A convicted rapist who was a suspect in the 1982 disappearance of a Marin County au pair — a case that generated renewed interest recently when the woman’s remains were identified after more than three decades — apparently did not live much longer than she did.
The suspect, Henry Lee Coleman, died on Feb. 5, 1988, according to a spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration. The spokeswoman said the agency did not have a record on where Coleman died or a cause of death.
Coleman died about 16 months after being released from the state prison in Vacaville, although he apparently died in a different state. A spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, which keeps vital statistics, said the agency has no record of Coleman’s death within California.
The au pair, 21-year-old Elisabeth Martinsson of Sweden, was living with a host family in Greenbrae while taking classes at College of Marin. She vanished on Jan. 17, 1982, after buying a pair of boots at a Larkspur Landing store.
Martinsson had gone to the store in a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit she borrowed from her hosts, Robert and Anita Blau. Ten days later, police stopped the car in Boise City, Oklahoma, and found a man at the wheel and a woman in the passenger seat.
The couple initially identified themselves as Jemma and Linda Charles. While police were talking to them, the driver hit the accelerator and raced away, setting off a pursuit of nearly 11 miles before they were arrested, according to court testimony.
Police determined that the driver was actually Coleman, 31, of Los Angeles. Coleman, who had served 10 years in prison on rape convictions in Oklahoma, was wanted on a robbery warrant out of San Bernardino County, authorities said.
The woman, 26-year-old Sabrina Ann Johnson of Seattle, was apparently picked up by Coleman in Seattle before they drove east.
Coleman and Johnson were arrested on auto theft allegations while authorities investigated the Martinsson case as a potential homicide. Coleman told investigators he bought the Volkswagen from a man he met at a bar.
Prosecutors dropped the case against Sabrina Johnson for lack of evidence, while Coleman was tried on auto theft charges but not for the homicide of Martinsson, who was still missing.
During court proceedings, a witness said she saw a man resembling Coleman approach a young woman resembling Martinsson at Larkspur Landing, and they got in a yellow car like the one Martinsson was driving.
Coleman was eventually convicted and served a prison term for both the Marin case and the San Bernardino County robbery. He was paroled on Oct. 9, 1986, and released from parole monitoring on Nov. 13, 1987, said Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the state prisons department.
Meanwhile, Martinsson remained missing, and the case languished for decades. In 2010, however, a partial skeleton was found in the Morrison Canyon area on the eastern edge of Fremont. Alameda County investigators sent the remains to the state Department of Justice to see if they could be matched to any missing persons cases.
Last November, the coroner’s bureau received notification that dental records from the remains had been matched to Martinsson. Alameda County coroner’s investigators have been unable to determine the cause of death from the few weathered remains.
Martinsson’s remains were cremated for transportation to family members in Sweden. Martinsson was from Uddevalla, a small town about 50 miles below the Norwegian border, and her ashes will be buried at her parents’ gravesite, the Bohusläningen newspaper reported.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office has sent evidence to the state Department of Justice to see if there are any DNA traces that might offer clues on what happened to Martinsson, said sheriff’s Lt. Jamie Scardina.
Sabrina Johnson’s whereabouts are unknown and the sheriff’s department does not know if she is still alive. If Coleman mentioned anything incriminating to Johnson about the death of the au pair, she is well beyond the statute of limitations for charges of being an accessory after the fact by failing to report the information to authorities.
