Spalding cold case trial: Missing evidence, doubts and a conviction

IN-DEPTH: With guilty verdict in decades-old murder, Georgia county turns a page

They did have witnesses — seven men who said they heard Gebhardt say he and his brother-in-law, William Moore Sr., killed 23-year-old Timothy Coggins, stabbing him some 30 times and then dragging his body behind a pickup truck, linked by a chain.

But there was a catch. Six of those witnesses were incarcerated. Convicted child molester Christopher Vaughn was perhaps the worst of that lot, and also the most important — "the catalyst" that led to the case being reopened, said Chris DeMarco, assistant special agent in charge of the GBI's Columbus Field Office.

Gebhardt, according to Vaughn, had disposed of articles of clothing worn by Coggins, along with the knife that killed him, down a well on his property — a well filled not with water but decades of debris.

“We had the other witnesses, but we needed more corroboration,” Broder said. “We needed to get what was in that well.”

It wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t be their first major challenge.

“There were times when Mrs. Broder and myself had major doubts,” Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Benjamin Coker said, moments after Gebhardt was led away in shackles to begin serving a sentence of life in prison plus 20 years.

THE PHANTOM EVIDENCE

Although both sides ripped the initial investigation into Coggins’ death as “incomplete” and “shameful,” some valuable evidence was collected, if not acted upon.

Former GBI crime scene analyst Larry Peterson testified he took tire impressions of the truck that allegedly dragged Coggins’ body back and forth under the power lines off rural Minter Road, where his body was found. There was also the victim’s bloody sweater, containing two hair samples. A wooden club was found, and an empty Jack Daniels bottle. Enough to present a compelling case, at the very least.

And it was all gone. Coker said he didn’t find that out until after a grand jury had indicted Gebhardt and Moore, who will stand trial in August. Their arrests had generated international media coverage and the expectation of convictions. Now Coker, elected to his first term as district attorney just a year earlier, faced the real possibility that the trial was lost before it even started.

“It was a crushing blow,” Coker said. He doesn’t believe the evidence was stolen, probably just lost — another indicator of just how little black lives mattered in Spalding County not all that long ago.

“We just had to accept it and do the best with what we had,” Coker said.

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Getting into Gebhardt’s well had taken on added importance. But after securing search warrants for the Sunny Side man’s property, investigators determined that excavating the well would compromise the foundation of Gebhardt’s house because the two are in close proximity. As the GBI summarized it: For every 1 foot down, you have to go 3 feet wide.

“I remember all of us sitting around a table — the GBI, the sheriff’s department — and none of us could come up with a solution,” Broder said. “We didn’t know what we were going to do.”

“Lots of sleepless nights,” she said.

Then, one of her investigators came up with an idea. Why not flush it out?

They found a company out of Woodstock that did just that, Atlanta Hydrovac. It’s a process that, to Broder’s knowledge, has never been used to recover evidence. So much was unknown. Would it destroy fragile items such as a shirt or shoe — items that Gebhardt, according to Vaughn, had tossed down the well.

They didn’t worry about what it might do to any potential DNA evidence because GBI forensic scientists had already told them it would be impossible to get a read on anything stored so poorly for so long.

Credit: Bob Andres

Credit: Bob Andres

So while any direct, conclusive links to the defendant would be impossible, finding the items in question could significantly bolster Vaughn’s credibility. He was certainly a problematic witness, found guilty of a repugnant crime. And he had spoken with the GBI three previous times, dating back to 2005, before disclosing he had heard Gebhardt cop to the crime. The state knew the defense would relentlessly assail Vaughn’s veracity and motive.

They would’ve been foolish not to. Vaughn, Gebhardt’s lawyers argued, sexed up his story in hopes of eventually getting his sentence reduced. (Coker has repeatedly denied any such deals were made.)

“He had this card in his back pocket, and of course he was going to try and parlay it,” DeMarco said. “But we never caught him in a lie.”

DeMarco said there’s another reason many of the witnesses waited until recently to share their story.

“They were no longer scared of Frankie Gebhardt,” he said. For years, the burly pulpwooder with a 6th-grade education and a long rap sheet curried favor through intimidation. Letting certain people know he had killed before convinced them he was capable of doing it again, DeMarco said.

Still, the case at this point remained one convict’s words versus six others.

WELLSPRING OF SECRETS

It took 10 hours to flush out Gebhardt’s well, but not everything could be removed. Some objects remained stuck to the bottom, and the unsung, and unnamed, hero of the trial, employed by Atlanta Hydrovac, volunteered to be lowered into the dark, fetid hole to retrieve whatever was left behind.

Stuck to the bottom: a thick, metal chain.

“It was exciting,” Broder said. “This was huge for us.”

During the trial, defense co-counsel Larkin Lee dismissed the discovery — all wells have a chain. But this one, prosecutors say, was made for bigger jobs than lifting buckets.

The following day, in a nearby pasture, the contents of the well were emptied onto a large tarp about half the size of a football field. Broder said they found a size 10 Adidas shoe almost immediately — significant since no shoes were found at the crime scene. No socks were found, either, from Coggins’ body. But from the well, they retrieved a red Argyle sock — not the kind one would expect tough guy Frank Gebhardt to wear, Coker said in his closing argument.

To their surprise, they also turned up a white T-shirt, with burn marks. (Vaughn had said Gebhardt told him he burned the evidence.) They also turned up a broken knife handle, and two solitary blades.

All circumstantial, but more than they could have expected. Ironically, the well seemed to preserve some of the articles of clothing, such as the T-shirt and sock.

“Once it was pulled out (of the well) you could see the texture start to change,” Broder said. “In trying to destroy the evidence, (Gebhardt) ended up preserving it.”

Now, the state believed, Vaughn’s account had some heft. If he was lying, how did he know what was in the well?

“That was going to be the linchpin for us,” Coker said.

There were still challenges. Asked if he had ever tried a case so dependent on so many problematic witnesses, Coker laughed and said, “Not in a murder trial.”

A few weeks after the well was dredged, Broder met with the victim’s sister, Telisa Coggins, to show her the shoe.

Coggins started crying as soon as she saw it.

“She recognized it as Timothy’s shoe,” Broder said. “That was a huge moment.”

For the first time, she said, she felt confident Gebhardt would be convicted.

“That was the turning point,” Broder said. “There had been so many obstacles along the way. But after the well we knew: ‘We got him!’”

MORE DETAILS

Previously: Timothy Coggins, 23, was stabbed some 30 times then dragged behind a pickup, linked by a chain, in 1983.

Latest: On Tuesday, the judge sentenced Franklin Gebhardt to life in prison plus 20 years immediately after the verdict was announced.

Next: Gebhardt's brother-in-law, William Moore Sr., who is also accused in the killing, will be tried later this year.