This image from Marion, Kansas Police Department body camera footage provided by the Law Offices of McDonald Tinker shows former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody on August 11, 2023 in Marion, Kansas. City of Lyons raids Marion County Record newspaper.
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TOPEKA, Kan. — The former central Kansas police chief who led a raid on a weekly newspaper last year has been charged with felony obstruction of justice and accused of persuading a potential witness to investigate him for withholding information from authorities.
An indictment against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody alleges that he knowingly or knowingly committed a crime on the day the Marion County Record and its publisher’s home was raided or at some time within the next six days. Influencing witnesses to conceal information. The charge, filed Monday in Marion County State District Court, does not provide more specific details about Cody’s alleged conduct.
However, a report last week by two special prosecutors cited text messages between Cody and the business owner after the raid. The business owner said Cody asked her to delete text messages between them out of concern people would get the wrong idea about their relationship, which she said was professional and platonic.
Cody defended the raid, saying he had evidence that the paper, publisher Eric Meyer and its reporter Phyllis Zorn were verifying business owners who provided information to the paper The authenticity of a copy of your state driving record when identity theft or other computer crime is committed. The business owner is seeking Marion City Council approval for a liquor license, and records show she may have been driving without a valid license for years. However, she later had her license reinstated.
The prosecutor’s report concluded that Meyer, Zorn or the newspaper did not commit any crimes and that Cody drew the wrong conclusions about their actions due to a poor investigation. The charge was brought by one of the special prosecutors, Barry Wilkerson, the top prosecutor in Riley County in northeastern Kansas.
The Associated Press left a message seeking comment on Cody’s possible cell phone number but did not immediately receive a response Tuesday. The attorney representing Cody in the federal lawsuit over the raid is not representing him in the criminal case, and it’s unclear who is.
Body camera footage from a police raid on the publisher’s home in August 2023 shows the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, visibly upset and telling police: “Get out of my house!” She was there The co-owner of the newspaper, who lived with his son, died of a heart attack the next afternoon.
Prosecutors said they could not charge Cody or the other officers involved in the raid in connection with Cody’s death because there was no evidence they believed the raid posed a threat to her life. Eric Meyer blamed her death on the stress of the raid.
