INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The pair stabbed Coggins more than 30 times, leaving a patchwork of bloody Xes.In Franklin Gebhardt's eyes, Timothy Coggins's crime was
simple: Coggins was a black man who was dating a white woman.And so one night in the fall of 1983, Gebhardt and his brother-in-law, William
Moore, lured Coggins into a car parked across the street from a dance club frequented by African Americans in Sunnyside, Georgia - the first
step in carrying out the 23-year-old's killing.The pair stabbed Coggins more than 30 times, leaving a patchwork of bloody Xes on the young
man's skin, prosecutors said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Then, the two white men chained Coggins to the back of a pickup truck, took him to a desolate part of town, and dragged him across the
asphalt until he stopped moving.Coggins's corpse was so badly damaged that investigators at first had difficulty identifying him."We don't
know whether this person was local or a transient," an investigator told the local paper, according to clipping later tweeted by a CNN
"About all that's known for certain is that the victim died a violent death."It was, Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix later told the
Journal Constitution, a slaying so heinous that it "appeared to be sending a message."Gebhardt and Moore boasted to their buddies that the
killing of a black man in cold blood was a public service."They were proud of what they had done," Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special
Agent Jared Coleman would eventually tell a jury, according to the Journal Constitution
"They felt like they were protecting the white race from black people."Authorities combed through missing persons reports before identifying
Coggins a day after his bloody remains were found in a grassy ditch.But no witnesses came forward, police exhausted their leads, and the
case went cold - even though one of Coggins's killers openly bragged about the time he killed a black man with impunity."If you keep on
you're going to wind up like that [n-word] in the ditch," Gebhardt once told a girlfriend, the GBI's Coleman told jurors, according to the
Journal Constitution.Threats like that, investigators said, contributed to a cone of silence that kept the case cold for years."Gebhardt has
said both in jail calls and in interviews that if you give me a name of witnesses they won't testify," prosecutor Marie Broder said.Gebhardt
and his brother-in-law were laborers at a pulp mill, but had reputations as toughs with nasty, racist streaks - and rap sheets: Gebhardt had
been charged with aggravated assault several times and had spent time in a Georgia penitentiary.They also had friends in key places.Two of
them - Gregory Huffman and Lamar Bunn - were law enforcement officers when Gebhardt and Moore were eventually arrested, CNN reported
Huffman is accused of revealing the identity of a confidential informant who was being used against Gebhardt, the Associated Press reported
Bunn previously worked for the Spalding County Sheriff's Office and was employed as an officer at another department when Gebhardt was
arrested.As WSB Radio reported, half the evidence in the Coggins investigation disappeared over the years.And as those years passed, there
were no breaks in the case.To Coggins's family, it was a three-decade slap in the face: The feeling that the whole community cared nothing
for his gruesome death.The break finally came a year ago, when authorities said they received new information that prompted a deeper look
into the case.Investigators were able to find people to whom Gebhardt had bragged in prison
Defense attorneys countered that those key witnesses had their own checkered pasts, and that they were cooperating solely because
prosecutors had struck deals for reduced sentences.But in court testimony, they relayed things that only the true killer would know, the
Journal Constitution reported.In the end, it took the jury just six hours to return the guilty verdict the family had wanted for
decades.Gebhardt was convicted of committing a murder that was driven by racial hatred."We've waited for 34 years to even be here today,"
Coggins' niece, Heather Coggins, said to NBC News
"We never thought that we would be here
We thought Tim had been forgotten."
