TOPEKA, Kansas — A former central Kansas police chief who led a raid on a weekly magazine last year has been charged with obstruction of justice and is accused of trying to induce a potential witness into an investigation into his conduct in which he withheld information from authorities.
The sole charge against former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody alleges that he knowingly influenced the witness to withhold information on the day of the raid on the Marion County Record and the publisher’s home or sometime within six days afterward. The complaint was filed Monday in state District Court in Marion County and is not more specific about Cody’s alleged conduct.
However, a report by two special prosecutors last week referred to text messages between Cody and the business owner after the raid. The business owner has said that Cody asked her to delete text messages She was concerned that people would get the wrong impression of their relationship, which she believed was professional and platonic.
Cody justified the raid by saying he had evidence that the newspaper, its publisher Eric Meyer, and one of its reporters, Phyllis Zorn, had committed identity fraud or other computer crimes when verifying the authenticity of a copy of the business owner’s state driver’s license that had been provided to the newspaper by an acquaintance. The business owner was seeking approval from the Marion City Council for a liquor license, and records showed that she may have been driving without a valid license for years. She later got her license back.
The prosecutors’ report concluded that no crime had been committed by Meyer, Zorn or the newspaper and that Cody drew an incorrect conclusion about their conduct because of a poor investigation. The charges were filed 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 a possible cellphone number for Cody, and it was not immediately returned Tuesday. Attorneys representing Cody in a federal lawsuit over the raid are not representing him in the criminal case and did not immediately know who was representing him.
Police bodycam footage of the raid on the publisher’s home in August 2023, his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, is visibly upset and tells officers, “Get out of my house!” She was a co-owner of the newspaper, lived with her son, and died of a heart attack the following afternoon.
Prosecutors said they could not charge Cody or other officers involved in the raid with her death because there was no evidence that led them to believe the raid posed a risk to her life. Eric Meyer has blamed the stress of the raid for her death.