Anatomy of Murder - The Reading Man (Warren Barnes)

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

A chilling discovery and call to police led to a murder that shocks the conscience. Recorded statements became critical evidence at trial.        View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/the-reading-man-warren-barnes Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Let's start back at the beginning and go slow and tell me as many details as you can remember. It's murder. I mean, I'm going to jail for 20, probably, seconds. So I figured, I fight it. Okay. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Sometimes the quest to understand the motivations behind a homicide is an attempt to know the unknowable.

Why does a killer kill? Oftentimes it's money, other times revenge. But in some instances, the motive is so dark and so twisted, it defies rational explanation. And it's those cases that can prove the most confounding and most frightening because without understanding the why behind a murder, it's difficult to know whether there was ever anything that anyone could have done to stop it. Many of those very questions and issues come up in today's case, a gruesome, cold-blooded murder that is disturbing even by AOM standards. This story is also unique because it contains an unusually large amount of recorded material from various sources, including 911 calls, police body cams, and interview footage with

the suspect himself. So if you don't hear as much from us today as you're used to, you'll soon know why. The events in question took place in Grand Junction, Colorado in February of 2021. To help us tell the story, we're joined by Trish Mayer, who is an assistant DA for the 21st Judicial District in Mesa County, a picturesque part of the country on the western slope of Colorado near the Utah border. We're located halfway between Denver and Salt Lake. We're called Grand Junction because we're the junction of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. It is kind of big, but we're still just a small town feeling.

We don't have a lot of features of the big city. Which means it's a community that doesn't have a particularly high crime rate, but no amount of experience could have prepared local law enforcement for the dark events of that February. Around 2 a.m. on February 27, 2021, the Grand Junction Police in Colorado responded to a report of a vehicle partially submerged in the water at the Blue Heron boat ramp along the Colorado River. The driver of the car was 19-year-old Brian Cohey, Jr., who had narrowly escaped the sinking vehicle as it began filling with water. He was saturated and cold. It was pretty chilly that evening. He ended up getting out of the river himself, but his car was still left in the river. And he ended up walking out to the public roadway and sort of flagging somebody down.

When officers arrived at the scene, they helped the shaken teenager and his parents assess the damage and call a tow truck to attempt to drag the car from the river. I don't think they thought much of why this happened, except the fact that Brian Cohey was kind of a teenager with bad driving and got himself in a bad situation. According to Brian Jr., he had been driving around and had parked on the boat ramp to, quote, clear his head when the car had started rolling backwards into the river. He managed to escape just in time. A quick wellness check proved that Brian was okay and he was sent home with no apparent injuries except, perhaps, to his pride. His parents,

however, stuck around at the scene. They were witness to the first of what would prove to be several disturbing discoveries. The officer's body cam footage captured what happened next in real time. I have a quick question for you. Okay. This back bumper, I don't know if you can probably see it from here, it's a lot of red on the back of that. Drip it down at all a little bit. That's underneath the license plate, a little area right there.

Okay. Okay. A lot of red. It looks like blood. Blood? Yeah. Police had found what looked like blood on the bumper of the car. I don't know if your son hurt himself on his way out at all.

He might have, he just didn't know it. I don't know. Maybe just have him do like a self-check, make sure he's okay. His mom calls him and says, Brian, Brian, the police are wondering if there's blood on the car. Did you hurt yourself, Brian? Brian, are you OK? They see blood on the back bumper of the vehicle.

Really? Yeah, did you get hurt? No. Are you sure you don't have any injuries? No, I'm fine. There's blood on it. All right, but you're not injured. You don't have any injuries? No, I'm fine. There's blood on it. All right, but you're not injured. You don't have any cuts?

No, I don't know what we call blood or whatever it is on that bumper. Grand Junction police eventually arranged for the car to be towed from the river and transported back to the Cohey residence. But just a day later, they would be called back to the Cohey's home by one of the more distressing 911 calls you will ever hear. The call came in at 1.47 p.m. from Brian's mother, who was requesting immediate assistance at their home. She was in her son Brian's bedroom and had just made a terrible discovery. This is the first of several warnings we will make during today's episode about the graphic nature of this crime.

Now, I want to ask John to address the emergency. Hi, there is an emergency. I found something in my son's closet wrapped in a plastic bag. Okay, what was it? I think it's a human hood. It's a what? I think it's a human hood. Inside her son's closet, Mrs. Cohey had found a plastic trash bag.

And inside that bag, a severed human head. Why do you think it's that? Because it looks like it's on here. Is it all, is it bloody or is it like anything like that? I just need to come. Do I have to take a picture and send it to you? What's the address? Through frantic sobs, Terry

Cohey informed police that her son had just returned home from a friend's house and his father was keeping him in the front yard until police arrived. Is your son there now? He just pulled up. We wanted to make sure he was here before we called.

Mrs. Cohey also noted that Brian had long struggled with mental health issues and more recently had demonstrated a disturbing interest in morbid subjects. Do you have any type of mental issues? Yes, he's been, he has autism, ADHD, anxiety, and apparently a whole host of other stuff. He's had a little bit of a fascination with the morbid, but he was channeling it, I thought, into becoming a crime scene investigator, but not so much.

You know, the police are responding thinking a mother has probably mistaken something. Nobody would expect that this would turn out to be real. Nonetheless, the 911 dispatcher gathered as much information as he could in order to prepare first responders for the worst. Does he have any weapons in his room, or do you guys have any in the house? I don't know. I think that he has a shotgun, but we couldn't really remember immediately. Before he gets in his room, he's caught by the car now, so he has no idea that I know anything.

They're filming down Broadway right now. They're pretty close. What's captured on body-worn camera when the deputy sheriff arrives at the home is she's a screaming, crying mess. But as officers approached Brian Cohey Jr., he greeted them calmly at the end of the driveway. Deputy Thomas Duckenschneider rolls up. There's another officer following him. They both have body-worn cameras on, and they're basically saying, hey, your mom called the police. What's this about? What did your mom discover? His response was the first of what would soon be many chilling admissions. Parents have some concerns of some stuff they may have found in your room?

Yeah, I believe so. And what would it be? A human head and hands brian is standing there fairly calm and basically says she found a head a human head here deputy stuck in schneider's trying to figure out oh my gosh like this is going to be real do you have anything on he's going to cut poke hurts stick me anything without reaching for nothing don't reach for nothing. My phone and my wallet. Okay. Well, I'm going to have you face that way.

Put your hands on top of your head for me real quick. I just want to make sure you interlace your fingers for me real quick, all right? With the teenager now in custody, Brian's father led officers inside the home to the kitchen where Brian's mom had placed two garbage bags. First responders confirmed that they contained the severed head and the hands of an unidentified victim. And before we even get to the enormity of what officers were now faced with, let's just

think about the origin of that phone call. This is Brian Cohey's own parents, his mother calling the police to report these incredibly difficult discoveries that she believes her own child is involved in. And, you know, Scott, right there, that is the first step back that we really all need to think about and remember the reality of what we're discussing here. We're talking about a shock of a discovery and then the additional shock, Anastasia, of where it was discovered, whose room, and then it's your child. So picking up that phone, I can't imagine the thoughts in her head trying to imagine all along what was this the beginning of. But I would imagine it's important for the officers,

instead of reacting to what they're seeing or how serious of an issue this is right there with the defendant now in custody, it's about keeping him talking. If he's willing to continue that conversation about what had happened, why he did what he did, I think it's an important moment for them to be able to keep him in that talkative mode. It is their job to keep the situation under control, right? I mean, we all know that for law enforcement, for prosecutors, like you need to keep those feelings, which we all have because we're people inside when you're doing your job. And so for every reason you just said, Scott, like, yes, it is to keep everyone safe, Right. Because if this person just committed this crime, we know they're capable of an incredible amount of destruction. You have the parents there and who knows how that's going to go. So that's number one. But then, as you said, you know, it's thinking about the case.

And if this is going to be a homicide, which seems very clear at this point, It is how to build the evidence of that case for the prosecution. For all those reasons, it's really just keeping the situation under control. And they really did a great job with that, especially with what they were faced with. All right, Brian, we're headed to the sheriff's office. My friend was going to go with us, okay? They did not handcuff him at that moment in time because he was talking, and they were basically strategizing how to keep him cooperative. On the short drive to the police station, the officer's body camera continued to roll, capturing a brief but chilling comment from the suspect in the back seat.

It was under this bridge. The first of a long list of grisly details that Brian Cohey was about to share with Grand Junction Police. How did you get here? I murdered someone. Okay. When I went over there, I came back and I told my boss, I want this case. Within minutes, 19-year-old Brian Cohey Jr. was in police custody. But the long and twisted tale of how he ended up there was just beginning. In Grand Junction, Colorado, a distressed mother called police after discovering human remains in her teenage son's closet. I actually went over to the sheriff's office as soon as this happened. I was over there nearing time to when Brian Coe, he was brought in.

His parents were there and I remember his mother hysterical. Brian's mother went on to recount the traumatic details of her discovery. I was in his room cleaning up, putting some things away and he has a rubber made container in his closet. So I just kind of started digging through going, you know, what is this mess? And I saw a plastic bag, a white plastic trash bag. And I was like, what in the world does he have in here? Mrs. Cohey was running a daycare service out of her home, and incredibly, at the time of her discovery, the house was filled with children. I had a few little kids over, but I was watching.

So I called their parents, and I said, it's a family emergency. Please go pick up come home right away. And as their horrible realization snapped into focus, they immediately took action truth about their son had started to reveal itself the day before in the aftermath of the incident at the Blue Heron boat ramp. According to Mr. Cohey, inside the glove box, he also found a wallet. The license inside identified the owner as a man named Warren Barnes. Inside that wallet was also the number for a local business, which he called in hopes of finding the wallet's owner. I was like, hey, this is a weird call, but I've got a wallet here with so-and-so's name, and I'm hoping he works for you all, or he's in a, he's, he's, he's subbed him out or whatever. Oh, yeah, my wife, we've been missing him. Yes, he didn't show up today. With the fear rising in his stomach, Mr. Cohey called his son in for an explanation.

Call Brian. Brian, what's going on? Why is there a wall in the car? Okay, and he was so sincere and he planned to return it. What parent doesn't want to believe their own child? But considering the knife, the blood on the bumper, and the man's wallet in the glove box, Mr. Coe, he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew the terrible truth. A truth that Brian Cohey Jr. was about to lay out for investigators in frightening detail. What follows is actual audio from the interview with Brian Cohey Jr. just a short time after he was placed in custody at his home.

How did you get here? I murdered someone. just a short time after he was placed in custody at his home. How did you get here? I murdered someone. The officer asked how, and he said with a knife. He told the officer that he did it because he always wondered what killing somebody would feel like. Cohey went on to calmly provide a detailed narrative, revealing a chilling and callous act of extreme violence. Two of our most experienced detectives with the sheriff's office were involved in his interrogation. Investigator Berg knew this guy wants to talk. Let him talk.

And of course, as he talked, every word, every gesture, every smile would be recorded. And that video would provide not just an insight into the psyche of the suspect, but also an invaluable piece of evidence in any future trial. It was phenomenal from a prosecutor's point of view that that could be captured to show exactly what Brian Cohey looked like, what he sounded like, how he spoke and how he spoke about it so matter-of-factly. What's important to me is to learn as much about you and what you did as I can. Well, the more details you can give me, the better. I'm just trying to be cooperative. As you will hear, Cohey's polite demeanor was shockingly disconnected to the details of the story he was about to share. When he is interviewed at the Mesa County Sheriff's Office,

he laughed a little, he chuckled a little, he was proud, and he was ready to go to prison. I have a question. He was proud and he was ready to go to prison. I have a question. You send people who have committed crimes like me. Do we stay in this county jail or are we moved? It all depends on what the judge says. It's not easy to watch this video because honestly, it is the description of incredible cruelty told with a smile. As he's recounting the events of February 27th of 2021,

he was animated and even using the whiteboard behind him to diagram some details of his story. A story that started with him at home watching a movie with his parents before deciding to leave in his car with the intention of taking someone's life. I was cruising around for an hour, hour and a half. I filled up on gas halfway through. And I'm eventually driving underneath the bridge near the sheriff's office. Under the bridge, along some railroad tracks, Cohey spotted his target. So I go up, and as I'm looking, I see a large thing wrapped in a canvas. Okay. And I'm like, that's a homeless person.

Once again, a warning. The following recording gets very graphic. And just as disturbing is Cohe's callousness in the retelling. So I grab my knife. I put on three layers of gloves. I took the knife. I pulled back the canvas and I stabbed his neck. He was saying, what are you doing? What are you doing?

Why? And I just kept on stabbing his neck. At this point in the video from the interview room, Cohey actually begins to mime out his actions for police, getting on his knees to reenact the crime. I was straddled on top of him like this. Okay. And I couldn't fight back.

It was actually surprisingly easy. I was barely breaking a sweat. I thought, oh my God, he's going to be tough. But no, it was actually surprisingly easy. The reserve demonstrated by the investigators during Cohe's account is really testament to their professionalism and keeping it together for the case, and as their job requires. Because as they're listening, keep in mind that Cohe is clearly not only enjoying

his retelling of the murder, he was reliving it. During the time I was growling and making animalistic noises. Why were you doing that? I suppose it was a frenzy. Okay. I was so excited, so rushed up on adrenaline every day. Within just a few minutes of his interview, Brian Cohey had admitted to the cold-blooded murder of a complete stranger.

But perhaps the most chilling part of his confession was what he said next as he described the victim begging for his life and fighting for his last breath. I paused and he said, why are you doing this? And I said, I've been wanting to do this for a long time. Just imagine the fear that this man is going through and how long did he have to suffer fighting for his life? I think the only thing you can hope is that he didn't suffer long, but we know he suffered long enough to be screaming, why are you doing this to me? Let's just all pause for a moment here. You know, we have debated how much of this audio to actually put in this, you know, we put it in, we've taken it out, but the portions we've left in, and trust us, there is much, much more than what you're hearing here, is really, we put it in as the disturbing reminder, because it's an important, in a legal sense, mental illness or defect will definitely be raised early on.

In fact, even though there is a confession to this gruesome crime, law enforcement knows it's going to likely be challenged. So how the conversation is approached and the way the conversation is conducted, like many other things, is going to be scrutinized even more, Anasiga. And I know you've handled these types of cases, and certainly you really need to be in the best frame of mind in talking with someone in this situation who is accused of a crime just like this. A hundred percent. It's separating our own humanness, if you will, just for those moments to focus on the mission, which is to do everything you can legally here. It's taking a statement, but to keep him talking so that the

truth really shows itself wherever it lands. And based on what we've seen here, investigators calmly and expertly pressed Cohey for more details, ultimately revealing not just the depth of his depravity, but also that this murder was a long time in the making. What are you worried about? I mean, this looks like it's pretty close to the road and stuff. Somebody seeing you? Well, if they look, they would have seen me holding a bloody 12-inch knife, wearing gloves, and wearing a mask to conceal my identity, a face mask.

This is an important admission. Cohey already had a knife, latex gloves, and a mask in his car. That's proof that this was no spur-of-the-moment decision or a case of temporary psychosis, right? This all goes to planning. And that's by his own admission that he had been waiting, thinking out a night like this for months. And not only that, he admitted that he had purposely chosen a victim

that he believed would be particularly vulnerable. I was figuring the police don't, this is not to be taken offense, but police, they don't seem to care as much about high-risk individuals, homeless people, prostitutes, etc. So I was deliberately looking for someone who lived that type of life. And I found a homeless person. We knew he was trying to pick someone that he did not think would be missed. But as it turns out, this was a gross miscalculation

because Cohey's victim, 69-year-old Warren Barnes, was not just missed, he was beloved. A lifelong resident of Grand Junction, Barnes was a fixture in the community who could often be found sitting behind a local bridal shop, engrossed in a paperback, or even assisting local store owners with various tasks. He was 69 years old, so he was not, you know, a young buff man, but he was somebody who regularly reported for work at People Ready to look for jobs.

So I think he was somebody that a lot of our citizens noticed. I think most people would describe him as a quiet, peaceful man who had a regular routine. But unfortunately, Warren suffered from housing insecurity, and his home was actually the streets of Grand Junction. Many people did not know he did not have a home. His family did not know he was without shelter. Nobody ever heard him complain about his living situation, which is interesting because he was unhoused.

But despite his living situation, people in Warren's community had come to not just appreciate him, but rely on him. So when a local business owner noticed his absence, she was immediately worried something had happened. So she ended up calling the police on Monday, realizing that Warren had left her on Saturday saying, I'll see you tomorrow. And then she never saw him tomorrow. She knew something awful had probably happened. She would never, you know,-year-old Brian Cohey Jr. was describing in sickening detail the brutal murder of 69-year-old Warren Barnes. He wasn't through.

He went on to describe the post-mortem mutilation and dismemberment of his victim. We've chosen not to play that portion of his statement, but suffice it to say, it is sickening. What he was describing here is not just the act of murder and mutilation, but it was also the specific deliberate actions he took to cover up his crimes. And Anastasia, I think he's really going through great lengths to cover up his crimes because we do know that he was involved in washing the murder weapon, washing the knives. He washed his clothes. You know, this is somebody

who was trying to cover up the crime in the beginning and seems now very open and happy to talk about it. Agreed. You know, you're really seeing this duality here. You have the clear mental health component. You can almost just picture his eyes glistening as he's talking about taking the head and the hands as trophies. We're talking about a human being, right? So that is clearly nothing that most people fortunately would ever think of doing. But then on the other side, as you said, Scott, it's all those pieces that show that he's trying to cover up his crime. And that really goes to what the prosecutors are going to look at as evidence that would counter any potential insanity defense

because legally it's not about whether someone is suffering from mental illness or impairment. That I think is obvious here. It's whether he knew right from wrong. And we always look classically at the covering up of a crime as part of that important distinction. The fact that this entire confession is on videotape and as horrible as it is to see and clearly horrible as it is to hear, it's going to be an important part of what we know is going to be, unless there's a plea deal, it's going to be part of a trial where a jury gets to see, you know, his mannerisms,

the way he acts during this confession. That is direct evidence in itself. And I think that's exactly it. Within his statements to police, he talks about that, you know, after trying to go to sleep with Warren Barnes' remains just a few feet away in his closet, that he left his home again and decided to return to the crime scene. I tried going to sleep, but I was worried that because there was a hole in my glove that he left his home again and decided to return to the crime scene. He then proceeded to tell them how it related to his sunken car, that after he killed him, he had tried to dispose of the body in the river.

Because I don't want fingerprints on a body, I open the trunk. I take his body out. I put it in the water. Because I don't want fingerprints on a body, so I just try moving it with my shoes. That works successfully. He goes out to some part in the river and flips off. God knows where he is now. But as we know now, that's when Cohey's plan went off the rails. His car became stuck, leading to his call for help and to the subsequent police response. I tried putting it full throttle. Yeah.

That doesn't work. And then it slides into the river. And so I'm there in a car quickly being flooded with water. I almost died. I need to act fast or else I'll die of hypothermia. I'm panicking a bit at this point. I'm going to be like, this is what I'm going to be remembered for, dying of hypothermia and a botched attempt at hiding a body. Authorities were eventually dispatched to the bridge

where Cohe described killing Warren Barnes. Again, body cam footage captures their grisly discovery, which sadly confirmed Cohe's account of the murder. It's right here. Yeah, because there's an arm. There's an arm. There's another arm. There's another one.

Right here's a leg. Holy cow. Obviously, what Brian Cohey had described were the actions of someone that was deeply disturbed. In fact, he likened himself to infamous serial killers like Ted Bundy and the Zodiac Killer. For years, I was wondering what murder would feel like because like Ted Bundy and the Zodiac, they all say murder is the best human in the world. So I'm like, I'm going to try that. So for some some time I had been wondering when it would happen. And so if Cohey had been harboring these fantasies and plans to kill,

it begs the question of whether warning signs had appeared before. The answer is they did. In an interview with prosecutors, a high school friend of Cohey's who was visiting just prior to his arrest said that his morbid nature was a hallmark of his personality. When I first met him, he was very edgy is the best way I can describe it. His jokes were always in the realm of dark humor. Very rarely did he make jokes that weren't somehow relating to death or violence or destruction or breaking the law or just basically just humor that is considered dark humor. When he spoke with police, Cohey's own father admitted that he too had had concerns about his

son's strange behavior. I don't understand. He's obviously sick. He's obviously very sick. We've noticed weird things about him. She looks at me and he has this cold look on his face. According to his mother and Cohe himself, he had been diagnosed with a range of mental health issues, but even in his own interview, Cohe denied being delusional or otherwise disassociated with reality. I don't have any hallucinations. But you don't have times where you feel like another personality is in your body? No, that's dissociative identity disorder. Right. Schizophrenia is.

But you have multiple people talking to you at the same time. What kind of a thing? Um, no one almost sounded to me. Further evidence that his actions were not the result of insanity or temporary insanity, Kobe had been planning to act out on his murderous fantasies for months, maybe even years. His internet search history revealed research on fatal neck wounds, serial killers, and the recent murder of an unhoused individual in Louisiana. In his interview with investigators,

Cohey went further in explaining his devolution from awkward teenager to ruthless killer. Was it like something all of a sudden one day you woke up and thought, I'll kill someone, or was it a gradual thing? It was gradual, I think. So tell me about when those thoughts were thrown out. Well, in high school, last year, my parents found a kit I had been assembling. It had hammers, shovels, knives, large zip ties, duct tape that I saw. I wasn't there for hurting people. We called it, in tape, saw. I was meant for hurting people. We called it, in trial, a kill kit

because Brian Cohey himself described it like that during his interview with Investigator Berg. His mom and dad found it, started thinking, this is weird. What is our kid doing walking around with a backpack like this? Even the blue jumpsuit he wore on the night of the murder was a tribute to the Halloween movie

villain Michael Myers who he considered to be not a psychopath but a role model. I was wearing a dark blue jumper suit. And the reason you were wearing a dark blue one-piece jumper suit?

Do you know the movie Halloween, Michael Myers? He wears one of those. And for Halloween last year, I bought that as a costume to put on the mask in the room. Okay. And, yeah, I just associated that piece of article of clothing with violence. That's what I was wearing it. You know, you ask any person who does something like this, and they say a crazy person. But Trish also knew that despite what his defense team might claim in a future trial, there was a lot of evidence that Cohey had demonstrated that he knew the difference between right and wrong.

That while definitely very disturbed, the evidence did not point to him being legally insane. And she was prepared to prove that to a jury. Brian Cohey Jr. was arrested on March 1st, 2021 and charged with first-degree murder and other crimes relating to the desecration of a victim's body and the attempted cover-up of the murder. Our justice system here in Grand Junction gets a fair amount of attention in the media. So you can imagine something like this, so violent, so gruesome, that I think it was pretty extensively covered. The sensational press coverage would make picking an impartial jury challenging. Here they have the most sympathetic victim you could ever find.

A peaceful, quiet, hardworking man who has done nothing to provoke the defendant. And then you have a defendant that you can't even imagine was trolling our streets looking for somebody to kill. The prosecution's case was largely based on Cohey's own confession. But that confession was backed up by evidence collected by investigators, including the murder weapon.

We ended up actually having to do DNA testing on the knife. And we had some swabbing done at the very base of the blade to the hand and ultimately found Warren's DNA in the crook of the knife. And then also Blue Heron Boat Ramp also became a crime scene. We also did some swabbing on some rocks that appeared stained by blood and also found Warren's DNA at the Blue Heron Boat Ramp. There was also a wealth of digital evidence that verified Cohey's timeline down to the minute. So we had video footage of him in his Michael Myers jumpsuit at 1026. We actually see him passing the Justice Center shortly thereafter toward the Crosby area where this murder actually happened.

And we know by 1106, he was doing a web search for waste disposal methods. We knew that he had taken photos on his phone of the murder scene between 11.08 and 11.12 p.m. He had multiple photos of what he had just done. We knew we had a strong case going into it, but you would never hear any of us call this a done deal or a sure thing. That was because Trish anticipated that Cohey would plead not guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect. And considering the facts of the case and listening to Cohey's own confession, prosecutors knew that the insanity defense would be a challenge to disprove. Because we have a confession does not in and of itself mean he's sane.

So we had to make sure this jury had enough evidence to understand, even though this seems crazy, he was sane. During his January 2023 trial, Cohey's attorneys argued that the defendant's diagnosed mental health disorders, including major depression disorder, ADHD, and autism, combined with the environmental stressors, triggered in Cohey an episode of temporary insanity resulting in his murderous rage. Ultimately, the defense expert relied upon this concept that he had a co-occurring transient psychotic episode occurring with schizoaffective disorder, co-occurring with autism spectrum disorder. And we know it's all about, we have to simplify it.

And ultimately, we knew the facts were on our side. The trial became a case of dueling doctors, each arguing whether mental disease or defect could have made Kohe incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong. The result could mean the difference between being remanded to a state hospital or life in prison. And just really quickly, here is why that matters and where the difference really is, is because if you are remanded to a state hospital, well, then you can theoretically at least be released at any time that doctors decide that your mental health capacity is up to the point that you're no longer a danger to society. It could be that you start taking your medication, right? But then who knows what happens when you get back out on the streets where life in prison or your time in prison is definite and you know what that means.

So that's really how that difference between the two plays out. Even though we knew it was going to be a battle of the experts, we also knew that the key factual people would be his family, his mother, his father. We knew that every officer who came into contact with him at Blue Heron Boat Ramp would be extremely important, that the body-worn camera, that would be important. He was talking in realistic terms. He knew who people were. He understood what they were talking about. He was not talking paranoid. He was not hallucinating. This wasn't something that he thought about that night. He had been talking paranoid. He was not hallucinating. This wasn't something that he thought about that night. He had been thinking about it for years. The prosecution was also able to demonstrate Cohey's pre-planning and intent by explaining the lengths he took to try to get away

with murder. He had blubbed up trying to make sure he did not leave any crime scene evidence that would link back to him. So after he killed Warren, he tried to start cleaning off his shoes, cleaning off his jumpsuit. He tried to go to sleep and then started worrying that he had left too much evidence. He was worried about DNA. He was worried about fingerprints. So then he went back and did dump the rest of Warren's body in the Colorado River. Cohey's public defender put on a vigorous defense, and after several weeks, Cohey's fate was in the hands of the jury. I think they took their time. I think they knew that somebody's life was in their hands, despite it being a very difficult case to hear and deal with,

probably forever for them, they wanted to make sure they did their job right. They wanted to make sure they took their responsibilities seriously. After two days of deliberation, the jury finally returned its verdict. Guilty on all charges and the insanity fence was not proven. He received life in prison on first-degree murder, which was a mandatory sentence. And then he was also found guilty of tampering with a deceased human body, two counts of that, tampering with physical evidence, and received life plus a consecutive 12 years.

So obviously there are a lot of questions about warning signs. And, you know, could the parents have known? Should the parents have known? And I think that's a question that when watching the confession tape and thinking about what had happened over a period of time leading up to this, I think it's a valid question to ask just in general. but you still have to really, really feel for these parents. I mean, it's the obvious elephant in the room to not discuss it. Like, were there warning signs?

And again, we are talking to you off of interviews that we have watched and listened to and reading files. So it's just such a complicated, complex question. And I also think there's the reality that we often look away sometimes to more difficult signs, realities, and I'm not even talking about murder, you know, when it comes to those we love, you know, they have an annoying character trait. Well, you look away because you love them. And I think that continues down the line that you try to hopefully help those that are closest to you. But it's just, I don't even think that we should try to dissect what they saw or should have seen, but rather feel for that this is their child and that they made that difficult decision to call the police, you know, and give evidence against him. I think the jury was trying to size up the mom and dad too.

Like, things had gone wrong for a long time, but they are not to blame that their son did this. I think that they did the best they could for the circumstances that arose during the years leading up to this, but nobody can blame his parents. From the initial 911 call to her testimony in court, Brian Cohey Jr.'s mom's heartbreak was clear. Of course, the mother falls apart the second I have to ask her, what did you find? And sit there facing her son, you could just see her. She

couldn't keep her eyes off her son when she testified. But Brian Cohey's actions revealed the irreversible nature of his crimes. Warren Barnes is gone forever. After Warren was killed, a lot of his family who didn't live here came back and some of his family members went and walked his normal path so they could visualize what kind of life he led. In November 2021, a memorial to Warren Barnes was unveiled in downtown Grand Junction. It's a tribute to the beloved citizen known affectionately as the Reading Man. Every time I'm downtown, I walk by it remembering him. And even though I never had the opportunity to get to meet him,

I have a really good sense of who he was by knowing his family. Even though Warren Barnes was experiencing a homelessness existence, he was still a very important part of this community. He never bothered anybody. In fact, he went out of his way to work and to earn a living to be self-sufficient the best way he could. And his vulnerability made him a target and cost him his life. Every murder is disturbing, but this one definitely affected me. I've seen cases, unfortunately, almost just like this before. And that combination of brutality, cruelty, and the effects of deeply disturbed behavior are all the harder to wrap our heads around or even accept that things like this are actually real.

Listening to Cohey's parents from the 911 call his mom placed to talking with investigators is truly heartbreaking. To have a child commit such savagery and then be in the position to report that yourselves is to me almost too hard to think about, but I respect that they made that call. And Warren Barnes, Cohe chose him thinking no one would care and boy was he wrong. Everybody matters and those on the fringes of society, to victimize them because of their difficulties in life, whether handed down to them by life itself or even if self-created, that's just an additional level of so very, very wrong.

Grand Junction's The Reader, Warren Barnes was cared about by his community. A gentle man who was helpful and kind. His memory will live on in the hearts of the many he touched during his time here on Earth. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media

and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?