by Morgan Gomes
This week while working on the Serial Homicide and Path Dependency team, I came across some fascinating serial killers: Alfred Leonard Cline and Cynthia Coffman. What this team investigates are the various social and cultural variables that may have impacted a killer’s behavior. These variables cover a large range of crucial data points from childhood anomic strain to post start practical constraints. The reason I have chosen to discuss both Alfred Leonard Cline and Cynthia Coffman, rather than focus in depth on one of them, is to focus on their juxtapositions and what ideas this has led me to.
For the vast majority that I’m sure are not familiar with either of these individuals, I will provide a brief overview of their origins and crimes. Cline, who was born in 1889 in the Bible Belt of Kansas, grew up, married young, and established a reputation as an upstanding farmer with his traditional family. He participated in the community as a Sunday school and choir teacher. What changed, we are unsure of, but at one point or another, Cline developed an affinity for older widowed women; specifically, an affinity for luring them into marriage, taking them on a celebratory trip, and poisoning them with buttermilk; only to write off their sudden deaths to the medical examiners as heart problems associated with their age.
Cynthia Coffman, on the other hand, formed one half of a killing couple with her lover James Marlow. Coffman didn’t have as fortunate of a childhood as Cline, with parents who constantly fought and broke up when she was only 4 years old. The rest of what is known about her “childhood” resumes in adolescence when she runs away at 17 to get married to her boyfriend after becoming pregnant with his child. She continued to suffer in abusive relationships until meeting James Marlow in the same jail as the man she was currently seeing until she decided to leave him for Marlow. After his release, the two committed various petty crimes together until reaching the point of sexual violence and homicide, some of which violent behavior was directed at Coffman by Marlow. Their victims seemed to be individuals they could easily capture like a woman alone in a parking lot, or someone who could provide them with resources like their victim of a contract killing they committed to earn some money.
The key differences I wanted to focus on were their childhood conditions. For Cline, his childhood seems to have had little to no influence on his violent behavior. Coffman, however, grew up in her formative years around a dysfunctional relationship between her parents that may have influenced the relationships she found herself in. In his adulthood, Cline was able to foster a family and reputation in the community that kept suspicions off of him. Her adulthood was marked by various crimes, jail time, and domestic abuse. Cline’s murders are regarded by some as a business strategy as his motivation in killing these women was to gain money and assets from their will. Coffman’s murders are considered to be comitted out of desperation for money and coersion by her partner. My goal in comparing these two is to pose some important questions this study has raised for me: how can killers’ childhood circumstances influence their homicidal behavior? Are there different schemes of logic we can apply to these individuals based on what is known of their motivations and victimologies? Finally, what are the implications of research projects like this one that works to analyze and/or categorize a range of killing behaviors and trends among these people.