Left: Cheryl Coe (Coweta County Sheriff”s Office). Right: Luther “Luke” Coe III (McKoon Funeral Home).
A 55-year-old Georgia woman will spend the rest of her life behind bars for the slaying of her husband after she shot him to death following a disagreement about her seeing other men in their open marriage.
Cheryl Coe was convicted Monday of murder and aggravated assault in the death of 48-year-old Luther “Luke” Coe III in Coweta County. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to a courtroom report from the Newnan Times-Herald.
The Coweta County Sheriff’s Office responded around 7:30 p.m. on June 23, 2021, to the Coe home on Tommy Lee Cook Road in Newnan after the defendant called 911 to report she shot her husband when she mistook him for an intruder.
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Coe allegedly told cops that prior to the shooting, she had consumed four or five Angry Orchard Hard Cider drinks on the porch as her husband worked in his detached garage. She reportedly said she decided to go to bed around 7:15 p.m. but was awoken roughly 10 minutes later when the bedroom door swung open.
Thinking it was an intruder, she opened fire.
“I was just trying to protect myself,” she reportedly told investigators at the time.
She claimed she didn’t realize she shot her husband until he reportedly said “Cheryl, you shot me.”
But her story fell apart almost immediately, as investigators determined that her husband had suffered a contact bullet wound — meaning that the gun was fired as it was being held to the victim’s body, and not from a distance as Coe originally claimed.
Coe then claimed she shot her husband in self-defense. She reportedly said he came storming into the room and tried dragging her out of bed. She said he left the room, so she took the opportunity to grab a gun from the nightstand. The now-convicted murderer fired one warning shot — which she said made the victim angry — before pulling the trigger a second time.
“I was just trying to hit the wall behind the TV so it would scare him off or make him leave,” she reportedly said. “I wasn’t trying to hit him.”
But she did. After Coe helped paramedics render aid to her husband, he later died at a hospital.
Investigators then discovered simmering issues within the marriage. A series of text messages in the days leading up to the shooting reportedly showed the couple fighting about their open marriage.
Cheryl Coe asked her husband for permission to see another man later that week. He then reportedly asked if she was also planning on seeing a second man that same day to which she responded “lol.” The victim reportedly said her response “turned his stomach.”
She suggested they end their open marriage because it was causing issues, but he reportedly wanted to keep it going with more ground rules. Luther Coe reportedly became even more upset when he learned that his wife was talking about their issues with a friend.
The defendant reiterated her self-defense claim when she took the stand at her trial. She reportedly told jurors he was “more enraged that he’s ever been at me.”
Asked why she initially told cops the shooting was an accident, she reportedly claimed it was because she did not want to tarnish her husband’s reputation.
Prosecutors during closing arguments pointed out her conflicting narratives.
“She brought a gun to a verbal spat,” prosecutor Laura Lukert reportedly said.
According to his obituary, Luther Coe served in the U.S. Army and owned a demolition and road grading company.
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