One Death Mask From Murder

Martre Coles was born October 22, 1997. He was the youngest of 8 siblings. He and his family lived in Highland Springs, near Richmond, Virginia. Martre, or Tre as he was sometimes called, was a happy, sweet kid who was a very talented artist. He expressed himself through his drawing and was very talented.

He was tall and thin and always looked younger than his age. Tre was very close with his mother, Corina, but not with his father, Maurice Coles, who was strict and had high expectations for his children. He was the kind of father who expected you to clean your room. And if it wasn’t done, he was going to do it for you and toss whatever he wanted. In 2014, tragedy struck the Coles family when Corina Coles died suddenly from complications from hip surgery.

Only 16 at the time, his mother’s death was hard on Martre. He, withdrew and struggled with depression. He expressed his pain through his art. All of Martre’s older siblings had moved out, so it was just father and son in the house. And they were not getting along at all. Maurice Coles did not handle the loss of his wife well. He leaned heavily on a friend and co-worker, Denise Monique Gay.

A single mother with 2 daughters. Denise comforted Maurice and would come by the house and clean up and cook. And they quickly became a couple. Just a month after his wife’s death, Denise and her younger daughter, 9 yr old Elena, moved in. His older sisters Michelle and Marqweisha were angry at their father for moving on so quickly after their mother’s death and they did not care for or trust Denise. But Martre was desperate for a mother figure and bonded quickly with Denise.

She was kind and supportive of him. But Elena…. She resented the move. She had severe behavior issues. When Maurice and Denise would go out, Martre was expected to watch Elena. She and Tre did not get along and they fought constantly. Denise covered for Elena’s bad behavior and Tre would get the blamed for things Elena did. Over the next 3 years the negative situation at home escalated.

Maurice ignored Tre’s ongoing mental health issues and ignored or was oblivious to the growing volatility between Tre and Elena. Tre’s depression worsened and he even expressed thoughts of suicide, telling his sisters he wanted to join his mother. He starts taking medication for depression. In January of 2016, he began dating a girl he met in his HS art class named Ashlyn Knight. They were great together and quickly fell in love.

They talked ALL day every day. Martre hoped to one day turn the characters he drew into a career, creating art for video games. He and Ashlyn started to talk about a future together. He shared with her his dream of attending Art School at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. Tre spent a lot of time on the phone with Ashlyn and he and Elena fought constantly over the phone.

One fight grew so violent, Elena picked up a pair of scissors and stabbed Tre. She was aiming for his chest, but he blocked it and she caught him in the collarbone instead. Denise tried to smooth things over with Tre and forced Elena to apologize. Then Denise asked Martre to keep the incident a secret from his father. Which he did. But he told his sisters, who started to worry for his safety.

After that, Denise had her older daughter, 21-year-old LaToya, move in to the house to monitor Martre and Elena when they are out. Tre graduates HS but still struggles with his mental health. Tre tries to talk to his father about his future and applying to his dream art school.

His father doesn’t understand his art and has no experience with higher education and says he can’t help him. But Denise offers to help him apply and helps him prepare a portfolio of his work. And one day Denise is cleaning up Tre’s room and discovers a pentagram drawn on his floor under the rug. She freaks out and tells Maurice who is livid. Tre denies drawing the pentagram, but Maurice doesn’t believe him.

Not long after, Maurice’s deceased wife’s car is set on fire. Tre was blamed for stating it, but he denied having anything to do with it. Michelle and Marqweisha defended Tre to their father knowing Tre would never do anything to his beloved mother’s belongings. Maurice can’t be reasoned with.

The father-son relationship hits an all-time low. In the spring of 2017, a miserable 19-year-old Tre gets a lifeline. He received and email from Full Sail University inviting him to come down and tour the Art School. Tre was thrilled. After a few emails back and forth, a plan is set for him to visit the school. He would take a bus from Virginia to Florida and someone from the school would meet him and take him to the campus.

He needed to complete an essay, bring his portfolio and is told to make a paper mache mask of his face. Denise helps Tre plan for his trip and write the essay. His girlfriend, Ashlyn is thrilled for him, on his way to make his dreams come true. On the morning of March 12th, the day he was leaving, Tre realized he had left his wallet at his sister Michelle’s house the night before and left to get it. A few hours later,

Ashlyn was calling and messaging Tre to check on him. They were usually in constant contact throughout the day, and she was surprised he didn’t call to say goodbye or text her from the bus. More hours went by. Ashlyn kept texting asking why he wasn’t answering her and that she was getting worried.

When there was still no response, she called Denise who said Tre had left hours ago and she hadn’t heard from him since. She wasn’t concerned. Ashlyn called his sisters and Michelle said that he was supposed to come pick up his wallet, but he never showed up. Both his sister tried to reach Tre, but his phone was going right to Voicemail. The next day the sisters went to their father’s house and were met by Denise and LaToya who were acting weird. Denise said she didn’t know where Tre was. H

e left and she hadn’t heard from him. The sisters were even more worried. Was their brother on his way to Florida, or was it something more serious, something to do with his mental health. They start searching places where Tre would hang out. Martre and Ashlyn had the passwords for each other’s email accounts. So Ashlyn logs into Tre’s account to see if she can get any more information about his trip, or someone she could contact down there to see if he had just gone to Florida.

She notices that the person he was communicating with, Shelia Crenshaw had been emailing from a gmail address, not school address ending in “.edu”. Marqweisha called the university and found out no one was expecting Tre and no one by the name Shelia Crenshaw worked there. That’s when the go to the police to file a missing person’s report.

The police spoke to Maurice and Denise, but neither were concerned that he hadn’t come home or called. The report was filed, but since Tre was legally an adult at 19, there wasn’t much they could do. Days went by without a word from Tre. The sisters were angry their father wasn’t concerned that their brother had left the house and hadn’t been heard from since. 3 weeks went by.

Then on April 2nd, a man on his lunchbreak is walking in a wooded area near the industrial park where he works. He notices a blueish-gray plastic container – a Rubbermaid tote that used for storage – with a sneaker poking out of it. He thought someone maybe dumped a bin of old clothes, so he went to check them out. But when he lifted the lid, what he found was the body of a young black male, folded up like an accordion with his hands tied behind his back.

Horrified he called police. He was fully clothed, but there was no identification on him. There was no obvious cause of death, no trauma or injuries to his body. An autopsy was performed, and the toxicology report showed he had high levels of Trazodone, a sleeping pill, and GHB, a sedative, in his system. Both slow your breathing and heart rate. It was determined his cause of death was suffocation.

The detective assigned to the case sees that the victim matches the description on a recently filed missing person’s report for Martre Coles. He looks up Tre’s driver’s license photo and confirms the body is that of 19 year old Martre Coles. Tre’s body was found only 5 miles from his home.

The detective is about to notify the family when he gets a call from the overnight Sergeant who recognized Martre’s name from a different police report taken on March 31st - just a few days earlier. On that night 2 officers responded to a burglar alarm at the home of Maurice Coles. One officer recognized now 12 year old Elena. She had had recently run away from home after being disciplined by her mother for something.

Older sister LaToya explained to the officers that it was a false alarm that Elena had set off on purpose to get attention. The officer asks Elena if she’s ok and she asks to talk to him. So he takes her aside while the other officer stays and talks to LaToya. Elena tells the officer that a few weeks ago she saw her mother and sister kill her stepbrother, Martre. She says she was walking past his room and the door was ajar.

She looked in to see Tre laying on the floor on his back. Denise was pressing down on his chest and LaToya was sitting on his legs. Tre was struggling under them. And on his face was the paper mache mask he had made. Her mother sees Elena and yells at her to go to her room, which she does. But a little while later she hears the ladder for the attic pulled down. Then she hears something heavy being dragged down the hall.

She peeked out her bedroom door saw her sister dragging a large plastic tub out of the house and put it in the car and they left. In the show I watched this is all shown on the officer’s body cam footage. Elena is very matter-of-fact, calm. But the other officer, a young guy, is listening with this look of horror on his face.

Familiar with Elena’s behavioral issues and unaware that Tre had been reported missing by his sisters, the officers aren’t sure if they should believe her. But they wrote up Elena’s story in their report anyway. Because it was such a shocking story, the Sargent had remembered the report and the name “Coles” when he heard they identified the victim. Otherwise, the 2 incidents might not have been connected.

Detectives needed more evidence to corroborate Elana’s story, especially since it came from an unreliable 12-year-old girl. They decided to hold off telling the family that Martre had been found murdered while they gather more evidence.

They ran a background check on Denise Monique Gay and found that she had served time in more than 1 state for a number of felonies, including writing bad checks, computer fraud and forgery. And Maurice Coles hadn’t been ruled out as suspect. He had shown absolutely no concern over Tre’s disappearance. He may have played a role in the murder.

On April 3rd police call Michelle and Marqweisha to the station to follow up on the missing person’s report. This time they got more information about the dysfunctional situation in the home. They asked the sisters for their DNA. And the sisters start to realize their brother is probably dead. Police got a warrant for the Coles’ home and when they serve it, only LaToya is home.

She’s told they’re gathering evidence for the missing person’s case, and they interviewed her. As soon as she’s done talking to them she got in her car and left and an officer is sent to follow her. She immediately drove to the area where Tre’s body was found. She didn’t actually get out of the car and walk over, she just pulled over to see if there was any police tape or police cars and then drove off.

Thinking their suspects might return to move the body, detectives set up a trail cam – like game hunters use – at the site, pointed toward the nearby road. If there is any movement, it with silently snap pictures. 4 days later they get blurry images of someone in a big coat with the hood up, carrying what looked like a shovel, walking to the site of the storage tote. In the background, pulled up on the side of the road is a black suburban, the same make and model that Maurice Coles owned. But detectives were able to confirm that the person on the trail came was not Maurice.

They were able to confirm via security cameras that Maurice was at work at that time, as well as the morning the morning it was believed Martre was murdered. Then they obtained Denise’s cell phone records. Her phone was at the site where Martre’s body was found on the day he was killed AND the day the trail cam was set off. She had been driving Maurice’s car that day. And a computer forensic expert had traced the fake emails from the art school to Denise’s computer. She had been in the next room when she sent them to him. She also had access to the sleeping pill, Trazodone.

On April 10, 2017, Denise Gay was arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder, 8 days after Martre’s body was found. She denied having any knowledge or part of the murder. LaToya Gay was arrested soon after. Maurice would not cooperate with the prosecutor and refused to believe Denise and LaToya were responsible for his son’s death. The joint trial started in late 2017. The prosecution painted a motive for the jury. Denise Gay saw an opportunity when Corina Coles died. She targeted Maurice and worked herself into his heart and home. And she wanted to make it HER home. She got rid of almost all traces of Corina as quickly as she could. And that meant Tre had to go, too. She tried turning Maurice against his son, but it wasn’t enough. Tre wasn’t moving out. So she came up with an elaborate plan to get rid of Tre for good.

She encouraged him to apply to college and helped him do it. She created a phony invitation for him to visit his dream school. And he wasn’t supposed to come back. On the morning of March 12th, she drugged Tre. Then she and her daughter LaToya held him down until he suffocated. Then they stuffed him in a storage tote from the attic and left him in a wooded area. Elana testified to what she saw that day and how her mother told her nothing happened, Tre had just woken up in a panic. But then he was gone and he never came back. She admitted to stabbing Tre with scissors. She also testified that she didn’t miss Tre and wasn’t sad that he was dead. The jury convicted both women of conspiracy but were deadlocked on the murder charge. They were each sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy.

A retrial was set for spring of 2018. After hearing all the evidence presented at the first trial, Maurice Coles shocked everyone and brought the prosecution some a piece of evidence he found when he was cleaning the house. Denise’s cell phone. In the 2nd trial, prosecutors were able to present to the jury the text messages between Denise and LaToya on April 4th with Denise saying she was going back to the site where they left the bin, and LaToya saying she was sorry she couldn’t be there to help her, and that she didn’t think her mother could lift it alone. Denise replies she’s going to do it herself and then a little later texts that the bin wasn’t there.

The jury also learned that on her phone Denise had searched for “ways to dispose of a dead body” and “what does lime do to a dead body?” In May of 2018, Denise Monique Gay was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life. LaToya is also convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years.

Sources: Killer Motive S2E9 “Art of Death” Relatively Evil S1E3 “Masked Motives” Article from The Roanoke Times on Roanoke.com Us capital news .Wordpress .com The cinemaholic .com