Lisa Coleman Executed After Starving, Binding & Torturing a 9-Year-Old | Final Words & Last Meal
A Texas woman has been executed for the 2004 torture and starvation death of her girlfriend’s 9-year-old son. 38-year-old Lisa Ann Coleman died at 6:24 Wednesday evening.
Inside the execution chamber at the Huntsville unit, a woman is strapped to a gurney. The room is quiet. Witnesses sit behind a glass window watching. No one speaks. Her name is Lisa Ann Coleman. She is 38 years old. She looks toward the window and speaks, calm, almost peaceful, and says her final words. Then silence. 12 minutes later, she is gone.
But here is what makes this case impossible to walk away from: Two women were arrested for the same crime. Only one was executed. And the charge that sent Lisa Coleman to death row, her own attorney called it legally impossible. What the paramedics found inside the Arlington apartment is something that will stay with you long after this video ends.
Welcome back to the channel. If you are new here, subscribe and turn on notifications. You do not want to miss what comes next.
Devonte’s Early Life
Devonte Tramaine Williams was born on June 13th, 1995, in Arlington, Texas. He came into the world 4 months too early. His mother, Marcella L. Williams, was just 14 years old. From his very first breath, life was already hard for Devonte. He had developmental disabilities, speech delays, hyperactivity, and a body that was fragile from the start.
But he was still a child who could learn. His first-grade teacher at Webb Elementary School described him as capable of learning, but highly distractible. He did better when he sat close to his teacher. He responded to structure. He responded to warmth. He just needed someone to show up for him.
Child Protective Services (CPS) opened a file on his home when he was just 2 months old. The complaint said Marcella was not watching him properly. By the time he was 4 years old, he had already been removed from his home once. He had three siblings. He lived in a small apartment in Arlington with his mother, Marcella, and her partner, Lisa Ann Coleman. He deserved protection. He deserved stability. He deserved love. But, the people who were supposed to protect him were the very ones destroying him.
Lisa Coleman’s Dark Past
To understand what happened to Devonte, you have to understand the woman at the center of this case. Lisa Ann Coleman was born on October 6th, 1975, in Tarrant County, Texas. She never had a fair start. Her mother was raped by her own step-grandfather. That assault produced Lisa. From the very beginning, she was not wanted.
Her own mother gave her a nickname, “Pig.” Not a term of endearment, a label. And that mother rarely showed up during the years Lisa spent moving through foster care. Inside her family home, violence was normal. An uncle beat her with extension cords—the same kind of cords that would later be used on Devonte.
A child abuse expert testified at trial that Lisa was sexually abused by foster parents when she was still a toddler. As a preteen, a cousin stabbed her. Before she even reached puberty, a relative was already giving her drugs and alcohol. She dropped out of school after the 10th grade. At 16, she became a mother herself.
As a young adult, she went to prison twice: once for burglary, and once for possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She never received proper treatment for it. She had no public profile, no job on record. She existed largely off the grid.
A System’s Failure
In 1999, Child Protective Services removed Devonte and his 1-year-old sister from the home. He was 4 years old. He had thinning hair, bruises on his back, and swelling on his lip and genitals. CPS concluded Lisa Coleman was responsible. Both children were placed in foster care. Marcella fought to get them back. After approximately 1 year, she did, but only after making one promise: stay away from Lisa Coleman.
She broke that promise. In November 2000, Marcella gave birth to a third child, a daughter. By 2002, Lisa had quietly moved back in. Devonte was now in first grade at Webb Elementary School. In October 2002, a new CPS report was filed, citing allegations of physical and medical neglect. Caseworkers visited the apartment. The children denied everything. They said nothing was wrong.
After that visit, Devonte stopped going to school. Medical appointments stopped completely. Marcella and Lisa told school officials they had moved out of the district. It was a lie. Between November 13th and December 30th, 2002, CPS investigators visited the apartment nine times. No one answered. No sign of the family. Nine visits. Nine times no one answered, and no one pushed harder. That silence cost a child his life.
The Escalation of Abuse
There were no outside conspirators in this case. No hired hands. No third party. This was done by the two people Devonte lived with every single day. Marcella and Lisa operated as a unit. Marcella was his biological mother. Lisa was the enforcer. Together, they created an environment that was designed to control, isolate, and punish a 9-year-old boy with developmental disabilities.
Court records show that both women restrained Devonte with plastic extension cords on multiple occasions. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. And according to those same records, it happened on the night he died. He was also locked in a pantry, confined, and hidden away inside his own home.
The apartment had food. Court records confirm that. The rest of the household ate. Devonte was not allowed to. The medical examiner testified that Devonte’s diet was so deficient in protein that his body had begun breaking down its own muscle and fat just to survive. His heart had almost no surrounding fat, something the examiner described as an extremely unusual finding in a child. His wounds could not heal properly because his body had nothing left to work with.
A blood-stained golf club was also found in the apartment. It was consistent with blunt force injuries near his ear. This was not one bad night. This was years of deliberate deprivation. And when the defense tried to argue that Lisa did not even live in the home, Devonte’s own adopted sister took the stand. She testified that Lisa lived there. She had personally witnessed Lisa tying Devonte up. What the jury would eventually see—the photos, the scars, the cords—took less than 1 hour to decide Lisa Coleman’s fate. But getting to that courtroom took 2 years.
(If you are new here, this channel covers true crime cases with the depth they deserve. Hit like, drop a comment, and subscribe so you never miss one.)
The Discovery
July 26, 2004, Arlington, Texas. At some point that day, Devonte Tramaine Williams took his last breath. He was 9 years old. Court records and forensic evidence tell us what happened, but the exact hours before the 911 call remain partially unknown.
What we do know is this: he was not rushed to a hospital. He was not given emergency care. He was placed in a bathroom. Marcella called 911. Her voice was trembling. She told the dispatcher her son had stopped breathing. The dispatcher tried to walk her through CPR. The call disconnected.
Paramedics arrived. Lisa answered the door. She told them Devonte had stopped breathing just a few minutes earlier. She said he had eaten, started vomiting, and they brought him to the bathroom to clean him up. That story fell apart the moment paramedics stepped inside.
Devonte was on the bathroom floor wearing a disposable diaper that barely fit his frame. Rigor mortis had already set in. He had been dead for hours. He weighed 35 lbs. 9 years old, the size of a toddler. Dried yellow fluid, bile or vomit, was crusted around his mouth and nose. Dirty, peeling bandages covered his arms.
250 scars marked his small body, some old, some fresh. There were infected wounds on his wrists and ankles consistent with being bound by plastic extension cords. A fresh tear on his lower lip, a healing tear where his ear met the side of his head. A blood-stained golf club was found in the apartment.
Medical examiner Dr. Daniel Conzelman later testified that when he first saw the body, he suspected blunt trauma. The bruising was that extensive. The official cause of death was severe malnutrition with pneumonia as a contributing factor. His body had been consuming itself. This was not a child who got sick. This was a child who was starved, beaten, and bound, and then hidden until there was nothing left to hide.
The Investigation and Arrest
And what investigators found when they started asking questions about the months before his death is almost impossible to believe. When paramedics arrived at that Arlington apartment, neither woman ran. Neither woman panicked. They stayed. Lisa answered the door calmly. She offered her explanation about the vomiting. No visible distress, no urgency. Marcella had been trembling on the phone during the 911 call, but in person, she was composed.
Devonte’s two younger sisters were also in the apartment. They were three and six years old. A CPS spokesperson later confirmed that both girls appeared healthy and unharmed. That detail matters. The abuse was not random. It was not directed at every child in that home. It was targeted specifically at Devonte.
Both women were taken in for questioning, and Lisa talked. Court records show she admitted to striking Devonte with a belt. When asked why she stopped, she did not say she felt guilty. She said the bruises were too hard to hide. She also admitted that she and Marcella had tied Devonte with cords on multiple occasions, including the night he died.
She described what happened that night. She said Marcella woke her up screaming. She ran into the room and found Devonte unresponsive. The two women dragged him into the bathroom and lowered his body into warm water trying to bring him back. It was already too late. Both women were arrested and charged with injury to a child. Each was held on a $200,000 bond. Devonte’s two younger sisters were removed from the apartment and placed in foster care, this time permanently.
Upgrading the Charges
But the charge of injury to a child would not hold for long. What prosecutors uncovered next would change everything. Tarrant County investigators got to work. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed what the scene already suggested. Malnutrition was the primary cause of Devonte’s death. Pneumonia was a secondary factor.
A full forensic review of his body cataloged 250 scars, infected wounds on his wrists and ankles from the cords, and blunt force injuries consistent with the golf club found in the apartment. Then investigators pulled the CPS records. What they found was damning. There had been at least six prior child abuse investigations connected to that household.
The 1999 removal was documented. The promise Marcella made to stay away from Lisa Coleman was documented. The nine unanswered CPS visits between November and December 2002 were documented. All of it was on record, and none of it had been enough to save him.
The case drew attention far beyond Arlington. Governor Rick Perry ordered a state review of over 1,100 child abuse cases in North Texas. The Inspector General’s report found that CPS caseworkers failed to act quickly enough 70% of the time when abuse or neglect was indicated. In the Dallas and Fort Worth region specifically, only 30% of cases saw caseworkers implement the appropriate short-term safety steps when abuse was confirmed. The Williams case became a symbol of a system that had failed at every level.
Prosecutors upgraded the charges against both women to capital murder. But under Texas law, they needed to prove an aggravating felony—a second crime committed in the course of the murder. They landed on kidnapping. The cord marks, the pantry, the years of isolation. The legal argument that would send Lisa Coleman to death row was one her own attorney called legally impossible. And that argument would be debated all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The Trial
There was no single breakthrough moment in this case. It was the accumulation of everything. Devonte’s adopted sister took the stand and confirmed that Lisa Coleman lived in that home. She had personally witnessed Lisa tying Devonte up. That testimony directly dismantled the defense’s central claim that Lisa was rarely present.
Dr. Daniel Conzelman’s findings added another layer. The protein deficiency. The near-absent fat around Devonte’s heart. The wounds that could not heal because his body had nothing left to work with. All of it pointed to long-term deliberate starvation, not simple neglect. The cord wounds on his wrists and ankles were infected. That meant they had been there for an extended period of time. This was not a one-time incident.
Physical evidence confirmed Devonte had been locked inside the pantry. The blood-stained golf club was consistent with blood transfer from an open wound, specifically the tear near his ear. And court records confirmed what Lisa herself had already admitted during questioning: the belt, the cords, the night he died.
Both women were formally charged with capital murder. Both were offered the same plea deal: plead guilty and receive a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Marcella accepted. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. She will not be eligible for parole until 2044.
Lisa refused. She chose to go to trial. That single decision set everything that followed. In less than 1 hour, a jury would decide her fate. But the legal fight over whether she should have faced death at all would last another 8 years.
The trial of Lisa Ann Coleman began on June 7th, 2006, before Judge Everett Young in Tarrant County. The prosecution was direct. The apartment had food. Devonte was denied it. The scars, the bindings, the pantry, the golf club. This was not bad parenting. This was captivity.
Defense attorney Michael Heiskell pushed back. He argued that Lisa did not live in the apartment full-time. He said Devonte had always been small because he was born 4 months premature. He claimed that Devonte’s hyperactivity symptoms made restraint necessary. His position was that this was a case of tragic poor parenting, not murder.
The jury heard from both sides. Dr. Daniel Conzelman testified that when he first examined Devonte’s body, the bruising was so extensive he initially suspected blunt trauma as the cause of death. He described the protein deficiency, the wounds that could not heal, and the near-absent fat around the heart. Devonte’s adopted sister testified that Lisa lived in the home and that she had personally witnessed the restraints. Devonte’s first-grade teacher from Webb Elementary described a boy who was capable of learning, who needed structure, and who could have thrived with the right support.
The defense called a physician who testified that Devonte died from aspirating his own vomit, not malnutrition. A forensic consultant argued the blood on the golf club was transfer, not spatter, meaning Devonte was not struck with it. A psychological associate noted his developmental delays and said he needed a stable environment to develop properly.
The jury deliberated for 1 hour. They returned a verdict of guilty of capital murder.
In the sentencing phase, the defense raised every mitigating factor available: Lisa’s traumatic conception, her childhood abuse, early exposure to drugs and alcohol, sexual abuse in foster care, her bipolar disorder, and the cycle of intergenerational trauma. The jury rejected every one of them. Lisa Ann Coleman was sentenced to death.
Death Row and Appeals
Her attorneys immediately began the appeals process. Their central argument was straightforward: You cannot kidnap a child inside their own home. In 2009, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed both the conviction and the sentence. The legal fight was far from over.
Lisa Ann Coleman spent 8 years on death row at the Mountain View Unit in Texas. Her appeals were led by John Stickels of Arlington and Brad Levenson of the Office of Capital Writs. Their core argument remained the same throughout: The kidnapping charge was legally invalid. Devonte was in his own home. Confining a child as punishment, however cruel, did not meet the statutory definition of kidnapping under Texas law.
They also argued that Lisa’s original trial attorneys had failed to investigate evidence that could have challenged the kidnapping claim. Neighbors had reportedly seen Devonte walking around the apartment complex and appearing unrestrained in the days before his death. That evidence was never presented at trial.
John Stickels raised another concern. He argued that Lisa was being targeted because she was a black lesbian—that Marcella, equally responsible for what happened to Devonte, had walked away with a far lesser punishment.
On September 16th, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected the kidnapping argument. The United States Supreme Court declined to intervene. The execution date stood.
The Execution
September 17th, 2014. That morning Lisa ate the standard prison meal: Fried pork chop, macaroni and cheese, carrots, green beans, navy beans, sliced bread, and pineapple orange cake. Texas does not grant special last meal requests. She spent the morning with visitors. Prison officials said she was sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.
When she was strapped to the gurney and asked for her final words, she looked toward the witness window and spoke calmly:
“I just want to tell my family I love them. My son, I love him. God is good. Done.”
She told the women on death row to keep their heads up. She smiled at her aunt. She mouthed a kiss.
At 6:12 in the evening, pentobarbital was administered. At 6:24 in the evening, Lisa Ann Coleman was pronounced dead. 12 minutes. She was 38 years old. She was the 15th woman executed in the United States since 1976 and the 517th execution carried out in Texas since 1982. She is buried at Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville.
Aftermath
Marcella Williams remains in prison. She will not be eligible for parole until 2044. Her own aunt, Tracy Williams, spoke publicly about the outcome. She said the family felt Marcella should have received the same sentence as Lisa. Her words were simple and direct: “She had a chance to protect him. She didn’t.”
Devonte’s two younger sisters, who were three and six years old at the time of his death, were adopted. They appeared healthy. They survived.
In 2005, a Texas Senate bill sponsored by Jane Nelson allocated $200 million dollars to hire and train additional CPS staff. It was a direct response to Devonte’s death and cases like his. The state review had found that CPS failed to act quickly enough 70% of the time when abuse was confirmed. That number became a turning point for reform.
None of it brought Devonte back. He was born premature. He had disabilities. He was removed from his home once, then returned. He was hidden. He was starved. He weighed 35 pounds when he died. He was 9 years old. Two women were responsible. One is still alive. One died on a gurney in Huntsville saying, “God is good.” And a little boy who just wanted to sit next to his teacher never got the chance to grow up.
Tell me in the comments, what moment in this case hit you the hardest? Was it the nine CPS visits with no answer, the 1-hour verdict, or those final words? If this kind of in-depth true crime coverage is what you are here for, subscribe and hit the bell. A new case drops every week.
Devonte deserved better. Make sure his story is heard.
