Every year
on January 7, Unit 1012 will always remember Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a couple from
Knoxville, Tennessee who were murdered on January 7, 2007. This year, we will
remember them on the 10th anniversary of their murders.
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10 years since
Christian-Newsom murders in Knoxville
Published: Updated:
KNOXVILLE
(WATE) – It has been 10 years this week since the heinous kidnappings, rape and
murders of a young Knoxville couple. The crime forever changed two families,
resulted in several new laws and led to years upon years of court proceedings.
The
randomness of the crimes left the community in fear and the victims’ families
have been forced to constantly relive the nightmare, appearing in court more
than 350 times in their pursuit of justice.
Timeline: Christian-Newsom murder
trials
The murders
Channon
Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Chris Newsom, 23, did not arrive at a friend’s
party on January 6, 2007, and never returned home to their parents. They were
last seen at the Washington Ridge Apartments. The next day, a train conductor
reported a body near the railroad tracks and 9th Avenue in East Knoxville. The
next day it was learned the bound and burned body was that of Chris Newsom and
later it was revealed he had been raped, beaten and shot.
Tim
Miller was the first reporter from WATE on the scene.
“We
started hearing on Sunday from family members that two young people were
missing and that is when we learned of the discovery of Chris’s body,” he said
in a recent interview.
In
the hours that followed, fear set in about Channon Christian’s fate. Chris
Newsom’s own father fought back tears.
“He
would not have hesitated one moment with her in danger, without putting his own
life on the line. He was that type,” said Hugh Newsom in 2007.
Meanwhile,
friends and family started their own massive search, leading to Channon
Christian’s abandoned Toyota 4Runner, not far from where Chris Newsom’s body
had been found. On January 9, fingerprints in the car led to a house at 2316
Chipman Street A body was found, but not immediately identified.
Friends
and family feared the worst and later investigators confirmed Channon Christian
was dead. She was found in a trash can – beaten, raped and with bleach poured
down her throat. The medical examiner determined she suffocated in the trash
can.
WATE
6 On Your Side legal analyst and attorney Greg Isaacs remembered what it was
like as the true details of the crime started leaking out.
“Then
the injuries and the extent of the torture, and how the victims were found
started permeating out. And you could tell… veteran prosecutors were impacted
and couldn’t talk about it,” he said. “This was a very horrific and sinister
crime that touched everyone involved and started permeating throughout the
community.”
The manhunt
By
the next day, a manhunt had begun. The first two names released by police were
half brothers Lemaricus Davidson and Letalvis Cobbins. Davidson had lived at
the Chipman Street home and already faced aggravated robbery and carjacking
charges. He had not been out of prison for long and was wanted in Knoxville for
driving on a suspended license.
A
tip a day later led to Lebanon, Kentucky. State, federal and local law
enforcement agencies – including the Knox County sheriff himself – teamed up to
arrest Cobbins and another suspect, George Thomas.
The
finger pointing started immediately. During interrogation, Cobbins said he saw
Davidson and another suspect, Eric Boyd, commit the carjacking.
“They
jump out of the car and run to a white SUV and, um, there were two people – a
man and a woman at the SUV. They jump in, pointing guns at them and… and um…
they carjacked them, I guess,” said Cobbins during a recorded interrogation.
The
same day Cobbins was caught, the search in Knoxville led to a home on Reynolds
Street and Lemaricus Davidson. It later came out that it was Boyd who had told
police to go there.
Police
said at the time they had everyone they were looking for, but a few days later
there was another arrest in Kentucky: Cobbins’s girlfriend Vanessa Coleman. She
had admitted to being at Chipman Street the night of the crime and that she had
been told it was Davidson, Cobbins and Thomas who burned Chris Newsom’s body.
She
also told investigators she saw the men repeatedly go in and out of the bedroom
where Channon Christian was tied up and blindfolded.
“It
was after he choked her and she was laying on the floor. He hollered at me to
come in there and check on her pulse. He said that he couldn’t tell if she was
dead or not,” she said in a police interview.
Meanwhile,
Davidson had also been talking to investigators. The specifics of his story
kept changing over the course of two and a half hours as he laid blame on the
others – Cobbins for the carjacking, Thomas for killing Chris Newsom and he
insisted he did not rape Channon Christian.
The trials
Eric
Boyd was the first to go to trial in April 2008, but Boyd faced charges as an
accessory after the fact, not for the murders or rapes, despite what the other
suspects told police. His face was federal, meaning no cameras were allowed in
the courtroom.
In
a police interrogation tape, Boyd portrayed Davidson as the killer. The defense
said Boyd stopped helping Davidson after learning his parts in the murders. The
verdict was guilty and the sentence was 18 years. The Christian and Newsom
families recognized this was only the start.
More
than a year later in August 2009, Letalvis Cobbins was the defendant in the
first state trial. A jury was brought in from Nashville because of all the
publicity. Cobbins started the trial by entering surprise guilty pleas to
lesser charges.
“Letalvis
Cobbins made bad choices. He’s manned up this morning and taken ownership of
them,” said his attorney at the trial.
Evidence
from Channon Christian’s rape kit showed DNA from Cobbins and Davidson. The
most graphic testimony came from the medical examiner: signs of multiple
attackers and the news that both Channon Christian and Chris Newsom had been
raped. Christian was raped repeatedly and left to suffocate in a trash can.
Newsom was bound, gagged, shot execution style, and burned. Grim photographs
left a mark on the people who saw them.
“I’ve
seen autopsy photos of homicide cases, abuse cases for two decades. Once I saw
three to four of those photos, I left the courtroom,” said Isaacs.
“I
saw a few of the pictures. It’s just very difficult. I don’t know how the
families listened to the testimony and looked at these pictures, but it was
important, I think, for people to understand this is what happened to these
people and this is what happened in Knoxville,” said former WATE anchor Gene
Patterson.
The
defense maintained that while Cobbins was there for the carjacking and
kidnapping, and did rape Christian, it was his older half brother Davidson who
had done the killing. Another surprise was when Cobbins himself took the stand.
“She
said, ‘Please can you just convince him to let me go?’ I said I’ll try,” said
Cobbins on the stand, describing an exchange with Channon Christian.
Then
the verdict came. He was found guilty on all but five counts, but received the
life sentence, not the death penalty. The families were let down.
“What
do you got to do to earn the death penalty in this state?” asked Gary
Christian, Channon Christian’s father, after the trial.
Mid-October
2009 brought Lemaricus Davidson’s trial and much of the testimony had been
heard before. However, the defense was using its cross-examinations to raise
questions about the victims, with talk of Adderall to cram for tests and
marijuana use. Chris Newsom’s friend Josh Anderson spoke about their marijuana
use.
“He’s
not the one on trial. Those kids were totally, completely innocent,” said his
mother Mary Newsom.
After
a week of testimony and eight hours of deliberations, Davidson was found guilty
of first degree felony murder of both Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.
During the sentencing phase, the victims’ families told the jury of their loss.
“My
life will never be the same because of a senseless crime by people who have no
regard for life,” said Mary Newsom.
Davidson’s
half-sister described a rough upbringing and an abusive mother, but the jury
wasn’t swayed and sentenced him to death.
A
few weeks later, in December 2009, George Thomas went on trial and a
Chattanooga jury was brought in to hear the case. Prosecutors admitted they
didn’t have much physical evidence to tie him to the murders, but Thomas was
there and they argued he was responsible, showing the jury just how tiny the
house was.
The
defense argued it was reprehensible for Thomas not to help the victims, but not
criminal. The jury convicted Thomas on every single charge from kidnapping to
rape and handed him a sentence of life without parole.
Last
to go on trial was Vanessa Coleman in May 2010 with another out-of-town jury,
this time from Nashville. Coleman’s attorney at first said his client would take
the stand, but that never happened. The jury returned not guilty verdicts on
the charges related to Chris Newsom’s rape and murder and guilty verdicts on
lesser charges for facilitating the rape and murder of Channon Christian.
Judge Baumgartner
The
circumstances surrounding the final months on the bench by Judge Richard
Baumgartner, the man overseeing the state trials in this case, are still
shocking. Court watchers first got a clue that something was wrong at the end
of the Vanessa Coleman trial. The judge was slurring his words and sounding
sleepy as he led the jury through the charges.
Former
district attorney Randy Nichols says his office didn’t know how bad off
Baumgartner was.
“Everybody
knew that Judge Baumgartner suffered from physical injuries and was not overly
spry.
We knew that, so when you would see him, it wouldn’t raise much
suspicion,” he said.
On
January 27, 2011, there was an announcement made that Baumgartner would be
taking a leave of absence for medical reasons. The next day, the TBI confirmed
it was investigating Baumgartner and had been for a while.
Then
on March 10, he pleaded guilty to state charges of official misconduct and
admitted his addiction to prescription painkillers.
“I
have lately let this system, this community, let my family down,” he said.
The
plea deal gave him judicial diversion and he resigned from the bench. Attorney
in the Christian-Newsom cases began putting the wheels in motion for the
sentences to be overturned.
In
June 2011, there was a sign there might be more to Baumgartner’s case from the
ex-wife of Chris Gibson, a man prosecutors identified as the judge’s drug
dealer.
“Richard
Baumgartner, he got a smack on the hand. He walked out and he should have had
to do more than treatment, I think. He was buying multiple pills that I knowed
of,” said Darlene Gibson.
It
turned out she was right. The TBI’s report, released in December of that year,
was full of eye-popping details. Deena Castleman, a woman in Baumgartner’s drug
court, said the two had a sexual relationship and she supplied him with pills.
He even visited her in the hospital during the Davidson trial to get his fix.
Baumgartner ended up serving around five and a half months in federal prison
over what was in that file. He was released in 2013.
Judge
Jon Kerry Blackwood granted the motion for all four suspects to get new trials.
The retrials and further court proceedings
Prosecutors
appealed that decision and the retrials were eventually whittled down to two:
George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman. Coleman went first.
The jury
was brought in from Jackson for the trial that began on November 13, 2012. The
testimony revisited familiar yet still shocking facts. The prosecution said
Coleman was left alone with Channon Christian when the others left to get rid
of Chris Newsom.
“All the
stuff that she knew. She had the opportunity to get herself out of the house.
She had the opportunity to save Miss Christian,” said prosecutor Takisha
Fitzgerald.
The
defense tried to paint Coleman as a victim, a young woman who was too scared to
leave. Her attorney said the prosecution couldn’t prove what Coleman’s role
was.
“The
government, with all its resources, has not put on not one witness to swear
under oath what happened at Chipman Street. Not one witness took this witness
stand to tell you what happened that day,” said defense attorney Ted Lavit.
After
nine hours of deliberations, the jury found her guilty on 13 of the 17 counts.
The most serious was facilitating the rape and murder of Channon Christian. She
was found not guilty on the one count relating to Chris Newsom.
“Chris
died protecting my daughter that night. She got enough justice for them both
today,” said Channon Christian’s mother Deena Christian after the verdict was
read.
“She
deserves to spend the rest of her life in jail,” said Channon’s father Gary
Christian.
Thomas’s
retrial came around in May 2013, again with an out-of-town jury. Again
prosecutors walked through the timeline – the missing couple, the tiny house
where you couldn’t miss what was going on, and the gruesome discovery.
Thomas
sat stoic as his attorneys continued to point out the lack of physical evidence
linking him to the crimes. His only reaction was to shake his head in
disagreement with the verdict: guilty on 38 counts.
“If I
could sit in there and hear guilty over and over and over, I might get a little
bit of sleep,” said Gary Christian.
The judge
would later give Thomas back to back life sentences, plus 25 years, meaning he
would have to live to the age of 147 before he would be eligible for parole.
Cobbins
faces life without parole and Davidson was sentenced to death, a sentence which
was just upheld in December 2016. Eric Boyd is still in prison on an 18 year
sentence.
Vanessa
Coleman’s sentence had been knocked down from 53 to 35 years and she only had
to serve 30 percent before becoming eligible for parole, with time served and
good behavior. In December 2014, she got her parole hearing, but it was denied.
More
Christian-Newsom Murders 10 Years Later coverage:
- Families push for more charges for 5th person charged in Christian-Newsom case
- Changes in laws after Christian-Newsom murder case
- Christian, Newsom families push forward 10 years after murders
- Former WATE journalists reflect on emotional impact of Christian-Newsom murders
INTERNET SOURCE:
http://wate.com/2017/01/05/christian-newsom-families-push-forward-10-years-after-murders/
Christian,
Newsom families push forward 10 years after murders
Published: Updated:
KNOXVILLE
(WATE) – Ten years after the violent kidnapping and murders of their children,
the Christian and Newsom families are still fighting to have their stories
heard and still fighting for justice.
The
parents of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom have relived these crimes so many
times, but say they never want their children to be forgotten and want to keep
their story fresh in people’s minds because justice still hasn’t been served.
Mary
Newsom has left Chris’s bedroom relatively untouched since his murder 10 years
ago this week. Quilts have been added to his bed, made by friends following his
death. Each square tells a story, like the orange and white shirt he’s seen
wearing in countless photographs.
“That was
Chris’s favorite orange and white shirt,” she said. It’s now sewn together as
part of a tribute to their son.
Across
the room in his closet sits the last load of laundry Mary Newsom washed and
folded for her son. She says she can’t bear the thought of getting rid of
anything and that time is not healing their pain.
“It
doesn’t really heal. You think about it every day and you go through it every
day. We keep his picture up around the house and talk to him every day,” she
said.
All the
same, they do understand life is moving on around them.
More
details: 10
years since Christian-Newsom murders in Knoxville
“One of
the most difficult things for me is watching his friends get married, having
kids, growing up, going to the weddings, wondering this should be us,” Mary
Newsom said.
While the
Newsoms say they don’t like to revisit the scene of the crimes in East
Knoxville, Deena Christian does make a point to come by Chipman Street where
her daughter’s body was found at least once a year.
“It was
the worst day of my life and it’s still like it just happened yesterday,” Deena
Christian said.
Like the
Newsoms, Deena Christian says Channon’s room has stayed the same for the last
10 years.
“Her
bookbag is still where it was when she put it down that Friday coming home from
school,” she said.
However,
that is about to change because Channon Christian’s parents Gary and Deena are
now divorced. Deena Christian is moving out and is forced to pack up her little
girl’s belongings, possibly for the final time.
“That’s
going to be very difficult. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do it. My
friends are going to have to help me do that,” she said.
Timeline: Christian-Newsom murder
trials
She says
she still has trouble sleeping and often has nightmares about the way her
daughter was killed. She says she can still see the pictures in her mind of
Channon tied up in the trash can where she died. However, she says she must
move forward for her son and for others, no matter how dark some days might be.
“I would
just love to hear her voice, and give her a hug, and tell her I love her. I
wouldn’t want her to go through the pain she went through again, but I would
love to wrap my arms around her and I just don’t know if I could ever let go,”
she said.
Channon’s
father Gary Christian just returned to East Tennessee after getting remarried.
While a lot in his life has changed, he says his fight to keep the suspects
behind bars and to see the death sentence delivered to Lemaricus Davidson has
not faded.
“There
needs to be a time frame which that sentence is carried out, not only for the
sake of justice but for taxpayers’ money. And if he’s gonna be put to death, it
needs to be done,” he said.
When
asked if he wanted to attend the execution, his answer was affirmative.
“Absolutely.
I want look at him the whole time. I don’t want to miss nothing,” he said.
Memorials
are planned for Saturday. Chris Newsom’s is at 3 p.m. at Woodhaven Memorial
Gardens on Edgemoor Road. Channon Christian’s is at 5 p.m. at Highland West
Memorial Park.
The
families also say they are continuing to seek more charges against Eric Boyd,
the fifth person charged in the case, who was charged as an accessory and
sentenced to 18 years in prison.
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Hugh Newsom and his wife Mary
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28355466]
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Please go these Blog Posts
to learn more:
1. The Case:
2. ‘Liberal Lies About the
Death Penalty’ by Ashley Herzog
3. UNIT 1012
WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER CHANNON CHRISTIAN AND CHRISTOPHER NEWSOM (DIED: JANUARY 7,
2007)
4. IN LOVING MEMORY OF CHANNON CHRISTIAN
AND CHRISTOPHER NEWSOM (7TH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR MURDERS) [DIED ON JANUARY 7,
2007]
5.
Pro Death Penalty Quote by Hugh Newsom
6. FOREVER CHANGED
May justice be served ASAP in this horrendous case. All 5 of these racist murderers should have been put to death.
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