Brian Cohee Jr: The Murder of Warren Barnes

Brian Cohee Jr. was a 19-year-old from Grand Junction, Colorado, who murdered Warren Barnes, a 69-year-old homeless man known locally as “the reading man,” on the night of February 27, 2021. Cohee confessed almost immediately, told investigators he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone, and after a three-week trial in which he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, a Mesa County jury convicted him of first-degree murder. He is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Night of the Killing

Cohee spent the evening of February 27, 2021, driving around Grand Junction looking for a victim. He told investigators he chose someone experiencing homelessness because he believed “nobody would miss a homeless person or prostitute.”¹ He found Warren Barnes asleep near railroad tracks a few blocks from downtown.²

He had put on three pairs of gloves and carried a 12-inch kitchen knife. He ambushed Barnes as he slept and stabbed him repeatedly. Forensic pathologist Dr. Daniel Lingamfelter later testified that Barnes suffered 30 to 40 stab wounds, at least three of them inflicted while he was still alive.³ After the killing, Cohee dismembered Barnes’s head and hands and took them back to the home he shared with his parents. He tried to dump the rest of the body at the Blue Heron boat ramp on the Colorado River, but his vehicle got stuck.⁴

When he arrived home with blood on the bumper, he told his mother it was fake blood from a theatrical kit.⁵ In the notes app on his phone, he logged the event as “1st.” Prosecutors argued the label showed he intended to kill again.¹

How He Was Caught

A few days later, Cohee’s mother, Terri Cohee, opened a plastic container in her son’s closet and found Barnes’s severed head and hands. She ran a daycare out of the family home, and she testified that when she found the head in the kitchen sink her “first thought was to get the kids out.”⁵ She called 911. When officers arrived on March 1, 2021, Cohee openly admitted what was in his room: “A human head and hands from that fella that went missing recently.”²

On body-camera interviews he told investigators he had wanted to kill someone for months and had targeted a homeless victim because he believed “no one would notice.”¹ He was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body, and tampering with evidence.⁴

Long-Standing Fixation on Killing

Evidence at trial showed Cohee had been fixated on violence for years. Classmates in middle school had nicknamed him “Dahmer” because of his interest in the serial killer. Clinical psychologist Dr. Katrina Katen, who had treated him, testified that he idolized Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Ted Bundy, and the Columbine shooters. She ended treatment after he expressed a desire to be well-known for any reason and began openly praising mass killers.⁶ He had killed a cat and kept its decomposing head in his bedroom for three days.²

A counselor, Bea Phillips, who saw him from 2017 to 2019, testified that he showed a “fascination with death” and that she referred him to Mind Springs Health for crisis treatment out of concern he might hurt himself or others. She later learned he had been released less than a day after being admitted.⁶

Months before the killing he had assembled what prosecutors called a “kill kit”: a black backpack holding zip ties, a hammer, and duct tape. His mother had found it earlier but did not know what it was for.⁵ Digital forensics recovered searches from his phone in the weeks before the murder: “How do people react when held at knifepoint?” and “How deadly is a neck stab wound.” He had also searched whether homeless people were “safe to be with.” Hours after the killing, he searched for how to wipe his phone, which prosecutors said was an attempt to erase photographs he had taken of the body.³

The Insanity Defense

Cohee had been diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and major depressive disorder and had been on medication since age five.⁵ His trial began January 17, 2023. Under Colorado law, an insanity verdict required proof that he was “incapable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time a crime is committed because of a mental disease or defect.”⁷

The defense’s central witness, psychologist Paul Spragg, testified that Cohee was having a “major depressive episode with psychotic features” and that the sight of Barnes sleeping triggered a dissociative episode. On cross-examination, Spragg acknowledged that this was his first full insanity evaluation, that Cohee had appeared lucid when speaking with police, and that Cohee understood there would be consequences for his actions both before the killing and while disposing of the body.⁸

State-hired psychologist Dr. Laura Serrano-Amerigo testified that Cohee “showed no signs of psychosis at any point before, during, or after the crime” and that he understood his actions.⁹ The prosecution pointed to the months of planning, the internet searches, the kill kit, and the attempts to destroy evidence as proof he knew exactly what he was doing.⁴

Verdict and Life Sentence

The jury deliberated for about two days after closing arguments on February 1, 2023. On Friday, February 3, 2023, it returned guilty verdicts on all three counts. Cohee showed no reaction.¹⁰

Sentencing followed on Monday, February 6, 2023, before Twenty-first Judicial District Judge Richard Gurley. First-degree murder in Colorado carries a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and Judge Gurley imposed it, describing the case as one of the most horrific he had seen in 37 years in the justice system.¹¹

More than 30 of Barnes’s friends and relatives filled the courtroom to give victim impact statements. His sister, Geraldine Shipp, called him “a man of honor, a man of integrity, a man loved by community and family.” His cousin, Joanne Barnes Graham, told the court, “He would help anyone who needed anything, including the defendant. He was not a throwaway person.” Cohee sat stone-faced through all of it.¹

Who Warren Barnes Was

Warren Barnes was not the anonymous figure his killer imagined. Around downtown Grand Junction he was known as “the reading man” or “the bird man,” a gentle regular who spent his days behind a local bridal shop reading paperback Westerns and feeding birds. He picked up odd jobs through a temporary agency and helped shop owners move boxes. Neighbors and business owners said he never begged and never hassled anyone.¹

After his death, a makeshift memorial of flowers and books appeared behind Monique’s Bridal on Main Street, and friends held a private ceremony to burn his reading chair.¹² On November 20, 2021, a permanent metal sculpture by artist Tim Navin was installed in the breezeway between Monique’s Bridal and Out West Books, where Barnes had spent so many hours. It shows a chair, a stack of books etched with the titles of his favorite Westerns, and a tree. One of the books carries the inscription “And you also,” the phrase Barnes used whenever someone wished him a good day.¹

1
Colorado Sun. Warren Barnes Reading Man Killer Sentenced
2
Crime and Investigation. Brian Cohee Murder Warren Barnes
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KKCO 11 News. Prosecution Rests Their Case in Brian Cohee Trial
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Mesa County. Cohee Found Guilty
5
Western Slope Now. Brian Cohees Mom Takes the Stand
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Grand Junction Sentinel. Mental Health Professionals Testify in Cohee Trial
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KJCT8. Brian Cohees Closest Friend Takes the Witness Stand
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Grand Junction Sentinel. Expert Witness Testifies in Cohee Trial
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KJCT8. Cohee Trial
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Grand Junction Sentinel. Cohee Found Guilty
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Grand Junction Sentinel. A Look Back: Cohee Trial Top Crime Story of 2023
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RMPBS. Warren Barnes Memorial Grand Junction