On January 14, 1995, Mary Katherine Edwards, 31, a beloved elementary school teacher, was found dead in her townhouse in Beaumont, Texas.
His parents found him. It was a horrific scene: She was in her bathtub, handcuffed, and sexually assaulted. There were no signs of forced entry, leading investigators to believe she may have known her killer. Police-grade Smith & Wesson handguns were always a big clue, but when detectives tried to trace the serial numbers, they came up blank. Initial investigators interrogated various law enforcement officials and yielded nothing.
Texas Department of Public Safety
The case went cold, but Beaumont Police Dt. Aaron Lewallen told “48 Hours” contributor Natalie Morales, “It was talked about almost like a ghost story around the campfire. Could it have been someone we knew?” Morales reports on the search for answers “Tracking down the killer of Mary Katherine Edwards,” Airing Saturday, November 9 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Thanks to the advent of carefully preserved DNA and genetic genealogy from the crime scene, Det. Aaron Lewallen, his wife Tina Lewallen, who is also a detective, along with Brandon Bass, a Texas Ranger in the Cold Case Division, and Sherra LaPoint, a professional genealogist, spent nearly three months working tirelessly to solve the case.
Following all the initial leads and the suspicion that someone from law enforcement was involved, the family tree they created revealed someone else. Their prime suspect turns out to be not a law enforcement officer, but a man who attended the same high school as Edwards: Clayton Foreman.
And then they learned that Edwards and her identical twin sister, Allison Foreman, had been bridesmaids at her first wedding. The sisters were good friends of his first wife, Diana Coe, who had attended the same high school.
Coe fondly remembers them, telling Morales how kind they were to her when she moved to a new city and started a new school.
Coe said, “I was new to the area… so, I didn't know anybody. And he… just started talking to me and asked me my name… and we were friends from that point on ”
The sisters were the first people Coe thought of as bridesmaids at her wedding. She and Foreman were married for 11 years. They were divorced by the time of the murder, but afterward, Coe began to see things in a different, darker, light. She remembered her former husband's fascination with police officers and the tools of their trade like handcuffs and billy clubs. As Coe told Morales, “He had a billy club that he kept by the bed. You know, he said it was for protection. And I remember he ordered those handcuffs. ..Well, he hung them on the rearview mirror.”
Coe also recalled a disturbing conversation she had with her ex-husband when she heard Edwards had been murdered and called to talk about it.
“I think, you know, I was crying and I said, 'Oh my God,' I said, 'Somebody has murdered Katherine,'” Coe told “48 Hours.” “And – and he says, 'Oh, really?' No emotion at all, which I thought was weird.”
Texas Department of Public Safety
A DNA match quickly established that Foreman was indeed at the crime scene. And when Det. Aaron Lewallen and the Rangers went to question the base foreman, they had an arrest warrant. They also brought something else with them – something very symbolic.
Together, they took the time to make an arrangement with prosecutors so they could use the handcuffs as evidence at the crime scene. When they arrested Foreman for the murder of Edwards, they did so with the same handcuffs with which he was bound on the night of his death. He was not one of them, but during the investigation, they discovered that Foreman was falsely claiming to be a police officer.
Handcuffs – initially such a focus – finally came full circle. Bess will never forget how it felt. As he told Morales, “It's a moment I'll never forget…You feel like you have to do something for Katherine there…you know, like physically do it for her, To take the handcuffs that bound her when she was murdered and put them back on the man who murdered her… It may seem small to some people, but it was a really big deal to us , and it felt good.”
The jury in Foreman's murder trial deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Edwards of murder. Foreman was sentenced to life imprisonment.