On July 18, 2008, Genai Coleman was sitting in her car near a transit station and reading her Bible when a man with a gun approached her.
The assailant, who had walked out of a gas station across the street, pointed his weapon at her and demanded that she get out of her gold Dodge Stratus. He shot the 40-year-old in the chest, pulled her out of the vehicle and drove away.
Coleman, a Gwinnett County, Georgia resident, didn’t make it.
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The murder is being explored in Oxygen’s true-crime series, “The Real Murders of Atlanta.” It explores “shocking, sinful and salacious cases” in the “metropolitan mecca of music, entertainment and tech.” It features interviews with loved ones, investigators and others connected to the cases being profiled.
Brittany Barrington, the crime scene supervisor of the Gwinnett County Police Dept., was on the scene.
“This is a crime of opportunity,” Barrington explained to Fox News Digital. “She was doing what people do every day, and I still do it sometimes – everybody does. You’re just sitting in your car on your phone, not paying attention, just in a random parking lot. He took advantage of that. It’s truly a crime of opportunity. He needed her car, and he was going to take it.”
Coleman’s family later contacted the police, worried that the punctual mother of three adopted children had never returned home. Investigators confirmed that Coleman was the victim.
Coleman was a beloved schoolteacher and soon-to-be grandmother, the episode revealed.
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While Coleman was parked near a popular mall, the crime scene was “minimal,” said Barrington. There was a pool of blood and zero suspects.
“All the main evidence that would have provided leads right off the bat was gone,” she said. “What stood out to me was that the car was missing. There were no fired cartridge casings on the ground. And we knew a shot was fired. So that immediately roused my suspicion that maybe the casing was left in the car. Maybe the casing was picked up. Maybe the firearm that was used was a revolver, so there would be no casings left behind.”
There was a witness.
According to the episode, a bus driver described how she had seen a man walk around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, calling Coleman a “mothef—-r.” She heard a gunshot and saw the man pull Coleman out of the car to the ground.
Coleman’s car was found parked in a lot about 40 miles away. A cigarette butt was found on the car floor.
“The small chance of finding that cigarette butt provided a huge DNA lead,” said Barrington. “It started up a whole new aspect of the investigation quickly.”
The cigarette was submitted for DNA.
The episode also described how detectives reviewed surveillance footage and spotted a man who was purchasing a pack of cigarettes – Bronson Lights – from the gas station. The Bronson filters were a match to the filter they found from the recovered cigarette butt. The same man was also seen walking through a parking lot located about 15 feet from where the vehicle was dumped.
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The DNA results came back. It led to Donald Smith.
According to investigators, Smith was previously charged with armed robbery, making him a “definite suspect.” They obtained his cellphone records and discovered that his phone had pinged towers near the crime scene on the night the murder took place. He also looked just like the man spotted on surveillance.
The police were certain they had their killer. But when Smith was brought in for questioning, he insisted that he had never seen Coleman or her car. When police told him they had his DNA, Smith replied, “So what?”
“My DNA couldn’t have been in that car, because I’ve never been in that car,” said Smith.
Smith was then shown the surveillance footage.
“That is definitely not me,” he said.
Smith went on to share that the cellphone number police found had been his brother’s – an identical twin.
“Donald and Ronald – he’s my twin,” said Smith.
Barrington said that a murder case involving identical twins is “extremely rare.”
“This is the only major homicide case that the department has had with identical twins,” she explained. “Since then, I haven’t had an additional crime scene that involved identical twins. This was a unique experience. . . . You don’t normally deal with this. It’s usually a single person, or you do have twins, but they’re fraternal twins. But the uniqueness of identical twins is very rare.”
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Smith initially refused to implicate his brother Ronald Smith, who also lived in Gwinnett County. But he later confirmed that the man in the surveillance video was Ronald.
In addition to the cigarette butt, fingerprints were lifted from the car. They would be the key to figuring out which twin had done it.
“Even if you’re an identical twin, you’re going to have unique fingerprint characteristics that set you apart from your sibling,” said Barrington. “That’s what helped to determine which brother had their hands on the top of the roof of Genai’s car so we could identify which brother was the actual suspect.”
The fingerprints were a match for Ronald.
Ronald, who was arrested, later admitted to killing Coleman and taking her car before leaving it behind. He claimed that the shooting had been “an accident.”
“It was a hair trigger,” Ronald claimed, the Oxygen series shows. “I set out to take a car . . . at gunpoint. The gun went off.”
In October 2012, Ronald was convicted on charges of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, hijacking a motor vehicle and possession of a weapon during the commission of a felony. The Gwinnett Daily Post reported that he had been sentenced to life plus 25 years in prison.
Barrington said a crime like this “could happen to anyone at any time.”
“Be aware of your surroundings,” she warned. “And also know that detectives, the police department, anyone investigating, has the passion to get justice. They want to help.”
“There’s an emotional toll,” Barrington reflected. “There’s a professional toll, too. But this is why we are here. This is why we exist.”
“The Real Murders of Atlanta” airs Saturdays at 9 p.m.
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