After spending eight years on death row, Lisa Anne Coleman was executed by lethal injection in Texas. But to understand how she ended up on death row, we have to go back to July 2004 and to a 9-year-old boy named Devonte Marcel Williams. Due to the nature of this case, viewer discretion is advised. All descriptions are factual and handled with care.

 On July 26th, 2004, paramedics were called to a small apartment in Arlington. Inside, they found Devonte dead. He weighed just 35 lb, severely underweight for his age. And within hours, two women were arrested. His mother, Marcela Williams, and her partner, Lisa Anne Coleman. But the signs had been there for years. Marcela had given birth to Devonte at just 14.

 He was born premature and struggled from the start. Developmental delays, special needs, and fragile health. And by the time he was 2 months old, child protective services had already opened a file. One report said Marcela wasn’t watching him properly, and they started monitoring the home for 6 months to make sure the little boy was safe, but they didn’t remove him.

That didn’t happen until 1999 when Dvonte and his baby sister were taken into foster care after new reports surfaced. This time far worse. His hair was falling out. He had bruises along his spine, swelling on his lips, and even worse, signs of trauma on his jles. CPS found clear evidence of abuse. And they blamed Lisa.

In the year that followed, the agency kept both kids in care, but Marcela wasn’t one to give up easily. She fought to get her children back. And after a year, she did, but only after promising to break up with Lisa and keep her away from her children. For a while, it seemed like things were going better. The chaos settled.

 Then, in late 2000, Marcela gave birth to a third child, a baby girl. And by 2002, Lisa had quietly moved back in, and Devonte had just started school. That’s when more red flags surfaced and multiple reports were filed alleging both physical and medical neglect. So CPS opened another case. But when case workers showed up to the apartment to talk to the children, they denied everything.

 They said everything was fine at the house. There was no abuse and there were no problems. But behind closed doors, Marcella and Lisa were running a different playbook. That year they began pulling away, isolating. Devonte stopped showing up at school and the doctor visits stopped too. When the school called, they claimed they had moved out of the district.

 And when CPS tried to follow up, checking in nine times from November through December, no one answered, and there was no sign of Devonte, just silence. They were hiding him, and no one would ever see him alive again. Then came the afternoon of July 26th, 2004. Marcella picked up the phone and called 911. Her voice trembled.

 She told the dispatcher her son had stopped breathing inside their Arlington apartment. The dispatcher immediately tried to walk her through CPR, but the line suddenly got disconnected. Paramedics rushed over, and when they arrived, Lisa answered the door and told them that Devonte had only stopped breathing a few minutes earlier.

 She said that he had just eaten and started throwing up, so they took him to the bathroom to clean him up. But that lie unraveled fast. When the paramedics entered the home, they found Devonte lying lifeless on the bathroom floor. He was wearing a disposable diaper, but his small frame was barely holding it up.

 He didn’t look 9 years old. He didn’t even look five. His body was so thin, so fragile that it resembled that of a toddler. There were dirty peeling bandages on his arms and around his mouth and nose a thin film of yellow vomit or bile had dried into his skin. Marcella and Lisa said that they had tried to feed him Pediasure, a nutritional supplement drink for children designed to support their growth and development.

 But if they did, it was already too late. His body couldn’t process it anymore, and his organs had already started shutting down. And the truth, it wasn’t in their story. It was written all over his body. He didn’t just stop breathing when his mother made the 911 call. Rigger Mortise had already set in.

 He had been dead for hours. And that was not it. His small body was covered in more than 250 scars, some old, some fresh. He had infected wounds around his wrists and legs, showing where he had been tied up with plastic extension cords. He also had a fresh tear on his lip and another marked the side of his head where his ear had once connected.

 And in the corner of the room, investigators found a golf club with blood on it. The question wasn’t whether he had suffered. It was who caused it and why. It didn’t take long for suspicion to fall on Lisa, who was just 28 years old at the time of the crime. And when detectives peeled back the layers of her past, they found a long chain of trauma and chaos stretching back decades.

 Lisa never got a clean start. She was the product of a rape born after her mother was assaulted by her own stepfather. And from the beginning, Lisa wasn’t wanted. Her existence was a wound no one in the family wanted to look at. And that wound bled into everything that followed. She grew up in a home where violence was common.

 An uncle beat her with extension cords, the same kind later used on Devonte. Child protective services stepped in, but help never came. Instead, Lisa was bounced through foster homes, each stop, leaving a different kind of scar. In some homes, she was only neglected. But in others, it was worse. Her mother barely visited, and when she did, there was no love, no warmth, only insults.

 She called Lisa Pig over and over until the nickname settled into her bones like rot. By her early teens, Lisa had already survived more than most adults. A cousin stabbed her, and another relative gave her alcohol and drugs before she even hit puberty. School didn’t stick, either. She dropped out after the 10th grade and by 15 she was already a mother herself.

The next decade brought arrests, burglaries, drug charges, and she was sent to prison twice. And by the time she met Marcela Williams, Lisa had already been shaped by a lifetime of rage, pain, and survival instincts that left no room for empathy. And eventually, it all led to one brutal conclusion, Devonte’s death.

When police brought Lisa in for questioning, she didn’t sugarcoat anything. She said she split her nights between Marcela’s apartment and her mom’s house where her own child lived. She admitted to disciplining Devonte with a belt, claimed she stopped, not out of guilt, but because the bruises were too hard to hide.

And then came the worst part. She said both she and Marcela had restrained Devonte with cords on multiple occasions, including the night he died. According to Lisa, Marcella shook her awake that night, screaming that something was wrong. Lisa ran into the other room and saw her trying to perform CPR.

 In a panic, they dragged Devonte into the bathroom and lowered his limp body into a tub of warm water, hoping to shock him back to life. But it didn’t work. It was already too late. Officers showed no mercy, and both women were arrested and charged with injury to a child. Davvonte’s two younger sisters, just three and six years old, were taken into foster care, this time for good.

But unlike their older brother, they appeared to be healthy. The autopsy confirmed what the officers already feared. The Tarant County Medical Examiner said Devonte died from severe malnutrition and pneumonia was listed as a secondary cause. His body was too weak to fight off anything. Before trial, prosecutors offered both women a deal.

 plead guilty and serve life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. Marcela took it, but Lisa didn’t. That decision sealed both of their fates. Marcella will be eligible for parole in 2044. Lisa would never get that chance. To pursue the death penalty, the state needed to prove that another felony like kidnapping had taken place during the murder.

Prosecutors pointed to the cord marks on Devonte’s wrists and ankles, the pantry he was locked in, and the isolation he endured for years. They told the jury that this wasn’t just abuse, it was captivity. They also said there was food in the house, but Devonte wasn’t allowed to have it.

 Lisa and Marcela had withheld nutrition over time. The jury saw photos of the scars, the golf club, the cords. They said Lisa beat him, bound him, and left scars all over his small body. But Lisa’s attorney fought back. He said she didn’t live in the house, that Devonte was difficult to care for, that he had always been underweight, even as a baby.

 He argued that the boy’s death wasn’t murder, just the tragic result of bad parenting. “Lisa is absolutely innocent of capital murder,” he insisted. and if they execute her, they will be executing someone who is innocent. But the jury didn’t buy it. They took just one hour to decide. Lisa Anne Coleman was found guilty of capital murder and they sentenced her to death.

For the next 8 years, her legal team tried to reverse it. They argued the kidnapping charge didn’t hold. Devonte hadn’t been taken from his home, so under Texas law, the death penalty shouldn’t apply. But none of it worked. Her appeals were denied. Lisa stayed on death row and the state set a date. On her final day, September 17th, 2014, Lisa wasn’t allowed to choose a special meal and ate what the other prisoners were having, a fried pork chop, macaroni and cheese, carrots, green beans, navy beans, sliced bread, and pineapple

orange cake with a choice of tea, punch, or water to drink. She spent the morning talking with visitors, occasionally crying and at other times laughing, according to prison officials. When it was time, Lisa was strapped to the gurnie and asked if she had any last words. She looked toward the window where the witnesses sat and began speaking with calm.

 First, she spoke to a few close friends, then to the girls on the row. She told them to keep their heads up. Then came words for her family. I just want to tell my family I love them. My son, I love him. God is good. I’m done. Witnesses saw her smile. She made eye contact with an aunt, mouthed an audible kiss.

 God is good, she repeated, and her last words came just before she closed her eyes. “Love you all.” Then a faint gasp escaped her lips as her eyes fluttered shut. Within moments, she was still. There appeared to be no struggle, no pain, just silence. She died at 6:24 p.m. 12 minutes after the drug was administered. Lisa Anne Coleman was 38 years old.

Years later, Marcella’s own family spoke out. Her aunt Tracy Williams said the life sentence wasn’t enough. She believed Marcella should have faced the same punishment as Lisa and that no matter what role Lisa played, Marcella had failed her son. She had a chance to protect him, but she didn’t.