HOUSTON – The Houston judge who sent emotionless child killer Brian Coulter to prison for the rest of his life said this case was one of the most “horrific set of facts that I’ve ever had to witness, to listen to and to image.”
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Judge Kelli Johnson told 34-year-old Coulter what he did to 8-year-old Kendrick Lee and his three brothers has haunted her mind and interrupted her safe space.
“How you, Sir, could have done what you did to those children. When you look at them in the face, children that you led to believe were your own kids,” Judge Johnson said.
Kendrick’s oldest brother, who was 15 at the time, called 911 on October 24, 2021 and told the dispatcher that his brother had been dead in their apartment for more than a year. When Harris County deputies got to the home at 3535 Green Crest, they found Kendrick’s three brother -- ages 15, 10 and 7 -- in horrid conditions and they found Kendrick’s decomposing body.
The boys told investigators and testified again in court that Coulter beat Kendrick to death and kept hitting and kicking him even when he was no longer moving. The 7-year-old said he stared at his older brother’s face while Coulter was kicking and hitting him and at some point during the beating, Kendrick stopped blinking.
Kendrick’s cause of death was homicidal violence. The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences said he suffered multiple blunt force injuries.
After that beating, the brothers were left alone in the apartment for months with Kendrick’s body decaying in another room.
Their mother, Gloria Y. Williams, is charged with injury to a child by omission and tampering with evidence, meaning Kendrick’s body. Williams and Coulter had been together for several years and at some point in the relationship, Coulter started consistently beating the children.
In closing arguments, prosecutors framed Coulter as a spiteful, jealous and angry man who wanted the kids out of sight and out of mind.
“I think about what his kids went through,” Judge Johnson said during sentencing. “I think about all three of them and their injuries. I think about how you can look at each and every one of them and hit them in the face. So much so that in the end, one had to have surgery. And so the courage that they had to have to testify in this case. And I hope they, all three of them remaining will go on and live a very, very healthy, happy life.”
The judge said she was happy to see that Kendrick’s brothers now seem to be living with loving and caring families.
“Now you will leave this court, but you will not leave my mind,” the judge told Coulter.
“And I hope, sir, when you’re in prison, I hope those same boys that have haunted my mind haunt yours.”
Coulter, sporting his ‘Warrior’ tattoo across the front of his neck, sat through it all in his yellow prison garb, never showing any emotion.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.