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Warren Was Here · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:42
  In March twenty twenty one, Terry Coohe was in her son's room putting away
• 0:47
  clothes and cleaning up when she found an unfamiliar container at the bottom of his
• 0:52
  wardrobe. She was curious and opened up the container to see what was inside.
• 0:58
  Terry pulled out a heavy plastic bag, but when she lifted it up,
• 1:03
  she realized it was covered in maggots, and against her better judgment,
• 1:07
  she opened it. There was a second plastic bag inside, but Terry couldn't
• 1:12
  bring herself to open it. Instead, she called her son's father, telling
• 1:17
  him, you need to come over right now. The two of them called
• 1:21
  the police, telling the nine one one operator that they believed their son,
• 1:25
  nineteen year old Brian Cohey Junior, had killed somebody. The plastic bags that
• 1:30
  Terry had opened contained a human decomposing head and a pair of dismembered human hands.
• 1:38
  On that nine one one call, Terry acknowledged that for Brian's entire life,
• 1:44
  he'd been only interested in death and murder. Quote, he has always
• 1:49
  had a little bit of fascination with the morbid, she said. He was
• 1:53
  channeling it. I thought into becoming a crime scene investigator, but not so
• 1:59
  much law enforcement rushed to the Kohee family home, where they began to question
• 2:04
  Brian. One of the officers calmly explained the situation to him, saying,
• 2:09
  your parents have raised concerns about some items they may have found in your bedroom.
• 2:14
  Can you elaborate? Brian didn't seem surprised or alarmed, and he didn't
• 2:19
  try to prove his innocence either. Instead, he matched the officer's tone,
• 2:23
  saying, yes, I believe so. A human head and hands from that
• 2:28
  man who went missing. I killed him with a knife. The victim that
• 2:32
  Brian was talking about was Warren Barnes, a sixty nine year old homeless man
• 2:37
  who was well known in the area. Warren had gone missing in late February,
• 2:42
  and there had been no sign of him in his usual haunts. Since
• 2:46
  Brian had no connection with Warren. In fact, Brian didn't even know the
• 2:50
  victim's name. When investigators grilled him why he had murdered a complete stranger,
• 2:54
  Brian simply responded, I wondered what it would feel like to commit murder.
• 3:00
  In all of his police interviews, Brian didn't show any remorse about the crime.
• 3:06
  Instead, he appeared to be excited to finally talk about what he'd done,
• 3:09
  and he was eager to share as many details as possible. He explained
• 3:14
  that before he had killed Warren, he spent at least six months planning out
• 3:19
  how he would commit the perfect murder. To avoid raising suspicion, he had
• 3:23
  decided he would target a victim whom he believed would not be missed, such
• 3:29
  as a sex worker or a homeless person. He began to describe the night
• 3:34
  that the crime had taken place, the twenty seventh of February. It had
• 3:38
  been a full moon, so while Brian had been driving around the streets looking
• 3:42
  for a victim, he had been able to easily spot the shape of a
• 3:46
  homeless man in the distance. Warren Barnes hadn't bothered Brian at all. In
• 3:52
  fact, he'd been sleeping and unaware when Brian approached him intent on killing him.
• 4:00
  My knife, Brian said, and I put on three layers of gloves
• 4:03
  because plastic gloves can betray their users because they're so thin. That I took
• 4:09
  the knife, pulled back the canvas, and stabbed his neck. Brian provided
• 4:14
  a detailed account of the crime, saying that while he had been stabbing Warren,
• 4:18
  he had been making animalistic noises and growling. Warren had not fought back,
• 4:25
  he had been terrified, repeatedly asking Brian why he was doing this.
• 4:30
  Brian did not answer. He just kept inflicting more and more wounds until Warren
• 4:34
  finally fell silent. Once he was sure Warren was dead, he inflicted several
• 4:41
  post mortem wounds, including stabbing his eyes and making incisions in the corners of
• 4:46
  his mouth to create the appearance of a joker like smile. Then he used
• 4:51
  the same kitchen knife to dismember the body, making it easier to dispose of.
• 4:57
  When he explained the process to investigators, Brian laughed, saying sorry,
• 5:02
  that's morbid, and he decided to keep a few of the dismembered body parts,
• 5:08
  Warren's head and both of his hands, but wanted to get rid of
• 5:11
  the rest. He loaded the rest of Warren's body into the trunk of his
• 5:15
  car and then tried to dispose of it in the Colorado River at a nearby
• 5:19
  boat ramp, but ended up getting his vehicle stuck. The car was towed
• 5:24
  to Brian's father's house with Warren's blood still in the trunk. Brian made up
• 5:30
  a story about how the car got damaged, and at the time nobody had
• 5:33
  any suspicions that he was lying. Shortly after the killing, however, Brian
• 5:39
  had gotten a little paranoid about whether or not he'd actually gotten away with the
• 5:43
  crime. He made a couple of incriminating Google searches, asking does a river
• 5:47
  wash evidence away? And how long does it take before a dead body smells.
• 5:54
  Brian's trial took place in early twenty twenty three. He attempted to get
• 5:59
  out of the charge by pleading not guilty, claiming that his mental health removed
• 6:02
  his responsibility for the crime. However, the jury were not convinced that Brian
• 6:08
  was not guilty by reason of insanity. He might have had a history of
• 6:12
  diagnosed mental illness, but he also clearly carefully planned out the crime. For
• 6:18
  half a year. He romanticized the idea of committing a murder, going as
• 6:23
  far as trying to pick a victim who would not be missed. When he
• 6:27
  approached a sleeping Warren Barnes, he had already been wearing his gloves and holding
• 6:31
  a knife. More than ten of Warren's loved ones decided to speak at the
• 6:36
  trial, talking to the jury about the impact that Warren had on their lives
• 6:42
  and how much they would miss him. One of the speakers was Warren's sister,
• 6:46
  Geraldine. Her birthday was the twenty sixth of February, the day before
• 6:50
  Warren was killed, and she had spoken to him on the phone. Since
• 6:56
  the murder, Geraldine has been devastated that she would never receive another phone call
• 7:00
  from Warren. Terry Coheed took the stand, retelling the story of how she
• 7:04
  found Warren's head in Brian's closet. She was interviewed by the prosecution for several
• 7:10
  hours and was so distressed that she required an emotional support dog during her testimony.
• 7:15
  Meanwhile, her son appeared to be completely unfazed. Terry told the jury
• 7:20
  about how Brian struggled with anxiety and was diagnosed with ADHD and autism, and
• 7:27
  also shared that several months before Warren's murder, she had discovered that Brian was
• 7:30
  carrying around a backpack that contained duct tape, a hammer, and several zip
• 7:36
  ties. The prosecution described the backpack as a kill kit that Brian hadn't had
• 7:43
  the chance to use yet. Finally, the jury reached their decision. Brian
• 7:48
  was found guilty of all of the charges against him first degree murder, as
• 7:54
  well as tampering with evidence in an investigation and two counts of tampering with the
• 7:59
  dead body. When the trial's verdict was read to the courtroom, several of
• 8:03
  the attendees burst into tears or began to celebrate, but Brian, who was
• 8:09
  now twenty one years old, showed no reaction. Brian Coheed Junior had been
• 8:13
  wrong about one thing. He had decided to target to a homeless victim because
• 8:18
  he believed that if a homeless person went missing, no one would notice or
• 8:24
  care. However, from the moments he disappeared, Warren Barnes was deeply missed.
• 8:30
  He had become a familiar, friendly face to locals in Grand Junction,
• 8:33
  Colorado, who appreciated him for his extroverted personality. Warren was often seen with
• 8:39
  his nose stuck in a book, and his love for reading was so well
• 8:43
  known that several Grand Junction businesses would set out a chair for him to sit
• 8:48
  and read his latest book. Passers by would stop to chat about what he
• 8:52
  was reading, said an article printed in the Colorado Sun, and if they
• 8:56
  bid Warren have a good day, he invariably responded, and you also not
• 9:01
  everybody in the area knew Warren's name, but if you mentioned the reading Man,
• 9:07
  they knew exactly who you were talking about. In late twenty twenty one,
• 9:11
  artist and metal worker Tim Nevin erected a memorial dedicated to Warren. It
• 9:16
  was installed in Grand Junction, close to Main Street. The metal sculpture took
• 9:22
  Tim almost three hundred hours to create. It consists of a curved metal chair,
• 9:26
  a recreation of the same chair that Warren would sit and read in,
• 9:31
  with a pile of metal books sitting on the seat. The spine of one
• 9:35
  of the books was engraved with the title and you also the same thing that
• 9:39
  Warren would always say to strangers when they wished him a good day. Warren
• 9:43
  Barnes memorial says one simple phrase, Warren was here. That's this ten minute
• 10:03
  Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime. I'm Joe. I'm the host,
• 10:09
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• 10:11
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• 10:15
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• 10:31
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• 10:37
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• 10:39
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• 10:43
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• 10:46
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• 11:01
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• 11:07
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• 11:11
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• 11:16
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• 11:24
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• 11:28
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• 11:31
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• 11:41
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• 11:43
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