Man charged in May 4 murder, sex assault

Jen Lawson

Wednesday, June 8, 2005 | 11:13 a.m.

Metro Police arrested a 31-year-old man Monday for allegedly strangling and raping a woman in an apartment on Russell Road near Boulder Highway last month.

Norman Keith Flowers is charged with murder and sexual assault in the May 4 death of Marilee Coote, 45, at the Silver Pines complex.

Later that day police found another woman, Rena Gonzales, 25, strangled with a phone cord in her apartment in the same complex. She had also been raped, police said.

Detectives had been investigating a connection between the two homicides, but Lt. Tom Monahan said they had not gathered enough evidence to charge Flowers with Gonzales' death.

"We can only charge someone when we have sufficient evidence to do so," he said. "We met the burden in one case but not the other."

The police report, obtained this morning by the Sun, describes Coote's murder scene as "very strange."

In her apartment detectives found paperwork, a phone book, bills and jewelry boxes in about 10 inches of water in the bathtub, covered with a towel, the police report says.

Personal photographs, forms of identification, two ice cube trays, clothing and more paperwork was found in Coote's washing machine, and they had been washed using a bleach soap product, police said.

According to the police report, another woman living in the complex was distraught over the deaths of Gonzales, her friend, and Coote, her next door neighbor, and told detectives that on the day they were killed, her ex-boyfriend left a note on her door.

She hadn't seen her ex-boyfriend, Flowers, in about two months.

"She found it very odd that on the day that her two friends were found deceased, living within several hundred feet of each other, Keith (Flowers) left a note on her door, knowing she was at work," the report says.

Flowers knew both women through her, the woman told police.

Another neighbor told detectives she saw Flowers in the apartment complex the day of the murders. She said Flowers tried to kiss her while she was standing at her front door, which made her very uncomfortable, the report says.

Detectives found Flowers at his apartment on North J Street and he agreed to an interview.

He denied having contact with Coote on the day she was killed, but he said he knocked on Gonzales' door and asked her to relay a message to his ex-girlfriend when she got home. He said he didn't enter her apartment, police said.

On Monday a Metro criminalist determined that Flowers' DNA was found on Coote's body, and Tuesday he was charged with murdering and raping her.

The investigation into Gonzales' murder is continuing.