Funds raised in memory of a slain Columbia woman and her two sons have apparently been donated to a women’s shelter in Chicago, it was reported last week.

More than $30,000 was donated by Monroe County residents and others across the area in support of a memorial to honor Sheri Coleman and her two young sons following their 2009 murders in Columbia.

One of Sheri’s closest friends, Meegan Turnbeaugh, questioned where these funds might have gone in a TV interview last week that aired on FOX 2 in St. Louis.

The initial idea was to build a large pavilion with two obelisks at Bolm-Schuhkraft Park in Columbia as a lasting tribute to Sheri, Garett and Gavin Coleman, but those plans fell by the wayside due to planning issues at the city level and a shortage of funds to complete the project.

Chris Coleman, Sheri’s husband and father of the young sons, was convicted of their strangling deaths in 2011. He is serving concurrent life sentences and his case is under appeal.

Reached by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week, Sheri’s brother, Mario DeCicco of Chicago, said he anonymously donated $28,000 in cash to a Chicago women’s shelter. DeCicco was the person left in control of the donations.

The Post-Dispatch reported that Sheri Ann Her Boys, the not-for-profit corporation created to administer the money, was involuntarily dissolved by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office last year for failure to submit an annual report.

The office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is looking into the matter.