The Cheat Sheet: Paupers and Publicity

[00:00:00] The world is a complicated place, troubling issues often echo throughout history.

[00:00:05] That's something we know all too well from reporting on various crimes.

[00:00:09] But often, it's really helpful to engage with a show that can take you back in time,

[00:00:14] to help unspool the pressing issues of today.

[00:00:16] How did we get here? That's the central question of NPR's Throughline.

[00:00:21] This is a show we both love to listen to Throughline from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:41] As a professional welder, Shana Ford uses ForgeFX to practice over and over, which helps

[00:01:47] her improve her skills. about. Two we've covered before. One is completely new to us. One is based in Indiana, another in Idaho, and the third in Ohio. So let's get started. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:03:00] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into

[00:03:05] murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet. of Joshua Farmer. This is a man who is accused of gunning down and murdering his ex-wife, Kayla Farmer. Now this is a pretty horrifying case. Joshua Farmer is accused of exhibiting stalking behavior, stalking this woman who was the mother

[00:04:21] of his children and prior to this incident also physically abusing her him in the case of physical abuse against her and one of their sons. So when somebody who is a witness or who is involved in bringing charges against a perpetrator, a defendant, is murdered by said defendant, courts take that more seriously because it's...

[00:05:40] That's a threat to the integrity of the justice system.

[00:05:43] If somebody can just get rid of the problems, you know, seemingly led to this horrific conclusion. So what's going on in this case?

[00:07:01] Well, there's been a couple of updates

[00:07:02] that I wanted to flag with our audience.

[00:07:04] Also, sorry if my voice sounds weird,

[00:07:06] we're both kind of read in between the lines there? Sure. And jumping from a vehicle, and number two, the victim being a witness against the defendant. So he's saying, same stuff, but we want a different penalty. So, I mean, the death penalty, obviously, it's a highly politicized issue sometimes, but in addition to that, the death penalty is very cumbersome.

[00:09:42] It's unwieldy.

[00:09:44] It's a lot of the older terms for that. But essentially it's public defense. And I don't know, I feel like in true crime, public defenders often get slammed a lot.

[00:11:00] Like they're not good.

[00:11:02] And I think, I mean, we've talked to a lot of public

[00:11:05] defenders on the show, but they also are private attorneys for a number of other clients. Right. There could be a quality of work they're doing for their public defense clients, such as Richard Allen is comparable to the quality of work

[00:12:23] they give to their private clients.

[00:12:25] That's a really good point. and Zana Kernodle. Very scary, horrifying case. The prosecution is saying, this is a stranger who showed up at these students' house, got inside and murdered four of them. The defense is obviously gonna be fighting for Coburger and saying, maybe there's someone else who did it.

[00:13:40] And as part of their efforts to fight for Coburger,

[00:13:43] as you put it, they back have heard in the street, maybe things they heard on a podcast, maybe things they read in a newspaper. And so this becomes an issue when you have cases that get a lot of publicity. If you have a case in a relatively small area that is becomes notorious in that area and

[00:15:03] everybody's talking about it and you hear it about. Like, you know, if Kevin's accused of murder and then there's a bunch of local news articles like this guy is a jerk and a bad tipper, you know, like that's, which is not true obviously,

[00:16:24] but also you're not a murderer, but that's the sort of thing that could bias a juror. And as a new member, you can try out Audible Free for 30 days. This is a valuable membership that gives you access to many new listening experiences. One novel I'm looking forward to listening to is A Wicked Snow by Greg Olson, as narrated by Karen Peakes. This one's all about a young crime scene investigator haunted by her mother's mysterious

[00:17:41] murder.

[00:17:42] I love spine-tingling thrillers and mysteries, and I can tell that this one is going to be

[00:17:46] spooky in the trial as much. So maybe they're coming into this cold. Even a state as small as Indiana is has different media markets. You have the Indianapolis media market in the middle of the state. You have a media market more associated with Chicago in the northern part of the

[00:19:03] state. You have media markets more associated with Louisville down in the

[00:19:07] southern parts of the state.

[00:20:03] So they could move it a couple counties over in Idaho. I still think there might be some issues.

[00:20:06] And I think that's just kind of the reality now.

[00:20:11] I think it's going to be important as long as what deer works out.

[00:20:15] And they make sure that they don't get anyone who has some sort of bias.

[00:20:18] But so what's interesting is the defense said we need to have a fair trial for Mr.

[00:20:24] Kolberger. We need a change of venue. should note that is a little bit more nuanced and has less to do with the internet and more to do with maybe the old-fashioned view of pretrial publicity. I can see where Anne Taylor, she's the lead public defender on on Co-Burger's case, I could see them arguing. I don't really know how relevant that is because I imagine in most situations people don't want to just go for the first guy who gets accused, they want to go where the evidence is. Regardless, you don't, it's not justice if the wrong guy goes to

[00:23:00] prison, but, you know, it's fictitious, some anywhere in between, where people talk about Kohlberger, their alleged interactions with him. What was he like? How did he treat women? How did he do this? How did he do this? And a lot of this is unverifiable gossip,

[00:24:20] and you don't want that sort of thing

[00:24:23] in the minds of jurors

[00:24:25] who are deciding his ultimate fate.

[00:24:27] Absolutely. were bad or stupid or anything, it's just natural. You know, you, okay, well, this guy sounds like he's guilty or this guy sounds like he's totally innocent. And when you're dealing with people who are hearing the facts for the first time, those people are able to set aside any sort of, they don't have any biases to set aside. They're just coming into it cold and they're hearing about it and they're hearing about

[00:25:42] the right information.

[00:25:43] They're hearing about the facts that are introduced the experts and sort of discuss it and present it in that way. So hopefully we can make that happen soon. Kohberger of Steve's experience extends beyond a challenge to the methodology at issue to include assessing every avenue of litigation to block or neutralize DNA science evidence. All of this speaks clearly to

[00:28:23] trying to do everything they can to tear down the investigative genetic genealogy material. And he's basically, his reasoning is like, give it to the people that we've already approved of Larkin, Mercer and Barlow and then, you know, give us more examples on what you need to show investigators and why.

[00:29:41] He's keeping an open mind is what he says.

[00:29:43] So investigative genetic genealogies is very was noted in the Dayton Daily News just as a little sometimes they like list divorces happening. And it was by some accounts by some media

[00:31:05] accounts becoming a bit contentious. She wanted custody if Cheryl were to die, would she want to have a permanent relationship with Bill? Pretty bizarre thing to text. And detectives have said in the Dayton Daily News newspaper, which did excellent coverage of this case, by the way, they're not convinced that she actually sent that.

[00:33:21] Nothing bad about that. But Bill also brought along his girlfriend.

[00:33:25] Now family members have told the media

[00:33:26] that they don't think that Cheryl knew about that

[00:33:29] because she wouldn't have allowed it.

[00:33:31] She would have felt uncomfortable about that,

[00:33:33] or uncomfortable to say the least.

[00:33:36] They get back on Monday, October 1st that evening.

[00:33:40] The next morning, Cheryl disappears.

[00:33:44] So October 2nd, 2018, Cheryl left the house

[00:34:46] But police have other surveillance footage from that morning and that captures what they believe the person, they believe the person who was driving that car, a person dressed all in black,

[00:34:52] their hoods up, they're wearing white gloves and all black. And they say one of the surveillance

[00:35:00] footage shows the person walking towards Burkhardt Road at around 11 13 a.m. that morning.

[00:36:02] You know, her sister wouldn't leave her daughter like that.

[00:36:04] Keenan is the one to report her missing.

[00:36:11] The family, I imagine minus Bill, that the next day track down her

[00:36:17] Cheryl's vehicle using a find my iPhone app and police search it.

[00:36:20] They find Cheryl's phone in her backpack in the car.

[00:36:22] And that again doesn't sit right with anybody.

[00:36:24] She carried her phone everywhere. That doesn't make any sense.

[00:36:25] There's no sign of a break into the car. And he ultimately, in 2019, he is named as a suspect. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a shock. So he's named as a suspect on February 15th, 2019. Riverside police identify him as a suspect. And they also say that they believe Cheryl is dead and that she was not abducted by a stranger. News reports uncovered affidavits for search warrants for the Coker household.

[00:37:44] The Dayton Daily News reported on these,

[00:38:44] skeleton in Greene County, Ohio. And this was on private property off a road.

[00:38:48] They were not buried.

[00:38:50] The 911 call from the mushroom hunter

[00:38:52] includes a description as basically seeing a skeleton

[00:38:55] that appeared to be wearing cloth

[00:38:57] resembling pants and a sweatshirt.

[00:38:59] Now the Montgomery County coroner's office

[00:39:01] ultimately used dental records and surgical records

[00:39:04] to identify this body.

[00:39:05] These remains as Cheryl. stated that he believes that Coker was the last one in the house with her. Obviously, a lot of this points at Bill Coker. That being said, he has not been charged with a crime. He's very much innocent until proving guilty, especially in the absence of any charges. But I imagine that it's certainly understandable for a lot of us

[00:40:21] that Cheryl Coker's family members feel that he knows far more than he is saying,

[00:40:27] despite his repeated denials. you know, we reviewed a lot of their coverage on newspapers.com. So definitely check them out. They're doing a wonderful job keeping their readers updated about this troubling case. So that's all for the cheat sheet today. Thank you all so much for listening and putting up with my weird voice. I appreciate everybody's patience while I get over this little head cold. But

[00:41:42] thank you for listening and stay tuned for next week.