Murder-for-hire plea nets man 21 years

Cary man tried to hire a hit man to kill his wife and 14-year-old victim of his sex crimes

RALEIGH -- Eric Lee Coker left a Wake County courtroom in handcuffs Friday, beginning a prison stint of at least 21 years for repeatedly molesting a 14-year-old relative and then trying to hire someone to kill his wife, who had discovered the abuse and reported it to police, and the victim.

Coker, 34, of Cary, had been a manager at a Golden Corral in Durham, pulling down a six-figure salary before his arrest, said his attorney, Michael Scott Petty. In spring 2006, his wife discovered that he had been molesting a 14-year-old girl, and Cary police charged him with sex offenses.

While in jail, Coker promised fellow inmates thousands of dollars to kill his wife, Rachelle, and the victim, hoping that the charges would then go away, said Melanie Shekita, the Wake assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case.

Police discovered that he was trying to solicit hit men and thwarted the plot.

On Friday, Coker pleaded guilty to all of the charges: two counts of statutory sex offense, one count of statutory rape, three counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and two counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. But instead of admitting his guilt, he pleaded under an Alford arrangement, which allows someone to plead guilty because it is in his or her best legal interest.

Coker apologized, though, in a brief statement to Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr.

"I'm deeply sorry," he said.

Petty told Manning that his client had a "weakness."

Before sentencing Coker, Manning listened to an explicit audio recording in which Coker was heard repeatedly demanding sexual favors from the young girl. Shekita also told Manning that Coker had told a Cary police detective that he had had sexual contact with the girl to show her the "right way."

Manning combined sentencing for several of the charges, leaving Coker with a prison sentence of 21 to 27 years with four years of probation and placement on the sex offender registry once he is released. Coker could have been sentenced to a lifetime in prison.

"This man is a sexual predator," Manning said. "He put that girl through a living hell."

The girl, who spoke about her ordeal in court, has undergone intensive therapy and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from the abuse, Shekita said. The victim also has trouble relating to adults, especially men.

The News & Observer does not typically identify complainants in cases of reported sexual assaults.

Rachelle Coker said that she's trying to divorce her husband. But she was left in a financial lurch when he was arrested and can't afford the several hundred dollars it would take for a divorce, she said.

Coker is the son of Ehrlich A. Coker, a Georgia man imprisoned on several murder and rape charges in the 1970s. Ehrlich Coker was the defendant in Coker v. Georgia, a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that the death penalty could not be given to those convicted of raping adult females. Coker had been in a Georgia prison on separate murder charges when he escaped and raped a woman.

A jury sentenced him to death for that crime, but the Supreme Court overturned the punishment, and he's serving a life sentence in a Georgia prison.

Only one person in the country is still on death row for rape, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. A Louisiana man was sentenced to death in 2003 for raping an 8-year-old girl. His case is on appeal. All other death row inmates have been convicted of murders, Dieter said.

The Ehrlich Coker case is often cited in legal arguments.

"Law students around the country read and study Coker," said Richard Myers, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor.

Eric Coker was born after his father went to prison in 1972. He has met his biological father on only a few occasions, his estranged wife said Friday.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)