If you thought Joan Cusack was charming as the black widow Debbie Jellinsky in The Addams Family Values, you clearly haven’t experienced the oddly alluring personality of Jill Coit.
At first meeting, Coit is a cheerful and lively in a way that might remind people of character actress Miriam Flynn. With a slight southern drawl, flowing brown hair, and a bright smile, she appears non-threatening and she makes no secret about her attraction to the opposite sex.
“I love men. I adore men. I enjoy sex, totally. I think I’m an excellent wife when I’m in the marriage. My husbands have said I’m the perfect wife. I’m fun. I support them in whatever they’re doing. I’m not the nag. I’m alive and well and build them up. Because I’m happy with them.
“Unfortunately, I sometimes get unhappy and leave.”
Over the course of 30 years, Coit was married 11 times to nine different men. Larry Ihen, Steven Moore, William Clark Coit, Jr., Donald Charles Brodie, Louis A. DiRosa, Eldon Duane Metzger, Carl V. Steeley, Gerald “Gerry” Boggs, and Roy Carroll. She’s also been rumored to have been married to one of her boyfriends, Michael Backus.
Coit, born Jill Lonita Billiot, went from man to man, often not divorcing the previous one. She had three children with two men in a web of love and lust so complicated it took five psychology students from Radford University to put it all together in chronological order.
But it wasn’t romance that got Coit swept up in man after man, it was their money. Shortly after marrying, she would empty their bank accounts and move on. Before the ink was dry on her first divorce from Ihen, she had drained their joint bank account of a “whopping” $280. She even convinced an elderly man to adopt her and subsequently inherited all of his money.
Of course, scams and fraud weren’t Coit’s only game. If it served her interests, she would be willing to commit murder.
On March 28, 1972, the body of her third husband, whom she had married and divorced twice, William Coit, Jr. was found shot dead in the back. Despite being police’s primary suspect, there was not enough evidence to charge her. To avoid further questioning, her lawyer and eventual fifth husband, Louis DiRosa, helped put her in a mental institution with claims of “acute hysteria and emotional distress.”
The case ran cold, but police firmly believed Coit was responsible for her husband’s murder.
Almost 20 years and five husbands later, Coit married hardware store owner Gerry Boggs after she faked a pregnancy. His first marriage. After learning that Coit was still married to Carl Steeley, husband number seven, Boggs had their marriage annulled less than a year later.
Worried that information about her scams and frauds would get out, Coit enlisted the aid of boyfriend Michael Backus to murder Boggs.
On October 22, 1993, Coit, disguised as a mustached man, and Backus ambushed Boggs in his home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. They beat him with a shovel and shoot him three times with a .22 caliber pistol.
Afterwards, Coit called her son, Seth, whom she had with her second husband, Steven Moore. Over the phone, she told him, “Hey baby, it’s over and it’s messy.” Seth promptly reported her to police. Two months later, Coit is arrested for the murder of her eighth husband, Gerry Boggs.
On March 17, 1995, both Coit and Backus are convicted of first-degree murder. Coit is sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. She is currently staying at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.