Men Charged With Murdering Black Man Because He "Socialized With A White Woman!"

When a young black man was found slain outside Griffin, Georgia, in 1983, his family was too traumatized to put a headstone on his grave. Not knowing who killed Timothy Wayne Coggins or if the killer might come back to vandalize a well-marked burial site, they held a hurried, fearful funeral and left it unadorned, his niece Heather Coggins said.

Now, 34 years later, after two white men have been charged in the racially-tinged cold-case, Timothy Coggins' grave has finally been marked with his name. The Coggins family unveiled the new headstone Saturday at their home church in Zebulon, Georgia, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Atlanta.

"This has been a very dark cloud on our family. But today we can see the sun will shine again," said Tyrone Coggins, a brother of the slain man, during a rousing, 90-minute memorial service at Fuller's Chapel United Methodist Church. Timothy Coggins' body was found by hunters in a field not far from a highway in the Sunny Side community a few miles north of Griffin.

The killing remained unsolved until last October when authorities announced the arrests of 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. At a hearing in November, a prosecutor said Coggins was also dragged through the woods behind a pickup truck. Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Ben Coker said the 23-year-old Coggins was killed because he had been "socializing with a white female."
Posted By Joe