Former police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper hit with felony charge

Gideon Cody appears in footage from inside Marion County Record newspaper office during raid in August (KSHB/YouTube).

Gideon Cody appears in footage from inside Marion County Record newspaper office during raid in August (KSHB/YouTube).

Former Kansas police chief Gideon Cody has been charged with felony obstruction of justice in connection to an August 2023 raid of the local weekly newspaper The Marion County Record.

Cody also faces a single charge of interference with the judicial process.

He resigned in October 2023 after police bodycam footage showed him rifling through Marion County Record documents pertaining to himself both at the newspaper’s offices and at the publisher’s home. As Law&Crime reported, Cody ordered the raid on the paper. Marion County Attorney Joel Ensey determined that prior to Cody’s resignation there was “insufficient evidence” to justify the raid and seizure of records from the newspaper’s office as well as from the home.

The Marion County Record is owned by Eric Meyer, but at the time of the raid, he shared ownership with his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer. She was present at the home during the ransacking by Cody and a small throng of officers. She died the next day after having a heart attack.

Joan Meyer had forewarned the police that the stress of their conduct and raiding of her home would kill her, and as Law&Crime previously reported, Eric Meyer ended up suing Cody, Marion’s current police chief Zach Hudin, the county’s board of commissioners, the former mayor of Marion David Mayfield and several others in a sprawling lawsuit after her death.

Notably, the Meyers were not the only ones raided. A raid was also done by police at the home of Ruth Herbel, a Marion City Council board member.

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