Lawyer Says Televangelist’s No-Divorce Policy May Have Led to Killing
A lawyer says he needs to depose televangelist Joyce Meyer to determine whether her ministries could have prevented the slaying of a woman and her two sons.
Lawyer Enrico Mirabelli represents the family of the victims in a lawsuit against the woman’s husband, Christopher Coleman, the former security chief for Joyce Meyer Ministries, according to the Belleville News-Democrat and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Mirabelli says Meyer’s no-divorce policy for staffers may have led Coleman to kill his wife, Sheri Coleman, and their children, United Press International reports. Christopher Coleman has been charged with first-degree murder but has not yet been tried. Mirabelli is seeking to add the ministry as a defendant in the wrongful death suit against Coleman.
The family also contends the slaying may have been avoided if the ministry had investigated anonymous e-mail threats made against the Coleman family. The threats said Coleman’s family would be killed unless Meyer stopped preaching, according to the News Democrat. Police believe Christopher Coleman was the author of the e-mails, court documents say.
Police allege Christopher Coleman murdered his wife so he could marry another woman with whom he was having an affair.