Murder and weapons charges advanced against Lansing man, another with accessory after fact

Jared Weber Ken Palmer
Lansing State Journal

A Lansing man charged in connection with the gruesome death of a Mason woman whose burned remains were found buried in northern Michigan has been ordered to stand trial on murder and weapons charges.

Lansing District Judge Louise Alderson said the case against Cory Dean Coddington was circumstantial. But with data from a GPS tether placing Coddington at the place where the woman was killed and the area where she was buried, the case was strong enough to advance to circuit court, she said.

Coddington, 40, was charged in connection with the death of 33-year-old Melissa Nicole Murray in May. Police said she was shot and killed Feb. 2 at a home on Mahlon Street, weeks before her burned remains were found in an Isabella County field.

Alderson also found enough evidence to order Coddington's co-defendant, Daniel Lawrence Dutton, 62, to stand trial on an accessory charge. Dutton was accused of helping Coddington dispose of her remains and led police to the area where they were found.

The Ingham County Sheriff's Office began investigating a missing person report involving Murray in early March and contacted Lansing police about two weeks later.

A skull fragment found during a search of the Mahlon address was tied to Murray using DNA testing.

The Michigan State University anthropology department processed Murray's remains and found there had been at least one traumatic impact to the right side of her cranium, after which the remains were burned, a Lansing police detective testified. 

According to a witness, there were at least six people in the Mahlon Street home when Murray was shot. All were said to be present when Coddington arrived at the house – Murray and several other people in the living room, another person in the kitchen and another in a bedroom.

But none of the witnesses interviewed by police specifically identified Coddington as the gunman, although they agreed upon several key descriptive details.

 Several witnesses said Coddington was wearing a blue Ingham County jumpsuit at some point during the incident, and that he had been carrying a gun “with a crack in the middle,” officials say. Police interpreted that to mean he had a shotgun.

But the strongest piece of circumstantial evidence was data produced by the GPS monitoring tether Coddington was wearing at the time of Murray’s murder. The tether placed him at the Mahlon Street residence, as well as the field where investigators found Murray’s remains on March 24, police said.

A witness said Dutton directed them to clean up blood and pick up trash after the killing. Dutton's attorney, Ronald Berry, argued that the witness was not credible.

"At what point do we say someone's acting out of fear?" he said.

"You can argue that to a jury," Alderman responded.

A first-degree murder charge carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Contact reporter Jared Weber at 517-582-3937 or jtweber@lsj.com.