Law&Crime Sidebar - ‘You A**holes’: 98-Year-Old Slams Cops Raiding Her Home One Day Before She Died

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Home security video surfaced showing a 98-year-old Kansas woman yelling at police officers raiding her home on August 11. Joan Meyer, a co-owner of the Marion County Record newspaper, berated the officers, asking if their mothers loved them and even calling the police chief an “a**hole.” Some believe Meyer, who passed the day after the raid, died from stress. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy breaks it down with Meyer’s son, Eric Meyer.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Go to HelloFresh.com/50sidebar and use code 50sidebar for 50% off plus free shipping!LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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You're a mother love you. You love your mother. You're a police chief. You're the chief. Oh, God. Yeah. 98-year-old newspaper owner Joan Meyer from Kansas, not mincing any words after police raid her home. She died the next day, but there are serious questions now about whether that raid crossed the line and violated her rights and the First Amendment. Do you like to cook?

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the Marion County record, for decades. She was a reporter and a columnist who was described as basically a local historian. Police went to her home and the newspaper's offices. They seized reporters' computers, servers, and phones. Joan Meyer was visibly upset by what happened. She is a journalist after all. Take a look. Don't you touch any of that stuff. Ma'am, you're wasting your... This is my house! I know, you're wasting the breath.

Ma'am. Look, get out of here. You, asshole. We'll be out of here pretty quick. Get them out of here. They're here. You don't... Your mother love you.

You have another. You're a . Police chief. You're the chief. Oh, God. Get out of my house. You're pet, put you. Get up. Stand outside. You can stand outside that door and still see you in there. I don't want you in my house.

I don't want you if you do. That's a business class route or has a lot. What? What's you doing over there going through the papers? How many computers do you have in the house? do you have in the house, man? I'm not going to tell you. Get out my way.

It's all right. I want to see what they're doing. Well, they're working. I don't care what they're doing. So you can go on through if you want. What are you doing? Those are personal papers. Now, what makes this story even more concerning and sadly unbelievable and disturbing

is that Joan Meyer died the very next day. The search stemmed from a confidential document police believe the newspaper had in its possession about a local restaurant owner. driving record and an OVI. The newspaper reported that Joan Meyer's son, Eric, said the paper received the record via social media, but didn't report on it and that the issue was also discussed at a public meeting. A search warrant for the raid claimed potential violations of law involving identity theft and illegal use of a computer. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now investigating, and we've reached out to them for a comment. So far, we haven't heard back.

Joining me to discuss what happened at the Marion County Record and at Joan Myers' home is her son, Eric Meyer. He is the editor-in-chief of the Marion County Record. He also lived with his mother. Eric, thank you so much for coming on Sidebar. We're really sorry for the loss of your mother and for everything you guys are going through. Oh, thanks. Appreciate that. Let's just start at the beginning, if you would. What happened last Friday? We know the police. there and Marion obtained a search warrant and came to your home and raided your offices, seized equipment. They obtained a search warrant for us attempting to verify a document using a technique that the state since then has said it's perfectly legal that we also told them about when we did it. But they, rather than ask us any questions, decided that they were going to pretend that we were the Medellin drug cartel and conduct a simultaneous raid on the

newspaper office on my mother's home and on the home of the vice mayor trying to look for information that even during the raid was sitting actually it was sitting right here on my desk that they didn't seize so sort of raises questions as to whether their motivation was actually to look for this or this was just a convenience excuse to go after some people in us and the vice mayor who possibly at a different political point of view. Actually, we don't have a political point of view, but we try to report things. Some people don't like things that we report. So they came in. Five officers were here at the newspaper office. Two went to my mother's home. Eventually, the other five joined them at my mother's home. I was at her home because I was getting

ready to prepare her meals on wheels that she had delivered when they showed up. They were there for about two hours. They made her wait about an hour and a half just with the officers standing around in her living room. Wouldn't let us use the phone, wouldn't let us use the cell phone, use the computer or anything. I eventually came down here to the newspaper office because the staff was being forced to stand outside and in very hot weather. and they wouldn't let them watch them search the newspaper office,

which also seems a little strange to me. But then they seized our computers down here. They took one, two, three, four computers down here. They took two at my mother's house. They took her router, which I don't understand why they took her router. Took some hard drives, and they went over to the device mirrors, took her computer, and took her phone as well. My mother was very, very upset about all of this, as you can see.

We could see that. Yes. And rightfully so, it turns out it was an illegal right. They had admitted now that it was an illegal right. I just had a business person here in town saying, have they ever apologized to you? They've now determined it's an illegal right. So nobody's apologized to us. But it was very intrusive on my mother.

And there wasn't any point for. I mean, we'd already told them what we had. They had in the affidavit, they had the document and they had who it came from. And the person it came from, the source that gave it to us and gave it to the vice mayor, they've never even talked to that person. Never asked her a single question. It clearly was done for to score some sort of points because we had had the police chief under investigation. Hadn't published anything yet.

We'd had it under investigation. and the mayor doesn't like us particularly and doesn't like the vice mayor so we got targeted and this all stemmed from some sort of driving record that's my understanding allegedly a confidential driving record which even if a source had provided it to you that's not a crime for you for a source to provide something to you we were concerned we received on august 2nd what a to be a letter dated August 1st that had been sent to a restaurant owner in town about attempting to reinstate her driver's license, which had been suspended many, many years ago for a drunken driving conviction. And it gave the conditions for her reinstatement, which would include

that she'd still have to have an anti-drinking ignition interlock put on her car. We were concerned. We were concerned the Dan Rather syndrome that you've got something that's been faked because it was dated a day before and it wouldn't even had time to get here by mail. We didn't know how it came about and we did know that the person it came from had connections to law enforcement. So we thought maybe this was law enforcement, faking, sending it out, leaking it out, which would have been illegal. Or it was somebody who faked a document and leaked it out. So we wanted to check first of all to make sure it was a legitimate document. Then we discovered that it really was just a salvo in a divorce case. The estranged husband of this restritur wanted to keep all their cars

because he argued that she didn't have a valid driver's license and he was leaking it to us to get that. So we decided we aren't going to get involved in a divorce case and an argument between people over whether they keep cars or not. But we were concerned how that came about, whether it came about from law enforcement sources. and also our source had alleged later was supported by off the record comments from law enforcement officers that local police were well aware that this restrator had been driving for more than a decade without a valid license

and had never bothered to a stopper for that so we alerted we alerted law enforcement that friday so this would have been the the fourth of a of august that we alerted law enforcement to that and said we don't plan to do anything about this. We told them how we got the document. We told them we verified the document. We said we don't think there's any case here, but if you think there's something you want to investigate, ask us any questions you want to. We went by and they came and raided our office, never talked to us at all. So your mother, Joan, was she still working, by the way? I know she's listed as a columnist at your paper. So was she still producing? She still worked. She basically spent a day a week working for us until a year ago.

She was actually doing all her typing and doing everything. In fact, you didn't dare edit her copy, but she was making the column we called Memories, which is the old issue, 15, 20, 15, 30, 45, 60 years ago, all the way up to 145. She had an act for finding that because what the news of today is, you know, the headlines 15 years ago that were on the front page may not be things that people care about. years later. So she'd always find these little stories that were interesting, the old papers and put them out. She had some vision problems that developed last year, and she couldn't continue to do the actual research and typing, but she'd done previous research, and I read them to her

every week, and she still was putting them together up until her death. We could see how upset she was. Law enforcement coming into her home. She's 98 years old. She was 98 years old, and she knew what was going on, completely cognizant of that. What was her reaction to you later on afterwards? What did she say to you? She was very upset, obviously. She thought, she kept saying, where have all the good people gone? The people who can stop things like this.

And she felt sort of like she'd spent 60 years associated with a newspaper and doing this. And she felt that people no longer respected that, that what she'd done in her whole life didn't matter, that there were no good people left, that the world had changed and sort of left her by. And it was, she was very upset. She was muttering several times in the evening. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't drink, she wouldn't sleep. She was muttering, this will be the death of me. And I tried to cheer up and saying sometimes when bullies do something like this, that they cross the line so badly, that they will eventually get their comeuppance.

And she said, yeah, that may be true, but I won't be alive to see it. She was very distraught. And the next day, she finally went to bed at about six or seven in the morning. And I let her sleep a little late, went to see her. And she got up, went to the restroom, came back. I was talking about you, you need to have some lunch. I don't really feel that good. And I said, well, maybe having some lunch getting your pills will be better.

And I asked you, do you want your lunch in here or in the kitchen or where do you want? She says, I don't know that I can eat. I'm not feeling died right that way in the middle of the sentence. Wow. It was very sad. On the other hand, if you know her and you kind of get a little sense of what she was like from looking at her video, she's very strong will. She's very, but also very caring and very generous to people. And most people would tell you that she was somebody who always was.

laughing and being happy with people. She would be really happy. She didn't know about the outpouring of support we've received, not just from news organizations at journalism societies, but from average people all over the world. I just heard from somebody from France, somebody else heard from somebody from Switzerland. We've been hearing from everywhere, from retired FBI agents, from major screenwriters and actors. And we've gotten all sorts of response packs. to an extent, I think she would say, you know, I'm 98 years old. I know the end's coming pretty soon. I don't know when. It was sad that I had to spend my last 24 hours on Earth feeling abandoned. But in a sense, my death accomplished something by drawing attention to this. I mean, that's about all you can ask for. She'd feel a martyr. And frankly, my father who died about 10, 15 years ago, but actually did die. of sustained disability contributed to his death from World War II. So I've now had, in my estimation, both my parents have died fighting for liberty.

You said that the raid was determined to be illegal. I know the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is now investigating what happened. So your computers were returned to you. It's my understanding. Do you know if they were downloaded by the police or anything like that? It's a current point of issue. right now all of our computers were ordered the chief judge ordered their return after the county attorney was advised by the kansas bureau of investigation to say that the search withdraw the search

warrants uh and one of the interesting things is that on the the evidence sheet that we signed that said what was seized from us there are a certain number of items and a signature And then the evidence sheet that was supplied to the court has one additional item that was written on it without any notification that it was modified. That was a clone drive that the police used to clone one of our computers. They have refused to return that to us. The chief judge has ordered them to and they're not answering our attorney's queries and our attorneys actually, if they don't answer the queries and come up with a satisfactory answer, he's going to move to have the chief judge find the sheriff.

This police chief, Gideon Cody, we've reached out to him, thus far he has not responded to me to answer my questions or to provide a comment what is your message for him um i i even even on a podcast you can't use my language i wouldn't actually do that um he is also going around denying a story that he offered to set up a rock help set up a a newspaper to rival us, he clearly doesn't like us. He tried to use his position to stomp on us. He needs to resign. He needs to resign today. Does your attorney feel you have any recourse, civil suit, anything like that? Yes. Yes, considerable. Well, Eric, you're waiting for KBI. I'm assuming to provide you with some information.

waiting to see what goes on with this you know as a journalist it's it's offensive to think that somebody would come marching into a newsroom with a search warrant and sees items um i i find it appalling you know what what comes next well what comes next is we have no desire to you know stick it to them for for a financial award if we have a suit we win money in it I would plan to donate the money to someplace else. But it's important that we follow through on this. There are a lot of news organizations these days that don't have the benefit that we have. This is essentially my retirement hobby.

I mean, I was a journalism professor for 25 years and worked with the Milwaukee Journal before that. There are a lot of little newspapers similar in size to ours that are run by somebody who used to be the English teacher in the high school and thought that there's a town needed to local newspaper and doesn't know. that they can fight things like this. We need to fight this hard enough so that nobody ever tries it. Nobody ever tries it. It's ridiculous that they do. Eric Meyer, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate your time. Again, happy birthday, and we are sorry about the loss of your mother. Appreciate it. Thank you much. That's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar Podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel.

Make sure you hit the subscribe button. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and we will see you next time.