The murder of Timothy Coggins
Sunny Side, Spalding County, Georgia · 1983
Overview
Timothy Coggins was a 23-year-old Black man who was abducted and brutally murdered in October 1983 near Sunny Side in Spalding County, Georgia, in a racially motivated killing. Prosecutors said Coggins was targeted by two white men, Franklin George 'Frankie' Gebhardt and his brother-in-law William 'Bill' Moore Sr., because he had been socializing with a white woman, a transgression the men viewed as a violation of the rigid racial order they wanted to enforce. Coggins was stabbed more than thirty times, his lungs were punctured, he was mutilated, and his body was tied with a logging chain to the back of a truck and dragged across a field off a rural road. His body was found on October 9, 1983, near a power line in Sunny Side, a small community south of Atlanta. The original investigation stalled within weeks, in part because those involved intimidated potential witnesses and because, as later evidence showed, the local sheriff's office of that era had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The case stayed cold for more than three decades. It was solved not by DNA or forensic science but by criminal informants: while serving prison time on other charges, Gebhardt repeatedly bragged to fellow inmates and associates that he had killed a Black man, and roughly half a dozen of those men, including a former cellmate and one informant who wore a recording device while in a cell with Gebhardt, eventually came forward and testified. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Spalding County Sheriff's Office reopened the case in December 2016, made arrests in October 2017, and on June 26, 2018, a jury convicted Gebhardt of malice murder and other counts. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. Moore pleaded guilty in August 2018 to voluntary manslaughter and concealing a death and was sentenced to 20 years; Moore died in prison in 2021.
How it was solved
The murder of Timothy Coggins was solved primarily through criminal informants, men who had heard Franklin Gebhardt brag about the killing while behind bars and who finally agreed to repeat what they had heard in a court of law. There was no DNA breakthrough and no genetic-genealogy match; the case turned on the words of fellow inmates and criminal associates, corroborated by physical evidence recovered decades after the crime. In 1983, Coggins, a 23-year-old Black man, was stabbed, mutilated, and dragged behind a truck near Sunny Side in Spalding County, and his body was left in a field. The first investigation collapsed quickly. Witnesses were afraid, some were intimidated, and a later-discovered sheriff's deputy diary indicated that the Ku Klux Klan had infiltrated local law enforcement at the time, helping explain why the case was effectively abandoned. For more than thirty years no one was charged. The path to a courtroom reopened in 2016. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent, Jared Coleman, re-examined the long-dormant file, and newly elected Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix made the case a priority. Investigators discovered that Gebhardt had not kept his crime secret. Over the years, while he was incarcerated on other charges, he had boasted to other prisoners and to people he knew that he had killed a Black man, never using Coggins' name but using a racial slur, and treating the killing, in one investigator's words, as a badge of honor. Detectives located these men and persuaded them to testify. By the time of trial, six to seven witnesses were prepared to swear that Gebhardt had confessed to them. Their backgrounds were exactly what one would expect of jailhouse informants and criminal associates: among them were a convicted child molester, a man affiliated with white-supremacist groups, and a man who had been jailed on methamphetamine charges. One informant, Christopher Vaughn, even wore a concealed recording device while placed in a cell with Gebhardt. A former cellmate testified that Gebhardt had bragged in graphic detail about how Coggins was mutilated. The defense attacked these witnesses as opportunistic informants with criminal records and motives to curry favor, a standard and fair challenge to jailhouse testimony, but the jury found the consistent pattern of confessions credible, especially alongside corroborating physical evidence. Investigators used a Hydrovac system to excavate an old well on Gebhardt's property, the first time such a method had been used for a well excavation in Georgia; from it they recovered a knife, a chain, a white tank top, and shoes. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Spalding County Sheriff's Office announced the reopening in December 2016 and, in October 2017, arrested five people, including Gebhardt and Moore on murder-related counts and two former officers on obstruction charges connected to interference with the investigation. On June 26, 2018, after a trial in which the informant testimony was central, a Spalding County jury found Franklin Gebhardt guilty of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, and concealing the death of another. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. On August 16, 2018, William Moore Sr. pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and concealing the death of another and was sentenced to 20 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation, a negotiated plea reached with the consent of the Coggins family. Moore died at Augusta State Medical Prison in October 2021 at age 62. The case is widely regarded as one of the oldest cold-case murders in Georgia history to result in a conviction.
Sources
- Conviction in 1983 Cold Case Murder of Timothy Coggins
“On June 26, 2018, Franklin Gebhardt was found guilty of Malice Murder, Felony Murder, Aggravated Battery, Aggravated Assault, and Concealing the Death of Another and was sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison. On August 16, 2018, William Moore pled guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter and Concealing the Death of Another and was sentenced to 20 years to serve followed by 10 years probation.”
- Georgia police arrest 5 in 1983 cold case slaying
“On Oct. 9, 1983, 23-year-old Timothy Coggins was found dead on a power line in Sunny Side, Georgia. In October 2017, authorities arrested five people in connection with the killing, closing the cold case almost 34 years to the day after he was brutally murdered and his body abandoned.”
- Georgia man goes on trial for racially charged 1983 slaying of Timothy Coggins
“Gebhardt and Moore were accused of slicing and stabbing Timothy Coggins and tying him with a logging chain to the back of a truck before dragging him up and down a field off a rural road. Prosecutors say the men killed Coggins, who was 23, because he had been socializing with a white woman.”
- Georgia man gets life in prison in racially motivated cold case murder
“A Spalding County jury convicted Frankie Gebhardt of five counts, including felony murder, aggravated assault and concealing a death, in the October 1983 slaying of Timothy Coggins, putting him behind bars for life plus 30 years.”
- How the racially-motivated cold case murder of a young Black man was finally solved decades later
“Timothy Coggins was a 23-year-old Black man tortured, stabbed, chained to a vehicle and dragged before his body was dumped near Sunny Side, Georgia, in October 1983. A discovered 1982 sheriff's deputy diary revealed Ku Klux Klan infiltration of local law enforcement, providing context for the initial investigation's failure.”
- The Hate Crime Solved After 34 Years
“Gebhardt and his brother-in-law William Moore Sr., while serving time in a Georgia penitentiary on aggravated assault charges, made chilling boasts to fellow inmates, recounting how they had once killed a Black man in cold blood. About 18 months before, a witness filled in the gaps, Sheriff Darrell Dix said; police then interviewed over 60 people before arresting five suspects in October 2017.”
- Five Men And Women Arrested In Connection With 34-Year-Old Murder
“Investigators convinced witnesses to swear in court that Gebhardt had confessed to the murder. Those witnesses included a child molester, a neo-Nazi and a man jailed for methamphetamine, and they testified that Gebhardt bragged about killing Coggins, whom he never referred to by name, but by a racial slur.”
- Defendant in Coggins case dies in prison
“William 'Bill' Moore Sr., 62, died at Augusta State Medical Prison while serving a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty to felony manslaughter and felony concealing the death of another in the 1983 murder of Timothy Coggins. Frankie Gebhardt is serving a sentence of life plus 30 years at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville.”
- Unspeakable Horror: Georgia Prosecutors Bring Racially-Motivated Timothy Coggins Cold-Case Murder to Jurors
“The prosecutor told jurors the defendant acknowledged his involvement to multiple people who would testify from the stand. Other key state witnesses are jailhouse informants with conflicts of interest, the defense said.”