Retired Cleveland County Sheriff's Department investigator Cliff Winkler can't ever forget the images of finding 8-year-old Shane Coffman's badly decomposed body packed inside a deep freezer behind a Newalla trailer home on Feb. 9, 1996.

"It's a case that has really haunted me over the years and I feel like at least tomorrow, there will be some closure to it," Winkler said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

He said 13 years have passed, but he remembers the events that unfolded that winter day as if it were yesterday.

"It was almost 5 o'clock when I got a call from headquarters that some people found what they thought might have been human remains in a deep freezer," he said. "I went out to the residence and looked in the deep freezer. I could see that it was what appeared to be a child, the bones of his little fingers were showing and just the top portion of his skull. It was very obvious it was a human and most likely a child."

Donald Gilson, the man convicted of killing Coffman, is scheduled to die by lethal injection 6 p.m. today at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, the same place where he has served prison time.

Last month, an effort was made to spare Gilson's life. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole board met April 14 and recommended clemency for Gilson by a 3-2 vote.

Gov. Brad Henry granted Gilson a short execution stay in order to review the recommendation and other information related to the case. Henry decided Monday to deny Gilson clemency.

Winkler said he has no plans to travel to McAlester and witness Gilson's execution. However, he believes Gilson's death might bring closure to the case.

After Winkler found the remains in 1996, he said he immediately called his office for assistance, notified the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner's office and cordoned off the scene.

Winkler said the freezer was unplugged and filled with dirt. Shane's body had been stuffed inside the freezer almost six months before Winkler discovered him. Investigators believe Shane died around Aug. 17, 1995.

"Once the medical examiner came out and made his determination, I called the OSBI so we could use their laboratory people to process the freezer and any other evidence," he said.

Investigators found a pair of jeans and a shirt inside the freezer, but it was difficult to determine if Shane was clothed at the time of his death, Winkler said.

"When the medical examiner and OSBI started to move things, they couldn't tell," he said.

A medical examiner's report revealed Shane suffered acute fractures to his left jaw and right cheek in addition to a cracked upper incisor and fractures of the left collarbone, several ribs, a shoulder, a leg and his spine.

Winkler said detectives received consent from the trailer's owner to search the residence. That's when Winkler found a photo of Gilson, whom he recognized.

Winkler said he learned that Gilson's girlfriend, Bertha Jean Coffman had lived at the trailer with her children.

He said nobody was living at the trailer when Shane's body was discovered. Because the trailer needed numerous repairs, Coffman and her children moved to Gilson's trailer house on Harrah-Newalla Road sometime after the boy's death.

"One thing that stands out in my mind was when we did the search of the mobile home where the Coffman children were living at, I found a journal that Shane had written," Winkler said. "He had mentioned in that journal the best day of his life. He had broken either his arm or leg, he went to the hospital and got ice cream."

Winkler also recalled abuse the other children suffered from the hands of Gilson and Coffman.

"One little girl almost lost a foot to gangrene because Donald Gilson stomped on her foot with combat boots," Winkler said.

The former investigator said within a few hours of finding Shane, he located Gilson and Coffman at Gilson's residence in Newalla. The couple continuously changed details surrounding Shane's death.

"They had several stories," Winkler said. "First he had ran away, then they said they found him dead and thought some other guy killed him."

Winkler said after Gilson and Coffman told three different accounts of events, he spoke one-on-one with Gilson.

"I asked him if he had spanked or beat Shane that day and he said, yeah, he had," Winkler said. "I said how many times? He said several times because Shane just wouldn't mind, he was out of hand and he said at one point that Shane passed out and he tried to revive him.

"Bertha came and got him, put him in the bathtub, put some cold water on him and he came around," Winkler said Gilson told him.

Winkler said he learned more about what happened to Shane.

"But what it finally came down to is that they beat him several times that day because he had wet on the floor the night before," Winkler said.

He said Gilson and Coffman told him that Shane's death was an accident.

"You can tell from the broken bones on the little child what really happened to him," Winkler said. "You could tell those wounds were inflicted."

Winkler said more evidence showed Shane's siblings suffered abuse over a period of time.

"We did a search of the residence where Donald, Bertha and the children were living," he said.

Winkler said Luminol, a chemical substance used to detect the presence of blood, indicated there were blood spatters on the walls at one time. Luminol gives off a blue glow in a dark room.

"It looked like the Milky Way inside that residence where they had the children stand up and they would beat them periodically," he said.

Winkler said the children were malnourished and physically abused.

"They looked like Holocaust victims," Winkler recalled.

He said after Gilson and Coffman were questioned about Shane, the other children were taken into protective custody.

Some have questioned Gilson's mental capacity because it's been reported that Gilson suffered a brain injury from a vehicle accident about 16 years ago.

Winkler said he was aware that Gilson was injured in a motorcycle accident, but nobody including Gilson's attorneys mentioned that information at his trial in 1998.

"He knew it was wrong to beat those children," Winkler said.

After spending 20 years with the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department, Winkler retired in 2004. He said of all the cases he investigated during his career, Shane's killing sticks out the most in his mind.

"It was a case that I don't think anyone could ever forget," Winkler said.

Shane's mother, Bertha Jean Coffman also was convicted for her role in Shane's death. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A phone message left for Gilson's attorney Robert Jackson wasn't returned.

Meghan McCormick 366-3539 mmccormick@normantranscript.com