The Murder of Timothy Coggins

Due to the graphic nature of this cold case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of gore, racially motivated hate crimes, harm to animals, and murder.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Griffin, Georgia is a mid-sized city about 45 minutes south of Atlanta. In 1983, the downtown area feels suburban. There's a successful textile mill, a large courthouse, and a bustling community college. But further out... Concrete streets are replaced by winding country roads. Small, family-owned farms still operate. It's not quite rural, but fields and forests make it easy to forget how close you are to the city.

That October, a group of young boys are on the outskirts of Griffin hunting squirrels. They cross through a field to a wooded spot that's dotted with oak trees. Their eyes scan the branches for bushy tails. then land on a scene they can barely comprehend. There's blood everywhere. Tire tracks, broken branches, and the center of it all... A man's mutilated body lies on the ground. The boys know there must have been a struggle here. A brutal, chaotic, terrifying fight. But now...

The woods are deftly quiet.

Welcome to Solved Murder's True Crime Mysteries, a Spotify original from Parcast. I'm Carter Roy. This week, we're bringing you something special, an episode from my series, Cold Cases. Every Monday on Cold Cases, I tell the story of a crime that went unsolved for years. Some weeks, forensic breakthroughs will solve long dormant cases. Others will still be left searching for the truth. Today,

We're covering the 1983 murder of Timothy Coggins. His tragic death exposed the racism that divided a Georgia town. And it would take over 30 years before his family had a chance to get justice. Solved Murders will be back next week, but more on this case coming up. Stay with us.

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According to his niece, Heather, who was six at the time, quote, Tim isn't just a mama's boy, though. He's everybody's boy. He's funny, with loads of charisma, pearly white teeth, and an easy smile. Tim has tons of friends. And he loves a good party.

On the night of Friday, October 7th, Tim hitches a ride to a club with one of his buddies, a sheriff's deputy named Jesse Gates. On the way there... gates and tim catch up tim mentions he's been seeing a white woman and gates his tone becomes grave gates warns him quote we live in griffin georgia and not atlanta and some people just don't accept things like that. When they pull up to the People's Choice nightclub, Gates sees three white men at the entrance, which strikes him as strange.

A lot of places in Griffin are still effectively segregated, and white people don't normally go to this club. It's a little unsettling to see them standing outside. But Tim heads in anyway. For the black community in Griffin, People's Choice is the place to be on a Friday night. Drinks flow, barbecue sizzles, the DJ spins funk and soul, imagine hits from Marvin Gaye,

Mays and Frankie Beverly, and songs from Michael Jackson's Thriller album, Pulsing Through the Speakers. Tim's sister, Talisa, is there too, partying with her adoring big brother who taught her how to ride a bike when she was a kid. But tonight, Talisa isn't the only one basking in Tim's light. For the past few weeks, she's seen Tim teaching a white woman at the club to dance. Now...

Tim doesn't really care what racist friends are. But like Jesse Gates warned him earlier, some people do. Talisa heads to the bathroom. And hears people say there are white guys looking for Tim. Talisa looks back and sees Tim headed out of the club behind a white man. She doesn't think anything of it. In her mind, Tim's friends with everybody. He's probably just going to hang out somewhere else.

Tim's family doesn't hear from him the next day. But that doesn't set off alarms. He's got friends everywhere and likes to party. They figure he's probably hanging at a friend's or sleeping off a hangover on their couch. It's a comforting thought. But the comfort only lasts so long. On Sunday, October 9th, a group of squirrel hunters traipses through a field in Sunnyside.

a poor, mostly white area a few miles from Griffin. They're just kids, some are young teenagers, and one boy is only 10 years old. As they make their way through the field, they pass a trailer park called Carrie's Mobile Home. The power line runs overhead, but the most striking part of this setting is the hanging tree. A big old oak. where people go to party or deal drugs this morning though it's where the squirrel hunters find a young black man's body lying mutilated on the ground

When the crime scene analyst arrives, he takes in the chaos. There are signs of a struggle for hundreds of feet around the body. Drag marks, bloodstains, tire tracks, an empty bottle of bourbon. A sweater. It seems likely the man was chained to the back of a vehicle and dragged across the field. But that's not what killed him. I say him because at this point... No one knows who the body is. Officers at the Spalding County Sheriff's Department know he's young and black, but they need more help.

A black sheriff's deputy named Oscar Jordan is called into the coroner's office to look at the body. What he sees is horrific. The man's two bottom teeth are missing. There are scratches and stab wounds on his arm from trying to fight off his attacker. His lungs are punctured and he's been stabbed dozens of times. His killer has carved an X across his chest.

Decades later, Jordan recalled, quote, worst part about it, they didn't kill him. Autopsy showed he bled out, thrown behind a pile of wood, left to die. The body is so disfigured that Jordan can't tell who it is. Officers fan out across Griffin with photos of the body, and eventually, Talisa Coggins hears a knock at the door.

The officers outside show her the awful pictures and ask if she recognizes the victim. Talisa says she doesn't. But another relative confirms the identity with the police later. Aunt Talisa has to face the horrible truth. Her big brother has been murdered. And somewhere out there is the person who killed him. It's a three-part special, 65 million years in the making. Well, sort of.

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Timothy Coggins' burial is a closed casket affair. The devastated Coggins family gathers at an aunt's house that night. Space is tight and the kids sleep on the floor. But they're too afraid to be alone. Tim is gone. And now, all the Coggins family can do is hope for justice. The Spalding County Sheriff's Department begins its official investigation.

It teams up with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which handles crime in rural areas. Deputies Oscar Jordan, who declined to identify Tim's body, and Jesse Gates... who dropped Tim off at the club, are part of the team. We don't know if they were the only black investigators, but we know this case was deeply personal to them. The authorities profile suspects and conduct interviews, all standard procedure. Through this process, they're forced to confront certain truths about Timothy.

Like the fact that he dealt drugs, often to white people. Now, there are a lot of drugs going around Griffin, and Tim's side business was minor, but Gates and Jordan began to piece together a theory. Tim owed a white person money in a drug deal, but he couldn't pay them back. Tim was also dating a white woman. If that made Tim's black friends uncomfortable...

then it would absolutely enrage white racists in Griffin. So maybe they killed Tim for it. It just so happens that the field where Tim was found is by a trailer park, that's home to a number of white people who've had run-ins with the law. Investigators from the Spalding County Sheriff's Department, we don't know exactly who, hear whispers about two residents of Carey's Mobile Home Park.

Frankie Gebhardt and Bill Moore. These men are brothers-in-law with terrifying reputations. A local courthouse calls them frequent flyers because of how often they appear there. and Gebhardt is especially dangerous. He dropped out of school in sixth grade and now has a job as a logger, but outside of work, he hosts wild, drug-fueled parties. that turn into bizarre scenes of debauchery once he butchers a cow in a trailer's kitchen just for fun

Authorities question Frankie Gebhardt about his activities on October 7th. We don't know exactly what he says, but he gives them an alibi that's apparently shaky. And for whatever reason... They don't interview Bill Moore at all. Then, four days later, the investigation grinds to a halt. Oscar Jordan is told they've come to a dead end.

Jesse Gates is taken off the case because his higher-ups say he's a road deputy, not an investigator. They're not given any more information beyond that. This is... Maddening to Jordan and Gates. Especially Gates, who carries the guilt of taking Tim to the club that night. And the timing feels suspicious. He wonders... Did someone at the trailer park call the sheriff to sway the investigation? It's only been a few weeks since Tim was killed. The media has barely written about it.

choosing to cover a missing white girl in Marietta instead. The authorities have seemingly given up. Timothy Coggins is gone, and now he's been forgotten too.

Except by his family, who can't forget. Especially because someone is dead set on reminding them of their loss. Sometime after Tim's murder, his stepfather Robert gets a phone call where someone says more of his family will die if the cops keep asking questions. Another night... Tim's sister Talisa is sitting with her family watching TV. That's when a brick smashes through the window. There's a message attached to it. You're next.

All that is chilling, but it gets worse. On top of working as a handyman, Robert Coggins also drives a school bus for a living. One morning, he finds a blood-soaked shirt on board. Officers come to investigate, but they never follow up with Robert about any clues. And perhaps most terrifyingly, the Coggins family finds a random dog in their home hallway. It's dead.

and decapitated. It's possible Tim's killer is behind these twisted tableaus. Maybe it's a sign the police were closing in on them, which makes it all the more frustrating that the investigation ended. Or maybe these are just sick jokes, little acts of hate by white supremacists infesting Griffin. The Coggins family will never find out.

They'll never get to honor Tim properly either. The years go by, but they're still too scared to put a headstone on his grave. They're afraid it'll be vandalized. The Coggins family figures they'll never get closure. So they try to move on. Investigator Oscar Jordan resigns himself to the fact that there just simply wasn't enough attention paid to Tim's case, most likely because he was black. The unsolved case.

goes cold 33 years go by and then something strange happens it's february 2016 now and Tim's mother, Viola, is dying. Her diabetes has led to kidney failure, and she's in the hospital, barely able to eat. Tim's sister, Talisa, now in her early 50s, is taking care of her. playing Viola's favorite gospel songs to ease her pain. Just as she puts a song on, Viola proclaims, quote, I ain't gonna be here for it, but they're gonna get who killed Tim.

Talisa is stunned. Is her mom just expressing her hope that one day justice will be served? Is it a prophecy? Or just the ramblings of a dying woman? It may as well have been a prophecy. because Viola died on February 23rd. And one year later, the Coggins family hears from the district attorney's office. They're reopening the case because they know who killed. Every six months, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or the GBI, scans through all its unsolved cases, no matter how cold.

These cold cases are reassigned to new investigators who might catch something old ones hadn't. That's how Tim's case file ends up with Special Agent Jared Coleman, who's only two years into his job. Coleman scans through the thin file. Some evidence has gone missing. The only bits left are Tim's jeans and underwear.

But he sees the notes about Frankie Gebhardt and Bill Moore, the brothers-in-law from the trailer park near where Tim was killed. He wonders, why did authorities barely investigate them in 1983? And why hasn't anyone paid attention to a clue from 2007 from one of the people who found Tim's body? Back in 1983,

Christopher Vaughn was the 10-year-old boy who went off squirrel hunting and found a corpse. He lived at or near the trailer park where Gebhardt and Moore lived, and it seems that he followed their footsteps into a life of crime. By 2007, Vaughn was serving time for child molestation and felony charges. He'd written to the GBI, claiming to have heard a confession from Gebhard himself about his involvement in Timothy's murder. Why would the GBI ignore that? It's possible they were skeptical.

Maybe they thought Vaughn was making things up to get his own sentence reduced. Vaughn was trying to reduce his sentence, as he openly admits to Agent Coleman when he's interviewed in April 2017. but he also insists he was telling the truth. Vaughn tells Coleman that 34 years ago, he heard Gebhardt brag at a party that he'd killed Tim with a knife.

And he threw the knife down the well by his trailer. Why? Because Tim Coggins was having sex with Gebhardt's girlfriend, Ruth Elizabeth Guy, nicknamed Mickey. Coleman asks himself, was Mickey the white woman at the club with Tim? What's intriguing is Mickey left Georgia a few weeks after the murder. which feels like what a person would do if they suddenly found themselves at the center of a deadly love triangle. But we'll never know her side of the story because she died in 2010.

There are just too many loose ends for an outsider like Coleman to probe, so he reaches out to the newly elected Spalding County Sheriff, Daryl Dix. Dix is, quote, a tough-talking boulder of a man who was in high school when Tim was murdered. Dix was a troubled white kid in a rough town. He calls his younger self a homeless drunk.

And you get the sense that he could have become a Christopher Vaughn or a Frankie Gebhardt. But he found religion, upheld the law as a Griffin police officer, and was elected Spalding County Sheriff in January 2017. One of Dix's personal mandates is to improve relationships between his department and the black community. So teaming up with Agent Coleman and the GBI to solve a decades-old hate crime makes a lot of sense.

But there's another reason Dix is eager to help. A much darker one. After his election, Dix comes across a notebook in police archives. It's a personal log from the 80s. by an officer who infiltrated a local branch of the ku klux klan an entry from may 1982 says a clan leader told him several people in local law enforcement are clan too

The officer writes, quote, at this point, unsure of who to trust, we'll try and find out who in the department is Klan. Now Dix wonders, was the Coggins investigation... purposefully botched by white supremacists hiding in his own department. In 1983, Jesse Gates and Oscar Jordan suspected someone at the Cary Mobile Home Park, where Gebhardt and Moore lived, got authorities to stop investigating.

and they figured the police didn't care enough to keep the case open because Tim wasn't white. In retrospect, accusing authorities of casual racism and mild neglect feels too kind. Maybe white supremacists across Griffin were colluding to keep Tim's killer's identity a secret because they wanted to send a message.

Now, Dix is determined to right the wrongs within his own department. He assigns a deputy to work alongside GBI agent Jared Coleman and asks them both to find out exactly what happened to Timothy Coggins.

By this point, GBI Agent Coleman is completely convinced this case boils down to race and goes so far as to call Tim's murder a lynching. That's not a term to throw around lightly. A lynching is the public killing of someone who hasn't been tried in a court of law. And in the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of black Americans were lynched.

A study by the Equal Justice Institute says over a quarter of those lynched were black men accused of being involved with white women. Locals are interviewed about Gebhardt and Moore again. This time... Coleman finds out the two men have apparently been bragging about the murder for years, since they believe they were, quote, protecting the white race from black people. According to one witness,

Moore reportedly even said that he, quote, missed the good old days when you could kill a black man for no reason. At this point, there are several people who corroborate Christopher Vaughn's story. Gabhart and Moore killed Tim, and they're proud of it, too. But when Coleman questions Moore, he says he's never heard of Tim. It's clearly a lie.

Now, Coleman has to do his due diligence and talk to Gebhardt, too. In a dark twist, Gebhardt is already in jail on sexual assault charges. When Coleman visits him... He plays dumb, just like Moore. Coleman probes further and asks, did he throw the murder weapon in the well on his property? Gebhardt snaps, quote, well, y'all come out there and dig my well up. And soon, that's exactly what happens.

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Spalding County Sheriff Daryl Dix tells the media they're close to making an arrest in the Timothy Coggins murder. They just need more people to come forward with information that can help nail the perp. The reality is... He's stretching the truth. All investigators have are rumors. There's a serious lack of physical evidence because most of the evidence collected in the 1983 crime scene has been lost. Like hair samples from Tim's jeans.

or the bourbon bottle found in the field tim was killed a few years before dna profiling was common if evidence had been preserved it would have been much easier to try to match any dna to gebhart and moore But the evidence was lost, either by neglect or a purposeful effort by police to botch the investigation. All dicks can rely on now is more hearsay. and he needs as many witnesses as he can find. Luckily, his exaggeration to the media pays off. A man comes forward to say that back in the 80s,

Gebhardt told him he'd chained Tim to the truck and Moore was the one who stabbed him. And a woman says when she managed the trailer park where the two men lived, she may have heard about them plotting the murder. Shirley Sisk reveals that Brenda Moore, Bill Moore's sister and Gebhardt's wife, once said, quote, I'm telling you, he's going to kill him. They're going to tie him up and they're going to drag him with a car or truck.

Cisk says Brenda was drunk at the time, so she wasn't sure she could believe her. Maybe that's true. Or maybe she knew about the killing, but never revealed it to the police because she was scared. Or... because she didn't think killing Tim was a bad thing. Well, you can't know for sure, but regardless, Dix's risk works out in his favor. In October 2017,

he's able to charge Moore and Gebhardt with concealing a death, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, murder, and felony murder. In a heartening turn, Sheriff Dix deputizes Oscar Jordan, the black investigator who tried to identify Tim's body. Jordan was able to take part in the arrest, and Dix later gifts him a pair of handcuffs they used. Jordan cries upon receiving the cuffs,

But Dix reassures him, quote, You've waited 34 years for this. You've earned them. Of course, this is a symbolic act. Just like Frankie Gebhardt's arrest. He was already in jail on different charges. So he was paraded outside in his jumpsuit, arrested again, then taken back inside. It's darkly funny, but it also makes sense.

With a lack of physical evidence, investigators have to make this a public emotional process to remind people and a jury that this arrest is a big deal. A stand against systemic racism. a way to right a decades-old wrong. Bill Moore takes a manslaughter plea deal to avoid a trial, and in 2018, he's given 20 years in prison and 10 years of probation. In contrast,

Frank Gebhardt is set to go on trial. The state of Georgia has dozens of stories about him admitting to the crime, but they don't have any physical evidence to prove their case. That makes Prosecutor Marie Broder very anxious. At first glance, Broder doesn't seem like the ideal pick to bring justice to the Coggins family.

The chief assistant DA for the Griffin Judicial Circuit is 34 years old. She wasn't even born when Tim was murdered. But she does know how trauma can change a family. She went to law school because when she was young... Her uncle was killed, stabbed multiple times. Her family wasn't happy with how the judicial process played out, and Broder became a prosecutor to try to help others.

Roeder's known as a smart, aggressive, and passionate prosecutor. And she isn't satisfied with the scant physical evidence. It's no way to win a case. But witnesses keep mentioning the well on Frankie Gebhardt's property, where he allegedly threw a weapon. If they can find anything in the well to connect him to the murder, it would be a game changer.

Digging up the well isn't feasible because it would endanger the surrounding property. But Marie isn't going to let that stop her. It's time to bring in the big guns, or the big hoes. Broder arranges for a hydrovac to come to the trailer park. It's the first time this system has been used in Georgia. After a jet of water liquefies the soil in the well, a high-volume vacuum sucks up the dirt.

which will be dumped and sifted through for evidence. It's nerve-wracking for Broder. She can't see what's being excavated, and she won't be able to for a while. Naysayers like Brandy Abercrombie... Bill Moore's daughter, think Broder's expensive gamble is useless. She says they'll find, quote, nothing but a bunch of dirt. There's also the risk of destroying evidence. If there's anything in the well...

Flushing it with a powerful stream of water might strip it a valuable DNA. The only comfort Marie has is that any DNA has probably already been lost, since it's been sitting in a well for 34 years. That's pretty cold comfort. At first, all she gets for their troubles is a sick slosh of wet dirt. But then, the hydrovac spews out long-buried trash. When it's sifted...

Broder isn't able to find any DNA, but she does find Adidas shoes like Tim wore, a chain that could have been used to drag him across the field, a shirt with holes in it that look like stab wounds. and an old knife broken into several pieces. Broder is undeniably excited. This could make her case. But the discoveries are also deeply haunting.

Seeing the seven stab wounds in the back of the shirt seems to make Tim's murder feel more real for her. Marie knows what it's like to have a loved one killed. And as Gebhardt's summer 2018 trial approaches, she knows her first duty is to Timothy Coggins' family. She feels pressure, stronger than Hydrovac, to finally give them closure.

The prosecutor spends time with the extended Coggins family. She's empathetic, but she doesn't sugarcoat things. At the trial, they're going to have to stay neutral no matter what. They'll be witnessing terrible accusations and horrifying evidence. So it's best that they just see it now. Footage taken at the time of the trial shows Broder handing out pictures of Tim's body from the morgue. The Coggins family passes them around, crying and kissing them. It's tough, but necessary.

Tim's sister Talisa remains stoic. She later explains that as a black woman in a town where she's experienced racism firsthand, hope isn't easy to come by. It's not the best feeling to have going into a trial. The trial, presided over by a white judge, only lasts a week. but it's a difficult one for everyone in the courtroom. The Coggins family is forced to relive their worst nightmare. Bill Moore's daughter, Brandy, was once sure this case was nonsense.

but even she's coming to terms with the fact that her father was a monster. Broder loses sleep, and 12 pounds too, but she won't let that dull her flame. Her argument is simple. As Broder later put it, quote, Timothy Coggins was a young black man in 1983 who refused to follow societal norms. He was not following the rules of 1983, if you will.

And if you were a Klan member or a racist, any of those things would infuriate you and anger you to the point where Timothy Coggins became a target. A target that needed to be eliminated and the message that needed to be sent. She calls witnesses like former investigator Oscar Jordan to the stand, who testifies that Griffin was an awful place to be as a black person. She brings in the people who'd spent time with Gebhardt, like Christopher Vaughn,

who heard him confess to the murder and bearing the evidence in the well. In fact, she's got at least 17 instances of Gebhardt confessing. But this is where it gets tricky, because Broder... as an optics problem. Pretty much every person she calls upon has a criminal record. She's trying to find justice for a hate crime

but she's inviting child molesters and white supremacists to the stand. There's a risk the jury will find them untrustworthy. Broder was aware. Leading up to the trial, she joked, quote, We don't choose the witnesses to come in here and testify. I've never had a murder trial that consisted of preachers, deacons, whatever you want to say. Nuns. I would love that. That'd be great. But there are no nuns waiting in the wings.

just people who might be as despicable as Gebhardt himself. Larkin Lee, Gebhardt's attorney, seizes upon this fact with a vengeance. He says in his closing argument, quote, It's just trash. That's what those witnesses amount to. That's what all your jailhouse witnesses amount to is just trash. The same thing that was found in the well. He thinks the well evidence is the least he's seen against any defendant ever.

He'll later say Gebhardt is a, quote, poster boy for atonement, and the prosecution is trying to win a symbolic battle against racism using him as a pawn. Marie Broder's team does rely on passion over evidence, but their fury is a righteous one. One of her prosecutors pleads with the jury, quote, this crime screams anger, it screams hatred, but make it scream justice.

Ultimately, the jury finds Frankie Gebhardt guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and concealing a death. While the evidence was slight, Marie Broder's passion paid off. Ryan McMahon, the foreman, says that the prosecution just had a much better story. Gebhardt gets life in prison plus 30 years. And when he's sentenced, Judge Sams adds, quote, And hopefully, sir, you have stabbed your last victim.

It's something like justice, as close as Timothy's family can get to a reckoning after three and a half decades. But how much has Griffin really changed since 1983? The same year as the conviction, 2018, the Griffin City Council holds a vote to formally designate April as Confederate History Month. During the proceedings, a white former city commissioner arguing on behalf of the designation repeatedly uses racial slurs. The current commissioner...

A black man named Rodney McCord pushes back, arguing against the celebration of Confederate history and the cruel language. But the proclamation passes. Part of the stated purpose is to, quote, honor, observe, and celebrate the Confederate States of America. Rodney McCord asked CNN, how should I, as a black person, Celebrate that. For Timothy Coggin's loved ones, they can at least move forward now. Time can't heal every wound, but even in pain, there is solace.

Tim doesn't rest in an unmarked grave anymore. At long last, his family felt safe enough to gather, release purple balloons, and honor him with a headstone. Timothy Wayne Coggins Gone, but never forgotten. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Cold Cases. For more information on the murder of Timothy Coggins, amongst the many sources we used, we found the docuseries In the Cold Dark Night to be extremely helpful to our research.

We'll be back next week with an all-new episode of Solved Murder's True Crime Mysteries. We'll see you then. Cold Cases is a Spotify original from Parcast with executive producers Max Cutler and Drew Cole. Our head of programming is Julian Boireau. This show is developed by Mickey Taylor. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production and Trent Williamson as our senior production specialist.

Ryan O'Leary-Jones is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of Cold Cases was written by Amin Osman, edited by Karis Allen and Giles Hofseth, fact-checked by Hayley Milliken, Researched by Mickey Taylor with sound design by Russell Nash and produced by Aaron Larson. I'm Carter Roy.

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