Wife, 55, fatally shoots husband after argument over changing their open marriage agreement

Daily Mail​

a day ago

A Georgia woman will spend the rest of her life behind bars after she drunkenly shot and killed her husband amid a dispute over their open marriage.
Cheryl Howell Coe, 55, was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the June 2021 shooting of Luther 'Luke' Coe III, 48, inside their home, the Newnan Times-Herald reports.
Officials with the Cowetta County Sheriff's Office have said they responded at around 7.30pm on June 23, 2021 moments after Cheryl reported that she shot her husband when she mistook him for an intruder.
In body camera footage from the scene, Cheryl told deputies she drank four or five ciders while her husband worked in a detached garage, before she ultimately took a Klonopin and went to bed.
She said she was woken up a short time later to an unknown person entering her bedroom, which prompted her to grab her pistol from the nightstand.
'I was just trying to protect myself,' Cheryl said in the body camera footage, which was played at her week-long retrial this month.
She went on to claim she did not realize the person entering the room was her husband until he said, 'Cheryl, you shot me.'
By the time deputies arrived on the scene, Cheryl was seen applying pressure on her husband's wound as he told authorities, 'I can't breathe.' He was then rushed to the hospital, but soon succumbed to his injuries.
Cheryl's story quickly fell apart, however, when the medical examiner found that Luther had suffered from a contact bullet wound - meaning the rifle was pressed against his body and was not fired from a distance as his wife had claimed.
Investigators then also uncovered lengthy text message exchanges between the husband and wife in which they appeared to have some issues with their open marriage in the days leading up to the fatal shooting.
According to the messages, Cheryl had asked Luther for permission to see another man later in the week.
Luther replied by asking his wife if she was planning on seeing another man as well, to which she replied that she could - ending her message with 'lol,' the Times-Herald reports.
Luther then replied that her response 'turned his stomach,' at which point Cheryl proposed ending the open marriage - saying she believed it was the cause of their marital issues.
But Luther apparently wanted to keep the open marriage going, and they established more ground rules.
Other text messages detailed another dispute between the husband and wife, with her accusing him of telling a friend about their private disagreements.
Luther became enraged by the accusation and told his wife he needed some time to himself, prosecutors argued.
Finally, on the day of the shooting, Cheryl said Luther informed her he was ready to talk. But when she returned home from work that night, her husband and his son were still in the detached workshop on their property and so Cheryl decided to retire to the back porch, where she downed several hard ciders.
She said Luther never came back and after an hour on the porch, she went to bed.
When the door then swung open, Cheryl said she fired two shots, aiming at the ceiling and behind the television, in hopes that the gunfire would alert her husband in the workshop.
But when Cheryl was later confronted by the fact that she called 911 just 11 minutes after she claimed she went to bed, the defendant changed her story and admitted she knew it was Luther entering the room.
She claimed she could hear his 'thunderous footsteps' and yelling before he entered their bedroom, where she said Luther told her to 'get her ass out of bed' and dragged her from the mattress.
'I just wanted to be left alone and he wasn't having it,' Cheryl told police. 'He was dragging me out of bed.'
When Luther then briefly left the room, Cheryl said she grabbed her pistol and fired a warning shot, which made him 'angry and aggressive,' at which point she fired a second shot to scare him off.
'I wasn't trying to hit him,' she insisted.
Cheryl also told police about her and her husband's BDSM practices, saying she was the 'submissive' one but arguing Luther's behavior that night was 'different.'
Taking the stand at her trial, Cheryl reiterated her self-defense claims as she described how her husband had become more aggressive with her.
She said he once pulled her leg out from under her as she walked down the porch stairs, causing her to suffer a tear in her buttocks and an indentation that required surgery to fully heal.
Cheryl also said their BDSM practices became more violent, even though she asked him to stop.
'I didn't enjoy the pain,' she testified. 'He would coerce me and tell me I was doing this for him and [it] made him happy.'
On the night of the murder, Cheryl said Luther began to charge at her when she fired the second shot.
'I never told anyone anything about the bad parts of our relationship,' she claimed. 'Luke had a great reputation and [I] did everything I could to protect it.'
The 48-year-old had his own business, Platinum Demolition & Grading LLC and had served in the United States Army, according to his obituary.
But during closing arguments, prosecutor Laura Lukat focused on Cheryl's changing stories - and argued that even if her justification for shooting her husband were true, it did not justify the use of deadly force.
'She brought a gun to a verbal spat,' Lukat said. 'She brought a gun to a situation that might have ended with one of them staying at a friend's.'
Cheryl was ultimately found guilty on all the charges against her - one count of malice murder, one count of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault.