How a Couple's Dispute Over Their Open Marriage Led a Georgia Wife to Murder Her Husband By Sean Neumann

A Georgia woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole this week for the 2021 fatal shooting of her husband, which police said she initially lied about and then later claimed was an accident.

Cheryl Howell Coe was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault on Monday, Aug. 18, in connection with shooting and killing her husband Luther Coe on June 23, 2021, at the couple’s Georgia home, according to The Newnan Times-Herald and local Fox 5.

Cheryl was 51 at the time of the shooting, which The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported she had initially claimed was an accident before investigators discovered inconsistencies in her accounts. Physical evidence later showed Luther was shot at point-blank range, a medical examiner testified during her trial, according to the Times-Herald and Fox 5.

The incident happened at the couple’s Newnan, Ga., home, where Cheryl initially told police she woke up to a person she didn’t recognize barging into her bedroom, leading her to grab a gun from a nightstand next to the bed and shooting in the person’s direction twice.

According to the Times-Herald, which cited police testimony from Cheryl’s murder trial, the killer claimed she didn’t realize who the man was until she heard her husband’s voice. “Cheryl, you shot me,” she claimed Luther said.

At the trial, according to the local newspaper, the jury heard testimony that described Cheryl and Luther as having an open marriage since 2020, which included sexual acts with friends.

The couple had a disagreement over the boundaries they had set for their marriage, which Luther’s son from a previous marriage had described as seemingly “happy” before the shooting, per the Times-Herald report.

Body camera from responding Coweta County Sheriff’s Officer Jason Brooks showed Cheryl speaking with her mother on the phone after authorities arrived at the scene. 

“I was just trying to protect myself,” Cheryl is heard in the footage telling her mother, according to the Times-Herald. 

A local investigator later testified that Cheryl claimed she was following her husband’s directions for what to do if an intruder came into the house. “I didn’t know what else to do,” Cheryl claimed, according to the Times-Herald, citing an investigator’s testimony. “I just grabbed the gun like he’s (Luther) always told me to.”

But soon after, Cheryl changed her story, according to Jason Brooks, an investigator with the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office, who testified in court.

Cheryl eventually confessed to Brooks that she and her husband had a fight about their open marriage and had planned to talk about their disagreement that evening. Cheryl told Brooks she waited on the back porch for her husband to talk, drinking four or five hard ciders during that hour, before ultimately taking a Klonopin and going to bed shortly after 7 p.m.

Less than 15 minutes later, according to police, Cheryl shot Luther in their bedroom. The Times-Herald reported that Cheryl eventually told police she knew it was Luther who entered the bedroom, but that she felt frightened by his demeanor, alleging he told her to “get her ass out of bed” before claiming he yanked a pillow out from between her legs.

“I just wanted to be left alone, and he wasn’t having it,” Cheryl allegedly told police, according to Brooks’ testimony. “He was dragging me out of bed.”

Cherly claimed she “was just trying to hit the wall behind the TV so it would scare him off or make him leave,” adding that she “wasn’t trying to hit him.”

“I was scared,” Cheryl later testified in court late last week, according to the Times-Herald. “He was more enraged than he’s ever been at me.”

The Times-Herald reported that Senior Assistant District Attorney Laura Lukert called Cheryl “the most unreliable of narrators” in her closing statement, before she was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. 

“The only consistency we have is that that woman shot Luther Coe,” the prosecutor said.