By Amy Leigh Womack - Macon.com

August 27, 2013

GRAY -- Pamela Moss called her sister at 11:37 a.m. on the day Doug Coker disappeared.

Carol Holland was expecting the call. She and Moss had talked the day before about Moss’ concerns that Coker, a Henry County businessman, might not be “legit” and Moss wanted her sister to listen in when the two met on March 13, 2012, at the McDonald’s on Bass Road in Macon.

When Moss called, she put Coker on the phone with her sister. They had a short conversation about his business, Holland testified Tuesday.

About 10 minutes later, Coker called her back asking questions about the grant Moss was trying to obtain for him.

“We were talking and then we got disconnected” after about a minute, Holland said. He was in the middle of a sentence when the line went dead.

Moss called again at about noon and asked what had happened during the conversation.

“She said, ‘If anybody says anything, I didn’t call you back,’ ” Holland testified.

Moss, 55, was charged with Coker’s murder days later, after investigators found his body underneath the porch of her home in the River North subdivision just across the Jones County line from north Macon.

Her trial started Monday in Jones County Superior Court.

A security guard who manned the front gate at River North testified Tuesday that Coker, 67, signed in saying he was going to met Moss at 11:16 a.m. March 13.

After not hearing from Coker later that day, Coker’s wife and other family members reported him missing to both Henry and Bibb county authorities.

Moss talked with Henry County police detectives March 15 and admitted she had met with Coker at McDonald’s, but gave multiple stories about what happened afterward. In one version, she said she and Coker met at the fast food restaurant and then both went their separate ways. But later, she said Coker followed her to the intersection of Bass Road and Riverside Drive to look at property ripe for investment, said investigator Dean Watson.

An audio recording of the interview was played for jurors Tuesday.

“I have no idea where Mr. Coker is,” Moss said during the interview.

At the end of the interview, Moss agreed to talk with Watson again the following day, but he testified she never showed up.

Bibb County Sheriff’s Office investigator Jamey Jones testified he tried to call Moss using contact information Watson had used, but wasn’t able to reach her.

Jones and another investigator went to her home about 11 p.m. March 18, thinking that most people are at home at that time of night. They spotted lights on in Moss’ house, but no one appeared to be home, Jones said.

Walking around the house, they smelled a strong odor of natural gas. As they continued to walk around the house, they smelled another odor -- a decomposing body, Jones said.

After opening an area fenced in by lattice underneath the porch, Jones said he saw an object covered by a plastic tarp near a wheelbarrow and other yard tools. Roofing shingles and what appeared to be lime were on top of the plastic.

Looking under the plastic, Jones said he found a man’s body. He was wearing the same clothing Coker was reported as wearing on the day he went missing.

“At that time we knew it was Mr. Coker,” Jones said.

Evidence of a cleanup

Receipts found at Moss’ home show she bought several items at the Tom Hill Sr. Boulevard Kroger on the day after Coker went missing.

In one transaction, she bought two pairs of yellow kitchen gloves, plastic storage containers and a tub of chicken salad. In a second transaction, two minutes later, she bought two gallons of bleach.

When investigators found Coker’s body, they found a large plastic tub beside him. Inside were bloodied gloves, plastic sheeting, trash bags and “easy move pads” -- devices sold on TV to make it easier to move large furniture, said Kenneth Gleaton, a Jones County Sheriff’s Office investigator.

Investigators also found bottles of bleach inside Moss’ house, along with bags of lime typically used for lawn care. Gleaton explained a different type of lime is often used in farming applications to reduce odors.

In the kitchen, investigators found a hammer. A GBI DNA expert testified Tuesday that she found Coker’s DNA on the hammer.

GBI Medical Examiner Melissa Sims said Coker was struck at least five times in the head, causing his death.

Gleaton said authorities identified 228 separate blood stains inside Moss’ house.

“This was a very bloody crime scene,” he said.

Many of Coker’s family members faced forward and wept as crime scene photos were projected on the back wall of the courtroom. Several left during Sims’ testimony.

Gleaton testified the natural gas powered living room fireplace was turned on when investigators arrived and they had to air out the house before searching it. They found burned matches in the kitchen sink.

A natural gas meter reader salesman testified that records show a “significant spike” in gas usage began on March 15 at about 7 p.m. and continued until the early morning hours of March 19, the same time investigators were at the house.

Authorities also found multiple blood stains in the living room of the house, including a large stain on the floor. White paint appeared to have been spilled on the blood in an effort to cover it, Gleaton testified.

The stain also had been covered by a plastic sheet, similar to a painting drop cloth, he said.

She seemed ‘very distraught’

On the afternoon Coker disappeared, Moss called a woman she knew from church and asked for a ride home from the Spalding County Hospital, the woman testified.

Gleaton said authorities later found Coker’s car in the hospital parking lot. Inside, investigators found an envelope with three checks written out to Coker by Moss -- two were for $85,000, the amount Moss owed Coker. A third check was made out for $80,000. A Henry County detective testified Tuesday that Moss had already paid Coker $5,000 of the money she owed.

When investigators later searched Moss’ car, they found a Best Western Hotel parking permit dated for March 15 to March 17 and a substance on the floor thought to be lime, Gleaton said.

Walter Duncan, a Tennessee man who has known Moss for 26 years, testified she met him in Atlanta on March 14 for a business meeting the following day. The two had been romantically involved in the past and were dating again in 2012.

He said nothing appeared to be awry, even when they spent the night together at an Atlanta hotel March 14, until a Henry County detective called Moss on the morning of March 15 wanting to talk about Coker’s disappearance.

Holland said Moss called her on March 15 and asked if she could stay with her at her home in Jesup for a few days.

The next day, Moss called again and asked Holland to pick her up at a Wal-Mart in Hinesville, about 25 miles from Holland’s home. She left her car there and rode to Jesup with Holland and stayed at her home for the weekend.

Holland testified that her sister, who she’d only known for about four years, seemed “very distraught” when she picked her up.

By Monday, March 19, Moss said she wanted to be alone after spending a weekend with several teenagers in her sister’s house. She went to Holland’s ex-husband’s home nearby after he’d gone to work, Holland testified.

A deputy showed up at Holland’s door looking for Moss that afternoon and Holland admits she lied and said she hadn’t seen her sister.

Later that night, a family member found Moss on the floor of Holland’s ex-husband’s house suffering from a drug overdose. She was taken to a hospital by ambulance, Holland testified.

Franklin J. Hogue, Moss’ lawyer, told jurors Monday that Moss has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and that she acted under a “delusional compulsion” brought on by an alternate personality when she struck Coker.

Prosecutor Keagan Waystack told jurors Monday that steps Moss took to cover up the crime show she was a woman who knew the difference between right and wrong.

Testimony in the case is scheduled to continue Wednesday.

Although Moss was in the courtroom early Tuesday morning, she waived her right to be present and was taken back to the county jail.

Moss served eight years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in her mother’s 1996 fatal poisoning.

Prosecutor: Moss struck man in head with hammer multiple times

By Amy Leigh Womack - Macon.com

August 26, 2013

GRAY -- Judy Coker feared her husband might get hurt when he drove to Macon in March 2012 to meet Pamela Moss at the Bass Road McDonald’s to get $85,000 that Moss owed him.

Doug Coker, a Henry County businessman, had given her the money because Moss, a grant writer, was helping him set up a nonprofit organization to help people who couldn’t afford to buy homes.

But by March 13, 2012, Coker had figured out Moss was a “con person,” his wife testified Monday.

Moss, 55, is charged with murder in Coker’s death. His body was found March 18, 2012, covered in plastic and shingles, doused with lime, underneath the porch of Moss’ home in River North, a subdivision just across the Jones County line from north Macon.

Moss’ trial began Monday in Gray.

Prosecutor Keagan Waystack said Moss struck Coker in the head with a hammer multiple times in her living room before stashing his body.

Franklin J. Hogue, Moss’ lawyer, told jurors in his opening statement that the defense doesn’t dispute Moss killed Coker, but he said she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

She was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder in the 1990s and received treatment up until the early 2000s, he said.

Hogue said a doctor will testify during the trial that Moss still suffers from the disorder and that she acted out of a “delusional compulsion” when Coker was killed.

“I have an unhealthy client,” Hogue told the jury. “She is not well.”

Waystack argued that steps Moss took to cover up the killing, including trying to clean her house and leaving on the natural gas in hopes the house would burn, show she was a “woman who knew the difference between right and wrong.”

A meeting at McDonald’s

Doug Coker was scheduled to meet Moss at the Bass Road McDonald’s about 11 a.m. March 13, 2012.

Surveillance video shows Coker buying a cup of coffee and talking with someone on his cellphone, said Dean Watson, a Henry County police investigator who was assigned to look into Coker’s disappearance. Coker’s wife reported him missing later on March 13.

The video also shows Coker writing something before he left the restaurant, Watson testified.

Knowing Moss was the last person Coker spoke with, Watson said he went to her house on Old Ridge Road to talk with her on March 14, the day he checked the McDonald’s video. No one answered the door, but a car registered to Moss was parked in the driveway.

Watson later arranged to meet with Moss the following day. She wanted to meet at an Atlanta Starbucks.

While there, Moss said she had planned to use Coker’s $85,000 as seed money for a matching grant. Once another investor matched the money, Coker would get his money back. She would get 5 percent of the matched funds as payment for her services, Watson said.

Moss admitted she had used Coker’s money for her personal use -- she’d had a death in the family and some financial problems -- and said Coker was OK with how the money was used, Watson said.

But Watson had read emails sent from Coker to Moss in which Coker repeatedly had asked for his money back. The evidence didn’t match.

Watson testified that Moss told him multiple versions of how her meeting with Coker occurred. At first, she said they talked in the McDonald’s parking lot and then went their separate ways. She later said they met at the McDonald’s and then he followed her to another location, a piece of land ready for investment.

Watson had already requested copies of Moss’ cellphone records and knew that her cellphone, which she said she had with her that day, had been in the same location from about 6:35 a.m. to 1:35 p.m. The meeting was set for 11 a.m.

Coker’s cellphone records showed his phone was within a two-mile radius of a Monroe County cellphone tower about 2:15 p.m., Watson testified.

But by that time, he was already dead.

A worried wife

Doug Coker talked to his wife one last time, about 10:15 a.m. the day he died.

He had called on his way to meet Moss and said that he had taken some mail to the post office as she had requested.

Judy Coker testified she had asked her husband to call her as soon as he finished meeting with Moss, just so she would know he was OK.

She became concerned about 1 p.m. when she hadn’t heard anything from her husband. She called his cellphone.

“It would ring and ring until it went to voicemail,” Coker testified.

She called about every 15 minutes.

Coker also called one of her husband’s business associates and he tried to contact Doug Coker to no avail.

About 2:15 p.m., Coker said she saw her husband’s name flash across the caller ID readout on her cellphone.

She answered and the person hung up.

“I kept saying, ‘Hello, hello,’ ” Coker said.

She called back. “It was dead,” she said.

Waystack told jurors in her opening statement that Moss used Doug Coker’s cellphone to call his wife and business associate. During both calls she hung up as soon as the calls were answered. She then tossed the phone out the window of his car as she drove it to the Spalding County Hospital.

Waystack said Moss asked a friend to pick her up from the hospital parking lot, saying that her car needed repairs. The friend picked her up without seeing that Moss had been driving Coker’s Dodge Avenger.

A few days later, Moss set off in her own car, headed to her sister’s house in south Georgia. She called on the way, saying she couldn’t drive the whole way and asked that her sister pick her up at a Wal-Mart in Hinesville, Waystack said.

Her sister picked her up in the store parking lot and drove her to her house. When deputies went to her sister’s house several days after the killing, Moss was gone. She was at a neighbor’s house taking pills in an attempt to commit suicide, Waystack said.

After a hospital stay, Moss was taken into custody.

Just before testimony began Monday, Moss, who served eight years in prison after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in her mother’s fatal 1996 poisoning, asked the judge if she could waive her right to be present during the trial. The judge ruled that she had to attend the trial Monday, but could decide Tuesday whether to attend the second day of trial.

Testimony is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.

River North killing trial to begin in Jones County