Channon Christian, Chris Newsom slaying spawn unending agony (2024)

By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel

It was an unthinkable crime ? a young Knox County couple out on a date kidnapped by strangers, bound, beaten, tortured, raped and slain.Christopher Newsom, 23, a Halls High School graduate and gifted tradesman, was led barefoot to a set of railroad tracks in East Knoxville, shot execution-style and his body set on fire. Channon Christian, 21, a Farragut High School graduate and University of Tennessee senior, was hog-tied and stuffed alive inside a trash can, where she slowly suffocated.

A small army of federal, state and local law enforcers soon rounded up five suspects in the January 2007 torture-slayings, four charged in the slayings and a fifth suspected but charged only as an accessory.

With the defendants all black and the victims white, the case quickly drew the attention of white supremacist groups, who staged demonstrations in downtown Knoxville. Authorities pushed back, noting there was no evidence the crimes were racially motivated. Accused ringleader Lemaricus Davidson, whose Chipman Street home proved a house of horrors for Christian and Newsom, dated a white woman. So, too, had his brother Letalvis Cobbins and his friend George Thomas.

Eric Boyd was the first to stand trial. Although authorities have long suspected his involvement in the rape and slaying of Newsom, Boyd never admitted being at the Chipman Street house, and the burning of Newsom's body destroyed DNA evidence. He was convicted in a federal court of accessory to a fatal carjacking and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Next came the trials in Knox County Criminal Court of Cobbins, Davidson, Thomas and Cobbins' current girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman. The cases would cost millions to prosecute.

Cobbins shocked even his own defense team when he opted to testify on his own behalf, claiming Christian offered oral sex in hopes of being set free. A jury from Nashville bused to Knox County convicted him in the crimes against Christian but deemed him a facilitator only in the crimes against Newsom. He was sentenced to life without parole.

Davidson offered his own shocking defense, claiming Christian and Newsom came to his home to buy drugs. A Knox County jury sentenced him to death. Thomas, tried by a Hamilton County jury, was convicted in both slayings and sentenced to life without parole.

Coleman, who was 18 at the time of the slayings, insisted she herself was a victim of violent, domineering men, too afraid to try to stop the atrocities being committed against Christian and Newsom. A Nashville jury acquitted her of any role in the crimes against Newsom and convicted her as a facilitator only in the crimes against Christian. She was sentenced to 53 years in prison.

All were packed away to prison when, in January 2011, the judge who had presided over the trials ? Richard Baumgartner ? abruptly left the bench. The News Sentinel soon revealed he was the subject of a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe for buying prescription painkillers from a felon on probation in his court and using a graduate of the Drug Court program he helped found to get pills and sex.

He pleaded guilty to an official misconduct charge but escaped with his pension. Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood would later release a portion of the TBI file on Baumgartner that showed he had been committing crimes, including doctor-shopping, throughout the Christian/Newsom cases.

Baumgartner had not yet fulfilled his role as "13th juror" in affirming the verdicts in the Christian/Newsom case when he resigned. Because of that, Blackwood ordered new trials. Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols immediately fought against both Blackwood's findings and the judge himself.

Although the Tennessee Supreme Court would eventually uphold Blackwood's new trial orders, the court wound up removing Blackwood from the cases of Davidson, Cobbins and Thomas. The state did not challenge Coleman's retrial order primarily because Baumgartner confessed taking Xanax during her trial.

Coleman was retried and again found guilty on facilitation charges. A new judge, Senior Judge Walter Kurtz, has set a Dec. 13 hearing on whether Davidson, Cobbins and Thomas should be awarded new trials.

Baumgartner was convicted last month in federal court of five counts of lying to protect his mistress's role in a drug conspiracy and lost his pension as a result. He faces a March sentencing hearing.

Follow Jamie Satterfield on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jamiescoop.

Related stories

2000-12: A new millennium

Timeline for 2000-12

Knoxville rediscovers downtown living

A $50 million move: News Sentinel finds new home

Channon Christian, Chris Newsom slaying spawn unending agony

Ash spill tops list of disasters in 2000s

Lamar Alexander rises to power in Washington, D.C.

Ball park moves to Sevier County

Pat Summitt's unmatched career ends with sadness

Lane Kiffin fiasco lowest note of a low time for UT football

Bruce Pearl brings UT basketball back

Quentin Tarantino's film career started at South Clinton Drive-in

Johnny Knoxville takes bruising road to the top

Dolly Parton still growing strong into sixth decade

Music magical in the new millennium

Literary honors flow for Cormac McCarthy