Sheriff: Hate a possible motive in 1983 cold case; tip points to new suspects
SPALDING COUNTY, Ga. -- A sheriff says investigators received a tip pointing them to new suspects in the 1983 murder of a 23-year-old man found on a power line in a small Georgia town, reports CBS affiliate WGCL.
"It was just a horrible, torturous death that we can't release the details of it now," Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix said of the final moments of Timothy Coggins' life. "But we know that the people or person who committed this crime, they know what they did and that's what's important right now. And now we know."
In June of this year, investigators began re-examining the case and interviewing potential witnesses after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation received a tip related to the case, Dix said.
"Those people need to understand that we're coming for them, we're coming for them," Dix said. "If this crime occurred in 2017 it would without a doubt be classified as a hate crime."
Dix didn't elaborate on what has been learned since the murder in tiny Sunny Side, Georgia that meets today's definition of hate crime, but he said there have been witnesses who have been afraid to come forward.
"The people that we suspect of this crime, we have received information that they have been threatening witnesses and threatening to intimidate witnesses, and have been doing that for a number of years," Dix said.
Dix believes that there are people with pertinent information regarding this case that are still out there and he is asking them to come forward.
"I feel right now that we are closer than the Spalding County Sheriff's Office was 34 years ago, by far," Dix said.