Meeting the man of her dreams landed her on Death Row

Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow at the moment they learned they had received the death penalty.

On this day in 1989, Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow were sentenced to death in San Bernardino, California, for the 1986 murder of Corinna Novis. Coffman had the dubious distinction of being the first woman sentenced to death since capital punishment had been reinstated in 1977. Marlow was no stranger to the criminal justice system. In fact, it was a stint in jail that led him to meet Cynthia Coffman.

Cynthia Coffman was born in 1962 in St. Louis and by the time she was four years old, her parents had divorced. At seventeen, she ran away from home, got pregnant and married her child's father, Roy Coffman. Within two years, she had walked out on her husband and their baby and met a man by the name of Doug Huntley in Arizona. In April 1986, they were arrested on drug charges in Barstow, California, where Huntley ended up sharing a cell with James Marlow.

Marlow was born in 1956 in Cincinnati, to a drug-addicted prostitute who taught him to steal, do drugs and have sex. By the time he was sixteen, he had added the crime of rape to his extensive rap sheet. During a stint in Fulsom prison, he became known as The Folsom Wolf due to a prominent wolf tattoo. While sharing a cell with Huntley, who would end up in jail for the next six weeks, Marlow heard all about Huntley's girlfriend Cynthia. After his release, he went straight to her apartment and the two began an affair based on their love of drugs, crime, violence and sadomasochistic sex.

Within two months of meeting, the couple married in Tennessee and Cynthia got a tattoo on her butt that said "Property of The Folsom Wolf." The newlyweds then made their way back to California, where in November 1986, Cynthia came across twenty-year-old Corinna Novis in the parking lot of the Redlands Mall and asked her if she and her boyfriend could get a ride. After saying yes, Corinna Novis failed to show up for a party later that night and was absent from work the following Monday. A Taco Bell manager found her driver's license and checkbook in a dumpster along with documents containing information about Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow.

Within five days of the disappearance of Corinna Novis, nineteen-year-old Lynel Murray failed to show up for a date. Her body was found the next day by a maid in a Huntington Beach hotel room. Her head had been submerged in a water-filled bathtub and an autopsy revealed that she had been strangled and sexually assaulted. Coffman and Marlow had left a clear trail for the police by using credit cards to purchase hotel rooms and other items, including swimsuits, which they changed into for their getaway even though the temperature was 40 degrees. Authorities soon spotted Coffman walking down the highway in a bikini.

Cynthia Coffman soon confessed to the couple's crimes, insisting that she was a victim of battered women's syndrome who only participated because she had been beaten and brainwashed by James Marlow. She found no sympathy with the jury or the judge, who stated that, based on the evidence and her attitude in court, she "was in this thing up to the hilt and enjoyed it up to the last minute."

Both Cynthia Coffman and James Marlow are still sitting on Death Row.

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