CRIME HUNTER: Did swinging lifestyle turn deadly for Georgia pair?
· Toronto Sun
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In rural Georgia, alternative sexual practices and lifestyles aren’t always kosher with the hoi polloi.
While a late-night threesome may be cool in Atlanta , in the more rural areas, it’s best to keep one’s hormone-charged hijinks under wraps.
Such was the case of blond Georgia peach Cheryl Howell Coe . Cheryl and her hubby, Luther Coe, engaged in activities that definitely veered away from Friday Night Lights , PTA and the Antioch Baptist Church crowd south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
One liked BDSM, she liked lots of men
Cheryl and Luke were swingers and into partner swapping. No biggie, but sometimes this arrangement can go sideways when one half of a couple digs the lifestyle and action more than their spouse.
Luke was heavily into the BDSM and the Master/Slave corner of the boffing buffet, whereas Cheryl just wanted to get laid. Often and by as many different men as possible.
By 2021, Cheryl and Luke were arguing bitterly over their now divergent sex lives. She wanted more and with a multitude of partners, and he wanted less. Not for the first time did a man drive the swinging bus only to be left at the side of the road.
Exactly who was the dominant partner also became murkier. She had discussed the swinging lifestyle in Facebook conversations with fellow travellers, noting that “in the lifestyle, the women are in charge.”
Around 7:30 p.m. on June 23, 2021, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office responded to a phone call from a hysterical woman in Newnan. It was Cheryl Coe, who admitted knocking back too many ciders, crashing and then spilling her guts to a 911 operator. There had been a horrible accident.
In swinging, ‘women are in charge’
It seemed that Cheryl had just taken hubby off the board. She said she crashed after her cider fest, then awoke to hear what she believed was an intruder. BANG! BANG!
Luther was morgue-bound. No more intruder. No more Luther.
Cops have a suspicious nature and Cheryl gave them plenty of ammunition.
As detectives began digging, a sordid picture emerged. A week before the killing, Cheryl asked to add another playmate onto her growing roster. Her husband asked if she intended to have sex with both men on the same day.
She did.
She signed the sexual double-header note: “lol”
The Times-Herald reported that Cheryl answered in the affirmative that she was gunning for a double header. She signed off: “LOL”.
For Luther, this was all a bridge too far and he responded that her clandestine activities “turned his stomach.” Cheryl then suggested that maybe the couple should torpedo their open marriage arrangement. No, no, no, Luther said, they just needed more rules.
The pair had been in a relationship since 2015 and had opened it up in 2020.
Now, under the interrogation room spotlight, Cheryl, 51 at the time of the shooting, was not doing herself any favours. Her story kept changing. First, she believed Luther was an intruder so she shot him. Then, she claimed, Luther became overly aggressive during a BDSM session.
She was only defending herself and was disturbed at his uber-violent BDSM sexual practices. Hubby choked her out and slapped her breasts, leaving bruises.
‘Cheryl, you shot me’
“I didn’t enjoy the pain. He would coerce me and tell me I was doing this for him. That it satisfied him and made him happy,” the Times-Herald quoted Cheryl.
Physical evidence revealed that Luther had been shot at point-blank range. Why, Cheryl had no idea it was Luther until, with his dying breath, he told her, “Cheryl, you shot me.”
When Cheryl went on trial, testimony provided a veritable Penthouse Forum worth of carnal capers. Most of the sexual action was with friends, courthouse habitues learned. The couple appeared happy, his son from a previous marriage testified.
Entered into evidence was Coweta County Sheriff’s Officer Jason Brooks’s body camera video showing Cheryl speaking with her mother on the phone after cops arrived.
She is heard saying: “I was just trying to protect myself.”
Cheryl told detectives that her hubby told her to “get her ass out of bed” before yanking a pillow out from between her legs. And the vixen added one more twist: She was only doing what Luke had taught her to do in the event of an intruder.
‘He was dragging me out of bed’
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Cheryl claimed. “I just grabbed the gun like he’s (Luther) always told me to.”
But the black widow eventually copped to investigators that the couple had been fighting over their sexual entanglements. Until she passed out drunk, she told cops, they had planned to discuss the lay of the land.
“I just wanted to be left alone, and he wasn’t having it,” Cheryl allegedly told cops. “He was dragging me out of bed. I was scared.”
She added: “He was more enraged than he’s ever been at me.”
Adventure in lust imploded
But prosecutor Laura Lukert called the bodacious black widow “the most unreliable of narrators” in her closing arguments. “The only consistency we have is that that woman shot Luther Coe.”
Cheryl Howell Coe was found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault on Aug. 18, 2025. She was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
What had promised to be a tantalizing experiment in lust and adventure crashed and burned. Hubby in the morgue, his playmate in prison.
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