[4] On September 1, 1979, Cary Ann Medlin and her stepbrother were riding their bicycles in the neighborhood near their home in Greenfield, Tennessee.
Robert Coe pulled up next to them and began to talk to them, acting as if he knew Cary's father and needed directions to his house.
As soon as she was reported missing, friends and neighbors in the close-knit community began a massive search to locate Cary or the man whose car she was last seen in.
After hearing about the murdered girl, some of Coe's family members started to help him evade capture by buying him a bus ticket to Georgia, but another notified the police.
Coe confessed that he drove Cary to an isolated spot on the outskirts of town and then, according to his confessional videotape, masturbated while the child watched.
[5] On April 19, 2000, he was executed at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, by lethal injection.