Witnesses: Woman said she killed boyfriend, dismembered him with machete

Cierra Sutton, 31, was sentenced to 45 years in prison. She was convicted of murdering her live-in boyfriend, 32-year-old Steven Coleman, the Baytown Sun reports. Prosecutors said Sutton will have to serve at least 22-and-a-half years before she is eligible for parole.

MORE: Woman given 45 years in dismemberment murder - The Baytown Sun

October 16, 2017:

The people of Houston, Texas brace for the onslaught of a killer hurricane. But in nearby Baytown, a killer is already hard at work. And in apartment 302, it's raining blood.

Emergency crews are getting ready for one of the biggest hurricanes in U.S. history. Harvey is on their doorstep.

But at the Baytown landfill, workers make a gruesome discovery that puts all their preparations on hold. Baytown Sun newspaper reporter Matt Hollis covered the shocking story.

"A worker was using a tractor to push garbage and discovered this torso," Hollis tells Crime Watch Daily. "He immediately informs his supervisor and they call police."

Cops are baffled. The torso belongs to an adult male. But they can't nail the identity of the man who was murdered and chopped up. All around Houston, residents have fled the area, some to other states, seeking shelter from the storm.

Police do have a report of a missing person filed only a few days earlier. But they don't know if he's the same guy they found in the landfill. The missing man is 32-year-old Steven Coleman, an aspiring rap artist with a big presence on Youtube as Slim Da Don.

He lives with 30-year-old Cierra Sutton, along with her 10-year-old daughter from another man. She works at a veterinarian clinic and has no criminal record. But investigators tell Crime Watch Daily that Cierra Sutton was at the police station only days before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston.

"She actually came in and made a missing-persons report of her boyfriend Steven Coleman at about 6:30 in the evening," said Baytown Police Lt. Steve Dorris.

Sutton says Coleman had left the apartment two days earlier and had not returned.

"He wasn't answering his phone, he wasn't responding to anything on Facebook or anything of that nature," said Lt. Dorris.

Hurricane Harvey slams into Texas, causing more that 70 deaths and more than $100 billion in damage.

But in the aftermath of the devastating storm, police and Coleman's family keep the case alive. They put out the word on Steven Coleman, who has not been seen at work or heard from by his worried family and friends for weeks.

"It's not like him to not show up at work," reporter Matt Hollis tells Crime Watch Daily. "He was doing OK there. He had no reason to leave. He gave no indication. So that perplexed them."

But now they find that Cierra Sutton and her daughter are missing too. Has she fled the hurricane along with thousands of others? Or is there some murderous vendetta in the works aimed at Cierra and Steven?

"We had scheduled Cierra to come in for an interview to kind of follow up on her original report," said Lt. Dorris. "And she failed to show up."

Alarmed, cops get a search warrant for the couple's apartment. And what they find does not give them much hope of locating Steven Coleman or Cierra Sutton and her little girl.

"We discovered some areas in the bedroom that showed some significant blood that really led us to believe something tragic had happened," said Lt. Dorris.

Investigators take blood samples from the apartment to see if they can get a DNA match on that male headless torso found at the landfill. The results are still out on that test.

"It all just kind of points to that direction," said Lt. Dorris. "So while we can't say for certain if that is Mr. Coleman, that is certainly our suspicion."

And then, a big break in the case of the missing Cierra Sutton.

"We received a phone call that she had gone to Louisiana," said Lt. Dorris. "We solicited help from several other agencies in Louisiana to help us in trying to locate Cierra, and fortunately we were successful in that."

Police are relieved to find she is alive and well and that her daughter is safe at a friend's house. But what they hear about Cierra Sutton and Steven Coleman is chilling.

"She had divulged to some of the people in Louisiana what she had done here, to varying degrees," said Lt. Dorris.

Lieutenant Steve Dorris won't go into graphic detail. But reporter Matt Hollis has gone over all of the evidence and witness statements in graphic detail about what Sutton told her friends she did to Coleman.

And it's an absolute shocker.

"They had an argument and then at some point he decides to go to bed," said Hollis. "And then while he is asleep she shoots him in the head point-blank."

"While he is asleep in the bed and while her daughter is in the other room," Hollis tells Crime Watch Daily.

And according to the witnesses who say they heard Cierra Sutton's story, that's only the beginning of the horror.

"In an attempt to conceal the body, she discovers that he's too heavy and she can't move him. So she comes up with this idea to get a machete and cut his body into pieces," said Hollis.

"This happens with a child in another room," said Hollis. "And chop off his arms, chop off his legs, chop off his head. And then to wrap these pieces up, put them in your car. She's driving around town with pieces of his body and putting it in different Dumpsters."

Hollis says Baytown Police also have an incriminating videotape they will not release of Sutton at a Walmart shortly after reporting Coleman missing.

"She was caught on surveillance video at a store apparently using his credit card, and it also appears she was buying material to help conceal the body," said Hollis. "She was purchasing duct tape and a foam mattress."

Police aren't giving any theories about a motive, but they say that Coleman may have had a premonition about his fate.

"Mr. Coleman had actually confided in somebody that if he came up missing or something ever happened to him, to make sure that the police looked at Ms. Sutton, which was kind of an ominous thing," said Lt. Dorris.

And while cops are still waiting to see if there's a DNA match between the blood samples at the apartment and the torso at the landfill, they aren't wasting any time. They figure they have enough evidence to go to Louisiana, put handcuffs on Cierra Sutton and charge her with murder.

"Once we figured out where she was at, she was actually coming out of her apartment to get in the vehicle and leave when she was arrested," said Lt. Dorris.

Cierra Sutton was extradited back to Texas, where she awaits arraignment. And police can only wait to see if she tells a judge the same horrifying story that her friends say she told them in Louisiana.

"It's a lot for one person to do but we're looking at those angles to see if we can connect anybody else to this crime, but to this point we have not," said Lt. Dorris. "Her alone."

"It's unusual for a woman to go so far as to chop a man's body up, with your child in the other room, is pretty depraved," said Hollis.

Adding to the mystery behind this attack, Sutton and Coleman had no prior reports of domestic violence, and she had a clean arrest record.

UPDATE February 24, 2019:

Cierra Sutton, 31, was sentenced to 45 years in prison. She was convicted of murdering her live-in boyfriend, 32-year-old Steven Coleman, the Baytown Sun reports. Prosecutors said Sutton will have to serve at least 22-and-a-half years before she is eligible for parole.