Killing that haunted family since ’83 linked to racism
Victim, 23, dragged by truck, disfigured
GRIFFIN, Ga. — When Timothy Coggins was found dead and disfigured beside a Georgia highway in 1983, the black man’s family and neighbors whispered that his killing may be linked to racism.
“It was always mentioned, and it was always suspected,” said his niece, Heather Coggins, who still lives not far from where he was killed.
Now, more than three decades later, authorities say, it’s been confirmed.
A Georgia district attorney says Timothy Coggins, 23, was killed for “socializing with a white female.” Prosecutor Ben Coker told a judge Wednesday that Coggins was dragged behind a truck through the woods. Arrest warrants say he was stabbed and sliced to death and suffered “severely disfiguring” wounds.
A break came in October, when law enforcement officials arrested five local residents on charges stemming from the slaying.
All are white; two worked in law enforcement.
Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix said at an Oct. 13 news conference in Griffin, about 40 miles south of Atlanta, that based on evidence and interviews “there is no doubt in the minds of all investigators involved that the crime was racially motivated.”
Two men are charged with murder: Frankie Gebhardt, 59, and Bill Moore Sr., 58. Arrest warrants accuse them of stabbing and slicing Coggins to death and giving him “seriously disfiguring” wounds.
Moore and Gebhardt were just a year or two older than the victim, and Heather Coggins says she believes her uncle was acquainted with them. But she said the rest of the family didn’t know them.
“This is the first time we’ve heard their names and seen their faces,” she said in a recent interview.
Three other suspects — Sandra Bunn, 58; her son Lamar Bunn; and Gregory Huffman, 47 — are charged with obstruction. Sandra Bunn worked as a Spalding County detention officer until her arrest, when the sheriff fired her. Huffman was also a detention officer and later a police officer in nearby Milner. He’s charged with revealing the identity of a confidential informant who was being used against Gebhardt.
Officials haven’t detailed the suspects’ connections with each other, but court records show Sandra Bunn sued Gebhardt in 2003 to have him evicted from a property she owned. Gebhardt has been convicted in the past of aggravated assault and criminal damage, both felonies, along with multiple misdemeanors, records show.
Coker said he will seek indictments in December but hasn’t decided whether to seek the death penalty against Moore and Gebhardt.
Heather Coggins was just 6 years old when her uncle was killed, but she still tears up at how his slaying wracked her large extended family, longtime residents of the community, with “uncertainty, heartbreak, fear.”
His mother was burdened by his slaying until she died in February 2016. She called out his name on her death bed, Heather Coggins said.
“I really don’t think my grandmother ever recovered from losing her son … not because of his death, but because of the uncertainty of who did it,” she said. “She felt like justice wasn’t done.”