A former Kansas police chief has been charged with a felony for allegedly tampering with an investigation into his raid on a small-town newspaper’s office. Gideon Cody is facing one count of interfering with a judicial process, according to Marion County court records. Special prosecutor Barry R. Wilkerson, one of the two prosecutors assigned to the case, accused Cody of influencing a witness to withhold information. As of now, no attorney has been listed for Cody, and he could not be reached for comment.
The incident stems from a raid that took place on August 11, 2023, involving the newsroom of the Marion County Record and the home of its editor and publisher, Eric Meyer. This raid drew significant national attention to the small county, located about 60 miles north of Wichita, and sparked outrage from press freedom advocates.
The situation began with a local divorce case, where a restaurant owner falsely claimed that a reporter from the newspaper had illegally obtained damaging information about an old DUI conviction and was planning to publish it. The Marion Police Department, led by Cody at the time, initiated a criminal investigation based on these claims.
Cody told a judge that the reporter had accessed the restaurant owner’s driving record from a state database, something that could only be done by either impersonating the victim or lying about the reasons for requesting the record. This led the judge to sign a warrant allowing the police to seize the newspaper’s files.
However, last week, special prosecutors Wilkerson and Marc Bennett released a 124-page report concluding that the reporter had done nothing illegal. They also revealed that Cody had asked the restaurant owner to delete text messages between them because he was worried people might think their relationship was more than just friendly.
Eric Meyer, the publisher of the newspaper, expressed disappointment that Cody was only being charged for actions after the raid, rather than for the raid itself. Meyer emphasized that the prosecutors had clearly established that the newspaper had committed no crime and that the raid should never have happened.
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In a related matter, the newspaper’s publisher filed a federal lawsuit in April, claiming that the stress from the raid led to the sudden death of his 98-year-old mother, Joan, who co-owned the paper and lived with him.
