto the cover of Vogue, at the age of 16 she joined the local Pulse Model Management Agency and worked on the London catwalks, including the Café de Paris on Piccadilly and the Swatch Alternative Fashion Week. Tall, willowy, with long blonde hair and large blue eyes, the budding model, although hardly out of school, was fiercely ambitious and could not wait to break into the big time.
Unfortunately for Sally Anne, she had also attracted the attention of Mark Dixie, a 36-year-old pub chef, who was into both drug and alcohol abuse, and who frequented many of the dance clubs and pubs in Croydon town centre where Sally Anne often went with her sisters. Dixie began to stalk his victim, showing up at karaoke nights where Sally Anne, a proficient singer, liked to perform her favourite songs – Bette Midler’s ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and Celine Dion’s ‘Love Goes On’, the theme from Titanic.
On one occasion he even turned up at the hairdressing salon where she worked and insisted that ‘the tall blonde one’ washed and cut his hair. It’s possible that Dixie’s obsession had given Sally Anne cause for unease, since her relatives told police that three or four days before her murder she seemed worried and unsettled.
The night of Saturday 24 September 2005 was to evolve into a blood bath of horror but it started innocently enough when Sally Anne and her 22-year-old sister Nicole went into Croydon to visit a club. Nicole decided to go home early while Sally Anne stayed for a drink with friends at a nearby bar before telephoning her on/off boyfriend, 22-year-old plasterer Lewis Sproston, to ask him to give her a lift to her newly-rented apartment in Blenheim Crescent.
It was the first time in 30 days that Sally Anne had returned to the apartment, having spent most of this time back home with her mother, Linda, and sisters during a bout of homesickness and worry over grocery bills – common enough in young women who leave home to demonstrate their newfound independence.
Lewis arrived reluctantly, annoyed because Sally Anne had chosen to go out without him that evening but was now treating him as a taxi driver. He found himself in the quandary that can affect all young men in a state of unrequited love towards offhand young women they have known since schooldays and who go on to seemingly