Waterloo - The Joyce Meyer Ministries, whose former security chief was charged with murdering his wife and two sons, is being drawn deeper into the case by a wrongful-death suit filed Tuesday.
The worldwide televangelism operation is not named as a defendant, but its records on former employee Christopher Coleman could be subjected to deep examination.
"What did Joyce Meyer Ministry know, and when did they know it?" lawyer Jack Carey asked at a news conference Tuesday after filing a civil suit accusing Coleman of responsibility for the deaths.
The case in Monroe County Circuit Court was filed on behalf of the mother and brother of Sheri Coleman, whose body was found May 5 in her home.
Carey also filed court documents Tuesday asking the ministry - based nearby in Jefferson County - about life insurance policies, safe deposit boxes, pensions, overheard conversations, travel records and other information.
Roby Walker, a spokesman for Joyce Meyer, said the organization is working "together with representatives of Sheri Coleman's family and are gathering the information requested."
Meyer personally visited the Coleman home in Columbia, Ill., to offer condolences about an hour after the bodies were found May 5, officials said. Through a spokesman, she has declined requests to be interviewed about the case.
The lawsuit names her ministry and Christopher Coleman's father, Ronald Coleman, himself a clergyman, as "respondents in discovery." That means they can be ordered by the court to provide Sheri Coleman's survivors with information about finances, work history, private conversations and e-mails.
Ronald Coleman, pastor of a church in Chester, Ill., did not return calls seeking comment. Christopher Coleman stayed with his father and mother after the killings and before being arrested last week.
Enrico Mirabelli, a Chicago lawyer and cousin of Sheri Coleman, said Tuesday the family is "seeking documents, not dollars, from Ron Coleman and Joyce Meyer Ministry at this time."
He said the suit would help ensure that Christopher Coleman does not profit from the deaths.
Mario Weiss, the brother of Sheri Coleman, said any money the family wins will be donated to a memorial fund to honor the names of Sheri, 31, and sons Garett, 11, and Gavin, 9.
"Our goal is to extract something positive from such a horrific and senseless tragedy and to honor the lives of my sister and her two young sons," Weiss told reporters.
Civil suits are not uncommon in murder cases. Most famously, O.J. Simpson was sued for wrongful death by the families of murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. In 1997, a jury in California found Simpson civilly liable for the deaths and ordered him to pay damages of $33.5 million.
Christopher Coleman resigned from the Joyce Meyer Ministries after the killings; the organization cited an unspecified violation of a morals clause.
Police sources say Christopher Coleman carried on a romance with a Florida woman who was a friend of his wife, and that he sometimes met his lover while traveling on ministry business. Neither he nor his lawyers have commented on that claim. Sheri Coleman's relatives said they were unaware of an affair or marital difficulties.
Coleman, 32, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and held in jail in Waterloo without bail.
The criminal charges are based in part, sources said, on physical evidence that suggests the family was dead before the time Coleman said he left home that day. The three were strangled in separate bedrooms, and writing was found spray-painted in red on several walls.
Weiss, Mirabelli and Carey visited the death scene Tuesday after obtaining a court order for access. Carey said the words were hard to read, but that one phrase appeared to include the word "punished."
"It was very hard," said Mirabelli. He declined to discuss specifics of the inside of the house, saying he did not want to damage the criminal case.
In November, Sheri Coleman's name was removed from the deed for the home, leaving Christopher Coleman as sole owner, according to Monroe County records. It has aroused suspicion among her relatives.
"Did she sign her name? That's the first question," Carey told reporters.
"If you ask any attorney, is there any rational basis for a married woman whose husband is in security with two minor children, is there any rational basis for her to take her name off a deed which would have entitled her to joint tenancy with right of survivorship? We can't think of a rational basis for Sheri to do that."
Mirabelli said, "Even if it is her signature, the question is whether or not it was coerced, whether or not it was voluntary."
Elizabethe Holland of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
