Editor’s note: Sandy Hodson’s 14-part investigation into justice in the Brunswick Judicial District continues with a look at how Glynn County law enforcement has responded when one of its own takes the law into his own hands.
Earlier this year, quietly and without debate, Glynn County commissioners voted to approve a $1 million settlement in the federal lawsuit filed by Debra Gann, the mother of Katie Kettles Sasser.
MORE: Golden Isles Injustice: Brunswick Judicial District marked by a ‘culture of cover-up’
Golden Isles Injustice
Part 13
“The feckless county management has embraced the corruption and abdicated policy into the hands of Chief (John) Powell and his henchmen,” reads the lawsuit.
Katie Kettles Sasser was the estranged wife of Lt. Robert Corey Sasser, the Glynn County Police officer who killed Caroline Small in 2008. In 2018, Sasser hunted down Katie and the man she was seeing, John Hall, and executed them before killing himself.
Kettles Sasser began seeing Hall after she left Sasser and moved out of their home in March 2018. Their deaths might have been prevented if the Glynn County Police Department had followed its own policy, and/or if prosecutors, judges and probation officers had treated Sasser as the violent and dangerous person he was, reads the lawsuit, a scorching indictment of the criminal system in Brunswick.
The slayings weren’t a spur of moment decision on Sasser’s part.
Hall was with Kettles Sasser in the early morning of May 13, 2018, at her home inside a gated community when Sasser began pounding and kicking at the front door. He was in a rage after peeping in the windows and seeing Hall with Kettles Sasser. Hall called 911, but instead of helping protect him and Kettles Sasser, the police helped Sasser take her vehicle, according to the lawsuit.
Hall and Kettles Sasser told Glynn County Officers Parker Marcy and Justin Floyd that Sasser threatened to kill them. In Georgia, that is a crime called terroristic threats. Trying to break down someone’s door in the middle of the night is generally regarded as attempted burglary or attempted home invasion. And when Sasser rushed at his estranged wife and pushed her out of the doorway in front of Marcy and Floyd, he committed battery.
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But instead of arresting Sasser, Marcy and Floyd joked and laughed with him about Sasser having “given the house a good ole Glynn County ‘police knock.’” Sasser insisted they call Lt. Scott Jackson to the scene. Marcy and Floyd told Kettles Sasser if she wanted her estranged husband to leave she had to give them the keys to her vehicle because Sasser demanded her vehicle.
Jackson decided Sasser hadn’t committed any crime, although all of Sasser’s and the officers’ behavior was caught on body cameras. Not all of the audio was available because the officers turned off or muted the microphone on their bodycams as they huddled to decide what to do. At the conclusion of the huddle, Marcy went back to Kettles Sasser asked her for jewelry that Sasser also wanted. Even after Sasser finally left in Kettles Sasser’s vehicle – his truck was left parked outside the gated community – the police department again tried to get her to give them the jewelry Sasser wanted.
When Hall and Kettles Sasser complained that Sasser hadn’t been arrested, Floyd said “He didn’t need anyone to tell him how to do his job.”
Powell assigned Assistant Chief Brian Scott to determine whether Sasser violated department policy or the law the night before. Others in the department kept Sasser apprised of Scott’s efforts. Although the bodycam footage documented at least one felony, the lawsuit alleged Powell ordered that Sasser was only to be charged with battery and trespass, misdemeanor offenses.
Sasser wasn’t arrested. Instead, the secretary for Glynn County State Court Judge Bart Altman, who represented Sasser in the 2008 fatal shooting of Caroline Small, called and asked attorney Alan Tucker to represent Sasser. The bond had been arranged with Magistrate Judge Alex Atwood. Tucker would tell the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, called in by the police chief after the double homicide and suicide, that Sheriff Neal Jump feared putting Sasser in jail for any amount of time posed a security risk. The bond was preset before he got to the jail to be booked. He was immediately released.
A day after Sasser was charged with the misdemeanor offenses, he barricaded himself in his truck, threatening to kill himself and any officer who dared to come near him. He fired at least one shot, sending officers running for cover. The standoff lasted hours and involved more than 100 officers from Glynn County police, the sheriff’s office and state patrol. He was finally subdued, but instead of being arrested and taken to jail, the Glynn County police transported Sasser to a mental health facility.
At Sasser’s request, Glynn County Police Lt. Tom Jump had Sasser’s vehicle and the weapons inside released to his son, Bryce Sasser, according to the lawsuit.
While the magistrate judge, Atwood, moved to revoked Sasser’s bond on the domestic violence charges, it didn’t happen. District Attorney Jackie Johnson made a show of recusing herself from Sasser’s next bond hearing but but it was one of her assistants, John B. Johnson, who handle the consent bond hearing. This time, Magistrate Flay Cabiness – who had practiced law with Altman, Sasser’s former attorney who is still a state court judge – set the bond.
Instead of being jailed, Sasser, charged with obstruction of an officer for the standoff, walked again. Sasser’s attorney insisted in his GBI interview that Sasser didn’t get any special treatment. The bond prohibited Sasser from remaining in Glynn County and entrusted him and his son to store away his firearms.
Sasser’s attorney, Tucker, would surface in another notorious Glynn County case, the Feb. 23, 2020, murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Tucker was the one who released the video of Arbery’s shotgun killing to the public in May 2020.
According to Sasser’s internet search history and witnesses, five days after he was released on bond a second time, on May 29, 2018 he began planning the deaths of his estranged wife, Hall and himself.
One internet search on Sasser’s phone read: “How does law enforcement deal with an individual threatening to commit suicide?” the lawsuit reads.
On May 30, 2018, Sasser met with CSRA Probation Officer Amy Corcoran. He was supposed to download an app for GPS monitoring, another condition of his bond. But Corcoran failed to enforce the GPS monitoring provision.
The night of June 26, 2018, Kettles Sasser and Hall were at a Brunswick pizza parlor when Sasser and his son walked in.
“Eyewitness accounts state that Sasser stared down Katie and Hall the entire time he was in the restaurant,” the lawsuit reads.
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The owner and bartender feared what Sasser might do. Kettles Sasser called the victim liaison at GCPD and the sheriff. They told her to call 911.
Two minutes after Kettles Sasser called 911, Glynn County Officer Heather Savage called Sasser to warn him. Sasser tried to head off Sgt. Gerald Herndon who was sent to the pizza parlor to investigate. Herndon documented what had happened and briefed Scott. Powell assured Herndon that his report would be sent to the judge, according to the lawsuit. It wasn’t.
Instead, GCPD Tom Jump and Investigator Stephanie Oliver determined Sasser hadn’t committed any crime. Oliver was supposed to go to the judge who had signed off on the consent bond after Sasser’s armed standoff. She called the judge who told her to call CSRA Probation. The probation office told Oliver she needed a police report. None was provided. SCRA Probation Officer Corcoran told Kettles Sasser she should get a police report herself so Corcoran could seek Sasser’s bond revocation. Corcoran called the district attorney’s office and was told to schedule a hearing.
Hours later, a neighbor of Hall’s watched as Hall walked around the side of his house to the front door. Sasser jumped out of a bush and shot Hall four times in the chest with a 12-guage shotgun. He kicked in the door, went upstairs to where Kettles Sasser was hiding in a bathroom. He kicked in that door, grabbed Kettles Sasser by the hair and dragged her to the bed where he threw her face down. He put the gunshot barrel to the back of her head and fired.
Sasser then drove home. He shot himself inside his truck parked at the house.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
