Chilling video shows raid on 98-year-old newspaper co-owner's home
Video released Monday reveals the frustation experienced by 98-year-old Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer during during a nearly two-hour search of her home Aug. 11 by Marion police and Marion County sheriff's deputies.
Meyer, still reeling from the effects, died 24 hours later of sudden cardiac arrest. An official coroner's report lists the anxiety and anger she experienced as a contributing cause of her death. After the Kansas Bureau of Investigation intervened, the search was ruled unjustified five days later.
The video, one of 82 captured on her security cameras, starts one and a half hours into police presence, which she found intolerable, at her home and ends at the point when police pulled the plug on her Internet connection.
At the beginning of the video, she asks her Alexa smart speaker to call her son, Eric Meyer, the paper's other owner and editor and publisher. He had left to go to the newspaper office, where employees had been ejected by police and were forced to stay outside during a heat advisory. In the background, Eric Meyer's cell phone can be heard ringing. It already had been seized by police.
Seized items were turned over to the newspaper's attorney Wednesday and gradually are being returned after being checked by a forensic expert to determined what police might illegally have accessed. As of this writing, four computers, two hard drives, and router still have not been returned.
Last modified Aug. 22, 2023