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#InTheColdDarkNight, a special documentary on 20/20, starting now on ABC. A thread here
My involvement on this project began with a random drinks, years ago, with @morsels - who knew my work on race and policing, and whose documentary on Amanda Knox was one of my favorites. We vowed to figure out a way to work together. #InTheColdDarkNight is our first collab
This scene, with former sheriff's deputy Oscar Jordan, at the place of where Timothy Coggins was killed, is in my opinion among the most powerful. It provides the title of the documentary. I can never shake his word "This is the place" #InTheColdDarkNight
Spalding sheriff Darrell Dix gets at a major issues when it comes to distrust between black Americans and the police: for all of American history, murders like those of Timothy Coggins were allowed to happen without the killers ever being brought to justice #InTheColdDarkNight
Heritage or hate? Timothy Coggins' killers carved an "X" into his abdomen -- meant to symbolize the Confederate battle flag #InTheColdDarkNight
After Timothy Coggins was murdered, his family faced a series of threats: a bloody t-shirt left in the school bus his stepfather drove each day, a brick through the window, an ominous phone call, a dead dog left at their home #InTheColdDarkNight
Hank Klibanoff is one of my journalism heroes. An amazing man who has done a lifetime of amazing work ("The Race Beat" is a must read for any journalist). Love that his expertise is featured in this doc #InTheColdDarkNight
As the Spalding County sheriff's searched for missing evidence in the Timothy Coggins lynching, they stumbled across a notebook from a former deputy who documented that at the time of Coggins' murder, several sheriff's deputies were members of the local Klan #InTheColdDarkNight
Sheriff Dix: "Back then (1983), racism and white supremacy were almost accepted as norms in the parts of the South" #InTheColdDarkNight
Timothy Coggins had bragged to friends about the beautiful white woman he was dating. They warned he was flirting with danger. On the last night of his life, he went to the People's Choice - a popular black nightclub in Griffin, Ga. #InTheColdDarkNight https://twitter.com/ABC2020/status/1284297082719711233
Today, the People’s Choice is boarded up and covered with weeds. Back then, fall of ‘83, it was the place to be. And Timothy Coggins was often found at the center of the dance floor #InTheColdDarkNight
Timothy Coggins had been dating a white woman. It's impossible to divorce his murder from the role of white anger at black men sleeping with white women that has colored the history of American lynchings #InTheColdDarkNight
While Timothy Coggins' lynching had initially been blown off by police, the cold case file eventually landed on the desk of @GBI_GA agent Jared Coleman. His efforts to re-interview witnesses are what cracked this case #InTheColdDarkNight
As GBI agent Jared Coleman reinvestigated the case, he found a ton of people who claimed Frankie Gephardt had bragged to them about killing Timothy Coggins. It was enough to file charges -- but they still needed to find physical evidence #InTheColdDarkNight
Marie Broder, one of the local prosecutors, was stunned by how little physical evidence they had. Her and Coleman began working to figure out how to fix that. Then they figured it out: Gephardt's well #InTheColdDarkNight
