Messy small town relationships and a corrupt local government created the perfect storm

This story is part of a series by Kansas Reflector and The Handbasket to examine the one-year anniversary of the raid on the Marion County Record. Support independent journalism by subscribing to The Handbasket or donating to Kansas Reflector.

MARION — When police raided the Marion newspaper office in August 2023, the initial explanation seemed fairly straightforward: Police Chief Gideon Cody was seeking revenge against local press for an investigation into his past, and was using a local businesswoman with a DUI as a pawn.

While Cody’s grudge played a role in the unprecedented Marion County Record raid, in the year since, details of messy relationships in this small town paired with the inner-workings of a corrupt local government paint a picture that’s more complicated. And even though the special prosecutors report released Monday clears everyone involved but Cody of criminal wrongdoing, it does nothing to diffuse allegations of police malfeasance.

Information provided in the five federal lawsuits filed in connection to this case makes it clear that while certain names — like Eric Meyer, the owner and publisher of the Marion County Record whose office and home were raided, Ruth Herbel, the city councilwoman whose home was also raided, and Kari Newell, whose driving record kicked off this whole fracas — dominated the story, others flew under the radar in the immediate aftermath.

“The story unfolded just like it was a novella or something. Literally every day there was something new,” said Kansas Rep. Mari-Lynn Poskin, a Democrat from the Kansas City metro who earlier this year proposed a resolution to support the freedom of the press. “I definitely remember every day just going, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”

It is now clear that then-Marion Mayor David Mayfield and Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez were instrumental in the raids and harbored resentments of their own against the targets. And Mayfield’s wife, Jami, helped stoke the flames from the outside.

“Cody had it in for us, I’m certain,” Meyer said in his office in late July as he reflected on last year’s raids, “but somebody had to overrule the city administrator and say, ‘Cody, go ahead.’ And that was David Mayfield.”

Mayfield, according to one of the lawsuits, asked Soyez to help him find a new police chief in late 2022 after the previous one quit. Soyez was friends with Cody when they both worked in Kansas City, and Soyez “strongly urged” Mayfield to hire him for the job. It was difficult for Mayfield to say no: In addition to being mayor, the former Kansas Highway Patrol trooper also works part-time for Soyez transporting local prisoners.

Shortly after the raids, The Handbasket learned the Record had been investigating claims that Cody had been demoted at his last post for inappropriate conduct toward other officers, as the Record later reported. Multiple sources also alleged to the Record that Cody “ran over a dead body at a crime scene.”

Cody’s loathing for the Record helped explain the motivation for the raids in the early days, but it didn’t capture the whole story.

Two weeks before the raids, Mayfield posted the following on his personal Facebook page: “The real villains in America aren’t Black people. They aren’t white people. They aren’t Asians. They aren’t Latinos. They aren’t women. They aren’t gays. They are the radical ‘journalists,’ ‘teachers’ and ‘professors’ who do nothing but sow division between the American people.”

Meyer, who taught journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believed the post targeted him. In his lawsuit, Meyer accuses Mayfield of spurring Cody to investigate the newspaper.

But they didn’t act alone. Sheriff’s deputies drafted the search warrant applications and helped carry out the raid. Soyez threw a pizza party when the officers seized computers and cellphones from the newspaper office and Meyer’s and Herbel’s homes.

Herbel worked closely with Mayfield in her official capacity. In a recent conversation at Newell’s former coffee shop in Marion, now under new management, Herbel said she had supported Mayfield’s campaign for mayor, but then “he just flipped.”

Herbel recalled a combatant relationship with Mayfield, which she attributes, in part, to her gender and outspoken nature.

“I don’t think he likes a woman to stand up to him,” she said. “And I’ve always been one that stood up and shared my view with anybody that would listen.” 

According to her lawsuit filed in May against multiple city officials, Mayfield once called her a “bitch” during an executive session of the council.

Jami Mayfield, the mayor’s wife, also became involved in taking down Herbel. In February 2023 she launched an effort to recall Herbel from the council. In a Facebook post shown in one of the lawsuits, she wrote, “if anyone is interested in signing a petition to recall councilor Herbel and silence the MCR in the process let me know.” The MCR refers to the Marion County Record.

The fix was in for Herbel before the raid. As the Kansas Reflector explained in May, her lawsuit describes how “Cody sent an email to county prosecutor Joel Ensey with the subject line: ‘Crimes?’ The email outlined five possible ways they could charge Herbel with a crime.”

And for Record reporter Phyllis Zorn, the parties involved decided she’d be charged with identity theft, of which she is now cleared, per Monday’s report.

“When (Cody) was questioning me, he kept trying to intimidate me,” Zorn recalled recently in her first interview since the raid, which took place before the release of the report. “He would say things like, ‘You’re a smart girl. I like you. I’m trying to keep you out of trouble.’ And I’m looking at him and thinking, ‘I haven’t done anything illegal. You couldn’t get me in trouble if you wanted to.’ Of course, that’s the story he stuck with — that I had done something illegal.”

Among Ensey, Herbel, Cody and Mayfield, Ensey is the only one who still has his job. Mayfield decided not to run for reelection and Herbel lost her reelection bid. Cody stepped down in October and was replaced by Zach Hudlin, who was part of the team that carried out last summer’s raids. Cody will face a low-level felony charge of obstructing the judicial process for telling Kari Newell to delete text messages related to the pre-raid events. The other public officials and law enforcement officers involved have escaped criminal charges. 

“Our strategy from the very beginning has been Cody was clearly the one in charge, and we were going to pursue him first,” said Blake Shuart, attorney for former Record reporter Deb Gruver, in a recent interview.

Gruver was present during the raid on the newspaper, when Cody snatched her cell phone from  her hand. The city’s liability insurance provider paid Gruver $235,000 to settle the claims against Cody, but her lawsuit continues against Soyez and Ensey.

Now after nearly a year of waiting, the current and former staffers of the Marion County Record know they won’t face charges. 

“Their report makes it clear that they arrived at this conclusion mere days after the raid,” Meyer told Kansas Reflector on Monday. “Yet they left us swinging in the wind. That’s disappointing, to say the least. We are pleased that they believe, as we long have, that Gideon Cody violated state law. Unfortunately, others involved in the case — those who didn’t flee the state — seem to have escaped similar scrutiny.”

Many hoped the report would clear up the narrative, but it created more questions. While the report says investigators talked to Mayfield, there is nothing in the report about his conversations with Cody. And the overarching narrative in the report is that the Marion police officers and sheriff’s deputies simply didn’t realize that their actions were wrong.

And the report largely excuses Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents for joining the investigation into whether Zorn, Meyer and Herbel committed crimes.

The report revealed that KBI agent Todd Leeds met with law enforcement in Marion two days before the raid. As Kansas Reflector previously reported, police sent Leeds a copy of a search warrant a day before the raid. But the report says Leeds was attending a funeral and wasn’t sure why the warrants were sent to him.

When investigators asked Leeds why he didn’t follow up with anyone in Marion about the search warrant, he told them: “I should have.” His “lack of a formal, insistent response arguably led Chief Cody to construe Agent Leeds’ silence as acquiescence,” the report said.

Two days after the raid, Cody called KBI special agent in charge Bethanie Popejoy while she was at Sunday church service. She told investigators she stepped outside to take the call.

She said Cody told her: “This is a mess. I really wish you guys would take this over.”

“And I said, ‘Well, it’s a little f***in’ late for that now,” Popejoy told investigators.

But later that Sunday, Popejoy texted Cody: “I know you feel like you’re out on a limb, but there are amazing minds working behind the scenes to help you and support you. We’re here with you, so hang in there with us.”

And in a statement that day, KBI director Tony Mattivi defended the efforts of KBI agents who regularly “investigate and gather facts.”

“No one is above the law, whether a public official or a representative of the media,” Mattivi said.

The report makes no mention of Mattivi or his statement.

KBI spokeswoman Melissa Underwood, in a statement after the report was released Monday, said, “Even though agents did not play a role in executing the search warrants, on Sept. 19, 2023, agents attended additional training presented by the Kansas County and District Attorney Association regarding the protections and special legal considerations afforded to the press, clergy, appointed counsel, and mental health professionals.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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