Jill Coit

Jill Coit was born and raised in Louisiana where she had a “normal” American childhood; however, at the age of 15 she decided that she wanted to live with her grandparents in Indiana. Jill was said to have been beautiful and smart, which attracted many of the boys in her new high school, including Larry Eugene Ihnen. Jill soon became infatuated with Larry and at the age of seventeen she dropped out of school and married Larry, who was eighteen.

After nearly one year of marriage, the couple divorced and Jill moved back to Louisiana where she earned her high school diploma. After graduating, she enrolled in the Northwestern State University of Louisiana, where she met fellow college student, Steven Moore. The couple wed in 1964 and a year later, Jill gave birth to a baby boy. Shortly after his birth, the couple separated.

One evening, while out in the French Quarter, Jill fell for a wealthy man named William Clark Coit, Jr. She then filed for divorce from her second husband, Steven Moore; however, before her divorce from Moore was finalized, she and Coit married. William adopted Jill’s son, and nine months into their marriage, she gave birth to another son. The Coit family relocated to Texas for William’s job, which he traveled for quite frequently, enabling Jill to have affairs with many men. He was aware of her escapades and accused her of only marrying him for his money. On March 8, 1972 she filed for divorce and on March 29, 1972, Jill reported that William had been murdered. Detectives believed that Jill was responsible for his murder, but never had enough evidence to charge her and she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital to avoid further questioning.

Following William’s death, Jill moved to California. While in California she convinced a wealthy man in his 90s to “adopt” her. He passed away a year later and she received a large portion of his estate. She then moved onto Donald Charles Brodie, a U.S. Marine Corps Major, who became her fourth husband. The couple divorced in 1975, after just two years of marriage.

Husband number five was Louis D. DiRosa, Jill’s lawyer following the murder of her third husband, William Clark Coit. The couple wed in Mississippi in 1976. Throughout their marriage they separated several times, and during one of their separations in 1978, Jill married Eldon Duane Metzger in Ohio. Jill traveled to Haiti to divorce DiRosa; however, this divorce was not legally recognized in the U.S.

Jill divorced Metzger, but was still legally married to DiRosa when she married her seventh husband, Carl V. Steely in 1983. After less than a year of marriage, the couple separated and Jill traveled to Haiti again, this time to divorce Steely. This divorce was not legal; however, in 1985, Jill did finally legally divorce DiRosa.

By 1991 she had moved onto her eighth husband, Gerry Boggs, one of the wealthiest men in Colorado. After eight months of marriage, he found out that she was still legally married to Carl Steely and annulled their marriage. Jill then legally divorced Steely, and began dating Michael Backus. During this time, she was also in the middle of a civil suit against Boggs seeking $100,000.

In 1992 she moved to Las Vegas Nevada, where she married husband number nine, Roy Carroll. The couple relocated to Carroll’s hometown in Texas; however, by the end of the year they were divorced and Jill had married Michael Backus.

On October 22, 1993, one week away from a hearing in Jill and Gerry’s civil case, Gerry Boggs was found shot and beaten to death in his Colorado home. Jill’s son from her marriage to Moore, told police that he suspected that his mother had killed William Clark Coit and Gerry Boggs. He told police that she told him she planned to kill Boggs, and on the night he was murdered, she called him and said “Hey baby. It’s over and it’s messy.”

On December 23, 1993, Jill Coit and Michael Backus were arrested and in 1995 they were sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.