Herbert James Coddington was born on October 13, 1959, in Morristown, New Jersey. He was known to be a "math whiz" during his school years in New York. As an adult, he became an avid gambler and supported himself by writing books on gambling and making investments. Coddington lived in Florida before moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, in the early 1980s. In January 1987, he relocated to South Lake Tahoe, California, where he was considered a reclusive individual by his neighbors.

On May 16, 1987, Coddington lured two teenage models, Alecia Thoma (14) and Monica Berge (12), along with their chaperones, Maybelle Martin (69) and Dorothy Walsh (73), to his trailer in South Lake Tahoe under the pretense of filming an anti-drug video. Once inside, he blindfolded and gagged all four. He strangled Martin and Walsh using strips of ridged plastic and placed their bodies in garbage bags in a bedroom. The two girls were confined in a soundproof plywood cage he had constructed in another bedroom, where he sexually assaulted them over three days.

Coddington was arrested on May 18, 1987, after FBI agents rescued the girls and discovered the bodies of the two women in his trailer. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, forcible rape, oral copulation, and forcible digital penetration. The jury found him sane at the time of the crimes and sentenced him to death on January 20, 1989. Coddington is also the prime suspect in the 1981 murder of 12-year-old Sheila Jo Keister in Nevada. ​